The Uphill Climb Page 3

  CHAPTER III

  One Way to Drown Sorrow

  Ford walked up to the bar, with a smile upon his face which Sammisunderstood and so met with a conciliatory grin and a hand extendedtoward a certain round, ribbed bottle with a blue-and-silver label. Fordwaved away the bottle and leaned, not on the bar but across it, andclutching Sam by the necktie, slapped him first upon one ear and nextupon the other, until he was forced by the tingling of his own fingersto desist. By that time Sam's green necktie was pulled tight just underhis nose, and he had swallowed his gum--which, considering the size ofthe lump, was likely to be the death of him.

  Ford did not say a word. He permitted Sam to jerk loose and back into acorner, and he watched the swift crimsoning of his ears with a keeninterest. Since Sam's face had the pasty pallor of the badly scared,the ears appeared much redder by contrast than they really were. Next,Ford turned his attention to the man beside him, who happened to beBill. For one long minute the grim spirit of war hovered just over thetwo.

  "Aw, forget it, Ford," Bill urged ingratiatingly at last. "You don'twant to lick anybody--least of all old Bill! Look at them knuckles! Youcouldn't thump a feather bed. Anyway, you got the guilty party when youdone slapped Sam up to a peak and then knocked the peak off. Made himswaller his cud, too, by hokey! Say, Sam, my old dad used to feed a cowon bacon-rinds when she done lost her cud. You try it, Sam. Mebby itmight help them ears! Shove that there trouble-killer over this way,Sammy, and don't look so fierce at your uncle Bill; he's liable to turnyou across his knee and dust your pants proper." He turned again toFord, scowling at the group and at life in general, while the snowmelted upon his broad shoulders and trickled in little, hurrying dropsdown to the nearest jumping-off place. "Come, drownd your sorrer," Billadvised amiably. "Nobody said nothing but Sammy, and I'll gamble hewishes he hadn't, now." If his counsel was vicious, his smile wasengaging--which does not, in this instance, mean that it was beautiful.

  Ford's fingers closed upon the bottle, and with reprehensiblethoroughness he proceeded to drown what sorrows he then possessed.Unfortunately he straightway produced a fresh supply, after his usualmethod. In two hours he was flushed and argumentative. In three he hadwhipped Bill--cause unknown to the chronicler, and somewhat hazy to Fordalso after it was all over. By mid-afternoon he had Sammy entrenched inthe tiny stronghold where barreled liquors were kept, and scared to thebabbling stage. Aleck had been put to bed with a gash over his right eyewhere Ford had pointed his argument with a beer glass, and Big Jim hadsuccumbed to a billiard cue directed first at his most sensitive bunionand later at his head. Ford was not using his fists, that day, becauseeven in his whisky-brewed rage he remembered, oddly enough, his skinnedknuckles.

  Others had come--in fact, the entire male population of Sunset washovering in the immediate vicinity of the hotel--but none had conquered.There had been considerable ducking to avoid painful contact with flyingglasses from the bar, and a few had retreated in search of bandages andliniment; the luckier ones remained as near the storm-center as was safeand expostulated. To those Ford had but one reply, which developed intoa sort of war-chant, discouraging to the peace-loving listeners.

  "I'm a rooting, tooting, shooting, fighting son-of-a-gun--_and a goodone!_" Ford would declaim, and with deadly intent aim a lump of coal,billiard ball, or glass at some unfortunate individual in his audience."Hit the nigger and get a cigar! You're just hanging around out theretill I drink myself to sleep--but I'm fooling you a few! I'm watchingthe clock with one eye, and I take my dose regular and not too frequent.I'm going to kill off a few of these smart boys that have been talkingabout me and my wife. She's a lady, my wife is, and I'll kill the firstman that says she isn't." (One cannot, you will understand, be tooexplicit in a case like this; not one thousandth part as explicit asFord was.)

