That night, when he had been given a bath in the little zinc tub they
used for washing clothes, and had been carefully buttoned inside a clean
undershirt of Bud's, for want of better raiment, Lovin Child missed
something out of his sleepytime cudding. He wanted Marie, and he did not
know how to make his want known to this big, tender, awkward man who had
befriended him and filled his thoughts till bedtime. He began to whimper
and look seekingly around the little cabin. The whimper grew to a cry
which Bud's rude rocking back and forth on the box before the fireplace
could not still.
"M'ee--take!" wailed Lovin Child, sitting up and listening. "M'ee
take--Uvin Chal!"
"Aw, now, you don't wanta go and act like that. Listen here, Boy. You
lay down here and go to sleep. You can search me for what it is you're
trying to say, but I guess you want your mama, maybe, or your bottle,
chances are. Aw, looky!" Bud pulled his watch from his pocket--a man's
infallible remedy for the weeping of infant charges--and dangled it
anxiously before Lovin Child.
With some difficulty he extracted the small hands from the long limp
tunnels of sleeves, and placed the watch in the eager fingers.
"Listen to the tick-tick! Aw, I wouldn't bite into it... oh, well, darn
it, if nothing else'll do yuh, why, eat it up!"
Lovin Child stopped crying and condescended to take a languid interest
in the watch--which had a picture of Marie pasted inside the back of the
case, by the way. "Ee?" he inquired, with a pitiful little catch in his
breath, and held it up for Bud to see the busy little second hand. "Ee?"
he smiled tearily and tried to show Cash, sitting aloof on his bench
beside the head of his bunk and staring into the fire. But Cash gave
no sign that he heard or saw anything save the visions his memory was
conjuring in the dancing flames.
"Lay down, now, like a good boy, and go to sleep," Bud wheedled. "You
can hold it if you want to--only don't drop it on the floor--here! Quit
kickin' your feet out like that! You wanta freeze? I'll tell the world
straight, it's plumb cold and snaky outside to-night, and you're pretty
darn lucky to be here instead of in some Injun camp where you'd have to
bed down with a mess of mangy dogs, most likely. Come on, now--lay down
like a good boy!"
"M'ee! M'ee take!" teased Lovin Child, and wept again; steadily,
insistently, with a monotonous vigor that rasped Bud's nerves and nagged
him with a vague memory of something familiar and unpleasant. He rocked
his body backward and forward, and frowned while he tried to lay hold of
the memory. It was the high-keyed wailing of this same man-child wanting
his bottle, but it eluded Bud completely. There was a tantalizing sense
of familiarity with the sound, but the lungs and the vocal chords of
Lovin Child had developed amazingly in two years, and he had lost the
small-infant wah-hah.