The Uphill Climb

d I Don't Kn

g at the leash of forgetfulness. He sighed largely, swung his head slowly from left to right in mute admission of failure to grasp what lay just behind his slumber, and thereby discovered other muscles that protested a

oud, mechanically taking the straight line of logic from

eplied an unemotional voic

r. His finger-tips explored the right side of his face;

nerringly taking the backward trail from effect to cause

man smoking and speaking between puffs. "Can't say just

e matched the flicker

n-h

recollect ever licking a preache

sitting upon the side of the bed, got from there to his feet, looked down and saw that he was clothed to his boots, and crossed slowly to where a ch

Sandy?" he inquired apat

ome up outa the heap. You licked

e he smoked; his interest in Ford and Ford's

nd trickled underneath in a thin rivulet to a shallow puddle, formed where the floor was sunken. A dank warmth and the smel

an

un

lness was snapping, strand by strand. Troubled remembrance

rette with a mechanical finger movement. "You did." He looked briefly up from the pa

rhead. Ford ceased caressing the purple half-moon which in

I do that for?" he in

k. He read half a page farther. "Do wha

ook it, looked in, and made a grimace of disgust as the steam smote

of the kind. What I want to know is who's the lady? And what did I do it for?" He sat down, leaned his bruised head upon his palms, and spat morosely into the stov

has behaved foolishly and knows it. Ford would not have borne the look if he had seen it; but he was caressing a bruise on the point of his jaw and sta

dy?" he begged dispiri

and said you was her fee-ancy." (Sandy read romances, mostly, and permitted his vocabulary to profit thereby.

" Ford looked up from

e, all right." Sandy's voice

asped Ford un

into his book. He turned a leaf and was half-way down

Ford spoke with a certain f

"She took the 'leven-twenty," he added then. Anothe

t back to studying the meager blaze and trying to remember. He might be able to extract the whole truth from Sandy, but that would involve taking his novel away from him-by force, probably; and the loss of the book would be very likely to turn Sandy so sullen that he wou

" aske

in great physical discomfort as well, specif

don't want to take it to heart lik

long paragraphs of snow, cold, and sunrise artistically blended with prismatic adjectives. He waded through the first paragraph and well into the second before he mired in a hopeless jumble of unf

"You might be a lot worse off. You're married, all right enough, from al

im a minute and

e lady herself," Sandy hastened to assur

t of condolence when he needed facts, "is, who

e depot, and you and her talked it over private like-the way I heard it. I was gitting a hair-cut and shampoo at th

body saying: 'I now pronounce you man and wife,'" Ford confessed miserab

of water on the stove to warm, that Ford might bathe his hurts, and he mad

his lady come to town looking for Frank Ford C

ntly. "My name's Ford Campbell and

illing enough. Seems like there was some hurry-up reason that she explained to you private. She had the license all made ou

always too damned polite wh

haps, the process by which Ford reached that lamentable condition, made a so

bar and had another drink-all this takin' place in the hotel dining-room, and Mother McGrew down with neuralagy and not bein' present-and one drink leads to another, you know. I come in then, and the bunch was drinkin' luck to you fast as Sam could pu

out doing something. You licked him-and then Rock bought in because some of your remarks kinda included him too. I d' know," said Sandy, scratching his unshaven jaw reflectively, "just how the fight did go between you '

r outa him, and Big Jim was whanging away at you, and Rock was clawin' Jim in the back of the neck, and you was all kickin' like bay steers in brandin' time. I reached in under the pile and dragged you out by one

il

though, seems like. You was going to start in at the beginning and en-core the whole performance, and you started out after Bill. Bill, he was lookin' for a hole big enou

Ford inquired in a tone

e, blue-gray eyes ro

ently shed enlightenment. He laughed, bending double, and sla

ound on the toe of your boot; and you kept saying: 'A sober man, and a preacher-and you'd marry that girl to a fellow like me!' And then biff! And he'd let out a squa

, and lick him when I'm sober, by thunder!" h

a nose like a kit-fox's and a whine to hi

ir of eyes looked in, hesitated while he stared hard at Ford, and then entered

tentatiously and pulled forward a chair rejuvenated with baling-wire braces between the legs, and a cowhide seat. "What's that cookin'-coffee, or sheep-dip?" he i

ggeration of cheerfulness. "You can't ever tell when death or matrimony's

or a friend, Bill," he reproached heavily. "Sandy says I licked you g

, am I? Why, Sandy here can tell you that I held one side of you up whilst he was leadin' the other side of you home! And I am sorry I stood there and seen you get married off and never

s thigh, and thereby discovered another sore

saw her. On the square now-what's sh

her looks, except she looked good to me, and I never seen her before, and her hair wasn't red-I always remember red hair when I see it, drunk or sober. You see," he added as an extenuation, "I was pretty well jagged myself. I mu

from the tapping process, as if his

lanced triumphantly from one to the other. "Take it from me, you married a lady, Ford. Drunk or sober, I always make it a point to speak proper before the ladies-t'other kind don't count-and when I make a break, you betcher lif

go that way?" Ford, as his brain cleared, stuc

if you was really Frank Ford Cameron, and you said: 'I sure am,' or something like that. The preacher'd k

m I want to see him." Ford spoke with more of hi

p," volunteered Bill. "Left this m

you know?" Ford went

now'-or 'You're safe,' or 'I'm safe,'-anyway, some darned thing was safe. And I was goin' to kiss the bride-mebbe I did kiss her-only I'd likely remember it if I had, drunk or sober! And-oh, now I got it!" Bill's voice was full of elation. "You was goin' to kiss the bride-that was it, it was you goin' to kiss her, and she slap-no, by hokey,

im to her," Sandy info

tly he came back to the stove and stood staring disgustedly down

to lick every darned galoot that stood back and let me in for this. You'd ought to have stopped me. You'd oughta pounded the

indignantly, "how much

andy had a stomach which invariably rebelled at the second glass and therefore,

d Ford, and went over and laid himself down upon the be