by B. M. Bower
“Well, if you’re sure you counted straight, the last time I saw him he was in the bunk-house.”
“Well?” The tone of her demanded more.
“He was in the bunk-house—sitting close up to a gallon jug of whisky.” His eyelids flickered. “He’s there yet—but I wouldn’t swear to the gallon—”
“Thank you very much.” This time her tone pushed him over the edge and into the depths of her disapproval. “I was sure I could depend upon you—to tell!”
“What else could I do, when you asked?”
But she had her back to him, and was walking away up the path, and if she heard, she did not trouble to answer. But in spite of her manner, Dick smiled, and brought the hammer down against a post with such force that he splintered the handle.
“Something’s going to drop on this ranch, pretty quick,” he prophesied, looking down at the useless tool in his hand. “And if I wanted to name it, I’d call it Ford.” He glanced up the path to where Josephine was walking straight to the west door of the bunk-house, and laughed sourly. “Well, she needn’t take my word for it if she don’t want to, I guess,” he muttered. “Nothing like heading off a critter—or a woman—in time!”
Josephine did not hesitate upon the doorstep. She opened the door and went in, and shut the door behind her before the echo of her step had died. Ford was lying as he had lain once before, upon a bunk, with his face hidden in his folded arms. He did not hear her—at any rate he did not know who it was, for he did not lift his head or stir.
Josephine looked at the jug upon the floor beside him, bent and lifted it very gently from the floor; tilted it to the window so that she could look into it, tilted her nose at the odor, and very, very gently put it back where she had found it. Then she stood and looked down at Ford with her eyebrows pinched together.
She did not move, after that, and she certainly did not speak, but her presence for all that became manifest to him. He lifted his head and stared at her over an elbow; and his eyes were heavy with trouble, and his mouth was set in lines of bitterness.
“Did you want me for something?” he asked, when he saw that she was not going to speak first.
She shook her head. “Is it—pretty steep?” she ventured after a moment, and glanced down at the jug.
He looked puzzled at first, but when his own glance followed hers, he understood. He stared up at her somberly before he let his head drop back upon his arms, so that his face was once more hidden.
“You’ve never been in bell, I suppose,” he told her, and his voice was dull and tired. After a minute he looked up at her impatiently. “Is it fun to stand and watch a man—What do you want, anyway? It doesn’t matter—to you.”
“Are you sure?” she retorted sharply. “And—suppose it doesn’t. I have Kate to think of, at least.”
He gave a little laugh that came nearer being a snort. “Oh, if that’s all, you needn’t worry. I’m not quite that far gone, thank you!”
“I was thinking of the ranch, and of her ideals, and her blind trust in you, and of the effect on the men,” she explained impatiently.
He was silent a moment. “I’m thinking of myself!” he told her grimly then.
“And—don’t you ever—think of me?” She set her teeth sharply together after the words were out, and watched him, breathing quickly.
Ford sprang up from the bunk and faced her with stern questioning in his eyes, but she only flushed a little under his scrutiny. Her eyes, he noticed, were clear and steady, and they had in them something of that courage which fears but will not flinch.
“I don’t want to think of you!” he said, lowering his voice unconsciously. “For the last month I’ve tried mighty hard not to think of you. And if you want to know why—I’m married!”
She leaned back against the door and stared up at him with widening pupils. Ford looked down and struck the jug with his toe. “That thing,” he said slowly, “I’ve got to fight alone. I don’t know which is going to come out winner, me or the booze. I—don’t—know.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “What did you come in here for?” he asked bluntly.
She caught her breath, but she would not dodge. Ford loved her for that. “Dick told me—and I was—I wanted to—well, help. I thought I might—sometimes when the climb is too steep, a hand will keep one from—slipping.”
“What made you want to help? You don’t even like me.” His tone was flat and unemotional, but she did not seem able to meet his eyes. So she looked down at the jug.
“Dick said—but the jug is full practically. I don’t understand how—”
“It isn’t as full as it ought to be; it lacks one swallow.” He eyed it queerly. “I wish I knew how much it would lack by dark,” he said.
