Cabin Fever
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B. M. Bower >> Cabin Fever
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13 This etext was prepared by Anthony Matonak.
Cabin Fever by B. M. Bower
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE FEVER MANIFESTS ITSELF
II TWO MAKE A QUARREL
III TEN DOLLARS AND A JOB FOR BUD
IV HEAD SOUTH AND KEEP GOING
V BUD CANNOT PERFORM MIRACLES
VI BUD TAKES TO THE HILLS
VII INTO THE DESERT
VIII MANY BARREN MONTHS AND MILES
IX THE BITE OF MEMORY
X EMOTIONS ARE TRICKY THINGS
XI THE FIRST STAGES
XII MARIE TAKES A DESPERATE CHANCE
XIII CABIN FEVER IN ITS WORST FORM
XIV CASH GETS A SHOCK
XV AND BUD NEVER GUESSED
XVI THE ANTIDOTE
XVII LOVIN CHILD WRIGGLES IN
XVIII THEY HAVE THEIR TROUBLES
XIX BUD FACES FACTS
XX LOVIN CHILD STRIKES IT RICH
XXI MARIE'S SIDE OF IT
XXII THE CURE COMPLETE
CABIN FEVER
CHAPTER ONE. THE FEVER MANIFESTS ITSELF
There is a certain malady of the mind induced by too much of one
thing. Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to
that horrid disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon
monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West
calls "cabin fever." True, it parades under different names,
according to circumstances and caste. You may be afflicted in a
palace and call it ennui, and it may drive you to commit
peccadillos and indiscretions of various sorts. You may be
attacked in a middle-class apartment house, and call it various
names, and it may drive you to cafe life and affinities and
alimony. You may have it wherever you are shunted into a
backwater of life, and lose the sense of being borne along in the
full current of progress. Be sure that it will make you
abnormally sensitive to little things; irritable where once you
were amiable; glum where once you went whistling about your work
and your play. It is the crystallizer of character, the acid test
of friendship, the final seal set upon enmity. It will betray
your little, hidden weaknesses, cut and polish your undiscovered
virtues, reveal you in all your glory or your vileness to your
companions in exile--if so be you have any.
If you would test the soul of a friend, take him into the
wilderness and rub elbows with him for five months! One of three
things will surely happen: You will hate each other afterward
with that enlightened hatred which is seasoned with contempt; you
will emerge with the contempt tinged with a pitying toleration,
or you will be close, unquestioning friends to the last six feet
of earth--and beyond. All these things will cabin fever do,
and more. It has committed murder, many's the time. It has driven
men crazy. It has warped and distorted character out of all
semblance to its former self. It has sweetened love and killed
love. There is an antidote--but I am going to let you find the
antidote somewhere in the story.
Bud Moore, ex-cow-puncher and now owner of an auto stage that
did not run in the winter, was touched with cabin fever and did
not know what ailed him. His stage line ran from San Jose up
through Los Gatos and over the Bear Creek road across the summit
of the Santa Cruz Mountains and down to the State Park, which is
locally called Big Basin. For something over fifty miles of
wonderful scenic travel he charged six dollars, and usually his
big car was loaded to the running boards. Bud was a good driver,
and he had a friendly pair of eyes--dark blue and with a
humorous little twinkle deep down in them somewhere--and a
human little smiley quirk at the corners of his lips. He did not
know it, but these things helped to fill his car.
Until gasoline married into the skylark family, Bud did well
enough to keep him contented out of a stock saddle. (You may not
know it, but it is harder for an old cow-puncher to find content,
now that the free range is gone into history, than it is for a
labor agitator to be happy in a municipal boarding house.)
Bud did well enough, which was very well indeed. Before the
second season closed with the first fall rains, he had paid for
his big car and got the insurance policy transferred to his name.
He walked up First Street with his hat pushed back and a
cigarette dangling from the quirkiest corner of his mouth, and
his hands in his pockets. The glow of prosperity warmed his
manner toward the world. He had a little money in the bank, he
had his big car, he had the good will of a smiling world. He
could not walk half a block in any one of three or four towns but
he was hailed with a "Hello, Bud!" in a welcoming tone. More
people knew him than Bud remembered well enough to call by
name--which is the final proof of popularity the world over.