  "I'm going to begin on Sam, pretty quick," he called through the opendoor. "I've got him right where I want him." And he stated, withterrible exactness, his immediate intentions towards the bartender.

  Behind his barricade of barrels, Sam heard and shivered like a gun-shycollie at a turkey shoot; shivered until human nerves could bear nomore, and like the collie he left the storeroom and fled with a yelp ofsheer terror. Ford turned just as Sam shot through the doorway into thedining-room, and splintered a beer bottle against the casing; glancedsolemnly up at the barroom clock and, retreating to the nearly denudedbar, gravely poured himself another drink; held up the glass to thedusk-filmed window, squinted through it, decided that he needed a littlemore than that, and added another teaspoonful. Then he poured thecontents of the glass down his throat as if it were so much water, wipedhis lips upon a bar towel, picked a handful of coal from the depletedcoal-hod, went to the door, and shouted to those outside to produceSam, that he might be killed in an extremely unpleasant manner.

  The group outside withdrew across the street to grapple with the problembefore them. It was obviously impossible for civilized men to sacrificeSam, even if they could catch him--which they could not. Sam had boltedthrough the dining-room, upset the Chinaman in the kitchen, and fallenover a bucket of ashes in the coal-shed in his flight for freedom. Hehad not stopped at that, but had scurried off up the railroad track. Thegeneral opinion among the spectators was that he had, by this time,reached the next station and was hiding in a cellar there.

  Bill Wright hysterically insisted that it was up to Tom Aldershot, whowas a deputy town marshal. Tom, however, was working on the house hehoped to have ready for his prospective bride by Thanksgiving, and hatedto be interrupted for the sake of a few broken heads only.

  "He ain't shooting up nobody," he argued from the platform, where he wasdoing "inside work" on his dining-room while the storm lasted. "Henever does cut loose with his gun when he's drunk. If I arrested him,I'd have to take him clear up to Garbin--and I ain't got time. And itwouldn't be nothin' but a charge uh disturbin' the peace, when I got himthere. Y'oughta have a jail in Sunset, like I've been telling yuh rightalong. Can't expect a man to stop his work just to take a man tojail--not for anything less than murder, anyhow."

  Some member of the deputation hinted a doubt of his courage, and Tomflushed.

  "I ain't scared of him," he snorted indignantly. "I should say not! I'llgo over and make him behave--as a man and a citizen. But I ain't goingto arrest him as an officer, when there ain't no place to put him." Tomreluctantly threw down his hammer, grumbling because they would not waittill it was too dark to drive nails, but must cut short his working day,and went over to the hotel to quell Ford.

  Ingress by way of the front door was obviously impracticable; themarshal ducked around the corner just in time to avoid a painfulmeeting with a billiard ball. Mother McGrew had piled two tables againstthe dining-room door and braced them with the mop, and stubbornlyrefused to let Tom touch the barricade either as man or officer of thelaw.

  "Well, if I can't get in, I can't do nothing," stated Tom, withphilosophic calm.

  "He's tearing up the whole place, and he musta found all them extrabilliard balls Mike had under the bar, and is throwin' 'em away," wailedMrs. McGrew, "and he's drinkin' and not payin'. The damage that man isdoin' it would take a year's profits to make up. You gotta do something,Tom Aldershot--you that calls yourself a marshal, swore to pertect thecitizens uh Sunset! No, sir--I ain't a-goin' to open this door, neither.I'm tryin' to save the dishes, if you want to know. I ain't goin' to letmy cups and plates foller the glasses in there. A town full uh men--andyou stand back and let one crazy--"

  Tom had heard Mrs. McGrew voice her opinion of the male population ofSunset on certain previous occasions. He left her at that point, andwent back to the group across the street.