She threw out an impulsive hand. “Oh, but you must make up your mind! You mustn’t temporize like that, or wonder—or—”
“This,” he interrupted rather flippantly, “is something little girls can’t understand. They’d better not try. This isn’t a woman’s problem, to be solved by argument. It’s a man’s fight!”
“But if you would just make up your mind, you could win.”
“Could I?” His tone was amusedly skeptical, but his eyes were still somber.
“Even a woman,” she said impatiently, “knows that is not the way to win a fight—to send for the enemy and give him all your weapons, and a plan of the fortifications, and the password; when you know there’s no mercy to be hoped for!”
He smiled at her simile, and at her earnestness also, perhaps; but that black gloom remained, looking out of his eyes.
“What made you send for it? A whole gallon!”
“I didn’t send for it. That jug belongs to Mose,” he told her simply. “Dick told me Mose had it; rather, Dick went into the kitchen and got it, and turned it over to me.” In spite of the words, he did not give one the impression that he was defending himself; he was merely offering an explanation because she seemed to demand one.
“Dick got it and turned it over to you!” Her forehead wrinkled again into vertical lines. She studied him frowningly. “Will you give it to me?” she asked directly.
Ford folded his arms and scowled down at the jug. “No,” he refused at last, “I won’t. If booze is going to be the boss of me I want to know it. And I can’t know it too quick.”
“But—you’re only human, Ford!”
“Sure. But I’m kinda hoping I’m a man, too.” His eyes lightened a little while they rested upon her.
“But you’ve got the poison of it—it’s like a traitor in your fort, ready to open the door. You can’t do it! I—oh, you’ll never understand why, but I can’t let you risk it. You’ve got to let me help; give it to me, Ford!”
“No, You go on to the house, and don’t bother about me. You can’t help—nobody can. It’s up to me.”
She struck her hands together in a nervous rage. “You want to keep it because you want to drink it! If you didn’t want it, you’d hate to be near it. You’d want some one to take it away. You just want to get drunk, and be a beast. You—you—oh—you don’t know what you’re doing, or how much it means! You don’t know!” Her hands went up suddenly and covered her face.
Ford walked the length of the room away from her, turned and came back until he faced her where she stood leaning against the door, with her face still hidden behind her palms. He reached out his arms to her, hesitated, and drew them back.
“I wish you’d go,” he said. “There are some things harder to fight than whisky. You only make it worse.”
“I’ll go when you give me that.” She flung a hand out toward the jug.
“You’ll go anyway!” He took her by the arm, quietly pulled her away from the door, opened it, and then closed it while, for just a breath or two, he held her tightly clasped in his arms. Very gently, after that, he pushed her out upon the doorstep and shut the door behind her. The lock clicked a hint which she could not fail to hear and understand. He waited until he heard her walk away, s
at down with the air of a man who is very, very weary, rested his elbows upon his knees, and with his hands clasped loosely together, he glowered at the jug on the floor. Then the soul of Ford Campbell went deep down into the pit where all the devils dwell.
CHAPTER XIII
A Plan Gone Wrong
It was Mose crashing headlong into the old messbox where he kept rattly basins, empty lard pails, and such, that roused Ford. He got up and went into the kitchen, and when he saw what was, the matter, extricated Mose by the simple method of grabbing his shoulders and pulling hard; then he set the cook upon his feet, and got full in his face the unmistakable fumes of whisky.
“What? You got another jug?” he asked, with some disgust, steadying Mose against the wall.
“Ah—I ain’t got any jug uh nothin’,” Mose protested, rather thickly. “And I never took them bottles outa the stack; that musta been Dick done that. Get after him about it; he’s the one told me where yuh hid ’em—but I never touched ’em, honest I never. If they’re gone, you get after Dick. Don’t yuh go ’n’ lay it on me, now!” He was whimpering with maudlin pathos before he finished. Ford scowled at him thoughtfully.
“Dick told you about the bottles in the haystack, did he?” he asked. “Which stack was it? And how many bottles?”
