At Hand-Grips with the Demon
Mose was mad. He was flinging tinware about the kitchen with a fine
disregard of the din or the dents, and whenever the blue cat ventured
out from under the stove, he kicked at it viciously. He was mad at Ford;
and when a man gets mad at his foreman--without knowing that the foreman
has been instructed to bear with his faults and keep him on the pay-roll
at any price--he must, if he be the cook, have recourse to kicking cats
and banging dishes about, since he dare not kick the foreman. For in
late November "jobs" are not at all plentiful in the range land, and
even an angry cook must keep his job or face the world-old economic
problem of food, clothing, and shelter.
But if he dared not speak his mind plainly to Ford, he was not averse to
pouring his woes into the first sympathetic ear that came his way. It
happened that upon this occasion the ear arrived speedily upon the head
of Dick Thomas.
"Matter, Mose?" he queried, sidestepping the cat, which gave a long leap
straight for the door, when it opened. "Cat been licking the butter
again?"
Mose grunted and slammed three pie tins into a cupboard with such force
that two of them bounced out and rolled across the floor. One came
within reach of his foot, and he kicked it into the wood-box, and swore
at it while it was on the way. "And I wisht it was Ford Campbell
himself, the snoopin', stingy, kitchen-grannying, booze-fightin',
son-of-a-sour-dough bannock!" he finished prayerfully.
"He surely hasn't tried to mix in here, and meddle with you?" Dick
asked, helping himself to a piece of pie. You know the tone; it had just
that inflection of surprised sympathy which makes you tell your troubles
without that reservation which a more neutral listener would
unconsciously impel.
I am not going to give Mose's version, because he warped the story to
make it fit his own indignation, and did not do Ford justice. This,
then, is the exact truth:
Ford chanced to be walking up along the edge of the gully which ran past
the bunk-house, and into which empty cans and other garbage were thrown.
Sometimes a can fell short, so that all the gully edge was liberally
decorated with a gay assortment of canners' labels. Just as he had come
up, Mose had opened the kitchen door and thrown out a cream can, which
had fallen in front of Ford and trickled a white stream upon the frozen
ground. Ford had stooped and picked up the can, had shaken it, and heard
the slosh which told of waste. He had investigated further, and decided
that throwing out a cream can before it was quite empty was not an
accident with Mose, but might be termed a habit. He had taken Exhibit A
to the kitchen, but had laughed while he spoke of it. And these were his
exact words:
"Lordy me, Mose! Somebody's liable to come here and get rich off us, if
we don't look out. He'll gather up the cream cans you throw into the
discard and start a dairy on the leavings." Then he had set the can
down on the water bench beside the door and gone away.
"I've been cookin' for cow-camps ever since I got my knee stiffened up
so's't I couldn't ride--and that's sixteen year ago last Fourth--and
it's the first time I ever had any darned foreman go snoopin' around my
back door to see if I scrape out the cans clean!" Mose seated himself
upon a corner of the table with the stiff leg for a brace and the good
one swinging free, and folded his bare arms upon his heaving chest.
"And that ain't all, Dick," he went on aggrievedly. "He went and cut
down the order I give him for grub. That's something Ches never
done--not with me, anyway. Asked me--asked me, what I wanted with so
much choc'late. And I wanted boiled cider for m' mince-meat, and never
got it. And brandy, too--only I didn't put that down on the list; I
knowed better than to write it out. But I give Jim money--out uh my own
pocket!--to git some with, and he never done it. Said Ford told him
p'tic'ler not to bring out nothin' any nearer drinkable than lemon
extract! I've got a darned good mind," he added somberly, "to fire the
hull works into the gully. He don't belong on no cow ranch. Where he'd
oughta be is runnin' the W.C.T.U. So darned afraid of a pint uh
brandy--"
"If I was dead sure your brains wouldn't get to leaking out your mouth,"
Dick began guardedly, "I might put you wise to something." He took a
drink of water, opened the door that he might throw out what remained in
the dipper, and made sure that no one was near the bunk-house before he
closed the door again. Mose watched him interestedly.
"You know me, Dick--I never do tell all I know," he hinted heavily.
"Well," Dick stood with his hand upon the door-knob and a sly grin upon
his face, "I ain't saying a word about anything. Only--if you might
happen to want some--eggs--for your mince pies, you might look good
under the southeast corner of the third haystack, counting from the big
corral. I believe there's a--nest--there."
"The deuce!" Mose brightened understandingly and drummed with his
fingers upon his bare, dough-caked forearm. "Do yuh know who--er--what
hen laid 'em there?"
"I do," said Dick with a rising inflection. "The head he-hen uh the
flock. But if I was going to hunt eggs, I'd take down a chiny egg and
leave it in the nest, Mose."
"But I ain't got--" Mose caught Dick's pale glance resting with what
might be considered some significance upon the vinegar jug, and he
stopped short. "That wouldn't work," he commented vaguely.
"Well, I've got to be going. Boss might can me if he caught me loafing
around here, eating pie when I ought to be working. Ford's a fine
fellow, don't you think?" He grinned and went out, and immediately
returned, complaining that he never could stand socks with a hole in the
toe, and he guessed he'd have to hunt through his war-bag for a good
pair.
Mose, as need scarcely be explained, went immediately to the stable to
hunt eggs; and Dick, in the next room, smiled to himself when he heard
the door slam behind him. Dick did not change his socks just then; he
went first into the kitchen and busied himself there, and he continued
to smile to himself. Later he went out and met Ford, who was riding
moodily up from the river field.
"Say, I'm going to be an interfering kind of a cuss, and put you next to
something," he began, with just the right degree of hesitation in his
manner. "It ain't any of my business, but--" He stopped and lighted a
cigarette. "If you'll come up to the bunk-house, I'll show you something
funny!"
