The Uphill Climb by B. M. Bower

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CHAPTER XIII

A Plan Gone Wrong

It was Mose crashing headlong into the old messbox where he kept rattly
basins, empty lard pails, and such, that roused Ford. He got up and went
into the kitchen, and when he saw what was, the matter, extricated Mose
by the simple method of grabbing his shoulders and pulling hard; then he
set the cook upon his feet, and got full in his face the unmistakable
fumes of whisky.

"What? You got another jug?" he asked, with some disgust, steadying Mose
against the wall.

"Ah--I ain't got any jug uh nothin'," Mose protested, rather thickly.
"And I never took them bottles outa the stack; that musta been Dick done
that. Get after him about it; he's the one told me where yuh hid
'em--but I never touched 'em, honest I never. If they're gone, you get
after Dick. Don't yuh go 'n' lay it on me, now!" He was whimpering with
maudlin pathos before he finished. Ford scowled at him thoughtfully.

"Dick told you about the bottles in the haystack, did he?" he asked.
"Which stack was it? And how many bottles?"

Mose gave him a bleary stare. "Aw, you know. You hid 'em there yourself!
Dick said so. I ain't goin' to say which stack, or how many
bottles--or--any other--darn thing about it." He punctuated his phrases
by prodding a finger against Ford's chest, and he wagged his head with
all the self-consciousness of spurious virtue. "Promised Dick I
wouldn't, and I won't. Not a--darn--word about it. Wanted some--for m'
mince-meat, but I never took any outa the haystack." Whereupon he began
to show a pronounced limpness in his good leg, and a tendency to slide
down upon the floor.

Ford piloted him to a chair, eased him into it, and stood over him in
frowning meditation. Mose was drunk; absolutely, undeniably drunk. It
could not have been the jug, for the jug was full. Till then the oddity
of a full jug of whisky in Mose's kitchen after at least twenty-four
hours must have elapsed since its arrival, had not occurred to him. He
had been too preoccupied with his own fight to think much about Mose.

"Shay, I never took them bottles outa the stack," Mose looked up to
protest solemnly. "Dick never told me about 'em, neither. Dick tol'
me--" tapping Ford's arm with his finger for every word, "--'at there
was aigs down there, for m' mince-meat." He stopped suddenly and goggled
up at Ford. "Shay, yuh don't put aigs in--mince-meat," he informed him
earnestly. "Not a darn aig! That's what Dick tol' me--aigs for m'
mince-meat. Oh, I knowed right off what he meant, all right," he
explained proudly. "He didn't wanta come right out 'n' shay what it
was--an' I--got--the--aigs!"

"Yes--how many--eggs?" Ford held himself rigidly quiet.

"Two quart--aigs!" Mose laughed at the joke. "I wisht," he added
pensively, "the hens'd all lay them kinda aigs. I'd buy up all the
shickens in--the whole worl'." He gazed raptly upon the vision the words
conjured. "Gee! Quart aigs--'n' all the shickens in the worl' layin'
reg'lar!"

"Have you got any left?"

"No--honest. Used 'em all up--for m' mince-meat!"

Ford knew he was lying. His eyes searched the untidy tables and the
corners filled with bags and boxes. Mose was a good cook, but his ideas
of order were vague, and his system of housekeeping was the simple one
of leaving everything where he had last been using it, so that it might
be handy when he wanted it again. A dozen bottles might be concealed
there, like the faces in a picture-puzzle, and it would take a
housecleaning to disclose them all. But Ford, when he knew that no
bottle had been left in sight, began turning over the bags and looking
behind the boxes.

He must have been "growing warm" when he stood wondering whether it was
worth while to look into the flour-bin, for Mose gave an inarticulate
snarl and pounced on him from behind. The weight of him sent Ford down
on all fours and kept him there for a space, and even after he was up he
found himself quite busy. Mose was a husky individual, with no infirmity
of the arms and fists, even if he did have a stiff leg, and drunkenness
frequently flares and fades in a man like a candle guttering in the
wind. Besides, Mose was fighting to save his whisky.

Still, Ford had not sent all of Sunset into its cellars, figuratively
speaking, for nothing; and while a man may feel more enthusiasm for
fighting when under the influence of the stuff that cheers sometimes and
never fails to inebriate, the added incentive does not necessarily mean
also added muscular development or more weight behind the punch. Ford,
fighting as he had always fought, be he drunk or sober, came speedily to
the point where he could inspect a skinned knuckle and afterwards gaze
in peace upon his antagonist.

