CHAPTER XX--ONE LIVELY ESCUTCHEON
Interrogatory argument had forced most answers in Pape's career. Now twoof a pertinent order forced an italicized third which, under limitationsof the moment, was unanswerable.
Why delay a reappearance before his self-selected lady?
By way of excuse, why not realize on that well-bred dare of AuntHelene--why not make good on his agreement to match the Sturgiscoat-of-arms with that of the house of Pape?
_After which, what?_
Even more alive than was he must his escutcheon be. Just how dynamicallyalive, he'd be able soon to demonstrate, unless the West ShoreRailroad's fast freight from Chicago had met with delay. He'd ask norecourse to the weighty tomes of ancient history or the public library'sgenealogical records. His showing must be more representative of thelast of the line than that and up to the second.
The flags of all the taxis he sighted were furled for earlier fares, buta flat-wheeled Fifty-ninth Street surface car bore him cross-town. Thechecker at the door of Polkadot's palatial boarding-house further taxedhis time.
"Gent here asking for you, Mr. Pape, not more than half hour ago.... No,he wasn't small or sharp-faced--not partic'aler so. No, he didn't haveno cauliflower ear. What I did notice was his wat'ry voice and whatmight pass for a mustache if you had magnifying eyes.... Said he'd juststick around."
So! His trailer of the moment was neither Welch nor Duffy, but the youthof the slightly adorned lip. The nature of that small matter of businesswhich had brought him to the Astor last evening might better remain amystery since mysteries were the order of the day and attemptedsolutions were likely to land one before a magistrate.
Pape hurried into the stable and the whinnied greeting of his three-huedbest friend. His change into riding clothes took no more time than wasneeded by the groom to put Polkadot into his leather. He was riding outthe main "gate," his mind upon the plan that had come with the speed ofinspiration, when----
"Pardon my persistence, Mr. Pape, but that's what I'm hired for."
He had "stuck around," the thin-voiced, thin-mustached, thin-visagedweakling; was blocking the exit; now incensed Dot by a curbing hand onthe bridle rein.
Hurriedly Pape considered whether to jump the horse past the humanbarrier or to temporize. Fearing delay from more entanglement in thecity's red tape, he made an overture.
"If persistence is what you're hired for, how much to give up?"
"To give up--just what?"
"Whatever you're hired to run me down for. At that it looks to me as ifyou were working on the wrong job."
The youth straightened with some show of self-respect. "Right or wrongit's regular--a steady job for life if I do my part."
"For life?" Pape snorted. "You don't mean to say you're going to persistafter me _for life?"_
"Until you come across, sir----"
"You trying to pull a polite hold-up? I'll ride over your remains, son,if you don't drop that bridle and let me----"
"Until you pay what you owe, I mean."
Pape tweaked a sunburned ear in puzzling the thickened plot. "Haven't Isaid I was more than willing to pay you----"
"Pay the company, not me, Mr. Pape."
"The com----What company?"
"The New York Edison Company."
Indignantly the Westerner stared down into the vacuous face of thislatest impediment to progress.
"You're an agent for--for phonographs?" he guessed. "Sorry, but I've gotmore of those sing-tanks around home than I can spare ears to hear 'em.Lay off my horse! You can't sell me anything this afternoon."
"B-but, wait a minute!" The Edison emissary continued to earn his salaryby the way he hung on. "You've already bought all I'm asking you to payfor. Unless it's inconvenient--if you'd only take a minute off andsettle----"
"Inconvenient--_unless?_" Pape was beginning to fear a loss ofself-control.
Polkadot was equally vociferous, if less intelligible, for he detestedalien hands upon his harness.
Pushing back his stirrups, Pape leaned over the horn of his saddle todemand: "Say, do I look like a dodo that was just loafing around for achance chat with a persistency specialist like you? Now you tell me innot more than one short word what you want me to settle for or I'll----"
"Juice," interrupted the mild-mannered youth, obedient to the syllable.
"Juice?" As though a button had been pushed, light flooded Pape's mind.He straightened, began to laugh, then stopped again to query thecollector. "So you're from-- So they sent you to-- So _that's_ why----"
His pause was to tickle Polkadot's back-waggling ears--to share thatresponsive pal's quiver of mirth. When again able to articulate----
"How much? Let's see your persistency passport, if you brought one.Humph! Not much to waste all this two-man time for. Say, you go back andtell your skimpy electro-factory that you persisted just long enough toprevent my making an attack in force upon their main office."