  At length Sandy, whose imagination had been developed somewhat beyondthe elementary stage by his reading of romantic fiction, suggestedluring Ford into the liquor room by the simple method of pretending anassault upon him by way of the storeroom window, which could be barredfrom without by heavy planks. Secure in his belief in Ford's friendshipfor him, Sandy even vol
unteered to slam the door shut upon Ford and lockit with the padlock which guarded the room from robbery. Tom took a chewof tobacco, decided that the ruse might work, and donated the planks forthe window.

  It did work, up to a certain point. Ford heard a noise in the storeroomand went to investigate, caught a glimpse of Tom Aldershot apparentlyabout to climb through the little window, and hurled a hammer andconsiderable vituperation at the opening. Whereupon Sandy scuttled inand slammed the door, according to his own plan, and locked it. Therewas a season of frenzied hammering outside, and after that Sunsetbreathed freer, and discussed the evils of strong drink, and washed downtheir arguments by copious draughts of the stuff they maligned.

  Later, they had to take him out of the storeroom, because he insistedupon knocking the bungs out of all the barrels and letting the liquorflood the floor, and Mike McGrew's wife objected to the waste, on theground that whisky costs money. They fell upon him in a body, bundledhim up, hustled him over to the ice-house, and shut him in; and withinten minutes he kicked three boards off one side and emerged breathingfire and brimstone like the dragons of old. He had forgotten aboutwanting to kill Sam; he was willing--nay, anxious--to murder every malehuman in Sunset.

  They did not know what to do with him after that. They liked Ford whenhe was sober, and so they hated to shoot him, though that seemed theonly way in which they might dampen his enthusiasm for blood. Tom saidthat, if he failed to improve in temper by the next day, he would tryand land him in jail, though it did seem rigorous treatment for socommon a fault as getting drunk. Meanwhile they kept out of his way aswell as they could, and dodged missiles and swore. Even that wasbecoming more and more difficult--except the swearing--because Forddeveloped a perfectly diabolic tendency to empty every store thatcontained a man, so that it became no uncommon sight to see a back doorbelching forth hurrying figures at the most unseasonable times. No mancould lift a full glass, that night, and feel sure of drinking thecontents undisturbed; whereat Sunset grumbled while it dodged.

  It may have been nine o'clock before the sporadic talk of a jailcrystallized into a definite project which, it was unanimously agreed,could not too soon be made a reality.

  They built the jail that night, by the light of bonfires which theslightly wounded kept blazing in the intervals of standing guard overthe workers; ready to give warning in case Ford appeared as a war-cloudon their horizon. There were fifteen able-bodied men, and they workedfast, with Ford's war-chant in the saloon down the street as anincentive to speed. They erected it close to Tom Aldershot's house,because the town borrowed lumber from him and they wanted to savecarrying, and because it was Tom's duty to look after the prisoner, andhe wanted the jail handy, so that he need not lose any time from hishouse-building.

  They built it strong, and they built it tight, without any window save anarrow slit near the ceiling; they heated it by setting a stove outsideunder a shelter, where Tom could keep up the fire without the risk ofgoing inside, and ran pipe and a borrowed "drum" through the jail highenough so that Ford could not kick it. And to discourage any thought ofsuicide by hanging, they ceiled the place tightly with Tom's matchedflooring of Oregon pine. Tom did not like that, and said so; but thecitizens of Sunset nailed it on and turned a deaf ear to his complaints.

  Chill dawn spread over the town, dulling the light of the fires andbringing into relief the sodden tramplings in the snow around the jail,with the sharply defined paths leading to Tom Aldershot's lumber-pile.The watchers had long before sneaked off to their beds, for not a signof Ford had they seen since midnight. The storm had ceased early in theevening and all the sky was glowing crimson with the coming glory of thesun. The jail was almost finished. Up on the roof three crouchingfigures were nailing down strips of brick-red building paper as a fairsubstitute for shingles, and on the side nearest town the marshal andanother were holding a yard-wide piece flat against the wall withfingers that tingled in the cold, while Bill Wright fastened it intoplace with shingle nails driven through tin disks the size of ahalf-dollar.

