Free Collection 1997 - End Of The Drive (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour

closer until their tails started again, and then I stopped.
    Upshot of it was, I got a good big buck, butchered him, and broiled a steak right on the spot, I was that hungry. Then I loaded the best cuts of meat into the hide and started back, still munching on wild onions.
    Down on the creek again the first person I saw was Griselda, and right off she began switching her skirts as she walked to meet me.
    â€œI passed your claim,” she said, “but you were not there.”
    She had little flecks of brown in her blue eyes and she stood uncomfortably close to a man. “No, ma’am, I’ve give…given…it up. Your pa is right. That claim isn’t up to much.”
    â€œAre you coming by tonight?”
    â€œSeems to me I wore out my welcome. No, ma’am, I’m not coming by. However, if you’re walking that way, I’ll drop off one of these here venison steaks.”
    Fresh meat was scarce along that creek, and the thought occurred that I might sell what I didn’t need, so after leaving a steak with the Popleys, I peddled the rest of it, selling out for twelve dollars cash money, two quarts of beans, a pint of rice, and six pounds of flour.
    Setting in my shack that night I wrassled with my problem and an idea that had come to me. Astride that spavined mule I rode down to the settlement and spent my twelve dollars on flour, a mite of sugar, and some other fixings, and back at the cabin I washed out some flour sacks for aprons, and made me one of those chef hats like I’d seen in a newspaper picture. Then I set to making bear-sign.
    Least, that’s what we called them in the mountains. Most folks on the flatland called them doughnuts, and some mountain folk did, but not around our house. I made up a batch of bear-sign and that good baking smell drifted down along the creek, and it wasn’t more than a few minutes later until a wild-eyed miner came running and falling up from the creek, and a dozen more after him.
    â€œHey! Is that bear-sign we smell? Is them doughnuts?”
    â€œCost you,” I said. “I’m set up for business. Three doughnuts for two bits.”
    That man set right down and ate two dollars’ worth and by the time he was finished there was a crowd around reaching for them fast as they came out of the Dutch oven.
    Folks along that creek lived on skimpy bacon and beans, sometimes some soda biscuits, and real baking was unheard-of. Back to home no woman could make doughnuts fast enough for we Sackett boys who were all good eaters, so we took to making them ourselves. Ma often said nobody could make bear-sign like her son, William Tell Sackett.
    By noon I was off to the settlement for more makings, and by nightfall everybody on the creek knew I was in business. Next day I sold a barrel of doughnuts, and by nightfall I had the barrel full again and a washtub also. That washtub was the only one along the creek, and it looked like nobody would get a bath until I’d run out of bear-sign.
    You have to understand how tired a man can get of grease and beans to understand how glad they were to taste some honest-to-gosh, down-to-earth doughnuts.
    Sun-up and here came Arvie Wilt. Arvie was a big man with a big appetite and he set right down and ran up a bill of four dollars. I was making money.
    Arvie sat there eating doughnuts and forgetting all about his claim.
    Come noon, Griselda showed up. She came a-prancing and a-preening it up the road and she stayed around, eating a few doughnuts and talking with me. The more she talked the meaner Arvie got.
    â€œGriselda,” he said, “you’d best get along home. You know how your pa feels about you trailing around with just any drifter.”
    Well, sir, I put down my bowl and wiped the flour off my hands. “Are you aiming that at me?” I asked. “If you are, you just pay me my four dollars and get off down the pike.”
    He was mean, like I’ve said, and he did what I