The Climb Into its groove of routine slipped life at the Double Cross, but it did not move quite as smoothly as before.

It was as if the "hill" which Ford was climbing suffered small landslides here and there, which threatened to block the trail below.

Sometimes--still keeping to the simile--it was but a pebble or two kicked loose by Ford's heel; sometimes a bowlder which one must dodge.
Dick, for instance, must have likened Mose to a real landslide when he came at him the next day, with a roar of rage and the rolling-pin.

Mose had sobered to the point where he wondered how it had all happened, and wanted to get his hands in the wool of the "nigger" said to lurk in woodpiles.

He asked Jim, with various embellishments of speech, what it was all about, and Jim told him and told him truly.
"He was trying to queer you with the outfit, Mose, and that's a fact," he finished; which was the only exaggeration Jim was guilty of, for Dick had probably thought very little of Mose and his ultimate standing with the Double Cross.