eefed this morning is going to make some fine eating, if
you ask me." His tone was absolutely devoid of anything approaching
persuasion; it simply took a certain improbable thing as a commonplace
fact, and it tilted the balance of Ford's intentions.

He did not go on to the next saloon, as he had started to do, but
instead he followed Jim to the livery stable and got his horse, without
realizing that Jim had anything to do with the change of impulse. So
Ford went to camp, instead of spending the night riotously in town as he
would otherwise have done, and contented himself with cursing the game,
the gambler who would have given a "crooked deal," the town, and all it
contained. A mile out, he would have returned for a bottle of whisky;
but Jim said he had enough for two, and put his horse into a lope. Ford,
swayed by a blind instinct to stay with the man who seemed friendly,
followed the pace he set and so was unconsciously led out of the way of
further temptation. And so artfully was he led, that he never once
suspected that he did not go of his own accord.

Neither did he suspect that Jim's stumbling and immediate spasm of
regretful profanity at the bed-wagon where they unsaddled, was the
result of two miles of deep cogitation, and calculated to account
plausibly for not being able to produce a full flask upon demand. Jim
swore volubly and said he had "busted the bottle" by falling against the
wagon wheel; and Ford, for a wonder, believed and did not ask for proof.
He muddled around camp for a few indecisive minutes, then rolled
himself up like a giant cocoon in his blankets, and slept heavily
through the night.

He awoke at daylight, found himself fully clothed and with a craving for
whisky which he knew of old, and tried to remember just what had
occurred the night before; when he could not recall anything very
distinctly, he felt the first twinge of fear that he had known for
years.

"Lordy me! I wonder what kinda fool I made of myself, anyway!" he
thought distressfully. Later, when he discovered more money in his
pockets than his salary would account for, and remembered playing poker,
and having an argument of some sort with some one, his distress grew
upon him. In reality he had not done anything disgraceful, according to
the easy judgment of his fellows; but Ford did not know that, and he
flayed himself unmercifully for a spineless, drunken idiot whom no man
could respect or trust. It seemed to him that the m