The Uphill Climb | Page 9

her out of it if I could. She took
me for some one else, and I was just drunk enough to think it was a
joke, I suppose, and let it go that way. I don't believe she found out she
tied up to the wrong man. It's entirely my fault, for being drunk."
"Well, putting it that way, you're right about it," agreed the adaptable
Lew. "Of course, if you hadn't been--"
"If whisky's going to let a fellow in for things like this, it's time to cut it
out altogether." Ford was looking at the agent attentively.
"That's right," assented the other unsuspectingly. "Whisky is sure
giving you the worst of it all around. You ought to climb on the
water-wagon, Ford, and that's a fact. Whisky's the worst enemy you've
got."
"Sure. And I'm going to punish all of it I can get my hands on!" He
turned toward the door. "And when I'm good and full of it," he added as
an afterthought, "I'm liable to come over here and lick you, Lew, just
for being such an agreeable cuss. You better leave your mother's
address handy." He laughed a little to himself as he pulled the door shut
behind him. "I bet he'll keep the frost thawed off the window to-day,
just to see who comes up the platform," he chuckled.

He would have been more amused if he had seen how the agent ducked
anxiously forward to peer through the ticket window whenever the door
of the waiting room opened, and how he started whenever the snow
outside creaked under the tread of a heavy step; and he would have
been convulsed with mirth if he had caught sight of the formidable
billet of wood which Lew kept beside his chair all that day, and had
guessed its purpose, and that it was a mute witness to the reputation
which one Ford Campbell bore among his fellows. Lew was too wise to
consider for a moment the revolver meant to protect the contents of the
safe. Even the unintelligent know better than to throw a lighted match
into a keg of gunpowder.
Ford leaned backward against the push of the storm and was swept up
to the hotel. He could not remember when he had felt so completely
baffled; the incident of the girl and the ceremony was growing to
something very like a calamity, and the mystery which surrounded it
began to fret him intolerably; and the very unusualness of a trouble he
could not settle with his fists whipped his temper to the point of
explosion. He caught himself wavering, nevertheless, before the
wind-swept porch of the hotel "office." That, too, was strange. Ford
was not wont to hesitate before entering a saloon; more often he
hesitated about leaving.
"What's the matter with me, anyway?" he questioned himself
impatiently. "I'm acting like I hadn't a right to go in and take a drink
when I feel like it! If just a slight touch of matrimony acts like that with
a man, what can the real thing be like? I always heard it made a fool of
a fellow." To prove to himself that he was still untrammeled and at
liberty to follow his own desire, he stamped across the porch, threw
open the door, and entered with a certain defiance of manner.
Behind the bar, Sam was laughing with his mouth wide open so that his
gum showed shamelessly. Bill and Aleck and Big Jim were leaning
heavily upon the bar, laughing also.
"I'll bet she's a Heart-and-Hander, tryin' a new scheme to git a man.
Think uh nabbing a man when he's drunk. That's a new one," Sam
brought his lips close enough together to declare, and chewed

vigorously upon the idea,--until he glanced up and saw Ford standing
by the door. He turned abruptly, caught up a towel, and began polishing
the bar with the frenzy of industry which never imposes upon one in
the slightest degree.
Bill glanced behind him and nudged Aleck into caution, and in the
silence which followed, the popping of a piece of slate-veined coal in
the stove sounded like a volley of small-caliber pistol shots.
CHAPTER III
One Way to Drown Sorrow
Ford walked up to the bar, with a smile upon his face which Sam
misunderstood and so met with a conciliatory grin and a hand extended
toward a certain round, ribbed bottle with a blue-and-silver label. Ford
waved away the bottle and leaned, not on the bar but across it, and
clutching Sam by the necktie, slapped him first upon one ear and next
upon the other, until he was forced by the tingling of his own fingers to
desist. By that time Sam's green necktie was pulled tight just under his
nose, and