Mose gave him a bleary stare. “Aw, you know. You hid ’em there yourself! Dick said so. I ain’t goin’ to say which stack, or how many bottles—or—any other—darn thing about it.” He punctuated his phrases by prodding a finger against Ford’s chest, and he wagged his head with all the self-consciousness of spurious virtue. “Promised Dick I wouldn’t, and I won’t. Not a—darn—word about it. Wanted some—for m’ mince-meat, but I never took any outa the haystack.” Whereupon he began to show a pronounced limpness in his good leg, and a tendency to slide down upon the floor.
Ford piloted him to a chair, eased him into it, and stood over him in frowning meditation. Mose was drunk; absolutely, undeniably drunk. It could not have been the jug, for the jug was full. Till then the oddity of a full jug of whisky in Mose’s kitchen after at least twenty-four hours must have elapsed since its arrival, had not occurred to him. He had been too preoccupied with his own fight to think much about Mose.
“Shay, I never took them bottles outa the stack,” Mose looked up to protest solemnly. “Dick never told me about ’em, neither. Dick tol’ me—” tapping Ford’s arm with his finger for every word, “—’at there was aigs down there, for m’ mince-meat.” He stopped suddenly and goggled up at Ford. “Shay, yuh don’t put aigs in—mince-meat,” he informed him earnestly. “Not a darn aig! That’s what Dick tol’ me—aigs for m’ mince-meat. Oh, I knowed right off what he meant, all right,” he explained proudly. “He didn’t wanta come right out ’n’ shay what it was—an’ I—got—the—aigs!”
“Yes—how many—eggs?” Ford held himself rigidly quiet.
“Two quart—aigs!” Mose laughed at the joke. “I wisht,” he added pensively, “the hens’d all lay them kinda aigs. I’d buy up all the shickens in—the whole worl’.” He gazed raptly upon the vision the words conjured. “Gee! Quart aigs—’n’ all the shickens in the worl’ layin’ reg’lar!”
“Have you got any left?”
“No—honest. Used ’em all up—for m’ mince-meat!”
Ford knew he was lying. His eyes searched the untidy tables and the corners filled with bags and boxes. Mose was a good cook, but his ideas of order were vague, and his system of housekeeping was the simple one of leaving everything where he had last been using it, so that it might be handy when he wanted it again. A dozen bottles might be concealed there, like the faces in a picture-puzzle, and it would take a housecleaning to disclose them all. But Ford, when he knew that no bottle had been left in sight, began turning over the bags and looking behind the boxes.
He must have been “growing warm” when he stood wondering whether it was worth while to look into the flour-bin, for Mose gave an inarticulate snarl and pounced on him from behind. The weight of him sent Ford down on all fours and kept him there for a space, and even after he was up he found himself quite busy. Mose was a husky individual, with no infirmity of the arms and fists, even if he did have a stiff leg, and drunkenness frequently flares and fades in a man like a candle guttering in the wind. Besides, Mose was fighting to save his whisky.
Still, Ford had not sent all of Sunset into its cellars, figuratively speaking, for nothing; and while a man may feel more enthusiasm for fighting when under the influence of the stuff that cheers sometimes and never fails to inebriate, the added incentive does not necessarily mean also added muscular development or more weight behind the punch. Ford, fighting as he had always fought, be he drunk or sober, came speedily to the point where he could inspect a skinned knuckle and afterwards gaze in peace upon his antagonist.
He was occupied with both diversions when the door was pushed open as by a man in great haste. He looked up from the knuckle into the expectant eyes of Jim Felton, and over the shoulder of Jim he saw a gloating certainty writ large upon the face of Dick Thomas. They had been running; he could tell that by their uneven breathing, and it occurred to him that they must have heard the clamor when he pitched Mose head first into the dish cupboard. There had been considerable noise about that time, he remembered; they must also have heard the howl Mose gave at the instant of contact. Ford glanced involuntarily at that side of the room where stood the cupboard, and mentally admitted that it looked like there had been a slight disagreement, or else a severe seismic disturbance; and Montana is not what one calls an earthquake country. His eyes left the generous sprinkle of broken dishes on the floor, with Mose sprawled inertly in their midst, looking not unlike a broken platter himself—or one badly nicked—and rested again upon the grinning face behind the shoulder of Jim Felton.