In that glowing mood he had met and married a girl who went
into Big Basin with her mother and camped for three weeks. The
girl had taken frequent trips to Boulder Creek, and twice had
gone on to San Jose, and she had made it a point to ride with the
driver because she was crazy about cars. So she said. Marie had
all the effect of being a pretty girl. She habitually wore white
middies with blue collar and tie, which went well with her clear,
pink skin and her hair that just escaped being red. She knew how
to tilt her "beach" hat at the most provocative angle, and she
knew just when to let Bud catch a slow, sidelong glance--of
the kind that is supposed to set a man's heart to syncopatic
behavior. She did not do it too often. She did not powder too
much, and she had the latest slang at her pink tongue's tip and
was yet moderate in her use of it.
Bud did not notice Marie much on the first trip. She was
demure, and Bud had a girl in San Jose who had brought him to
that interesting stage of dalliance where he wondered if he dared
kiss her good night the next time he called. He was preoccupiedly
reviewing the she-said-and-then-I-said, and trying to make up his
mind whether he should kiss her and take a chance on her
displeasure, or whether he had better wait. To him Marie appeared
hazily as another camper who helped fill the car--and his
pocket--and was not at all hard to look at. It was not until the
third trip that Bud thought her beautiful, and was secretly glad
that he had not kissed that San Jose girl.
You know how these romances develop. Every summer is saturated
with them the world over. But Bud happened to be a simple-souled
fellow, and there was something about Marie--He didn't know
what it was. Men never do know, until it is all over. He only
knew that the drive through the shady stretches of woodland grew
suddenly to seem like little journeys into paradise. Sentiment
lurked behind every great, mossy tree bole. New beauties unfolded
in the winding drive up over the mountain crests. Bud was
terribly in love with the world in those days.
There were the evenings he spent in the Basin, sitting beside
Marie in the huge campfire circle, made wonderful by the shadowy
giants, the redwoods; talking foolishness in undertones while the
crowd sang snatches of songs which no one knew from beginning to
end, and that went very lumpy in the verses and very much out of
harmony in the choruses. Sometimes they would stroll down toward
that sweeter music the creek made, and stand beside one of the
enormous trees and watch the glow of the fire, and the
silhouettes of the people gathered around it.
In a week they were surreptitiously holding hands. In two weeks
they could scarcely endure the partings when Bud must start back
to San Jose, and were taxing their ingenuity to invent new
reasons why Marie must go along. In three weeks they were
married, and Marie's mother--a shrewd, shrewish widow--was
trying to decide whether she should wash her hands of Marie, or
whether it might be well to accept the situation and hope that
Bud would prove himself a rising young man.
But that was a year in the past. Bud had cabin fever now and
did not know what ailed him, though cause might have been summed
up in two meaty phrases: too much idleness, and too much mother-
in-law. Also, not enough comfort and not enough love.
In the kitchen of the little green cottage on North Sixth
Street where Bud had built the home nest with much nearly-Mission
furniture and a piano, Bud was frying his own hotcakes for his
ten o'clock breakfast, and was scowling over the task. He did not
mind the hour so much, but he did mortally hate to cook his own
breakfast--or any other meal, for that matter. In the next
room a rocking chair was rocking with a rhythmic squeak, and a
baby was squalling with that sustained volume of sound which
never fails to fill the adult listener with amazement. It
affected Bud unpleasantly, just as the incessant bawling of a
band of weaning calves used to do. He could not bear the thought
of young things going hungry.
"For the love of Mike, Marie! Why don't you feed that kid, or
do something to shut him up?" he exploded suddenly, dribbling
pancake batter over the untidy range.
The squeak, squawk of the rocker ceased abruptly. "'Cause it
isn't time yet to feed him--that's why. What's burning out
there? I'll bet you've got the stove all over dough again--"
The chair resumed its squeaking, the baby continued uninterrupted
its wah-h-hah! wah-h-hah, as though it was a phonograph that had
been wound up with that record on, and no one around to stop it
Bud turned his hotcakes with a vicious flop that spattered more
batter on the stove. He had been a father only a month or so, but
that was long enough to learn many things about babies which he
had never known before. He knew, for instance, that the baby
wanted its bottle, and that Marie was going to make him wait till
feeding time by the clock.
"By heck, I wonder what would happen if that darn clock was to
stop!" he exclaimed savagely, when his nerves would bear no more.
