o catch each one with his finger. To distract
him, she turned him around face to the window.

"See all the--pitty cows," she urged, her lips trembling so much that
they would scarcely form the words. And when Lovin Child flattened a
finger tip against the window and chuckled, and said "Ee? Ee?"--which
was his way of saying see--Marie dropped her face down upon his fuzzy
red "bunny" cap, hugged him close to her, and cried, from sheer, nervous
reaction.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN. CABIN FEVER IN THE WORST FORM

Bud Moore woke on a certain morning with a distinct and well-defined
grouch against the world as he had found it; a grouch quite different
from the sullen imp of contrariness that had possessed him lately. He
did not know just what had caused the grouch, and he did not care. He
did know, however, that he objected to the look of Cash's overshoes that
stood pigeon-toed beside Cash's bed on the opposite side of the room,
where Bud had not set his foot for three weeks and more. He disliked the
audible yawn with which Cash manifested his return from the deathlike
unconsciousness of sleep. He disliked the look of Cash's rough coat and
sweater and cap, that hung on a nail over Cash's bunk. He disliked the
thought of getting up in the cold--and more, the sure knowledge that
unless he did get up, and that speedily, Cash would be dressed ahead of
him, and starting a fire in the cookstove. Which meant that Cash would
be the first to cook and eat his breakfast, and that the warped ethics
of their dumb quarrel would demand that Bud pretend to be asleep until
Cash had fried his bacon and his hotcakes and had carried them to his
end of the oilcloth-covered table.

When, by certain well-known sounds, Bud was sure that Cash was eating,
he could, without loss of dignity or without suspicion of making
any overtures toward friendliness, get up and dress and cook his own
breakfast, and eat it at his own end of the table. Bud wondered how long
Cash, the old fool, would sulk like that. Not that he gave a darn--he
just wondered, is all. For all he cared, Cash could go on forever
cooking his own meals and living on his own side of the shack. Bud
certainly would not interrupt him in acting the fool, and if Cash wanted
to keep it up till spring, Cash was perfectly welcome to do so. It just
showed how ornery a man could be when he was let to go. So far as he was
concerned, he would just as soon as not have that dead line painted down
the middl