Cabin Fever

M. Bower B.

Description

The prolific author Bertha Muzzy Bower lived on a number of Western ranches and farms in her day and was intimately acquainted with the creeping solitude that can surround those who spend time alone on the range. In Cabin Fever, Bower weaves a subtle psychological thriller into the familiar Western landscape that serves as the setting for her most acclaimed works.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775453048
• Langue: English

Extrait

CABIN FEVER
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B. M. BOWER
 
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Cabin Fever First published in 1918 ISBN 978-1-775453-04-8 © 2011 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter One - The Fever Manifests Itself Chapter Two - Two Make a Quarrel Chapter Three - Ten Dollars and a Job for Bud Chapter Four - Head South and Keep Going Chapter Five - Bud Cannot Perform Miracles Chapter Six - Bud Takes to the Hills Chapter Seven - Into the Desert Chapter Eight - Many Barren Months and Miles Chapter Nine - The Bite of Memory Chapter Ten - Emotions Are Tricky Things Chapter Eleven - The First Stages Chapter Twelve - Marie Takes a Desperate Chance Chapter Thirteen - Cabin Fever in the Worst Form Chapter Fourteen - Cash Gets a Shock Chapter Fifteen - And Bud Never Guessed Chapter Sixteen - The Antidote Chapter Seventeen - Lovin Child Wriggles In Chapter Eighteen - They Have Their Troubles Chapter Nineteen - Bud Faces Facts Chapter Twenty - Lovin Child Strikes it Rich Chapter Twenty-One - Marie's Side of It Chapter Twenty-Two - The Cure Complete
Chapter One - The Fever Manifests Itself
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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 horriddisease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon monotony succumbsto the insidious mental ailment which the West calls "cabin fever."True, it parades under different names, according to circumstances andcaste. You may be afflicted in a palace and call it ennui, and it maydrive you to commit peccadillos and indiscretions of various sorts. Youmay be attacked in a middle-class apartment house, and call it variousnames, and it may drive you to cafe life and affinities and alimony. Youmay have it wherever you are shunted into a backwater of life, and losethe sense of being borne along in the full current of progress. Be surethat it will make you abnormally sensitive to little things; irritablewhere once you were amiable; glum where once you went whistling aboutyour work and your play. It is the crystallizer of character, the acidtest of friendship, the final seal set upon enmity. It will betray yourlittle, hidden weaknesses, cut and polish your undiscovered virtues,reveal you in all your glory or your vileness to your companions inexile—if so be you have any.
If you would test the soul of a friend, take him into the wildernessand rub elbows with him for five months! One of three things will surelyhappen: You will hate each other afterward with that enlightened hatredwhich is seasoned with contempt; you will emerge with the contempttinged with a pitying toleration, or you will be close, unquestioningfriends to the last six feet of earth—and beyond. All these things willcabin fever do, and more. It has committed murder, many's the time. Ithas driven men crazy. It has warped and distorted character out of allsemblance to its former self. It has sweetened love and killed love.There is an antidote—but I am going to let you find the antidotesomewhere in the story.
Bud Moore, ex-cow-puncher and now owner of an auto stage that did notrun in the winter, was touched with cabin fever and did not know whatailed him. His stage line ran from San Jose up through Los Gatos andover the Bear Creek road across the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountainsand down to the State Park, which is locally called Big Basin. Forsomething over fifty miles of wonderful scenic travel he charged sixdollars, and usually his big car was loaded to the running boards. Budwas a good driver, and he had a friendly pair of eyes—dark blue andwith a humorous little twinkle deep down in them somewhere—and a humanlittle smiley quirk at the corners of his lips. He did not know it, butthese things helped to fill his car.
Until gasoline married into the skylark family, Bud did well enough tokeep him contented out of a stock saddle. (You may not know it, butit is harder for an old cow-puncher to find content, now that the freerange is gone into history, than it is for a labor agitator to be happyin a municipal boarding house.)