"You'd let the kid starve to death before you'd let your own
brains tell you what to do! Husky youngster like that--feeding
'im four ounces every four days--or some simp rule like that--"
He lifted the cakes on to a plate that held two messy-looking
fried eggs whose yolks had broken, set the plate on the cluttered
table and slid petulantly into a chair and began to eat. The
squeaking chair and the crying baby continued to torment him.
Furthermore, the cakes were doughy in the middle.
"For gosh sake, Marie, give that kid his bottle!" Bud exploded
again. "Use the brains God gave yuh--such as they are! By
heck, I'll stick that darn book in the stove. Ain't yuh got any
feelings at all? Why, I wouldn't let a dog go hungry like that!
Don't yuh reckon the kid knows when he's hungry? Why, good Lord!
I'll take and feed him myself, if you don't. I'll burn that
book--so help me!"
"Yes, you will--not!" Marie's voice rose shrewishly, riding
the high waves of the baby's incessant outcry against the
restrictions upon appetite imposed by enlightened motherhood.
"You do, and see what'll happen! You'd have him howling with
colic, that's what you'd do."
"Well, I'll tell the world he wouldn't holler for grub! You'd
go by the book if it told yuh to stand 'im on his head in the ice
chest! By heck, between a woman and a hen turkey, give me the
turkey when it comes to sense. They do take care of their young
ones--"
"Aw, forget that! When it comes to sense---"
Oh, well, why go into details? You all know how these domestic
storms arise, and how love washes overboard when the matrimonial
ship begins to wallow in the seas of recrimination.
Bud lost his temper and said a good many things should not have
said. Marie flung back angry retorts and reminded Bud of all his
sins and slights and shortcomings, and told him many of mamma's
pessimistic prophecies concerning him, most of which seemed
likely to be fulfilled. Bud fought back, telling Marie how much
of a snap she had had since she married him, and how he must have
looked like ready money to her, and added that now, by heck, he
even had to do his own cooking, as well as listen to her whining
and nagging, and that there wasn't clean corner in the house, and
she'd rather let her own baby go hungry than break a simp rule in
a darn book got up by a bunch of boobs that didn't know anything
about kids. Surely to goodness, he finished his heated paragraph,
it wouldn't break any woman's back to pour a little warm water on
a little malted milk, and shake it up.
He told Marie other things, and in return, Marie informed him
that he was just a big-mouthed, lazy brute, and she could curse
the day she ever met him. That was going pretty far. Bud reminded
her that she had not done any cursing at the time, being in his
opinion too busy roping him in to support her.
By that time he had gulped down his coffee, and was into his
coat, and looking for his hat. Marie, crying and scolding and
rocking the vociferous infant, interrupted herself to tell him
that she wanted a ten-cent roll of cotton from the drug store,
and added that she hoped she would not have to wait until next
Christmas for it, either. Which bit of sarcasm so inflamed Bud's
rage that he swore every step of the way to Santa Clara Avenue,
and only stopped then because he happened to meet a friend who
was going down town, and they walked together.
At the drug store on the corner of Second Street Bud stopped
and bought the cotton, feeling remorseful for some of the
things he had said to Marie, but not enough so to send him back
home to tell her he was sorry. He went on, and met another friend
before he had taken twenty steps.
This friend was thinking of buying a certain second-hand
automobile that was offered at a very low price, and he wanted
Bud to go with him and look her over. Bud went, glad of the
excuse to kill the rest of the forenoon.
They took the car out and drove to Schutzen Park and back. Bud
opined that she didn't bark to suit him, and she had a knock in
her cylinders that shouted of carbon. They ran her into the
garage shop and went deep into her vitals, and because she jerked
when Bud threw her into second, Bud suspected that her bevel
gears had lost a tooth or two, and was eager to find out for
sure.
Bill looked at his watch and suggested that they eat first
before they got all over grease by monkeying with the rear end.
So they went to the nearest restaurant and had smothered
beefsteak and mashed potato and coffee and pie, and while they
ate they talked of gears and carburetors and transmission and
ignition troubles, all of which alleviated temporarily Bud's case
of cabin fever and caused him to forget that he was married and
had quarreled with his wife and had heard a good many unkind
things which his mother-in-law had said about him.
By the time they were back in the garage and had the grease
cleaned out of the rear gears so that they could see whether they
were really burred or broken, as Bud had suspected, the twinkle
was back in his eyes, and the smiley quirk stayed at the corners
of his mouth, and when he was not talking mechanics with Bill he
was whistling. He found much lost motion and four broken teeth,
and he was grease to his eyebrows--in other words, he was happy.
