The Big-Town Round-Up

by Raine, William MacLeod

  The discretion of that young man had its limits. While he brushed the girl he told her rapidly what he had seen in the vestibule.

  "Was he hurt?" she asked breathlessly.

  "No 'm. I looked out and seen him standin' beside the track j'es' a-cussin' a blue streak. He's a sho-'nough bad actor, that Jerry Durand."

  Kitty marched straight to her section. The eyes of the girl flashed anger.

  "Please leave my seat, sir," she told Clay.

  The Arizonan rose at once. He knew that she knew. "I was intendin' to help you off with yore grips," he said.

  She flamed into passionate resentment of his interference. "I'll attend to them. I can look out for myself, sir."

  With that she turned her back on him.

  CHAPTER III

  THE BIG TOWN

  When Clay stepped from the express into the Pennsylvania Station he wondered for a moment if there was a circus or a frontier-day show in town. The shouts of the porters, the rush of men and women toward the gates, the whirl and eddy of a vast life all about him, took him back to the few hours he had spent in Chicago.

  As he emerged at the Thirty-Fourth Street entrance New York burst upon him with what seemed almost a threat. He could hear the roar of it like a river rushing down a cañon. Clay had faced a cattle stampede. He had ridden out a blizzard hunched up with the drifting herd. He had lived rough all his young and joyous life. But for a moment he felt a chill drench at his heart that was almost dread. He did not know a soul in this vast populace. He was alone among seven or eight million crazy human beings.

  He had checked his suitcase to be free to look about. He had no destination and was in no hurry. All the day was before him, all of many days. He drifted down the street and across to Sixth Avenue. He clung to the safety of one of the L posts as the traffic surged past. The clang of surface cars and the throb of motors filled the air constantly. He wondered at the daring of a pink-cheeked slip of a girl driving an automobile with sure touch through all this tangle of traffic. While he waited to plunge across the street there came a roar overhead that reminded him again of a wall of water he had once heard tearing down a cañon in his home land.

  Instinctively one arm clutched at the post. A monster went flying through the air with a horrible, grinding menace. It was only the Elevated on its way uptown. Clay looked around in whimsical admiration of the hurrying people about him. None of them seemed aware either of the noise or the crush of vehicles. They went on their preoccupied way swiftly and surely.

  "I never did see such a town, and me just hittin' the fringes of it yet," Clay moaned aloud in comic despair, unaware that even New York has no noisier street than Sixth Avenue.

  Chance swept him up Sixth to Herald Square. He was caught in the river of humanity that races up Broadway. His high-heeled boots clicked on the pavement of one of the world's great thoroughfares as far as Forty-Second Street. Under the shadow of the Times Building he stopped to look about him. Motor-cars, street-cars, and trucks rolled past in endless confusion. Every instant the panorama shifted, yet it was always the same. He wondered where all this rush of people was going. What crazy impulses sent them surging to and fro? And the girls—Clay surrendered to them at discretion. He had not supposed there were so many pretty, well-dressed girls in the world.

  "I reckon money grows on trees in New York," he told himself aloud with a grin.

  Broadway fascinated him. He followed it uptown toward Longacre Circle. The street was as usual in a state of chronic excavation. His foot slipped and he fell into a trench while trying to cross. When he emerged it was with a pound or two of Manhattan mud on his corduroy suit. He looked at himself again with a sense that his garb did not quite measure up to New York standards.

  "First off I'm goin' to get me a real city suit of clothes," he promised himself. "This here wrinkled outfit is some too woolly for the big town. It's a good suit yet—'most as good as when I bought it at the Boston Store in Tucson three years ago. But I reckon I'll save it to go home in."

  To a policeman directing traffic at a crossing he applied for information.

  "Can you tell me where there's a dry-goods store in this man's town?" he asked. "I fell into this here Broadway and got kinda messed up."

  "Watchawant?"

  "Suit o' clothes."

  The traffic cop sized him up in one swift glance. "Siventh Avenue," he said, and pointed in that direction.

  Clay took his advice. He stopped in front of a store above which was the legend "I. Bernstein, Men's Garments." A small man with sharp little eyes and well-defined nose was standing in the doorway.

  "Might you would want a good suit of qvality clothes, my friendt," he suggested.