  Ford, partly sober after a sleep on the billiard table in the hotelbarroom, heard the hammering, wondered what industrious soul was up anddoing carpenter work at that unseemly hour, and after helping himself toa generous "eye-opener" at the deserted bar, found his cap and went overto investigate. He was much surprised to see Bill Wright working, andsmiled to himself as he walked quietly up to him through the soft,step-muffling snow.

  "What you doing, Bill--building a chicken house?" he asked, a quirk ofamusement at the corner of his lips.

  Bill jumped and came near swallowing a nail; so near that his eyesbulged at the feel of it next his palate. Tom Aldershot dropped his endof the strip of paper, which tore with a dull sound of ripping, andremarked that he would be damned. Necks craned, up on the roof, andstartled eyes peered down like chipmunks from a tree. Some one up theredropped a hammer which hit Bill on the head, but no one said a word.

  "You act like you were nervous, this morning," Ford observed, in thetone which indicates a conscious effort at good-humored ignorance."Working on a bet, or what?"

  "What!" snarled Bill sarcastically. "I wisht, Ford, next time you bowlup, you'd pick on somebody that ain't too good a friend to fight back!I'm gittin' tired, by hokey--"

  "What--did I lick you again, Bill?" Ford's smile was sympathetic to adegree. "That's too bad, now. Next time you want to hunt a hole andcrawl into it, Bill. I don't want to hurt you--but seems like I've kindagot the habit. You'll have to excuse me." He hunched his shoulders atthe chill of the morning and walked around the jail, inspecting it withhalf-hearted interest.

  "What is this, anyway?" he inquired of Tom. "Smoke-house?"

  "It's a jail," snapped Tom. "To put you into if you don't watch yourdodgers. What 'n thunder you want to carry on like you did last night,for? And then go and sober up just when we've got a jail built to putyou into! That ain't no way for a man to do--I'll leave it to Bill if itis! I've a darned good mind to swear out a warrant, anyway, Ford, andpinch you for disturbin' the peace! That's what I ought to do, allright." Tom beat his hands about his body and glared at Ford with hisultra-official scowl.

  "All right, if you want to do it." Ford's tone embellished the replywith a you-take-the-consequences sort of indifference. "Only, I'd adviseyou never to turn me loose again if you do lock me up in this cooponce."

  "I know I wouldn't uh worked all night on the thing if I'd knowed youwas goin' to sleep it off," Bill complained, with deep reproach in hiswatery eyes. "I made sure you was due to keep things agitated aroundhere for a couple uh days, at the very least, or I never woulda drove anail, by hokey!"

  "It is a darned shame, to have a nice, new jail and nobody to use iton," sympathized Ford, his eyes half-closed and steely. "I'd like tohelp you out, all right. Maybe I'd better kill you, Bill; they _might_stretch a point and call it manslaughter--and I could use the bounty tohelp pay a lawyer, if it ever come to a head as a trial."

  Whereat Bill almost wept.

  Ford pushed his hands deep into his pockets and walked away, sneeringopenly at Bill, the marshal, the jail, and the town which owned it, andat wives and matrimony and the world which held all these vexations.

  He went straight to the shack, drank a cup of coffee, and packedeverything he could find that belonged to him and was not too large foreasy carrying on horseback; and when Sandy, hovering uneasily aroundhim, asked questions, he told him briefly to go off in a corner and liedown; which advice Sandy understood as an invitation to mind his ownaffairs.

  Like Bill, Sandy could have wept at the ingratitude of this man. But heasked no more questions and he made no more objections. He picked up thestory of the unpronounceable count who owned the castle in the BlackForest and had much tribulation and no joy until the last chapter, andwhen Ford went out, with his battered, sole-leather suitcase and hisrifle in its pigskin case, he kept his pale eyes upon his book andrefused even a grunt in response to Ford's grudging: "So long, Sandy."