Scotty hoped that Ford would show up for business when the lamps were lighted, that night.  There had been some delicacy on the part of Ford’s acquaintances that day in the matter of calling upon him at the shack.  They believed—­and hoped—­that Ford was “sleeping it off,” and there was a unanimous reluctance to disturb his slumbers.  Sandy, indulging himself in the matter of undisturbed spinal tremors over “The Haunted Chamber,” had not left shelter, save when the more insistent shiverings of chilled flesh recalled him from his pleasurable nerve-crimplings 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.