When he and Bill finally shed their borrowed overalls and caps,
the garage lights were on, and the lot behind the shop was dusky.
Bud sat down on the running board and began to figure what the
actual cost of the bargain would be when Bill had put it into
good mechanical condition. New bearings, new bevel gear, new
brake, lining, rebored cylinders--they totalled a sum that
made Bill gasp.
By the time Bud had proved each item an absolute necessity, and
had reached the final ejaculation: "Aw, forget it, Bill, and buy
yuh a Ford!" it was so late that he knew Marie must have given up
looking for him home to supper. She would have taken it for
granted that he had eaten down town. So, not to disappoint her,
Bud did eat down town. Then Bill wanted him to go to a movie, and
after a praiseworthy hesitation Bud yielded to temptation and
went. No use going home now, just when Marie would be rocking the
kid to sleep and wouldn't let him speak above a whisper, he told
his conscience. Might as well wait till they settled down for the
night.
CHAPTER TWO. TWO MAKE A QUARREL
At nine o'clock Bud went home. He was feeling very well
satisfied with himself for some reason which he did not try to
analyze, but which was undoubtedly his sense of having saved Bill
from throwing away six hundred dollars on a bum car; and the
weight in his coat pocket of a box of chocolates that he had
bought for Marie. Poor girl, it was kinda tough on her, all
right, being tied to the house now with the kid. Next spring when
he started his run to Big Basin again, he would get a little camp
in there by the Inn, and take her along with him when the travel
wasn't too heavy. She could stay at either end of the run, just
as she took a notion. Wouldn't hurt the kid a bit--he'd be
bigger then, and the outdoors would make him grow like a pig.
Thinking of these things, Bud walked briskly, whistling as he
neared the little green house, so that Marie would know who it
was, and would not be afraid when he stepped up on the front
porch.
He stopped whistling rather abruptly when he reached the house,
for it was dark. He tried the door and found it locked. The key
was not in the letter box where they always kept it for the
convenience of the first one who returned, so Bud went around to
the back and climbed through the pantry window. He fell over a
chair, bumped into the table, and damned a few things. The
electric light was hung in the center of the room by a cord that
kept him groping and clutching in the dark before he finally
touched the elusive bulb with his fingers and switched on the
light.
The table was set for a meal--but whether it was dinner or
supper Bud could not determine. He went into the little sleeping
room and turned on the light there, looked around the empty room,
grunted, and tiptoed into the bedroom. (In the last month he had
learned to enter on his toes, lest he waken the baby.) He might
have saved himself the bother, for the baby was not there in its
new gocart. The gocart was not there, Marie was not there--one
after another these facts impressed themselves upon Bud's mind,
even before he found the letter propped against the clock in the
orthodox manner of announcing unexpected departures. Bud read the
letter, crumpled it in his fist, and threw it toward the little
heating stove. "If that's the way yuh feel about it, I'll tell
the world you can go and be darned!" he snorted, and tried to let
that end the matter so far as he was concerned. But he could not
shake off the sense of having been badly used. He did not stop to
consider that while he was working off his anger, that day, Marie
had been rocking back and forth, crying and magnifying the
quarrel as she dwelt upon it, and putting a new and sinister
meaning into Bud's ill-considered utterances. By the time Bud was
thinking only of the bargain car's hidden faults, Marie had
reached the white heat of resentment that demanded vigorous
action. Marie was packing a suitcase and meditating upon the
scorching letter she meant to write.
Judging from the effect which the letter had upon Bud, it must
have been a masterpiece of its kind. He threw the box of
chocolates into the wood-box, crawled out of the window by which
he had entered, and went down town to a hotel. If the house
wasn't good enough for Marie, let her go. He could go just as
fast and as far as she could. And if she thought he was going to
hot-foot it over to her mother's and whine around and beg her to
come home, she had another think coming.
He wouldn't go near the darn place again, except to get his
clothes. He'd bust up the joint, by thunder. He'd sell off the
furniture and turn the house over to the agent again, and Marie
could whistle for a home. She had been darn glad to get into that
house, he remembered, and away from that old cat of a mother. Let
her stay there now till she was darn good and sick of it. He'd
just keep her guessing for awhile; a week or so would do her
good. Well, he wouldn't sell the furniture--he'd just move it
into another house, and give her a darn good scare. He'd get a
better one, that had a porcelain bathtub instead of a zinc one,
and a better porch, where the kid could be out in the sun. Yes,
sir, he'd just do that little thing, and lay low and see what
Marie did about that. Keep her guessing--that was the play to
make.