Ford dismounted in silence, led his horse into the stable, and without
waiting to unsaddle, followed Dick.
"We've got to hurry, before Mose gets back from hunting eggs," Dick
remarked, by way of explaining the long strides he took. "And of course
I'm taking it for granted, Ford, that you won't say anything. I kinda
thought you ought to know, maybe--but I'd never say a word if I didn't
feel pretty sure you'd keep it behind your teeth."
"Well--I'm waiting to see what it is," Ford replied non-committally.
Dick opened the kitchen door, and led Ford through that into the
bunk-room. "You wait here--I'm afraid Mose might come back," he said,
and went into the kitchen. When he returned he had a gallon jug in his
hand. He was still smiling.
"I went to mix me up some soda-water for heartburn," he said, "and when
I picked up this jug, Mose took it out of my hand and said it was boiled
cider, that he'd got for mince-meat. So when he went out, I took a
taste. Here: You sample it yourself, Ford. If that's boiled cider, I
wouldn't mind having a barrel!"
Ford took the jug, pulled the cork, and sniffed at the opening. He did
not say anything, but he looked up at Dick significantly.
"Taste it once!" urged Dick innocently. "I'd just like to have you see
the brand of slow poison a fool like Mose will pour down him."
Ford hesitated, sniffed, started to set down the jug, then lifted it and
took a swallow.
"That isn't as bad as some I've seen," he pronounced evenly, shoving in
the cork. "Nor as good," he added conservatively. "I wonder where he got
it."
"Search me--oh, by jiminy, here he comes! I'm going to take a scoot,
Ford. Don't give me away, will you? And if I was you, I wouldn't say
anything to Mose--I know that old devil pretty well. He'll keep mighty
quiet about it himself--unless you jump him about it. Then he'll roar
around to everybody he sees, and claim it was a plant."
He slid stealthily through the outer door, and Ford saw him run down
into the gully and disappear, while Mose was yet half-way from the
stable.
Ford sat on the edge of a bunk and looked at the jug beside him. If Dick
had deliberately planned to tempt him, he had chosen the time well; and
if he had not done it deliberately, there must have been a malignant
spirit abroad that day.
For twenty-four hours Ford had been more than usually restless and
moody. Even Buddy had noticed that, and complained that Ford was cross
and wouldn't talk to him; whereupon Mrs. Kate had scolded Josephine and
accused her of being responsible for his gloom and silence. Since
Josephine's conscience sustained the charge, she resented the accusation
and proceeded deliberately to add to its justice; which did not make
Ford any the happier, you may be sure. For when a man reaches that
mental state which causes him to carry a girl's ribbon folded carefully
into the most secret compartment of his pocketbook, and to avoid the
girl herself and yet feel like committing assault and battery with
intent to kill, because some other man occasionally rides with her for
an hour or two, he is extremely sensitive to averted glances and chilly
tones and monosyllabic conversation.
Since the day before, when she had ridden as far as the stage road with
Dick, when he went to the line-camp, Ford had been fighting the desire
to saddle a horse and ride to town; and the thing that lured him
townward confronted him now in that gray stone jug with the brown neck
and handle.
He lifted the jug, shook it tentatively, pulled out the cork with a jerk
that was savage, and looked around the room for some place where he
might empty the contents and have done with temptation; but there was no
receptacle but the stove, so he started to the door with it, meaning to
pour it on the ground. Mose just then shambled past the window, and Ford
sat down to wait until the cook was safe in the kitchen. And all the
while the cork was out of that jug, so that the fumes of the whisky rose
maddeningly to his nostrils, and the little that he had swallowed
whipped the thirst-devil to a fury of desire.
In the kitchen, Mose rattled pans and hummed a raucous tune under his
breath, and presently he started again for the stable. Dick, desultorily
bracing a leaning post of one of the corrals, saw him coming and
grinned. He glanced toward the bunk-house, where Ford still lingered,
and the grin grew broader. After that he went all around the corral with
his hammer and bucket of nails, tightening poles and braces and,
incidentally, keeping an eye upon the bunk-house; and while he worked,
he whistled and smiled by turns. Dick was in an unusually cheerful mood
that day.
Mose came shuffling up behind him and stood with his stiff leg thrust
forward and his hands rolled up in his apron. Dick could see that he had
something clasped tightly under the wrappings.
"Say, that he-hen--she laid twice in the same place!" Mose announced
confidentially. "Got 'em both--for m'mince pies!" He waggled his head,
winked twice with his left eye, and went back to the bunk-house.
Still Ford did not appear. Josephine came, however, in riding skirt and
gray hat and gauntlets, treading lightly down the path that lay all in a
yellow glow which was not so much sunlight as that mellow haze which we
call Indian Summer. She looked in at the stable, and then came straight
over to Dick. There was, when Josephine was her natural self, something
very direct and honest about all her movements, as if she disdained all
feminine subterfuges and took always the straight, open trail to her
object.
"Do you know where Mr. Campbell is, Dick?" she asked him, and added no
explanation of her desire to know.
"I do," said Dick, with the rising inflection which was his habit, when
the words were used for a bait to catch another question.
"Well, where is he, then?"
Dick straightened up and smiled down upon her queerly. "Count ten before
you ask me that again," he parried, "because maybe you'd rather not
know."
Josephine lifted her chin and gave him that straight, measuring stare
which had so annoyed Ford the first time he had seen her. "I have
counted," she said calmly after a pause. "Where is Mr. Campbell,
please?"--and the "please" pushed Dick to the very edge of her favor, it
was so coldly formal.
"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, sat 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.