Like a married couple who bicker and nag continually when together, but are miserable when apart, close association had become a deeply grooved habit not easily thrust aside.

Cabin fever might grip them and impel them to absurdities such as the dead line down the middle of their floor and the silence that neither desired but both were too stubborn to break; but it could not break the habit of being together.

So Bud was perfectly aware of the fact that he would be missed, and he was ill-humored enough to be glad of it.

Frank, if he met Bud that day, was likely to have his amiability tested to its limit.
Bud tramped along through the snow, wishing it was not so deep, or else deep enough to make snow-shoeing practicable in the timber; thinking too of Cash and how he hoped Cash would get his fill of silence, and of Frank, and wondering where he would find him.

He had covered perhaps two miles of the fifteen, and had walked off a little of his grouch, and had stopped to unbutton his coat, when he heard the crunching of feet in the snow, just beyond a thick clump of young spruce.
Bud was not particularly cautious, nor was he averse to meeting people in the trail.