He was occupied with both diversions when the door was pushed open as by
a man in great haste. He looked up from the knuckle into the expectant
eyes of Jim Felton, and over the shoulder of Jim he saw a gloating
certainty writ large upon the face of Dick Thomas. They had been
running; he could tell that by their uneven breathing, and it occurred
to him that they must have heard the clamor when he pitched Mose head
first into the dish cupboard. There had been considerable noise about
that time, he remembered; they must also have heard the howl Mose gave
at the instant of contact. Ford glanced involuntarily at that side of
the room where stood the cupboard, and mentally admitted that it looked
like there had been a slight disagreement, or else a severe seismic
disturbance; and Montana is not what one calls an earthquake country.
His eyes left the generous sprinkle of broken dishes on the floor, with
Mose sprawled inertly in their midst, looking not unlike a broken
platter himself--or one badly nicked--and rested again upon the grinning
face behind the shoulder of Jim Felton.

Ford was ever a man of not many words, even when he had a grievance. He
made straight for Dick, and when he had pushed Jim out of the way, he
reached him violently. Dick tottered upon the step and went off
backward, and Ford landed upon him fairly and with full knowledge and
intent.

[Illustration: Dick tottered upon the step and went off backward.]

Jim Felton was a wise young man. He stood back and let them fight it
out, and when it was over he said never a word until Dick had picked
himself up and walked off, holding to his nose a handkerchief that
reddened rapidly.

"Say, you are a son-of-a-gun to fight," he observed admiringly then to
Ford. "Don't you know Dick's supposed to be abso-lute-ly unlickable?"

"May be so--but he sure shows all the symptoms of being licked right at
present." Ford moved a thumb joint gently to see whether it was really
dislocated or merely felt that way.

"He's going up to the house now, to tell the missus," remarked Jim,
craning his neck from the doorway.

"If he does that," Ford replied calmly, "I'll half kill him next time.
What I gave him just now is only a sample package left on the doorstep
to try." He sat down upon a corner of the table and began to make
himself a smoke. "Is he going up to the house--honest?" He would not
yield to the impulse to look and see for himself.

"We-el, the trail he's taking has no other logical destination," drawled
Jim. "He's across the bridge." When Ford showed no disposition to say
anything to that, Jim came in and closed the door. "Say, what laid old
Mose out so nice?" he asked, with an indolent sort of curiosity. "Booze?
Or just bumps?"

"A little of both," said Ford indifferently, between puffs. He was
thinking of the tale Dick would tell at the house, and he was thinking
of the probable effect upon one listener; the other didn't worry him,
though he liked Mrs. Kate very much.

Jim went over and investigated; discovering that Mose was close to
snoring, he sat upon a corner of the other table, swung a spurred boot,
and regarded Ford interestedly over his own cigarette building. "Say,
for a man that's supposed to be soused," he began, after a silence, "you
act and talk remarkably lucid. I wish I could carry booze like that," he
added regretfully. "But I can't; my tongue and my legs always betray
the guilty secret. Have you got any particular system, or is it just a
gift?"

"No"--Ford shook his head--"nothing like that. I just don't happen to be
drunk." He eyed Jim sharply while he considered within himself. "It
looks to me," he began, after a moment, "as if our friend Dick had
framed up a nice little plant. One way and another I got wise to the
whole thing; but for the life of me, I can't see what made him do it.
Lordy me! I never kicked him on any bunion!" He grinned, as memory
flashed a brief, mental picture of Sunset and certain incidents which
occurred there. But memory never lets well enough alone, and one is
lucky to escape without seeing a picture that leaves a sting; Ford's
smile ended in a scowl.

"Jealousy, old man," Jim pronounced without hesitation. "Of course, I
don't know the details, but--details be darned. If he has tried to hand
you a package, take it from me, jealousy's the string he tied it with. I
don't mind saying that Dick told me when I first rode up to the corral
that you and Mose were both boozing up to beat the band; and right after
that we heard a deuce of a racket up here, and it did look--" He waved
an apologetic hand at Mose and the fragments of pottery which framed
like a "still life" picture on the floor, and let it go at that. "I'm
strong for you, Ford," he added, and his smile was frank and friendly.
"Double Cross is the name of this outfit, but I'm all in favor of
running that brand on the cow-critters and keeping it out of the
bunk-house. If you should happen to feel like elucidating--" he hinted
delicately.

Ford had always liked Jim Felton; now he warmed to him as a real friend,
and certain things he told him. As much about the jug with the brown
neck and handle as concerned Dick, and all he knew of the bottles in the
haystack, while Jim smoked, and swung the foot which did not rest upon
the floor, and listened.

