had no place in the list. Nor had he any patience with those
faults in others. Had Bud walked down drunk to Cash's camp, that
evening when they first met, he might have received a little food
doled out to him grudgingly, but he assuredly would not have
slept in Cash's bed that night. That he tolerated drunkenness in
Bud now would have been rather surprising to any one who knew
Cash well. Perhaps he had a vague understanding of the deeps
through which Bud was struggling, and so was constrained to hide
his disapproval, hoping that the moral let-down was merely a
temporary one.

He finished his strictly utilitarian household labor and went
off up the flat to the sluice boxes. Bud had not moved from his
first position on the bed, but he did not breathe like a sleeping
man. Not at first; after an hour or so he did sleep, heavily and
with queer, muddled dreams that had no sequence and left only a
disturbed sense of discomfort behind then.

At noon or a little after Cash returned to the cabin, cast a
sour look of contempt at the recumbent Bud, and built a fire in
the old cookstove. He got his dinner, ate it, and washed his
dishes with never a word to Bud, who had wakened and lay with his
eyes half open, sluggishly miserable and staring dully at the
rough spruce logs of the wall.

Cash put on his cap, looked at Bud and gave a snort, and went
off again to his work. Bud lay still for awhile longer, staring
dully at the wall. Finally he raised up, swung his feet to the
floor, and sat there staring around the little cabin as though he
had never before seen it.