Even the unintelligent know better than to throw a lighted match into a keg of gunpowder.
Ford leaned backward against the push of the storm and was swept up to the hotel.

He could not remember when he had felt so completely baffled; the incident of the girl and the ceremony was growing to something very like a calamity, and the mystery which surrounded it began to fret him intolerably; and the very unusualness of a trouble he could not settle with his fists whipped his temper to the point of explosion.

He caught himself wavering, nevertheless, before the wind-swept porch of the hotel "office." That, too, was strange.

Ford was not wont to hesitate before entering a saloon; more often he hesitated about leaving.
"What's the matter with me, anyway ?" he questioned himself impatiently.
"I'm acting like I hadn't a right to go in and take a drink when I feel like it! If just a slight touch of matrimony acts like that with a man, what can the real thing be like?
I always heard it made a fool of a fellow." To prove to himself that he was still untrammeled and at liberty to follow his own desire, he stamped across the porch, threw open the door, and entered with a certain defiance of manner.
Behind the bar, Sam was laughing with his mouth wide open so that his gum showed shamelessly.

Bill and Aleck and Big Jim were leaning heavily upon the bar, laughing also.
"I'll bet she's a Heart-and-Hander, tryin' a new scheme to git a man.
Think uh nabbing a man when he's drunk.