"Sounds like Dick, all right," he passed judgment, when Ford had
finished. "He counted on your falling for the jug--and oh, my! It was a
beautiful plant. I'd sure hate to have anybody sing 'Yield not to
temptation' at me, if a gallon jug of the real stuff fell into my arms
and nobody was looking." He eyed Ford queerly. "You've got quite a
reputation--" he ventured.

"Well, I earned it," Ford observed laconically.

"Dick banked on it--I'd stake my whole stack of blues on that. And after
you'd torn up the ranch, and pitched the fragments into the gulch, he'd
hold the last trump, with all high cards to keep the lead. Whee!" He
meditated admiringly upon the strategy. "But what I can't seem to
understand," he said frankly, "is why the deuce it didn't work! Is your
swallower out of kilter? If you don't mind my asking!"

"I never noticed that it was paralyzed," Ford answered grimly. He got
up, lifted a lid of the stove, and threw in the cigarette stub
mechanically. Then he bethought him of his interrupted search, and
prodded a long-handled spoon into the flour bin, struck something smooth
and hard, and drew out a befloured, quart bottle half full of whisky.
He wiped the bottle carefully, inspected it briefly, and pitched it into
the gully, where it smashed odorously upon a rock. Jim, watching him,
knew that he was thinking all the while of something else. When Ford
spoke, he proved it.

"Are you any good at all in the kitchen, Jim?" he asked, turning to him
as if he had decided just how he would meet the situation.

"Well, I hate to brag, but I've known of men eating my grub and going
right on living as if nothing had happened," Jim admitted modestly.

"Well, you turn yourself loose in here, will you? The boys will be good
and empty when they come--it's dinner time right now. I'll help you
carry Mose out of the way before I go."

Jim looked as if he would like to ask what Ford meant to do, but he
refrained. There was something besides preoccupation in Ford's face, and
it did not make for easy questioning. Jim did yield to his curiosity to
the extent of watching through a window, when Ford went out, to see
where he was going; and when he saw Ford had the jug, and that he took
the path which led across the little bridge and so to the house, he drew
back and said "Whee-e-e!" under his breath. Then he remarked to the
recumbent Mose, who was not in a condition either to hear or understand:
"I'll bet you Dick's got all he wants, right now, without any
postscript." After which Jim hunted up a clean apron and proceeded, with
his spurs on his heels, his hat on the back of his head, and a smile
upon his lips, to sweep out the broken dishes so that he might walk
without hearing them crunch unpleasantly under his boots. "I'll take
wildcats in mine, please," he remarked once irrelevantly aloud, and
smiled again.

CHAPTER XIV

The Feminine Point of View

When Ford stepped upon the porch with the jug in his hand, he gave every
indication of having definitely made up his mind. When he glimpsed
Josephine's worried face behind the lace curtain in the window, he
dropped the jug lower and held it against his leg in such a way as to
indicate that he hoped she could not see it, but otherwise he gave no
sign of perturbation. He walked along the porch to the door of his own
room, went in, locked the door after him, and put the jug down on a
chair. He could hear faint sounds of dishes being placed upon the table
in the dining-room, which was next to his own, and he knew that dinner
was half an hour late; which was unusual in Mrs. Kate's orderly domain.
Mrs. Kate was one of those excellent women whose house is always
immaculate, whose meals are ever placed before one when the clock
points to a certain hour, and whose table never lacks a salad and a
dessert--though how those feats are accomplished upon a cattle ranch
must ever remain a mystery. Ford was therefore justified in taking the
second look at his watch and in holding it up to his ear, and also in
lifting his eyebrows when all was done. Fifteen minutes by the watch it
was before he heard the silvery tinkle of the tea bell, which was one of
the ties which bound Mrs. Kate to civilization, and which announced that
he might enter the dining-room.

He went in as clean and fresh and straight-backed and quiet as ever he
had done, and when he saw that the room was empty save for Buddy,
perched upon his long-legged chair with his heels hooked over the top
round and a napkin tucked expectantly inside the collar of his blue
blouse, he took in the situation and sat down without waiting for the
women. The very first glance told him that Mrs. Kate had never prepared
that meal. It was, putting it bluntly, a scrappy affair hastily gathered
from various shelves in the pantry and hurriedly arranged haphazard
upon the table.

