Reaction
Even when a man consistently takes Life in twenty-four-hour doses and
likes those doses full-flavored with the joys of this earth, there are
intervals when the soul of him is sick, and Life becomes a nauseous
progression of bleak futility. He may, in his revulsion against it,
attempt to end it all; he may, in sheer disgust of it, take his doses
stronger than ever before, as if he would once for all choke to death
that part of him which is fine enough to rebel against it; he may even
forswear, in melancholy penitence, that which has served to give it
flavor, and vow him vows of abstemiousness at which the grosser part of
him chuckles ironically; or, he may blindly follow the first errant
impulse for change of environment, in the half-formed hope that new
scenes may, without further effort on his part, serve to make of him a
new man--a man for whom he can feel some respect.
Ford did none of these things, however. The soul-sick incentive was
there, and if he had been a little less of a reasoning animal and a
little less sophisticated, he would probably have forsworn strong drink
just as he forswore all responsibility for his inadvertent marriage. His
reason and his experience saved him from cluttering his conscience with
broken vows, although he did yield to the impulse of change to the
extent of leaving Sunset while yet the inhabitants were fortifying
themselves for the ardors of the day with breakfast and some wild
prophecies concerning Ford's next outbreak.
Apprehension over Bill's immediate future was popular amongst his
friends, Ford's sardonic reference to manslaughter and bounty being
repeated often enough in Bill's presence to keep that peace-loving
gentleman in a state of trepidation which he sought to hide behind vague
warnings.
"He better think twicet before he comes bothering around me, by hokey!"
Bill would mutter darkly. "I've stood a hull lot from Ford; I like 'im,
when he's himself. But I've stood about as much as a man can be expected
to stand. And he better look out! That's all I got to say--he better
look out!" Bill himself, it may be observed incidentally, spent the
greater portion of that day in "looking out." He was careful not to sit
down with his back to a door, for instance, and was keenly interested
when a knob turned beneath unseen fingers, and plainly relieved when
another than Ford entered his presence. Bill's mustache was nearly
pulled from its roots, that day--but that is not important to the story,
which has to do with Ford Campbell, sometime the possessor of a neat
legacy in coin, later a rider of the cattle ranges, last presiding
genius over the poker table in Scotty's back room in Sunset, always an
important factor--and too often a disturbing element--in any community
upon which he chose to bestow his dynamic presence.
Scotty hoped that Ford would show up for business when the lamps were
lighted, that night. There had been some delicacy on the part of Ford's
acquaintances that day in the matter of calling upon him at the shack.
They believed--and hoped--that Ford was "sleeping it off," and there was
a unanimous reluctance to disturb his slumbers. Sandy, indulging himself
in the matter of undisturbed spinal tremors over "The Haunted Chamber,"
had not left shelter, save when the more insistent shiverings of chilled
flesh recalled him from his pleasurable nerve-crimplings and drove him
forth to the woodpile. So that it was not until evening was well
advanced that Sunset learned that Ford was no longer a potential menace
within its meager boundaries. Bill took a long breath, observed
meaningly that "He'd _better_ go--whilst his credit's good, by hokey!"
and for the first time that day sat down with his back toward an outer
door.
Ford was not worrying about Sunset half as much as Sunset was worrying
about him. He was at that moment playing pinochle half-heartedly with a
hospitable sheep-herder, under the impression that, since his host had
frankly and profanely professed a revulsion against solitaire and a
corresponding hunger for pinochle, his duty as a guest lay in
satisfying that hunger. He played apathetically, overlooked several
melts he might have made, and so lost three games in succession to the
gleeful herder, who had needed the diversion almost as much as he needed
a hair-cut.
His sense of social responsibility being eased thereby, Ford took his
headache and his dull disgust with life to the wall side of the herder's
frowsy bunk, and straightway forgot both in heavy slumber, leaving to
the morrow any definite plan for the near future--the far future being
as little considered as death and what is said to lie beyond.
That day had done for him all he asked of it. It had put him thirty
miles and more from Sunset, against which he felt a resentment which it
little deserved; of a truth it was as inoffensive a hamlet as any in
that region, and its sudden, overweening desire for a jail was but a
legitimate impulse toward self-preservation. The fault was Ford's, in
harassing the men of Sunset into action. But several times that day, and
again while he was pulling the stale-odored blankets snugly about his
ears, Ford anathematized the place as "a damned, rotten hole," and was
as nearly thankful as his mood would permit, when he remembered that it
lay far behind him and was likely to be farther before his journeyings
were done.
Sleep held him until daylight seeped in through the one dingy window.
Ford awoke to the acrid smell of scorched bacon, thought at first that
Sandy was once more demonstrating his inefficiency as a cook, and when
he remembered that Sandy's name was printed smudgily upon that page of
his life which he had lately turned down as a blotted, unlearned lesson
is pushed behind an unwilling schoolboy, he began to consider seriously
his next step.
Outside, the sheep were blatting stridently their demand for breakfast.
