The Uphill Climb, B. M. Bower [comprehension books TXT] 📗

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"Hell-o, Ford, where the blazes did you drop down from?" a welcoming voice yelled.

THE UPHILL CLIMB
BY
B. M. BOWER

AUTHOR OF GOOD INDIAN,
CHIP, OF THE FLYING U, ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES M. RUSSELL

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

1913 CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.--"Married! and I Don't Know Her Name!"
CHAPTER II.--Wanted: Information
CHAPTER III.--One Way to Drown Sorrow
CHAPTER IV.--Reaction
CHAPTER V.--"I Can Spare this Particular Girl"
CHAPTER VI.--The Problem of Getting Somewhere
CHAPTER VII.--The Foreman of the Double Cross
CHAPTER VIII.--"I Wish You'd Quit Believing in Me!"
CHAPTER IX.--Impressions
CHAPTER X.--In Which the Demon Opens and Eye and Yawns
CHAPTER XI.--"It's Going to Be an Uphill Climb!"
CHAPTER XII.--At Hand-Grips with the Demon
CHAPTER XIII.--A Plan Gone Wrong
CHAPTER XIV.--The Feminine Point of View
CHAPTER XV.--The Climb
CHAPTER XVI.--To Find and Free a Wife
CHAPTER XVII.--What Ford Found at the Top

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Hell-o, Ford, where the blazes did you drop down from?" a welcoming voice yelled.

She lifted her head and looked at him, and drew away.

Dick tottered upon the step and went off backward.

"Ford, I'm no coquette," she said straightforwardly.

The Uphill Climb CHAPTER I "Married! And I Don't Know Her Name!"

Ford lifted his arms above his head to yawn as does a man who has slept too heavily, found his biceps stiffened and sore, and massaged them gingerly with his finger-tips. His eyes took on the vacancy of memory straining 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 against sudden movement. He felt his neck with a careful, rubbing gesture. One hand strayed to his left cheekbone, hovered there tentatively, wandered to the bridge of his nose, and from there dropped inertly to the bed.

"Lordy me! I must have been drunk last night," he said aloud, mechanically taking the straight line of logic from effect to cause, as much experience had taught him to do.

"You was—and then some," replied an unemotional voice from somewhere behind him.

"Oh! That you, Sandy?" Ford lay quiet, trying to remember. His finger-tips explored the right side of his face; now and then he winced under their touch, light as it was.

"I must have carried an awful load," he decided, again unerringly taking the backward trail from effect to cause. Later, logic carried him farther. "Who'd I lick, Sandy?"

"Several." The unseen Sandy gave one the impression of a man smoking and speaking between puffs. "Can't say just who—you did start in on. You wound up on—the preacher."

"Preacher?" Ford's tone matched the flicker of interest in his eyes.

"Uhn-hunh."

Ford meditated a moment. "I don't recollect ever licking a preacher before," he observed curiously.

Life, stale and drab since his eyes opened, gathered to itself the pale glow of awakening interest. Ford rose painfully, inch by inch, until he was 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 cheap, flyspecked looking-glass hung awry upon the wall. His self-inspection was grave and minute. His eyes held the philosophic calm of accustomedness.

"Who put this head on me, Sandy?" he inquired apathetically. "The preacher?"

"I d' know. You had it when you come up outa the heap. You licked the preacher afterwards, I think."

Sandy was reading a ragged-backed novel while he smoked; his interest in Ford and Ford's battered countenance was plainly perfunctory.

Outside, the rain fell aslant in the wind and drummed dismally upon the little window beside Sandy. It beat upon the door and trickled underneath in a thin rivulet to a shallow puddle, formed where the floor was sunken. A dank warmth and the smell of wet wood heating to the blazing point pervaded the room and mingled with the coarse aroma of cheap, warmed-over coffee.

"Sandy!"

"Hunh?"

"Did anybody get married last night?" The leash of forgetfulness was snapping, strand by strand. Troubled remembrance peered out from behind the philosophic calm in Ford's eyes.

"Unh-hunh." Sandy turned a leaf and at the same time flicked the ashes from his cigarette with a mechanical finger movement. "You did." He looked briefly up from the page. "That's why you licked the preacher," he assisted, and went back to his reading.

A subdued rumble of mid-autumn thunder jarred sullenly overhead. Ford ceased caressing the purple half-moon which inclosed his left eye and began moodily straightening his tie.

"Now what'n hell did I do that for?" he inquired complainingly.

"Search me," mumbled Sandy over his book. He read half a page farther. "Do what for?" he asked, with belated attention.

Ford swore and went over and