Buddy gazed upon the sprinkle of dishes with undisguised
dissatisfaction. "There ain't any potatoes," he announced gloomily. "My
own mamma always cooks potatoes. Josephine's the limit! I been working
to-day. I almost dug out a badger, over by the bluff. I got where I
could hear him scratching to get away, and then it was all rocks, so I
couldn't dig any more. Gee, it was hard digging! And I'm just about
starved, if you want to know. And there ain't any potatoes."

"Bread and butter is fine when you're hungry," Ford suggested, and
spread a slice for Buddy, somewhat inattentively, because he was also
keeping an eye upon the kitchen door, where he had caught a fleeting
glimpse of Josephine looking in at him.

"You're putting the butter all in one place," Buddy criticised, with his
usual frankness. "I guess you're drunk, all right. If you're too drunk
to spread butter, let me do it."

"What makes you think I'm drunk?" Ford questioned, lowering his voice
because of the person he suspected was in the kitchen.

"Mamma and Jo was quarreling about it; that's why. And my own mamma
cried, and shut the door, and wouldn't let me go in. And Jo pretty near
cried too, all right. I guess she did, only not when any one was
looking. Her eyes are awful red, anyway." Buddy took great, ravenous
bites of the bread and butter and eyed Ford unwinkingly.

"What's disslepointed?" he demanded abruptly, after he had given himself
a white mustache with his glass of milk.

"Why do you want to know?"

"That's what my own mamma is, and that's what Jo is. Only my own mamma
is it about you, and Jo's it about mamma. Say, did you lick Dick? Jo
told my own mamma she wisht you'd killed him. Jo's awful mad to-day. I
guess she's mad at Dick, because he ain't very much of a fighter. Did
you lick him easy? Did you paste him one in the jaw?"

Josephine entered then with Ford's belated tea. Her eyelids were pink,
as Buddy had told him, and she did not look at him while she filled his
cup.

"Kate has a sick headache," she explained primly, "and I did the best I
could with lunch. I hope it's--"

"It is," Ford interrupted reassuringly. "Everything is fine and dandy."

"You didn't cook any potatoes!" Buddy charged mercilessly. "And Ford's
too drunk to put the butter on right. I'm going to tell my dad that next
time he goes to Oregon I'm going along. This outfit will sure go to the
devil if he stays much longer!"

"Where did you hear that, Bud?" Josephine asked, still carefully
avoiding a glance at Ford.

"Well, Dick said it would go to the devil. I guess," he added on his own
account, with an eloquent look at the table, "it's on the trail right
now."

Ford looked at Josephine, opened his lips to say that it might still be
headed off, and decided not to speak. There was a stubborn streak in
Ford Campbell. She had said some bitter things, in her anger. Perhaps
she had not entirely believed them herself, and perhaps Mrs. Kate had
not been accurately quoted by her precocious young son; she may not have
said that she was disappointed in Ford. They might not have believed
whatever it was Dick told them, and they might still have full
confidence in him, Ford Campbell. Still, there was the stubborn streak
which would not explain or defend. So he left the table, and went into
his own room without any word save a muttered excuse; and that in spite
of the fact that Josephine looked full at him, at last, and with a
wistfulness that moved him almost to the point of taking her in his arms
and kissing away the worry--if he could.

He went up to the table where stood the jug, looked at it, lifted it,
and set it down again. Then he lifted it again and pulled the cork out
with a jerk, wondering if the sound of it had reached through the thin
partition to the ears of Josephine; he was guilty of hoping so. He put
back the cork--this time carefully--walked to the outer door, turned the
key, opened the door, and closed it again with a slam. Then, with a
grim set of the lips, he walked softly into the closet and pulled the
door nearly shut.

He knew there was a chance that Josephine, if she were interested in his
movements, would go immediately into the sitting-room, where she could
see the path, and would know that he had not really left the house. But
she did not, evidently. She sat long enough in the dining-room for Ford
to call himself a name or two and to feel exceedingly foolish over the
trick, and to decide that it was a very childish one for a grown man to
play upon a woman. Then she pushed back her chair, came straight toward
his room, opened the door, and looked in; Ford knew, for he saw her
through the crack he had left in the closet doorway. She stood there
looking at the jug on the table, then went up and lifted it, much as
Ford had done, and pulled the cork with a certain angry defiance.
Perhaps, he guessed shrewdly, Josephine also felt rather foolish at what
she was doing--and he smiled over the thought.

