At that moment Cash pushed back the blankets that had been banked to his
ears. Simultaneously, Bud swung his feet to the cold floor with a thump
designed solely to inform Cash that Bud was getting up. Cash turned
over with his back to the room and pulled up the blankets. Bud grinned
maliciously and dressed as deliberately as the cold of the cabin would
let him. To be sure, there was the disadvantage of having to start his
own fire, but that disagreeable task was offset by the pleasure he would
get in messing around as long as he could, cooking his breakfast. He
even thought of frying potatoes and onions after he cooked his bacon.
Potatoes and onions fried together have a lovely tendency to stick to
the frying pan, especially if there is not too much grease, and if they
are fried very slowly. Cash would have to do some washing and scraping,
when it came his turn to cook. Bud knew just about how mad that would
make Cash, and he dwelt upon the prospect relishfully.
Bud never wanted potatoes for his breakfast. Coffee, bacon, and hotcakes
suited him perfectly. But just for meanness, because he felt mean and
he wanted to act mean, he sliced the potatoes and the onions into the
frying pan, and, to make his work artistically complete, he let them
burn and stick to the pan,--after he had his bacon and hotcakes fried,
of course!
He sat down and began to eat. And presently Cash crawled out into the
warm room filled with the odor of frying onions, and dressed himself
with the detached calm of the chronically sulky individual. Not once
did the manner of either man betray any consciousness of the other's
presence. Unless some detail of the day's work compelled them to speech,
not once for more than three weeks had either seemed conscious of the
other.
Cash washed his face and his hands, took the side of bacon, and cut
three slices with the precision of long practice. Bud sopped his last
hotcake in a pool of syrup and watched him from the corner of his eyes,
without turning his head an inch toward Cash. His keenest desire, just
then, was to see Cash when he tackled the frying pan.
But Cash disappointed him there. He took a pie tin off the shelf and
laid his strips of bacon on it, and set it in the oven; which is a very
good way of cooking breakfast bacon, as Bud well knew. Cash then took
down the little square baking pan, greased from the last baking
of bread, and in that he fried his hot cakes. As if that were not
sufficiently exasperating, he gave absolutely no sign of being conscious
of the frying pan any more than he was conscious of Bud. He did not
overdo it by whistling, or even humming a tune--which would have
given Bud an excuse to say something almost as mean as his mood.
Abstractedness rode upon Cash's lined brow. Placid meditation shone
forth from his keen old blue-gray eyes.