The Uphill Climb | Page 5

about it!" Bill glanced triumphantly from one to the other. "Take it
from me, you married a lady, Ford. Drunk or sober, I always make it a
point to speak proper before the ladies--t'other kind don't count--and
when I make a break, you betcher life I remember it. She's a real
lady--I'd swear to that on a stack uh bibles ten feet high!" He settled
back and unbuttoned his steaming coat with the air of a man who has
established beyond question the vital point of an argument.
"Did I tell her so myself, or did I just let it go that way?" Ford, as his
brain cleared, stuck close to his groping for the essential facts.
"Well, now--I ain't dead sure as to that. Maybe Rock'll remember.
Kinda seems to me now, that she asked you if you was really Frank
Ford Cameron, and you said: 'I sure am,' or something like that. The
preacher'd know, maybe. He musta been the only sober one in the
bunch--except the girl. But you done chased him off, so--"
"Sandy, I wish you'd go hunt Rock up and tell him I want to see him."
Ford spoke with more of his natural spirit than he had shown since
waking.
"Rock's gone on out to Riley's camp," volunteered Bill. "Left this
morning, before the rain started in."
"What was her name--do you know?" Ford went back to the mystery.

"Ida--or was it Jenny? Some darned name--I heard it, when the
preacher was marrying you." Bill was floundering hopelessly in mental
fog, but he persisted. "And I seen it wrote in the paper I signed my
name to. I mind she rolled up the paper afterwards and put it--well, I
dunno where, but she took it away with her, and says to you: 'That's
safe, now'--or 'You're safe,' or 'I'm safe,'--anyway, some darned thing
was safe. And I was goin' to kiss the bride--mebbe I did kiss her--only
I'd likely remember it if I had, drunk or sober! And--oh, now I got it!"
Bill's voice was full of elation. "You was goin' to kiss the bride--that
was it, it was you goin' to kiss her, and she slap--no, by hokey, she
didn't slap you, she just--or was it Rock, now?" Doubt filled his eyes
distressfully. "Darn my everlastin' hide," he finished lamely, "there was
some kissin' somew'ere in the deal, and I mind her cryin' afterwards,
but whether it was about that, or--Say, Sandy, what was it Ford was
lickin' the preacher for? Wasn't it for kissin' the bride?"
"It was for marrying him to her," Sandy informed him sententiously.
Ford got up and went to the little window and looked out. Presently he
came back to the stove and stood staring disgustedly down upon the
effusively friendly Bill, leering up at him pacifically.
"If I didn't feel so rotten," he said glumly, "I'd give you another licking
right now, Bill--you boozing old devil. I'd like to lick every darned
galoot that stood back and let me in for this. You'd ought to have
stopped me. You'd oughta pounded the face off me before you let me
do such a fool thing. That," he said bitterly, "shows how much a man
can bank on his friends!"
"It shows," snorted Bill indignantly, "how much he can bank on
himself!"
"On whisky, to let him in for all kinds uh trouble," revised Sandy
virtuously. Sandy had a stomach which invariably rebelled at the
second glass and therefore, remaining always sober perforce, he took to
himself great credit for his morality.
"Married!--and I don't so much as know her name!" gritted Ford, and

went over and laid himself down upon the bed, and sulked for the rest
of that day of rain and gloom.
CHAPTER II
Wanted: Information
Sulking never yet solved a mystery nor will it accomplish much toward
bettering an unpleasant situation. After a day of unmitigated gloom and
a night of uneasy dreams, Ford awoke to a white, shifting world of the
season's first blizzard, and to something like his normal outlook upon
life.
That outlook had ever been cheerful, with the cheerfulness which
comes of taking life in twenty-four-hour doses only, and of looking not
too far ahead and backward not at all. Plenty of persons live after that
fashion and thereby attain middle life with smooth foreheads and
cheeks unlined by thought; and Ford was therefore not much different
from his fellows. Never before had he found himself with anything
worse than bodily bruises to sour life for him after a tumultuous night
or two in town, and the sensation of a discomfort which had not sprung
from some well-defined physical sense was therefore sufficiently novel
to claim all his attention.
It was not the first time he had fought and forgotten it afterwards.