Unfortunately for his domestic happiness, Bud failed to take
into account two very important factors in the quarrel. The first
and most important one was Marie's mother, who, having been a
widow for fifteen years and therefore having acquired a habit of
managing affairs that even remotely concerned her, assumed that
Marie's affairs must be managed also. The other factor was
Marie's craving to be coaxed back to smiles by the man who drove
her to tears. Marie wanted Bud to come and say he was sorry, and
had been a brute and so forth. She wanted to hear him tell how
empty the house had seemed when he returned and found her gone.
She wanted him to be good and scared with that letter. She stayed
awake until after midnight, listening for his anxious footsteps;
after midnight she stayed awake to cry over the inhuman way he
was treating her, and to wish she was dead, and so forth; also
because the baby woke and wanted his bottle, and she was teaching
him to sleep all night without it, and because the baby had a
temper just like his father.
His father's temper would have yielded a point or two, the next
day, had it been given the least encouragement. For instance, he
might have gone over to see Marie before he moved the furniture
out of the house, had he not discovered an express wagon standing
in front of the door when he went home about noon to see if Marie
had come back. Before he had recovered to the point of profane
speech, the express man appeared, coming out of the house, bent
nearly double under the weight of Marie's trunk. Behind him in
the doorway Bud got a glimpse of Marie's mother.
That settled it. Bud turned around and hurried to the nearest
drayage company, and ordered a domestic wrecking crew to the
scene; in other words, a packer and two draymen and a dray. He'd
show 'em. Marie and her mother couldn't put anything over on him
--he'd stand over that furniture with a sheriff first.
He went back and found Marie's mother still there, packing
dishes and doilies and the like. They had a terrible row, and all
the nearest neighbors inclined ears to doors ajar--getting an
earful, as Bud contemptuously put it. He finally led Marie's
mother to the front door and set her firmly outside. Told her
that Marie had come to him with no more than the clothes she had,
and that his money had bought every teaspoon and every towel and
every stick of furniture in the darned place, and he'd be
everlastingly thus-and-so if they were going to strong-arm the
stuff off him now. If Marie was too good to live with him, why,
his stuff was too good for her to have.
Oh, yes, the neighbors certainly got an earful, as the town
gossips proved when the divorce suit seeped into the papers. Bud
refused to answer the proceedings, and was therefore ordered to
pay twice as much alimony as he could afford to pay; more, in
fact, than all his domestic expense had amounted to in the
fourteen months that he had been married. Also Marie was awarded
the custody of the child and, because Marie's mother had
represented Bud to be a violent man who was a menace to her
daughter's safety--and proved it by the neighbors who had seen
and heard so much--Bud was served with a legal paper that
wordily enjoined him from annoying Marie with his presence.
That unnecessary insult snapped the last thread of Bud's regret
for what had happened. He sold the furniture and the automobile,
took the money to the judge that had tried the case, told the
judge a few wholesome truths, and laid the pile of money on the
desk.
"That cleans me out, Judge," he said stolidly. "I wasn't such a
bad husband, at that. I got sore--but I'll bet you get sore
yourself and tell your wife what-for, now and then. I didn't get
a square deal, but that's all right. I'm giving a better deal
than I got. Now you can keep that money and pay it out to Marie
as she needs it, for herself and the kid. But for the Lord's
sake, Judge, don't let that wildcat of a mother of hers get her
fingers into the pile! She framed this deal, thinking she'd get a
haul outa me this way. I'm asking you to block that little game.
I've held out ten dollars, to eat on till I strike something. I'm
clean; they've licked the platter and broke the dish. So don't
never ask me to dig up any more, because I won't--not for you
nor no other darn man. Get that."
This, you must know, was not in the courtroom, so Bud was not
fined for contempt. The judge was a married man himself, and he
may have had a sympathetic understanding of Bud's position. At
any rate he listened unofficially, and helped Bud out with the
legal part of it, so that Bud walked out of the judge's office
financially free, even though he had a suspicion that his freedom
would not bear the test of prosperity, and that Marie's mother
would let him alone only so long as he and prosperity were
strangers.
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