Before the fireplace in an evening Cash would put on wood, and when next it was needed, Bud would get up and put on wood.

Neither would stoop to stinting or to shirking, neither would give the other an inch of ground for complaint.

It was not enlivening to live together that way, but it worked well toward keeping the cabin ship shape.
So Bud, knowing that it was going to storm, and perhaps dreading a little the long monotony of being housed with a man as stubborn as himself, buttoned a coat over his gray, roughneck sweater, pulled a pair of mail-order mittens over his mail-order gloves, stamped his feet into heavy, three-buckled overshoes, and set out to tramp fifteen miles through the snow, seeking the kind of pleasure which turns to pain with the finding.
He knew that Cash, out by the woodpile, let the axe blade linger in the cut while he stared after him.

He knew that Cash would be lonesome without him, whether Cash ever admitted it or not.

He knew that Cash would be passively anxious until he returned--for the months they had spent together had linked them closer than either would confess.