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. 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, pulled his
moleskin cap well down, and went out into the storm without a word to
Sandy, which was also unusual; it was Ford's custom to wash the dishes,
because he objected to Sandy's economy of clean, hot water. Sandy
flattened his nose against the window, saw that Ford, leaning well
forward against the drive of the wind, was battling his way toward the
hotel, and guessed shrewdly that he would see him no more that day.
"He better keep sober till his knuckles git well, anyway," he mumbled
disapprovingly. "If he goes to fighting, the shape he's in now--"
Ford had no intention of fighting. He went straight up to the bar, it is
true, but that was because he saw that Sam was at that moment
unoccupied, save with a large lump of gum. Being at the bar, he drank a
glass of whisky; not of deliberate intent, but merely from force of
habit. Once down, however, the familiar glow of it through his being was
exceedingly grateful, and he took another for good measure.
"H'lo, Ford," Sam bethought him to say, after he had gravely taken
mental note of each separate scar of battle, and had shifted his cud to
the other side of his mouth, and had squeezed it meditatively between
his teeth. "Feel as rocky as you look?"
"Possibly." Ford's eyes forbade further personalities. "I'm out after
information, Sam, and if you've got any you aren't using, I'd advise you
to pass it over; I can use a lot, this morning. Were you sober, night
before last?"
Sam chewed solemnly while he considered. "Tolerable sober, yes," he
decided at last. "Sober enough to tend to business; why?"
With his empty glass Ford wrote invisible scrolls upon the bar. "I--did
you happen to see--my--the lady I married?" He had been embarrassed at
first, but when he finished he was glaring a challenge which shifted the
disquiet to Sam's manner.
"No. I was tendin' bar all evenin'--and she didn't come in here."
Ford glanced behind him at the sound of the door opening, saw that it
was only Bill, and leaned over the bar for greater secrecy, lowering his
voice as well.
"Did you happen to hear who she was?"
Sam stared and shook his head.
"Don't you know anything about her at all--where she came from--and why,
and where she went?"
Sam backed involuntarily. Ford's tone made it a crime either to know
these things or to be guilty of ignorance; which, Sam could not
determine. Sam was of the sleek, oily-haired type of young men, with
pimples and pale eyes and a predilection for gum and gossip. He was
afraid of Ford and he showed it.
"That's just what (no offense, Ford--I ain't responsible) that's what
everybody's wondering. Nobody seems to know. They kinda hoped you'd
explain--"
"Sure!" Ford's tone was growing extremely ominous. "I'll explain a lot
of things--if I hear any gabbling going on about my affairs." He was
seized then with an uncomfortable feeling that the words were mere
puerile blustering and turned away from the bar in disgust.
In disgust he pulled open the door, flinched before the blast of wind
and snow which smote him full in the face and blinded him, and went out
again into the storm. The hotel porch was a bleak place, with snow six
inches deep and icy boards upon which a man might easily slip and break
a bone or two, and with a whine overhead as the wind sucked under the
roof. Ford stood there so long that his feet began to tingle. He was not
thinking; he was merely feeling the feeble struggles of a newborn
desire to be something and do something worth while--a desire which
manifested itself chiefly in bitterness against himself as he was, and
in a mental nausea against the life he had been content to live.
The mystery of his marriage was growing from a mere untoward incident of
a night's carouse into a baffling thing which hung over him like an
impending doom. He was not the sort of man who marries easily. It seemed
incredible that he could really have done it; more incredible that he
could have done it and then have wiped the slate of his memory clean;
with the crowning impossibility that a strange young woman could come
into town, marry him, and afterward depart and no man know who she was,
whence she had come, or where she had gone. Ford stepped suddenly off
the porch and bored his way through the blizzard toward the depot. The
station agent would be able to answer the last question, at any rate.
The agent, however, proved disappointingly ignorant of the matter. He
reminded Ford that there had not been time to buy a ticket, and that the
girl had been compelled to run down the platform to reach the train
before it started, and that the wheels began to turn before she was up
the steps of the day coach.
"And don't you remember turning around and saying to me: 'I'm a poor
married man, but you can't notice the scar,' or something like that?"
The agent was plainly interested and desirous of rendering any
assistance possible, and also rather diffident about discussing so
delicate a matter with a man like Ford.
Ford drummed his fingers impatiently upon the shelf outside the ticket
window. "I don't remember a darned thing about it," he confessed glumly.
"I can't say I enjoy running all around town trying to find out who it
was I married, and why I married her, and where she went afterwards, but
that's just the kinda fix I'm in, Lew. I don't suppose she came here and
did it just for fun--and I can't figure out any other reason, unless she
was plumb loco. From all I can gather, she was a nice girl, and it seems
she thought I was Frank Ford Cameron--which I am not!" He laughed, as a
man will laugh sometimes when he is neither pleased nor amused.
"I might ask McCreery--he's conductor on Fourteen. He might remember
where she wanted to go," the agent suggested hesitatingly. "And say!
What's the matter with going up to Garbin and looking up the record? She
had to get the license there, and they'd have her name, age, place of
residence, and--and whether she's white or black." The agent smiled
uncertainly over his feeble attempt at a joke. "I got a license for a
friend once," he explained hastily, when he saw that Ford's face did not
relax a muscle. "There's a train up in forty minutes--"
"Sure, I'll do that." Ford brightened. "That must be what I've been
trying to think of and couldn't. I knew there was some way of finding
out. Throw me a round-trip ticket, Lew. Lordy me! I can't afford to let
a real, live wife slip the halter like this and leave me stranded and
not knowing a thing about her. How much is it?"
The agent slid a dark red card into the mouth of his office stamp,
jerked down the lever, and swung his head quickly toward the sounder
chattering hysterically behind him. His jaw slackened as he listened,
and he turned his eyes vacantly upon Ford for a moment before he looked
back at the instrument.
"Well, what do you know about that?" he queried, under his breath,
released the ticket from the grip of the stamp, and flipped it into the
drawer beneath the shelf as if it were so much waste paper.
"That's my ticket," Ford reminded him levelly.
"You don't want it now, do you?" The agent grinned at him. "Oh, I forgot
you couldn't read that." He tilted his head back toward the instrument.
"A wire just went through--the court-house at Garbin caught fire in the
basement--something about the furnace, they think--and she's going up in
smoke. Hydrants are froze up so they can't get water on it. That fixes
your looking up the record, Ford."
Ford stared hard at him. "Well, I might hunt up the preacher and ask
him," he said, his tone dropping again to dull discouragement.
The agent chuckled. "From all I hear," he observed rashly, "you've made
that same preacher mighty hard to catch!"
Ford drummed upon the shelf and scowled at the smoke-blackened window,
beyond which the snow was sweeping aslant. Upon his own side of the
ticket window, the agent pared his nails with his pocket-knife and
watched him furtively.
"Oh, hell! What do I care, anyway?" Revulsion seized Ford harshly. "I
guess I can stand it if she can. She came here and married me--it isn't
my funeral any more than it is hers. If she wants to be so darned
mysterious about it, she can go plumb--to--New York!" There were a few
decent traits in Ford Campbell; one was his respect for women, a respect
which would not permit him to swear about this wife of his, however
exasperating her behavior.
"That's the sensible way to look at it, of course," assented the agent,
who made it a point to agree always with a man of Ford's size and
caliber, on the theory that amiability means popularity, and that
placation is better than plasters. "You sure ought to let her do the
hunting--and the worrying, too. You aren't to blame if she married you
unawares. She did it all on her own hook--and she must have known what
she was up against."
"No, she didn't," flared Ford unexpectedly. "She made a mistake, and I
wanted to point it out to her and help 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.