Ford was ever a man of not many words, even when he had a grievance. He made straight for Dick, and when he had pushed Jim out of the way, he reached him violently. Dick tottered upon the step and went off backward, and Ford landed upon him fairly and with full knowledge and intent.
Jim Felton was a wise young man. He stood back and let them fight it out, and when it was over he said never a word until Dick had picked himself up and walked off, holding to his nose a handkerchief that reddened rapidly.
“Say, you are a son-of-a-gun to fight,” he observed admiringly then to Ford. “Don’t you know Dick’s supposed to be abso-lute-ly unlickable?”
“May be so—but he sure shows all the symptoms of being licked right at present.” Ford moved a thumb joint gently to see whether it was really dislocated or merely felt that way.
“He’s going up to the house now, to tell the missus,” remarked Jim, craning his neck from the doorway.
“If he does that,” Ford replied calmly, “I’ll half kill him next time. What I gave him just now is only a sample package left on the doorstep to try.” He sat down upon a corner of the table and began to make himself a smoke. “Is he going up to the house—honest?” He would not yield to the impulse to look and see for himself.
“We-el, the trail he’s taking has no other logical destination,” drawled Jim. “He’s across the bridge.” When Ford showed no disposition to say anything to that, Jim came in and closed the door. “Say, what laid old Mose out so nice?” he asked, with an indolent sort of curiosity. “Booze? Or just bumps?”
“A little of both,” said Ford indifferently, between puffs. He was thinking of the tale Dick would tell at the house, and he was thinking of the probable effect upon one listener; the other didn’t worry him, though he liked Mrs. Kate very much.
Jim went over and investigated; discovering that Mose was close to snoring, he sat upon a corner of the other table, swung a spurred boot, and regarded Ford interestedly over his own cigarette building. “Say, for a man that’s supposed to be soused,” he began, after a silence, “you act and talk remarkably lucid. I wish I could carry booze like that,” he added regretfully. “But I can’t; my tongue and my legs alwa
ys betray the guilty secret. Have you got any particular system, or is it just a gift?”
“No”—Ford shook his head—“nothing like that. I just don’t happen to be drunk.” He eyed Jim sharply while he considered within himself. “It looks to me,” he began, after a moment, “as if our friend Dick had framed up a nice little plant. One way and another I got wise to the whole thing; but for the life of me, I can’t see what made him do it. Lordy me! I never kicked him on any bunion!” He grinned, as memory flashed a brief, mental picture of Sunset and certain incidents which occurred there. But memory never lets well enough alone, and one is lucky to escape without seeing a picture that leaves a sting; Ford’s smile ended in a scowl.
“Jealousy, old man,” Jim pronounced without hesitation. “Of course, I don’t know the details, but—details be darned. If he has tried to hand you a package, take it from me, jealousy’s the string he tied it with. I don’t mind saying that Dick told me when I first rode up to the corral that you and Mose were both boozing up to beat the band; and right after that we heard a deuce of a racket up here, and it did look—” He waved an apologetic hand at Mose and the fragments of pottery which framed like a “still life” picture on the floor, and let it go at that. “I’m strong for you, Ford,” he added, and his smile was frank and friendly. “Double Cross is the name of this outfit, but I’m all in favor of running that brand on the cow-critters and keeping it out of the bunk-house. If you should happen to feel like elucidating—” he hinted delicately.
Ford had always liked Jim Felton; now he warmed to him as a real friend, and certain things he told him. As much about the jug with the brown neck and handle as concerned Dick, and all he knew of the bottles in the haystack, while Jim smoked, and swung the foot which did not rest upon the floor, and listened.
“Sounds like Dick, all right,” he passed judgment, when Ford had finished. “He counted on your falling for the jug—and oh, my! It was a beautiful plant. I’d sure hate to have anybody sing ‘Yield not to temptation’ at me, if a gallon jug of the real stuff fell into my arms and nobody was looking.” He eyed Ford queerly. “You’ve got quite a reputation—” he ventured.