The Uphill Climb | Page 6

Nor
was it a new experience for him to seek information from his friends
after a night full of incident. Sandy he had always found tolerably
reliable, because Sandy, being of that inquisitive nature so common to
small persons, made it a point to see everything there was to be seen;
and his peculiar digestive organs might be counted upon to keep him
sober. It was a real grievance to Ford that Sandy should have chosen
the hour he did for indulging in such trivialities as hair-cuts and
shampoos, while events of real importance were permitted to transpire
unseen and unrecorded. Ford, when the grievance thrust itself keenly
upon him, roused the recreant Sandy by pitilessly thrusting an elbow
against his diaphragm.
Sandy grunted at the impact and sat bolt upright in bed before he was

fairly awake. He glanced reproachfully down at Ford, who stared back
at him from a badly crumpled pillow.
"Get up," growled Ford, "and start a fire going, darn you. You kept me
awake half the night, snoring. I want a beefsteak with mushrooms,
devilled kidneys, waffles with honey, and four banana fritters for
breakfast. I'll take it in bed; and while I'm waiting, you can bring me
the morning paper and a package of Egyptian Houris."
Sandy grunted again, slid reluctantly out into the bitterly cold room,
and crept shivering into his clothes. He never quite understood Ford's
sense of humor, at such times, but he had learned that it is more
comfortable to crawl out of bed than to be kicked out, and that
vituperation is a mere waste of time when matched against sheer
heartlessness and a superior muscular development.
"Y' ought to make your wife build the fires," he taunted, when he was
clothed and at a safe distance from the bed. He ducked instinctively
afterwards, but Ford was merely placing a match by itself on the bench
close by.
"That's one," Ford remarked calmly. "I'm going to thrash every
misguided humorist who mentions that subject to me in anything but a
helpful spirit of pure friendship. I'm going to give him a separate
licking for every alleged joke. I'll want two steaks, Sandy. I'll likely
have to give you about seven distinct wallopings. Hand me some more
matches to keep tally with. I don't want to cheat you out of your just
dues."
Sandy eyed him doubtfully while he scraped the ashes from the grate.
"You may want a dozen steaks, but that ain't saying you're going to git
'em," he retorted, with a feeble show of aggression. "And 's far as
licking me goes--" He stopped to blow warmth upon his fingers, which
were numbed with their grasp of the poker. "As for licking me, I guess
you'll have to do that on the strength uh bacon and sour-dough biscuits;
if you do it at all, which I claim the privilege uh doubting a whole lot."

Ford laughed a little at the covert challenge, made ridiculous by
Sandy's diminutive stature, pulled the blankets up to his eyes, and
dozed off luxuriously; and although it is extremely tiresome to be told
in detail just what a man dreams upon certain occasions, he did dream,
and it was something about being married. At any rate, when the
sizzling of bacon frying invaded even his slumber and woke him, he
felt a distinct pang of disappointment that it was Sandy's carroty head
bent over the frying-pan, instead of a wife with blond hair which waved
becomingly upon her temples.
"Wonder what color her hair is, anyway," he observed inadvertently,
before he was wide enough awake to put the seal of silence on his
musings.
"Hunh?"
"I asked when those banana fritters are coming up," lied Ford, getting
out of bed and yawning so that his swollen jaw hurt him, and relapsed
into his usual taciturnity, which was his wall of defense against Sandy's
inquisitiveness.
He ate his breakfast almost in silence, astonishing Sandy somewhat by
not complaining of the excess of soda in the biscuits. Ford was inclined
toward fastidiousness when he was sober--a trait which caused men to
suspect him of descending from an upper stratum of society; though
just when, or just where, or how great that descent had been, they had
no means of finding out. Ford, so far as his speech upon the subject was
concerned, had no existence previous to his appearance in Montana,
five or six years before; but he bore certain earmarks of a higher
civilization which, in Sandy's mind, rather concentrated upon a
pronounced distaste for soda-yellowed bread, warmed-over coffee, and
scorched bacon. That he swallowed all these things and seemed not to
notice them, struck Sandy as being almost as remarkable as his
matrimonial adventure.
When he had eaten, Ford buttoned himself into his overcoat,