"An attack--why?" the youth asked gently.
"_Why not?_" demanded Pape. "Maybe you can tell me why all the currentis running to Goldfish Movie and Yutu Corset signs--why last night at7:15 they were blazing and not a letter of Welcome-To-Our-City was lit,nor a rose of my wreath blooming for me! If they call that service----"
"You can't have service without paying the bills, Mr. Pape. Just what Iwas trying to tell you at your hotel last evening. Your sign burns upcredit, I tell you. It won't light up another night until----"
"Until I fuel up, eh?" Already Pape had pulled from pocket a wallet fatwith bills freshly parked for ransom against any possible expense of NewYork justice. "This will cover the bill with a couple of centuries inadvance for a few days future service. Express my apologies to Mr.Edison. Explain that the reason you couldn't make me dig up last nightwas because I had an engagement to dig down. You might add that it waswith some one to whom the welcome sign had made me welcome. You can sayfor me that my career since he howdy-dooed me in watts and kilowattswould make a live-wire ad. for the concern. The facts ain't ready forrose-wreathed publicity yet--not yet awhile--but they would turn thepresident of a gas company into an enthusiastic rooter for electricsigns."
Pape chuckled from more than appreciation of his own pithy remarks--withmore than satisfaction at overly paying an over-due bill, as he waved ahand in cordial _au revoir_ and started out the stable. He consideredthis elimination of his eye-brow mustached caller--the out-speeding ofhis third shadow, so to say--a good omen. With like conclusiveness wouldhe in time dispose of the tack-faced Welch and Duffy of the vegetableear, not to mention any foes unidentified as yet, such as thering-leader of the plot against the Lauderdales and his own quarry inGotham's underbrush, that promoter of Montana Gusher oil stock.
He felt convinced that luck again was with him when, at the end of hisride to the wharf-studded bank of the Hudson River, he found that foronce the West Shore Road had not disappointed a consignee. In one of thehigh-fenced, unroofed pens of a wholesale butcher stood twenty-five orthirty sleek steers, red splotched with white, upon the rump of each theinterrogation brand of the Queer Question Ranch.
The range smell of the beasts caused Dot's nostrils to quiver fromdelight over the reminder of home; caused his hind-hoofs to polka aboutthe yard and his fore to lift in a proffered horseshoe shake to the beefhandlers, one and all. And Pape himself felt hugely pleased over theshowing of his product in this "foreign" market, for which they had beenbred and fed.
Dissatisfied with the returns from shipments to the establishedstock-yards of the Middle West--those of Chicago, Kansas City and Omahahaving proved in turn equally deficient--he had conceived a plan ofshipping direct by fast freight to the seaboard Metropolis. His hopeswere based upon New York's reputation of paying for its luxuries and thefact that absolutely fresh beef was a luxury. He soon had found an eagerdistributor and there promised to be no lack of consumers who were ableand willing to pay. In time he hoped to gain for "Montana beef" asambitious a place on high-class menus as that so long and honorably held
by "Virginia ham," "Vermont maple syrup," "Philadelphia squab" or "LongIsland duckling."
At the moment, however, his interest was not centered in the commercialorigin of the project; rather, in "showing" the town, inclusive of oneparticularly jealous gentleman snob. From the foreman of the yard heborrowed the services of a couple of transplanted punchers who lookedefficient and to whom he confided the nature of an impromptu act.Personally he selected and cut-out of the bunch its finest specimen--ahuge red steer with wide-flung horns, whose Queer Question brand wasdistinctly burned.
Polkadot, a-quiver from the exercise so remindful of home, was allcapers, grins and hee-haws by the end of the task. The yard employees,turned rail-birds for the nonce, were vociferous in their applause overthe skill of man and mount. Only the steer showed irritation.
"Not a bad idea," observed the foreman to Pape. "Bold, but not bad atall--this eat-ad. of beef on the hoof."
The Westerner stared at him a moment, then decided to let the surmisestand. These metropolitan cowboys scarcely would appreciate theimportance of the purpose to which he meant to put the brute, even didhe care to explain. Under his direction the two punchers "hung theirstrings" about the horns of the elect, one on either side. His own ropehe neatly attached to the left hind hoof, to act as a brake in case ofan attempted stampede. The small procession got under way.
