What Ford Found at the Top
Ford Campbell was essentially a man of action; he did not waste ten
seconds in trying to deduce the whys and hows of the amazing fact; he
would have a whole lifetime in which to study them. He started for the
house, and the tracks he made in the loose, shifting snow were
considerably more than a yard apart. He even forgot to stamp off the
clinging snow and scour his boot-soles upon the porch rug, and when he
went striding in, he pushed the door only half shut behind him, so that
it swung in the wind and let a small drift collect upon the parlor
carpet, until Mrs. Kate, feeling a draught, discovered it, and was
shocked beyond words at the sacrilege.
Ford went into the dining-room, crossed it in just three strides, and
ran his quarry to earth in the kitchen, where she was distraitly
setting out biscuit materials. He started toward her, realized suddenly
that the all-observing Buddy was at his very heels, and delayed the
reckoning while he led that terrible man-child to his mother.
"I wish you'd close-herd this kid for about four hours," he told Mrs.
Kate bluntly, and left her looking scared and unconsciously posing as
protective motherhood, her arm around the outraged Robert Chester Mason.
Mrs. Kate was absolutely convinced that Ford was at last really drunk
and "on the rampage," and she had a terrible vision of slain girlhood in
the kitchen, so that she was torn between mother-love and her desire to
protect Phenie. But Ford had looked so threateningly at her and Buddy
that she could not bring herself to attract his attention to the child
or herself. Phenie had plenty of spirit; she could run down to the
bunk-house--Mrs. Kate heard a door slam then, and shuddered. Phenie, she
judged swiftly, had locked herself into the pantry.
Phenie had. Or, to be exact, she had run in and slammed the door shut
in Ford's very face, and she was leaning her weight against it. Mrs.
Kate, pressing the struggling Buddy closer to her, heard voices, a
slight commotion, and then silence. She could bear no more. She threw a
shawl over her head, grasped Buddy firmly by the arm, and fled in terror
to the bunk-house.
The voices were a brief altercation between Ford and Josephine, on the
subject of opening the door, before it was removed violently from its
hinges. The commotion was when Josephine, between tears and laughter,
failed to hold the door against the pressure of a strong man upon the
other side, and, suddenly giving over the attempt, was launched against
a shelf and dislodged three tin pans, which she barely saved from
falling with a great clatter to the floor. The silence--the silence
should explain itself; but since humanity is afflicted with curiosity,
and demands details, this is what occurred immediately after Josephine
had been kissed four times for her stubbornness, and the pans had been
restored to their proper place.
"Say! Are you my wife?" was the abrupt question which Ford asked, and
kissed her again while he waited for an answer.
"Why, yes--what makes you ask that? Of course I am; that is--" Josephine
twisted in his arms, so that she could look into his face. She did not
laugh at him, however. She was staring at him with that keen, measuring
look which had so incensed him, when he had first met her. "I don't
understand you at all, Ford," she said at last, with a frown of
puzzlement. "I never have, for that matter. I'd think I was beginning
to, and then you would say or do something that would put me all at sea.
What do you mean, anyway?"
Ford told her what he meant; told her humbly, truthfully, with never an
excuse for himself. And it speaks well for the good sense of Josephine
that she heard him through with neither tears, laughter, nor anger to
mar his trust in her.
"Of course, I knew you had been drinking, that night," she said, when
his story was done, and his face was pressed lightly against the white
parting in her soft, brown hair. "I saw it, after--after the ceremony.
You--you were going to kiss me, and I caught the odor of liquor, and I
felt that you wouldn't have done that if you had been yourself; it
frightened me, a little. But you talked perfectly straight, and I never
knew you weren't the man--Frank Cameron--until you came here. Then I saw
you couldn't be he. Chester had known you when Frank was at home with
his mother--I compared dates and was sure of that--and he called you
Ford Campbell. So then I saw what a horrible blunder I'd made, and I was
worried nearly to death! But I couldn't see what I could do about it,
and you didn't--"
"Say, what about this Frank Cameron, anyway?" Ford demanded, with true
male jealousy. "What did you want to marry him for? You couldn't have
known him, or--"
"Oh, you wouldn't understand--" Josephine gave a little, impatient turn
of the head, "unless you knew his mother. I did know Frank, a long time
ago, when I was twelve or thirteen, and when I saw you, I thought he'd
changed a lot. But it was his mother; she was the dearest thing,
but--queer. Sort of childish, you know. And she just worshiped Frank,
and used to watch for the postman--oh, it was too pitiful! Sometimes I'd
write a letter myself, and pretend it was from him, and read it to her;
her eyes were bad, so it was easy--"
"Where was this Frank?" Ford interrupted.
"Oh, I don't know! I never did know. Somewhere out West, we thought. I
used to make believe the letters came from Helena, or Butte, because
that was where she heard from him last. He was always promising to come
home--in the letters. That used to make her so much better," she
explained naïvely. "And sometimes she'd be able to go out in the yard
and fuss with her flowers, after one like that. But he never came, and
so she got the notion that he was wild and a spendthrift. I suppose he
was, or he'd have written, or something. She had lots and lots of money
and property, you know.
"Well," Josephine took one of Ford's hand and patted it reassuringly,
"she got the notion that I must marry Frank, when he came home. I tried
to reason her out of that, and it only made her worse. It grew on her,
and I got so I couldn't bear to write any more letters, and that made it
worse still. She made a will that I must marry Frank within a year after
she died, or he wouldn't get anything but a hundred dollars--and she was
worth thousands and thousands." Josephine snuggled closer. "She was
shrewd, too. I was not to get anything except a few trinkets. And if we
didn't marry, the money would all go to an old ladies' home.
