"Oh, I see, all right! I'll tell the world I see you're a doggone
nuisance! Now see if you can keep outa mischief till I get the wood
carried in." Bud set him down on the bunk, gave him a mail-order
catalogue to look at, and went out again into the storm. When he came
back, Lovin Child was sitting on the hearth with the socks off, and was
picking bits of charcoal from the ashes and crunching them like candy in
his small, white teeth. Cash was hurrying to finish his scrubbing before
the charcoal gave out, and was keeping an eye on the crunching to see
that Lovin Child did not get a hot ember.
"H'yah! You young imp!" Bud shouted, stubbing his toe as he hurried
forward. "Watcha think you are--a fire-eater, for gosh sake?"
Cash bent his head low--it may have been to hide a chuckle. Bud was
having his hands full with the kid, and he was trying to be stern
against the handicap of a growing worship of Lovin Child and all
his little ways. Now Lovin Child was all over ashes, and the clean
undershirt was clean no longer, after having much charcoal rubbed into
its texture. Bud was not overstocked with clothes; much traveling had
formed the habit of buying as he needed for immediate use. With Lovin
Child held firmly under one arm, where he would be sure of him, he
emptied his "war-bag" on the bunk and hunted out another shirt Lovin Child got a bath, that time, because of the ashes he had managed
to gather on his feet and his hands and his head. Bud was patient, and
Lovin Child was delightedly unrepentant--until he was buttoned into
another shirt of Bud's, and the socks were tied on him.
"Now, doggone yuh, I'm goin' to stake you out, or hobble yuh, or some
darn thing, till I get that wood in!" he thundered, with his eyes
laughing. "You want to freeze? Hey? Now you're goin' to stay right on
this bunk till I get through, because I'm goin' to tie yuh on. You may
holler--but you little son of a gun, you'll stay safe!"
So Bud tied him, with a necktie around his body for a belt, and a strap
fastened to that and to a stout nail in the wall over the bunk. And
Lovin Child, when he discovered that it was not a new game but instead a
check upon his activities, threw himself on his back and held his breath
until he was purple, and then screeched with rage.
I don't suppose Bud ever carried in wood so fast in his life. He might
as well have taken his time, for Lovin Child was in one of his fits of
temper, the kind that his grandmother invariably called his father's
cussedness coming out in him. He howled for an hour and had both men
nearly frantic before he suddenly stopped and began to play with the
things he had scorned before to touch; the things that had made him bow
his back and scream when they were offered to him hopefully.