Bud did well enough, which was very well indeed. Before the secondseason closed with the first fall rains, he had paid for his big carand got the insurance policy transferred to his name. He walked upFirst Street with his hat pushed back and a cigarette dangling from thequirkiest corner of his mouth, and his hands in his pockets. The glow ofprosperity warmed his manner toward the world. He had a little money inthe 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 hewas hailed with a "Hello, Bud!" in a welcoming tone. More people knewhim than Bud remembered well enough to call by name—which is the finalproof of popularity the world over.
In that glowing mood he had met and married a girl who went into BigBasin with her mother and camped for three weeks. The girl had takenfrequent trips to Boulder Creek, and twice had gone on to San Jose, andshe had made it a point to ride with the driver because she was crazyabout cars. So she said. Marie had all the effect of being a prettygirl. She habitually wore white middies with blue collar and tie, whichwent well with her clear, pink skin and her hair that just escaped beingred. 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 thekind that is supposed to set a man's heart to syncopatic behavior. Shedid not do it too often. She did not powder too much, and she had thelatest slang at her pink tongue's tip and was yet moderate in her use ofit.
Bud did not notice Marie much on the first trip. She was demure, and Budhad a girl in San Jose who had brought him to that interesting stageof dalliance where he wondered if he dared kiss her good night thenext time he called. He was preoccupiedly reviewing theshe-said-and-then-I-said, and trying to make up his mind whether heshould kiss her and take a chance on her displeasure, or whether he hadbetter wait. To him Marie appeared hazily as another camper who helpedfill the car—and his pocket—and was not at all hard to look at. Itwas not until the third trip that Bud thought her beautiful, and wassecretly glad that he had not kissed that San Jose girl.
You know how these romances develop. Every summer is saturated with themthe world over. But Bud happened to be a simple-souled fellow, and therewas something about Marie—He didn't know what it was. Men never doknow, until it is all over. He only knew that the drive through theshady stretches of woodland grew suddenly to seem like little journeysinto paradise. Sentiment lurked behind every great, mossy tree bole. Newbeauties unfolded in the winding drive up over the mountain crests. Budwas terribly in love with the world in those days.
There were the evenings he spent in the Basin, sitting beside Mariein the huge campfire circle, made wonderful by the shadowy giants,the redwoods; talking foolishness in undertones while the crowd sangsnatches of songs which no one knew from beginning to end, and that wentvery lumpy in the verses and very much out of harmony in the choruses.Sometimes they would stroll down toward that sweeter music the creekmade, and stand beside one of the enormous trees and watch the glow ofthe fire, and the silhouettes of the people gathered around it.
In a week they were surreptitiously holding hands. In two weeks theycould scarcely endure the partings when Bud must start back to San Jose,and were taxing their ingenuity to invent new reasons why Marie must goalong. In three weeks they were married, and Marie's mother—a shrewd,shrewish widow—was trying to decide whether she should wash her handsof Marie, or whether it might be well to accept the situation and hopethat Bud would prove himself a rising young man.
But that was a year in the past. Bud had cabin fever now and did notknow what ailed him, though cause might have been summed up in two meatyphrases: too much idleness, and too much mother-in-law. Also, not enoughcomfort and not enough love.
In the kitchen of the little green cottage on North Sixth Street whereBud had built the home nest with much nearly-Mission furniture and apiano, 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 hedid mortally hate to cook his own breakfast—or any other meal, for thatmatter. In the next room a rocking chair was rocking with a rhythmicsqueak, and a baby was squalling with that sustained volume of soundwhich never fails to fill the adult listener with amazement. It affectedBud unpleasantly, just as the incessant bawling of a band of weaningcalves used to do. He could not bear the thought of young things goinghungry.
"For the love of Mike, Marie! Why don't you feed that kid, or dosomething to shut him up?" he exploded suddenly, dribbling pancakebatter over the untidy range.
The squeak, squawk of the rocker ceased abruptly. "'Cause it isn't timeyet to feed him—that's why. What's burning out there? I'll bet you'vegot the stove all over dough again—" The chair resumed its squeaking,the baby continued uninterrupted its wah-h-hah! wah-h-hah, as though itwas a phonograph that had been wound up with that record on, and no onearound to stop it
Bud turned his hotcakes with a vicious flop that spattered more batteron the stove. He had been a father o