The herder bolted coffee and coarse food until he was filled, and went
away to his dreary day's work, telling Ford to make himself at home, and
flinging back a hope of further triumphs in pinochle, that night.
Ford washed the dishes, straightened the blankets in the bunk, swept
the grimy floor as well as he could with the stub of broom he found,
filled the wood-box and then, being face to face with his day and the
problem it held, rolled a cigarette, and smoked it in deep meditation.
He wanted to get away from town, and poker games, and whisky, and the
tumult it brewed. Something within him hungered for clean, wind-swept
reaches and the sane laughter of men, and Ford was accustomed to doing,
or at least trying to do, the thing he wanted to do. He was not getting
into the wilderness because of any inward struggle toward right living,
but because he was sick of town and the sordid life he had lived there.
Somewhere, back toward the rim of mountains which showed a faint violet
against the sky to the east, he owned a friend; and that friend owned a
stock ranch which, Ford judged, must be of goodly extent; two weeks
before, hearing somehow that Ford Campbell was running a poker game in
Sunset, the friend had written and asked him to come and take charge of
his "outfit," on the plea that, his foreman having died, he was
burdened with many cares and in urgent need of help.
Ford, giving the herder's frying-pan a last wipe with the dish-cloth,
laughed at the thought of taking the responsibility offered him in that
letter. It occurred to him, however, that the Double Cross (which was
the brand-name of Mason's ranch) might be a pleasant place to visit. It
was long since he had seen Ches--and there had been a time when one bed
held the two of them through many a long, weary night; when one
frying-pan cooked the scanty food they shared between them. And there
had been a season of grinding days and anxious, black nights between,
when the one problem, to Ford, consisted of getting Ches Mason out of
the wild land where they wandered, and getting him out alive. The
problem Ford solved and at the solution men wondered. Afterward they had
drifted apart, but the memory of those months would hold them together
with a bond which not even time could break--a bond which would pull
taut whenever they met.
Ford set down the frying-pan and went to the door and looked out. A
chinook had blown up in the night, and although the wind was chill, the
snow had disappeared, save where drifts clung to the hollows, shrinking
and turning black beneath the sweeping gusts; sodden masses which gave
to the prairie a dreary aspect of bleak discomfort. But Ford was well
pleased at the sight of the brown, beaten grasses. Impulse was hardening
to decision while he stared across the empty land toward the violet rim
of hills; a decision to ride over to the Double Cross, and tell Ches
Mason to his face that he was a chump, and have a smoke with the old
Turk, anyway. Ches had married, since that vividly remembered time when
adventure changed to hardship and hazard and walked hand in hand with
them through the wild places. Ford wondered fleetingly if matrimony had
changed old Ches; probably not--at least, not in those essential
man-traits which appeal to men. Ford suddenly hungered for the man's
hearty voice, where kindly humor lurked always, and for a grip of his
hand.
It was like him to forget all about the herder and the promise of
pinochle that night. He went eagerly to the decrepit little shed which
housed Rambler, his long-legged, flea-bitten gray; saddled him
purposefully and rode away toward the violet hills at the trail-trot
which eats up the miles with the least effort.
That night, although he slept in a hamlet which called itself a town,
his purpose kept firm hold of him, and he rode away at a decent hour the
next morning,--and he rode sober. He kept his face toward the hills, and
he did not trouble himself with any useless analysis of his unusual
temperateness. He was going to blow in to the Double Cross some time
before he slept that night, and have a talk with Ches. He had a pint of
fairly good whisky in his pocket, in case he felt the need of a little
on the way, and beyond those two satisfactory certainties he did not
attempt to reason. They were significant, in a way, to a man with a
tendency toward introspection; but Ford was interested in actualities
and never stopped to wonder why he bought a pint, rather than a quart,
or why, with Ches Mason in his mind, he declined to "set in" to the
poker game which was running to tempting jackpots, the night before; or
why he took one glass of wine before he mounted Rambler and let it go at
that. He never once dreamed that the memory of cheerful, steady-going
Ches influenced him toward starting on his friendly pilgrimage the Ford
Campbell whom Mason had known eight years before; a very different Ford
Campbell, be it said, from the one who had caused a whole town to
breathe freer for his absence.
Of his wife Ford had thought less often and less uncomfortably since he
left the town wherein had occurred the untoward incident of his
marriage. He was not unaccustomed to doing foolish things when he was
drunk, and as a rule he made it a point to ignore them afterwards. His
mysterious, matrimonial accident was beginning to seem less of a real
catastrophe than before, and the anticipation of meeting Ches Mason was
rapidly taking precedence of all else in his mind.
So, with almost his normal degree of careless equanimity, he faced again
the rim of hills--nearer they were now, with a deeper tinge that was
almost purple where the shadows lined them here and there. Somewhere out
that way lay the Double Cross ranch. Forty miles, one man told him it
was; another, forty-three. At best it was far enough for the shortened
daylight of one fall day to cover the journey. Ford threw away the stub
of his after-breakfast cigarette and swung into the trail at a lope.