e had not made any promise to
himself or any one else, he remembered. He had simply resolved that he
would make good, if it were humanly possible to do so. That, he told
himself, did not necessarily mean that he should turn a teetotaler out
and out. Taking a drink, when a man was cold and felt the need of it,
was not--

At that point in the argument two of his own men entered, stamping
noisily upon the threshold. They were laughing, from pure animal
satisfaction over the comforts within, rather than at any tangible cause
for mirth, and they called to Ford with easy comradeship. Dick
Thomas--the Dick whom Buddy had mentioned in connection with
Josephine--waved his hand hospitably toward the bar.

"Come on, Campbell," he invited. He may have seen the hesitancy in
Ford's face, for he laughed. "I believe in starting on the inside and
driving the frost out," he said.

The two poured generously from the bottle which the bartender pushed
within easy reach, and Ford watched them. There was a peculiar lift to
Dick's upper lip--the lift which comes when scorn is the lever. Ford's
eyes hardened a little; he walked over and stood beside Dick, and he
took a drink as unemotionally as if it had been water. He ordered
another round, threw a coin upon the bar, and walked out. He had rather
liked Dick, in an impersonal sort of way, but that half-sneer clung
disagreeably to his memory. A man likes to be held the master--be the
slave circumstance, danger, an opposing human, or his own appetite; and
although Ford was not the type of man who troubles himself much about
the opinions of his fellows, it irked him much that Dick or any other
man should sneer at him for a weakling.

He went to another saloon, found and hired a cow-puncher strayed up from
Valley County, and when Dick came in, a half-hour later, Ford went to
the bar and deliberately "called up the house." He had been minded to
choose a mineral water then, but he caught Dick's mocking eye upon him,
and instead took whisky straight, and stared challengingly at the other
over the glass tilted against his lips.

After that, the liquor itself waged relentless war against his good
resolutions, so that it did not need the urge of Dick's fancied
derision to send him down the trail which the past had made familiar. He
sat in to a poker game that was creating a small zone of subdued
excitement at the far end of the room, and while he was arranging his
stacks of red, white, and blue chi