The Promise / A Tale of the Great Northwest

by James B. Hendryx

He thought how he had refused to drink with Daddy Dunnigan from the smeared and cloudy glass half-filled with the raw, rank liquor, across the surface of which had trailed the tobacco-stained mustaches of the half-dozen unkempt men.

A week before he had refused to drink good whisky with Appleton—but that was amid surroundings against which he had fortified himself; surroundings made familiar by a little veneered table in the corner of the tile-floored bar of a well-known hotel, and while the spirit of his determination to quit was strong upon him. Besides, it was good policy.

Therefore, he ordered ginger ale; but Appleton drank whisky and noted that the other eyed the liquor as the little beads rose to the top, and that as he looked he unconsciously moistened his lips with his tongue—just that little thing—as he looked at the whisky in Appleton's glass. By that swift movement Appleton understood, for he knew men—it was his business to know men—and then and there he decided to send Bill to Moncrossen's camp, where it was whispered whisky flowed freely.

Appleton had no son, and he felt strangely drawn toward the young man whose eyes had held him from the time of their first meeting. But he must prove his worth, and the test should be hard—and very thorough.

Appleton realized that to place him in any one of the other camps, where the ban was on whisky, and where each smuggled bottle was ferreted out and smashed, would be no test. It is no credit to a man to refrain from whisky where no whisky is.

But place a man who has created an appetite for whisky among men who drink daily and openly, and enjoy it; who urge and encourage him to do likewise; where whisky is continually before his eyes, and the rich bouquet of it in his nostrils, and that is a test.

Appleton knew this, and knowing, he sent Bill to Moncrossen, and smiled as he bet with himself on the outcome. But there is one other test—the supreme test of all, of which even Appleton did not know.

Place this same man alone, tired out, hungry, thirsty, and cold, with every muscle of his body crying its protest of aches against the overstrain of a long day's work; surround him with every attribute of physical discomfort; with the future stretching away in a dull gray vista of uncertainty, and the memory strong upon him that the girl—the one girl in all the world—has ceased to believe in him—has ceased to care; add to this the recollection of good times gone—times when good liquor flowed freely among good fellows, and at this particular psychological moment let him come suddenly and unexpectedly upon a bottle of whisky—good whisky, of a brand of which he has always approved—that is the acid test—and in writing this I know whereof I write.

And that is why Bill Carmody carefully and deliberately broke the seal and threw the cork away, and shook the bottle gently, and breathed deep of its fragrance, and smiled in anticipation as the little beads flew upward.

The fire had died down, and he set the bottle on the floor beside him and reached for the firewood. As he did so a long, sealed envelope, to the outside of which was tightly bound a photograph, fell to the floor from the inner pocket of his mackinaw.