The Foreman of the Double Cross
"Hell-o, Ford, where the blazes did you drop down from?" a welcoming
voice yelled, when he was closing the gate of the corral behind him and
thinking that it was like Ches Mason to have a fine, strong corral and
gate, and then slur the details by using a piece of baling wire to
fasten it. The last ounce of disgust with life slid from his mind when
he heard the greeting, and he turned and gripped hard the gloved hand
thrust toward him. Ches Mason it was--the same old Ches, with the same
humorous wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, the same kindliness, the
same hearty faith in the world as he knew it and in his fellowmen as he
found them--the unquestioning faith that takes it for granted that the
other fellow is as square as himself. Ford held his hand while he
permitted himself a swift, reckoning glance which took in these
familiar landmarks of the other's personality.
"Don't seem to have hurt you much--matrimony," he observed whimsically,
as he dropped the hand. "You look just like you always did--with your
hat on." In the West, not to say in every other locality, there is a
time-honored joke about matrimony, for certain strenuous reasons,
producing premature baldness.
Ches grinned and removed his hat. Eight years had heightened his
forehead perceptibly and thinned the hair on his temples. "You see what
it's done to me," he pointed out lugubriously. "You ain't married
yourself, I suppose? You look like you'd met up with some kinda
misfortune." Mason was regarding Ford's scarred face with some
solicitude.
"Just got tangled up a little with my fellow-citizens, in Sunset," Ford
explained drily. "I tried to see how much of the real stuff I could get
outside of, and then how many I could lick." He shrugged his shoulders a
little. "I did quite a lot of both," he added, as an afterthought.
Mason was rubbing his jaw reflectively and staring hard at Ford. "The
wife's strong on the temperance dope," he said hesitatingly. "I reckon
you'll want to bunk down with the boys till you grow some hide on your
face--there's lady company up at the house, and--"
"The bunk-house for mine, then," Ford cut in hastily. "No lady can get
within gunshot of me; not if I see her coming in time!" Though he smiled
when he said it, there was meaning behind the mirth.
Mason pulled a splinter from a corral rail and began to snap off little
bits with his fingers. "Kate will go straight up in the air with me if
she knows you're here and won't come to the house, though," he
considered uneasily. "She's kept a big package of gratitude tucked away
with your name on it, ever since that Alaska deal. And lemme tell you,
Ford, when a woman as good as Kate goes and gets grateful to a
man--gosh! Had your dinner?"
"Not lately, I haven't," Ford declared. "I kinda remember eating, some
time in the past; it was a long time ago, though."
Mason laughed and tagged the answer as being the natural exaggeration
of a hungry man. "Well, come along and eat, then--if you haven't
forgotten how to make your jaws go. I've got Mose Freeman cooking for
me; you know Mose, don't you? Hired him the day after the Fourth; the
Mitten outfit fired him for getting soused and trying to clean out the
camp, and I nabbed him before they had time to forgive him. Way they had
of disciplining him--when he'd go on a big tear they'd fire him for a
few days and then take him back. But they can't git him now--not if I
can help it. A better cook never throwed dishwater over a guy-rope than
that same old Mose, but--" He stopped and looked at Ford hesitantly.
"Say! I hate like the deuce to tie a string on you as soon as you hit
the ranch, Ford, but--if you've got anything along, you won't spring it
on Mose, will you? A fellow's got to watch him pretty close, or--"
"I haven't got a drop." Ford's tone was reprehensibly regretful.
"You do look as if you'd put it all under your belt," Mason retorted
dryly. "Left anything behind?"
"Some spoiled beauties, and a nice new jail that was built by my
admiring townspeople, with my name carved over the door. I didn't stay
for the dedication services. Sunset was getting all fussed up over me
and I thought I'd give them a chance to settle their nerves; loss of
sleep sure plays hell with folks when their nerves are getting frazzly."
He smiled disarmingly at Mason.
"I'd kinda lost track of you, Ches, till I got your letter. I've been
traveling pretty swift, and that's no lie. I meant to write, but--you
know how a man gets to putting things off. And then I took a notion to
ride over this way, and sample your grub for a day or so, and abuse you
a little to your face, you old highbinder!"
"Sure. I've been kinda looking for you, too. But--I wish you hadn't
quite so big an assortment of battle-signs, Ford. Kate's got ideals and
prejudices--and she don't know all your little personal traits. She's
heard a lot about you, of course. We was married right after we came
outa the North, you know, and of course--Well, you know how a woman sops
up adventure stories; and seeing you was the star performer--"
"And that's a lie," Ford put in modestly, albeit a trifle bluntly.
