ngs and drove him
forth to the woodpile. So that it was not until evening was well
advanced that Sunset learned that Ford was no longer a potential menace
within its meager boundaries. Bill took a long breath, observed
meaningly that "He'd _better_ go--whilst his credit's good, by hokey!"
and for the first time that day sat down with his back toward an outer
door.
Ford was not worrying about Sunset half as much as Sunset was worrying
about him. He was at that moment playing pinochle half-heartedly with a
hospitable sheep-herder, under the impression that, since his host had
frankly and profanely professed a revulsion against solitaire and a
corresponding hunger for pinochle, his duty as a guest lay in
satisfying that hunger. He played apathetically, overlooked several
melts he might have made, and so lost three games in succession to the
gleeful herder, who had needed the diversion almost as much as he needed
a hair-cut.
His sense of social responsibility being eased thereby, Ford took his
headache and his dull disgust with life to the wall side of the herder's
frowsy bunk, and straightway forgot both in heavy slumber, leaving to
the morrow any definite plan for the near future--the far future being
as little considered as death and what is said to lie beyond.
That day had done for him all he asked of it. It had put him thirty
miles and more from Sunset, against which he felt a resentment which it
little deserved; of a truth it was as inoffensive a hamlet as any in
that region, and its sudden, overweening desire for a jail was but a
legitimate impulse toward self-preservation. The fault was Ford's, in
harassing the men of Sunset into action. But several times that day, and
again while he was pulling the stale-odored blankets snugly about his
ears, Ford anathematized the place as "a damned, rotten hole," and was
as nearly thankful as his mood would permit, when he remembered that it
lay far behind him and was likely to be farther before his journeyings
were done.
Sleep held him until daylight seeped in through the one dingy window.
Ford awoke to the acrid smell of scorched bacon, thought at first that
Sandy was once more demonstrating his inefficiency as a cook, and when
he remembered that Sandy's name was printed smudgily upon that page of
his life which he had lately turned down as a blotted, unlearned lesson
is pushed behind an unwilling schoolboy, he began to consider seriously
his next step.
Outside, the
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