Although at the start their pace was no more than that of a reasonablybrisk funeral procession, they attracted the attention of the West Sideyoungsters, to whom they appeared to have much of the interest of acircus parade. At once, as if a growth sprung from asphalt andcobblestone fields, a veritable swarm of under-fifteens surrounded theoutfit. Well it was for these embryonic rooters of the ward thatPolkadot disdained to use his dancing feet for anything so _gauche_ askicks, for they banked about his rear-guard position, in order the moreintimately to admire his color splotches and prancy step, and even tookdrag-holds upon his silken tail, as well as Pape's stirrups, that theymight not fall behind.
"Taking him to a bull fight, mister?"
The question was variously couched, but unanimously excited.
Except for this darting, swooping, whooping escort, the early advance ofPape's escutcheon toward Fifth Avenue was accomplished without undueexcitement. At Columbus Circle, however, the roving "wall" eyes of thebeef-brute sighted the green of South Meadow. Doubtless its appetite washurting for fresh grass after the long journey on cured food, his brainconfused by the blur of strange sights and sounds, his muscles achingfor the Montana-wide freedom so suddenly curtailed at the gate of acow-town shipping pen.
Whether actuated by one or all of these impulses, or merely moved byinherent wildness, the red executed a flank movement that had nothing todo with steak. In terms of action he showed a desperate desire to throwoff his rope shackles and bolt into Central Park. The press of vehiculartraffic aided him by hampering his guard. Could they have spread outtriangularly, they might have held him helpless. An attempted swervetangled the puncher on the left in his own rope and forced him todismount to save himself a spill. He on the right was prevented fromclosing in by regard for the young lives and limbs of their admirers.
Relieved of the three-ply pressure, the steer essayed a headdown rush toaccept the gift of the grass. This soon was tautened into a three-leggedrun, through Pape's hoof-hold from behind. At that, the captive had theover-plus of power and might easily have controlled their course exceptfor ramming into a street car which had slowed down that the motor manmight enjoy the show. In the moment in which he stood stunned, theunhorsed puncher regained his rope and saddle, his fellow cleared a wayand Pape quit his drag from the rear. The steer stampede in Manhattan'sheart was under control. The lively Pape escutcheon again was headedtoward its destination.
In front of the Sturgis house a groom was holding three saddlers. Pape'swonder as to who might be riding with whom was answered. Scarcely had heand his aides stopped his hoofed exhibit when Jane Lauderdale, in acrisp gray riding suit, appeared from the vestibule. She was followed byIrene and Mills Harford. The trio stood at the top of the stone flightand gaped with sheer amazement at the unexpected delegation.
Irene was first to recover her sangfroid, probably because endowed withan excess of that quality.
"Only look who's here!" was her lilt of greeting as she clattered downthe steps. "The possible person back again and---- _How_ in the worlddid you suspect, Why-Not, that I am keen about cows? This specimen is aperfect dar-rling. I could just hug her to death."
"You could that--to your own death. Look out. Don't come closer than thecurb."
With the warning, Pape threw a snake-like wriggle into his rope whichloosened its noose-hold upon the hoof of the seemingly subdued steer.Coiling it upon his saddle horn, he swung to the asphalt and salutedher, army fashion.
Jane, from a stand halfway down the steps, added only the inquiry of hereyes.
Harford it was who strode forward with demand. "What's the big idea,Pape? You trying to make a spectacle of us for the benefit of theneighbors?"
Pape answered them inclusively. "No pet cow knocks at your gates, but asteer rounded up and cut-out at Mrs. Sturgis' request. Is the lady in?"
"Aunt Helene? Impossible!"--Jane, with a gasp for exclamation point.
"Ignore the practical joker," urged Harford. "Let's leave him to do hisridiculous worst and go on with our ride."
Ignore him, eh? The word interested the Westerner. That was what he haddecided to do to the claims of Irene. But one attempt promised to beabout as successful as the other to judge by the clutch of resentmentwithin him and the clutch of that young woman's fingers upon his arm. Hefaced another moment when heart's ease and fate hung upon a thread ofmost uncertain feminine spin.
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