"No, it ain't. She got the truth. And she's so darned grateful," he
added lugubriously, "that I don't know how to square your record with
that face! Unless we can rig up some yarn about a holdup--" He paused
just outside the mess-house door and eyed Ford questioningly. "We
might--"
"No, you don't. If you've gone and lied to her, and made me out a little
tin angel, you deserve what's coming. Anyway, I won't stay long, and
I'll stop down here with the boys. Call me Jack Jones and let it go at
that. Honest, Ches, I don't want to get mixed up with no more females.
I'm plumb scared of 'em. Lordy me, that coffee sure does smell good to
me!"
Mason looked at him doubtfully, saw that Ford was, for the time being,
absolutely devoid of anything remotely approaching penitence for his
sins, or compunction over his appearance, or uneasiness over "Kate's"
opinion of him. He was hungry. And since it is next to impossible to
whip up the conscience of a man whose thoughts are concentrated upon his
physical needs, Mason was wise enough to wait, though the one point
which he considered of vital importance to them both--the question of
Ford's acceptance or refusal of the foremanship of the Double Cross--had
not yet been touched upon.
While Ford ate with a controlled voraciousness which spoke eloquently of
his twenty-four hours of fasting and exposure, Mason gossiped
inattentively and studied the man.
Eight years leave their impress of mental growth or deterioration upon a
man. Outwardly Ford was not much changed since Mason had come with him
out of Alaska and lost sight of him afterwards. There was the maturity
which the man of thirty possessed and which the virile young fellow of
twenty-one had lacked. There was the same straight glance, the same
atmosphere of squareness and mental poise. Those were qualities which
Mason set down as valuable factors in his estimate of the man. Besides,
there were other signs which did not make so pleasant a reading.
Eight years--and a few of them, at least, had been spent wastefully in
tearing down what the other years had built; Mason had heard that Ford
was "going to the dogs," and that by the short trail men blazed for
themselves centuries ago and which those who came after have made a
highway--the whisky trail. Mason had heard, now and then, of ten
thousand dollars coming to Ford upon the death of his father and going
almost as suddenly as it had come. That, at least, had been the rumor.
Also he had heard, just lately, that Ford had taken to gambling as a
profession and to terrorizing Sunset periodically as a pastime. And
Mason remembered the Ford Campbell who had carried him on his back out
of a wild place in Alaska, and had nearly starved himself that the sick
man's strength might not fail him utterly. He had remembered--had Ches
Mason; and, being one of those tenacious souls who cling to friendship
and to a resilient faith in the good that is in the worst of us, he had
thrown out a tentative life-line, as it were, and hoped that Ford might
clutch it before he became quite submerged in the sodden morass of
inebriety.
Ford may or may not have grasped eagerly at the line. At any rate he was
there in the mess-house of the Double Cross, and he was not quite so
sodden as Mason had feared to find him--provided he found him at all. So
much, at least, was encouraging, and for the rest, Mason was content to
wait.
Mose, recognizing Ford at once, had asked him, with a comical attempt at
secrecy, if he had anything to drink. When Ford shook his head, Mose
stifled a sigh and went back to his dishwashing, not more than half
convinced and inclined toward resentfulness. That a "booze-fighter" like
Ford Campbell should come only a day's ride from town and not be fairly
well supplied with whisky was too remarkable to be altogether plausible.
He eyed the two sourly while they talked, and he did not bring forth one
of the fresh pies he had baked, as he had meant to do.
It was not until Ford was ready to light his after-dinner cigarette
that Mason led the way into the next room, which held the bunks and
general belongings of the men, and closed the door so that they might
talk in confidence without fear of Mose's loose tongue. Ford immediately
pulled off his boots, laid himself down upon one of the bunks, doubled a
pillow under his head, and began to eye Mason quizzically. Then he said:
"Say, you kinda played your hand face down, didn't you, Ches, when you
wrote and asked me to come out here and take charge? Eight years is a
long time to expect a man to stay right where he was when you saw him
last. You've lost a whole lot of horse sense since I knew you."
"Well, what about it? You came, I notice." Mason grinned and would not
help Ford otherwise to an understanding.
"I didn't come to hog-tie that foreman job, you chump. I just merely
want to tell you that you'll get into all kinds of trouble, some day, if
you go laying yourself wide open like that. Why, it's plumb crazy to
offer a job like that to a fellow you haven't seen for as long as you
have me. And if you heard anything about me, it's a cinch it wasn't what
would recommend me to any Sunday-school as a teacher of their Bible
class! How did you know I wouldn't take it? And let you in for--"
"Well, you're here, and I've seen you. The job's still waiting for you.
You can start right in, to-morrow morning." Ches got out his pipe and
began to fill it as calmly and with as much attention to the small
details as if he were not mentally tensed for the struggle he knew was
coming; a struggle which struck much deeper than the position he was
offering Ford.
