The Uphill Climb | Page 3

his great-grandfather from utter condemnation.
"What's eating you, Ford?" he began pacifically--for Sandy was a
weakling. "You might be a lot worse off. You're married, all right
enough, from all I c'n hear--but she's left town. It ain't as if you had to
live with her."
Ford looked at him a minute and groaned dismally.
"Oh, I ain't meaning anything against the lady herself," Sandy hastened
to assure him. "Far as I know, she's all right--"
"What I want to know," Ford broke in, impatient of condolence when
he needed facts, "is, who is she? And what did I go and marry her for?"

"Well, you'll have to ask somebody that knows. I never seen her,
myself, except when you was leadin' her down to the depot, and you
and her talked it over private like--the way I heard it. I was gitting a
hair-cut and shampoo at the time. First I heard, you was married. I
should think you'd remember it yourself." Sandy looked at Ford
curiously.
"I kinda remember standing up and holding hands with some woman
and somebody saying: 'I now pronounce you man and wife,'" Ford
confessed miserably, his face in his hands again. "I guess I must have
done it, all right."
Sandy was kind enough when not otherwise engaged. He got up and
put a basin of water on the stove to warm, that Ford might bathe his
hurts, and he made him a very creditable drink with lemon and whisky
and not too much water.
"The way I heard it," he explained further, "this lady come to town
looking for Frank Ford Cameron, and seen you, and said you was him.
So--"
"I ain't," Ford interrupted indignantly. "My name's Ford Campbell and
I'll lick any darned son-of-a-gun--"
"Likely she made a mistake," Sandy soothed. "Frank Ford Cameron,
she had you down for, and you went ahead and married her willing
enough. Seems like there was some hurry-up reason that she explained
to you private. She had the license all made out and brought a preacher
down from Garbin. Bill Wright said he overheard you tellin' her you'd
do anything to oblige a lady--"
"That's the worst of it; I'm always too damned polite when I'm drunk!"
grumbled Ford.
Sandy, looking upon his bruised and distorted countenance and
recalling, perhaps, the process by which Ford reached that lamentable
condition, made a sound like a diplomatically disguised laugh. "Not
always," he qualified mildly.

"Anyway," he went on, "you sure married her. That's straight goods.
Bill Wright and Rock was the witnesses. And if you don't know why
you done it--" Sandy waved his hands to indicate his inability to
enlighten Ford. "Right afterwards you went out to the bar and had
another drink--all this takin' place in the hotel dining-room, and Mother
McGrew down with neuralagy and not bein' present--and one drink
leads to another, you know. I come in then, and the bunch was drinkin'
luck to you fast as Sam could push the bottles along. Then you went
back to the lady--and if you don't know what took place you can search
me--and pretty soon Bill said you'd took her and her grip to the depot.
Anyway, when you come back, you wasn't troubled with no attack of
politeness!
"You went in the air with Bill, first," continued Sandy, testing with his
finger the temperature of the water in the basin, "and bawled him out
something fierce for standing by and seeing you make a break like that
without doing something. You licked him--and then Rock bought in
because some of your remarks kinda included him too. I d' know," said
Sandy, scratching his unshaven jaw reflectively, "just how the fight did
go between you 'n' Rock. You was both using the whole room, I know.
Near as I could make out, you--or maybe it was Rock--tromped on Big
Jim's bunion. This cold spell's hard on bunions--and Big Jim went after
you both with blood in his eye.
"After that"--Sandy spread his arms largely--"it was go-as-you-please.
Sam and me was the only ones that kept out, near as I can recollect, and
when it thinned up a bit, you had Aleck down and was pounding the
liver outa him, and Big Jim was whanging away at you, and Rock was
clawin' Jim in the back of the neck, and you was all kickin' like bay
steers in brandin' time. I reached in under the pile and dragged you out
by one leg and left the rest of 'em fighting. They never seemed to miss
you none." He grinned. "Jim commenced to bump Aleck's head up and
down on the floor instead of you--and I knew he didn't have nothing
against Aleck."
"Bill--"
"Bill, he'd quit right in the start." Sandy's grin became a laugh. "Seems

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