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Cash Markham's past could not have been a blank; more likely it held too much of sorrow for the salve of speech to lighten its hurt. There might have been a child.... "Aw, come back here!" Bud commanded Lovin Child gruffly. But Lovin Child was too busy. He had discovered in his circling of Cash, the fanny buckles on Cash's high overshoes.
When he was satisfied that Cash's skin could absorb no more, he turned him unceremoniously on his face and repeated his ministrations upon Cash's shoulders. Then he rolled him back, buttoned his shirts for him, and tramped heavily back to the table. "I don't mind seeing a man play the mule when he's well," he grumbled, "but he's got a right to call it a day when he gits down sick.
For the first time it struck him as significant that in the two years, almost, of their constant companionship, Cash's reminiscences had stopped abruptly about fifteen years back. Beyond that he never went, save now and then when he jumped a space, to the time when he was a boy. Of what dark years lay between, Bud had never been permitted a glimpse.
He was glad to salve his conscience with a small bequest, keeping the bulk if so tenuous a thing as Cash's fortune may be said to have bulk for this baby they two were hiding away from its lawful parents. Cash could do it; why couldn't be? He raised his head and looked over at Lovin Child, asleep in his new and rumpled little finery.
Followed by Larry, the captain hurried into Waterford, where, having got the seaman rigged out from top to toe in a new suit of clothing, he repaired to Ferris, Twigg, and Cash's office. He there wrote a letter to the firm in Dublin, giving an account of the information he had just received, and urging them to advance the sum required to enable the Research to proceed on her voyage.
Cut big gash. Swelled now like a punkin. Cash and I tangled over same. I'm going to quit. I have had enough of this darn country. Creek's drying up, and mosquitoes have found way to crawl under bags. Cash wants me to stay till we find good claim, but Cash can go to thunder. Then Cash's record goes on: June 27. Bud very sick & out of head. Think it is heat, which is terrible.
Bud hastily dropped the wood, and without a word Cash handed Lovin Child across the dead line, much as he would have handed over a wet puppy. Without a word Bud took him, but the quirky smile hid at the corners of his mouth, and under Cash's beard still lurked the grin. "No, no, no!"
With movements roughly gentle he opened Cash's clothing at the throat, exposed his hairy chest, and poured on grease until it ran in a tiny rivulets. He reached in and rubbed the grease vigorously with the palm of his hand, giving particular attention to the surface over the bronchial tubes.
Bud looked at him sitting there. For the first time since their trails had joined, he wondered what Cash was thinking about; wondered with a new kind of sympathy about Cash's lonely life, that held no ties, no warmth of love.
The twinkle in the eyes, the quirk of the lips, the shape of the forehead and, emphasizing them all, the expression of having a secret joke, struck him with a kind of shock. If it were possible... But, even in the delirium of fever, Bud had never hinted that he had a child, or a wife even. He had firmly planted in Cash's mind the impression that his life had never held any close ties whatsoever.
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