Ford almost dropped his cigarette in his astonishment. "Well, you damn'
fool!" he ejaculated pityingly.
"Why? I thought you knew enough--you punched cows for the Circle for
four or five years, didn't you? Nelson told me you were his top hand
while you stayed with him, and that you ran the outfit one whole summer,
when--"
"That ain't the point." A hot look had crept into Ford's face--a tinge
which was not a flush--and a glow into his eyes. "I know the
cow-business, far as that goes. It's me; you can't--why, Lordy me! You
ought to be sent to Sulphur Springs and get your think-tank hoed out.
Any man that will offer a foreman's job to a--a--"
"'A rooting, tooting, shooting, fighting son-of-a-gun, and a good one!'"
assisted Mason equably. "'The only original go-getter--' Sure. That's
all right."
The flush came slowly and darkened Ford's cheeks and brow and throat. He
threw his half-smoked cigarette savagely at the hearth of the rusty
box-stove, and scowled at the place where it fell. "Well, ain't that
reason enough?" he demanded harshly, after a minute.
Mason had been studying that flush. He nodded assent to some question he
had put to himself, and crowded tobacco into his pipe. "No reason at
all, one way or the other. I need a foreman--one I can depend on. I've
got to make a trip out to the Coast, this fall, and I've got to leave
somebody here I can trust."
Ford shot him a quick, questioning glance, and bit his lip. "That," he
said more calmly, "is just what I'm driving at. You can't trust me. You
can't depend on me, Ches."
"Oh, yes I can," Mason contradicted blandly. "It's just because I can
that I want you."
"You can't. You know damn' well you can't! Why, you--don't you know I've
got the name of being a drunkard, and a--a bad actor all around? I'm not
like I was eight years ago, remember. I've traveled a hard old trail
since we bucked the snow together, Ches--and it's been mostly down
grade. I was all right for awhile, and then I got ten thousand dollars,
and it seemed a lot of money. I bought a fellow out--he had a ranch and
a few head of horses--so he could take his wife back East to her mother.
She was sick. I didn't want the darned ranch. And so help me, Ches,
that's the only thing I've done in the last four years that I hadn't
ought to be ashamed of. The rest of the money I just simply blew.
I--well, you see me; you didn't want to take me up to the house to meet
your wife, and I don't blame you. You'd be a chump if you did. And this
is nothing out of the ordinary. I've got my face bunged up half the
time, seems like." He thumped the pillow into a different position,
settled his head against it, and looked at Mason with his old, whimsical
smile. "So when you talk about that foreman job, and depending on me,
you're--plumb delirious. I was going to write and tell you so, but I
kept putting it off. And then I took a notion I'd hunt you up and give
you some good advice. You're a good fellow, Ches, but the court ought to
appoint a guardian for you."
"I'll stick around for three or four weeks," Mason observed, in the
casual tone of one who is merely discussing the details of an everyday
affair, "till the calves are all gathered. We're a little late this
year, on account of old Slow dying right in round-up time. We got most
of the beef shipped--all I care about gathering, this fall. I've got
most all young stock, and it won't hurt to let 'em run another season;
there ain't many. I'll let you take the wagons out, and I'll go with you
till you get kinda harness-broke. And--"
"I told you I don't want the job." Ford's mouth was set grimly.
"You tried to tell me what I want and what I don't want," Mason
corrected amiably. "Now I've got my own ideas on that subject. This here
outfit belongs to me. I like to pick my men to suit myself; and if I
want a certain man for foreman, I guess I've got a right to hire him--if
he'll let himself be hired. I've picked my man. It don't make any
difference to me how many times he played hookey when he was a kid, or
how many men he's licked since he growed up. I've hired him to help run
the Double Cross, and run it right; and I ain't a bit afraid but what
he'll make good." He smiled and knocked the ashes gently from his pipe
into the palm of his hand, because the pipe was a meerschaum just
getting a fine, fawn coloring around the base of the bowl, and was dear
to the heart of him. "Down to the last, white chip," he added slowly,
"he'll make good. He ain't the kind of a man that will lay down on his
job." He got up and yawned, elaborately casual in his manner.
"You lay around and take it easy this afternoon," he said. "I've got to
jog over to the river field; the boys are over there, working a little
bunch we threw in yesterday. To-morrow we can ride around a little, and
kinda get the lay of the land. You better go by-low, right now--you look
as if it wouldn't do you any harm!" Whereupon he wisely took himself off
and left Ford alone.
The door he pulled shut after him closed upon a mental battle-ground.
Ford did not go "by-low." Instead, he rolled over and lay with his face
upon his folded arms, alive to the finger-tips; alive and fighting. For
there are times when the soul of a man awakes and demands a reckoning,
and reviews pitilessly the past and faces the future with the veil of
illusion torn quite away--and does it whether the man will or no.