Josephine turned the jug to the light, shut one eye into an adorable
squint, and peered in. Then she set the jug down and pushed the cork
slowly into place; and her face was puzzled. Ford could have laughed
aloud when he saw it, but instead he held his breath for fear she should
discover him. She stood very still for a minute or two, staring at
nothing at all; moved the jug into the exact place where it had stood
before, and went out of the room on her toes.

So did Ford, for that matter, and he was in a cold terror lest she
should look out and see him walking down the path where he should
logically have walked more than five minutes before. He did not dare to
turn and look--until he was outside the gate; then inspiration came to
aid him and he went back boldly, stepped upon the porch with no effort
at silence, opened his door, and went in as one who has a right there.

He heard the click of dishes which told that she was clearing the table,
and he breathed freer. He walked across the room, waited a space, and
walked back again, and then went out with his heart in its proper
position in his chest; Ford was unused to feeling his heart rise to his
palate, and the sensation was more novel than agreeable. When he went
again down the path, there was a certain exhilaration in his step. His
thoughts arranged themselves in clear-cut sentences, as if he were
speaking, instead of those vague, almost wordless impressions which fill
the brain ordinarily.

"She's keeping cases on that jug. She must care, or she wouldn't do
that. She's worried a whole lot; I could see that, all along. Down at
the bunk-house she called me Ford twice--and she said it meant a lot to
her, whether I make good or not. I wonder--Lordy me! A man could make
good, all right, and do it easy, if she cared! She doesn't know what to
think--that jug staying right up to high-water mark, like that!" He
laughed then, silently, and dwelt upon the picture she had made while
she had stood there before the table.

"Lord! she'd want to kill me if she knew I hid in that closet, but I
just had a hunch--that is, if she cared anything about it. I wonder if
she did really say she wished I'd killed Dick?

"Anyway, I can fight it now, with her keeping cases on the quiet. I
know I can fight it. Lordy me, I've got to fight it! I've got to make
good; that's all there is about it. Wonder what she'll think when she
sees that jug don't go down any? Wonder--oh, hell! She'd never care
anything about me. If she did--" His thoughts went hazy with vague
speculation, then clarified suddenly into one hard fact, like a rock
thrusting up through the lazy sweep of a windless tide. "If she did
care, I couldn't do anything. I'm married!"

His step lost a little of its spring, then, and he went into the
bunk-house with much the same expression on his face as when he had left
it an hour or so before.

He did not see Dick that day. The other boys watched him covertly, it
seemed to him, and showed a disposition to talk among themselves. Jim
was whistling cheerfully in the kitchen. He turned his head and laughed
when Ford went in.

"I found a dead soldier behind the sack of spuds," Jim announced, and
produced an empty bottle, mate to the one Ford had thrown into the
gully. "And Dick didn't seem to have any appetite at all, and Mose is
still in Sleepytown. I guess that's all the news at this end of the
line. Er--hope everything is all right at the house?"

"Far as I could see, it was," Ford replied, with an inner sense of
evasion. "I guess we'll just let her go as she looks, Jim. Did you say
anything to the boys?"

Jim reddened under his tan, but he laughed disarmingly. "I cannot tell a
lie," he confessed honestly, "and it was too good to keep to myself. I'm
the most generous fellow you ever saw, when it comes to passing along a
good story that won't hurt anybody's digestion. You don't care, do you?
The joke ain't on you."

"If you'd asked me about it, I'd have said keep it under your hat.
But--"

"And that would have been a sin and a shame," argued Jim, licking a
finger he had just scorched on a hot kettle-handle. "The fellows all
like a good story--and it don't sound any worse because it's on Dick.
And say! I kinda got a clue to where he connected with that whisky. Walt
says he come back from the line-camp with his overcoat rolled up and
tied behind the saddle--and it wasn't what you could call a hot night,
either. He musta had that jug wrapped up in it. I'll bet he sent in by
Peterson, the other day, for it. He was over there, I know. He's sure a
deliberate kind of a cuss, isn't he? Must have had this thing all
figured out a week ago. The boys are all tickled to death at the way he
got it in the neck; they know Dick pretty well. But if you'd told me not
to say anything, I'd have said he stubbed his toe on his shadow and fell
all over himself, and let it go at that."

"Lordy me! Jim, you needn't worry about it; you ought to know you can't
keep a thing like this quiet, on a ranch. It doesn't matter much how he
got that whisky here, either; I know well enough you didn't haul it out.
I'd figured it out about as Walt says.

"Say, it looks as if you'll have to wrastle with the pots and pans till
to-morrow. The lower fence I'll ride, this afternoon; did you get clear
around the Pinnacle field?"

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