"So, when she died, I felt as if I ought to do something, you see. It
didn't seem right to let him lose the property, even if he wouldn't
write to his mother. So I had the lawyers try to find him. I thought I
could marry him, and let him get the property, and then--well, I counted
on getting a divorce." She looked up quickly into Ford's face.
"And you know you did promise not to bother me--just to desert me, you
see, so I could get a divorce in a year. I thought I'd come and live
with Kate till the year was up, and then get a divorce, and go back
home to work. My father left me enough to squeak along on, you see, if I
lived in the country. Aunt Ida--that's Frank's mother--paid me a salary
for staying with her and looking after her house and her rents and
things. And then, when you followed me out here, I was furious! Just
simply furious!" She bent her head and set her teeth gently into the
fleshy part of Ford's thumb, and Ford flinched. It happened to be the
sore one.
"Well, but that doesn't explain how you got your loop on me,
girlie--though I sure am glad that you did!"
"Why, don't you see, the time was almost up, just for all the world like
a play. 'Only one day more--and I must save the pa-apers!' So the lawyer
Aunt Ida had for years, heard that Frank was--or had been--at Garbin. I
rushed out here, and heard that there was a Cameron (only they must have
meant Campbell) at Sunset. So I got a license, and the Reverend
Sanderson, and took the evening train down there. At the hotel I asked
for Mr. Cameron, and they sent you in. And you know the rest, you--you
old fraud! How you palmed yourself off on me--"
"I never did! I must have just been in one of my obliging moods; and a
man would have to be mighty rude and unkind not to say yes to a pretty
girl when--"
That is as far as the discussion went, with anything like continuity or
coherence even. Later, however, Josephine did protest somewhat
muffledly: "But, Ford, I married you under the name of Frank Cameron, so
I don't believe--and anyway--I'd like a real wedding--and a ring!"
Mrs. Kate, having been solemnly assured by Rock that Ford was sober and
as nearly in his right mind as a man violently in love can be (Rock made
it plain, by implication at least, that he did not consider that very
near), ventured into the kitchen just then. She still looked scared and
uncertain, until, through the half-open door of the pantry, she heard
soft, whispery sounds like kissing--when the kissing is a rapture rather
than a ceremony. Mrs. Kate had only been married eight years or so, and
she had a good memory. She backed from the kitchen on her toes, and
pulled the door shut with the caution of a thief. She did more; she
permitted dinner to be an hour late, rather than disturb those two in
the pantry.
* * * * *
The uphill climb was no climb at all, after that. For when a man has
found the one woman in the world, and with her that elusive thing we
call happiness, even the demon must perforce sheathe his claws and
retire, discomfited, to the pit whence he came.
There was a period of impatient waiting, because Josephine and Mrs. Kate
both stoutly maintained that the "real wedding" could not take place
until Chester came back. After that, there was a Mrs. foreman at the
Double Cross until spring. And after that, there was a new ranch and a
new house and a new home where happiness came and dwelt unhindered.
THE END
STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY
GENE STRATTON-PORTER
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_THE HARVESTER_ Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs
"The Harvester," David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who
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_FRECKLES._ Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford
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_A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST._ Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda.
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It is an inspiring story of a life worth while and the rich beauties of
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_AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW._ Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp.
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STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS
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_THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE._ Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree
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lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he
finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the
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_THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME_ Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
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_A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND._ Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
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Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of
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MYRTLE REED'S NOVELS
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_LAVENDER AND OLD LACE._
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prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fashioned love stories, * * * a
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_A SPINNER IN THE SUN._
Miss Myrtle Reed may always be depended upon to write a story in which
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_THE MASTER'S VIOLIN,_
A love story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso
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his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life
and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its
fulness. But a girl comes into his life--a beautiful bit of human
driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through
his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to
give--and his soul awakes.
Founded on a fact that all artists realize.
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_WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY._ By Robert Carlton Brown. Illustrated with
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_THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM._ By David Belasco. Illustrated by John Rae.
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_THE GARDEN OF ALLAH._ By Robert Hichens.
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_BEN HUR._ A Tale of the Christ. By General Lew Wallace.
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_BOUGHT AND PAID FOR._ By George Broadhurst and Arthur Hornblow.
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A beautiful Parisienne became an outcast because her husband would not
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_THE GARDEN OF ALLAH._ By Robert Hichens.
An unconventional English woman and an inscrutable stranger meet and
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_THE PRINCE OF INDIA._ By Lew. Wallace.
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_TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY._ By Grace Miller White. Illust. by Howard
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A girl from the dregs of society, loves a young Cornell University
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_YOUNG WALLINGFORD._ By George Randolph Chester. Illust. by F. R. Gruger
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money manipulation ever seen on the stage.
_THE INTRUSION OF JIMMY._ By P.G. Wodehouse. Illustrations by Will Grefe.
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_CHIP, OF THE FLYING U_
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_THE HAPPY FAMILY_
A lively and amusing story, dealing with the adventures of eighteen
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Ananias Green, known as Andy, whose imaginative powers cause many lively
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_HER PRAIRIE KNIGHT_
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_THE RANGE DWELLERS_
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_THE LURE OF DIM TRAILS_
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_THE LONESOME TRAIL_
"Weary" Davidson leaves the ranch for Portland, where conventional city
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atmosphere of the prairie, and the recollection of a pair of large brown
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_THE LONG SHADOW_
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