  "You've pegged me right," agreed the Westerner with his ready smile.

  "Lead me to it."

  Mr. Bernstein personally conducted his customer to the suit department. "I wait on you myself on account you was a stranger to the city," he explained.

  The little man took a suit from a rack and held it at arm's length to admire it. His fingers caressed the woof of it lovingly. He evidently could bring himself to part with it only after a struggle.

  "Worsted. Fine goods." He leaned toward the range-rider and whispered a secret. "Imported."

  Clay shook his head. "Not what I want." His eyes ranged the racks. "This is more my notion of the sort of thing I like." He pointed to a blue serge with a little stripe in the pattern.

  The eyes of Mr. Bernstein marveled at the discrimination of his customer. "If you had taken an advice from me, it would have been to buy that suit. A man gets a chance at a superior garment like that, understan' me, only once in a while occasionally."

  "How much?" asked Lindsay.

  The dealer was too busy to hear this crass question. That suit, Clay gathered, had been the pride of his heart ever since he had seen it first. He detached the coat lovingly from the hanger and helped his customer into it. Then he fell back, eyes lit with enthusiastic amazement. Only fate could have brought together this man and this suit, so manifestly destined for each other since the hour when Eve began to patch up fig leaves for Adam.

  "Like a coat of paint," he murmured aloud.

  The cowpuncher grinned. He understood the business that went with selling a suit in some stores. But it happened that he liked this suit himself. "How much?" he repeated.

  The owner of the store dwelt on the merits of the suit, its style, its durability, the perfect fit. He covered his subject with artistic thoroughness. Then, reluctantly, he confided in a whisper the price at which he was going to sacrifice this suit among suits.

  "To you, my friendt, I make this garment for only sixty-five dollars."

  He added another secret detail. "Below wholesale cost."

  A little devil of mirth lit in Lindsay's eye. "I'd hate to have you rob yoreself like that. And me a perfect stranger to you too."

  "Qvality, y' understan' me. Which a man must got to live garments like I done to appreciate such a suit. All wool. Every thread of it. Unshrinkable. This is a qvality town. If you want the best it costs a little more, but you got anyhow a suit which a man might be married in without shame, understan' me."

  The Arizonan backed off in apparent alarm. "Say, is this a weddin' garment you're onload'n' on me? Do I have to sashay down a church aisle and promise I do?"

  Mr. Bernstein explained that this was not obligatory. All he meant was that the suit was good enough to be married in, or for that matter to be buried in.

  "Or to be born anew in when Billy Sunday comes to town and I hit the sawdust trail," suggested the purchaser.

  Mr. Bernstein caressed it again. "One swell piece of goods," he told himself softly, almost with tears in his eyes.

  "All wool, you say?" asked Clay, feeling the texture. He had made up his mind to buy it, though he thought the price a bit stiff.

  Mr. Bernstein protested on his honor that there was not a thread of cotton in it. "Which you could take it from me that when I sell a suit of clothes it
is like I am dealing with my own brother," he added. "Every garment out of this store takes my personal guarantee."

  Clay tried on the trousers and looked at himself in the glass. So far as he could tell he looked just like any other New Yorker.

  The dealer leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. Apparently he was ashamed of his softness of heart. "Fifty-five dollars—to you."

  "I'll take it," the Westerner said.

  The clothier called his tailor from the rear of the store to make an adjustment in the trousers. Meanwhile he deftly removed the tags which told him in cipher that the suit had cost him just eleven dollars and seventy-five cents.

  Half an hour later Clay sat on top of a Fifth-Avenue bus which was jerking its way uptown. His shoes were shined to mirror brightness. He was garbed in a blue serge suit with a little stripe running through the pattern. That suit just now was the apple of his eye. It proved him a New Yorker and not a wild man from the Arizona desert.

  CHAPTER IV

  A NEW USE FOR A WATER HOSE

  The motor-bus ran up Fifth Avenue, cut across to Broadway, passed Columbus Circle, and swept into the Drive. It was a day divinely young and fair. The fragrance of a lingering spring was wafted to the nostrils. Only the evening before the trees had been given a bath of rain and the refreshment of it showed in every quivering leaf. From its little waves the Hudson reflected a million sparkles of light. Glimpses of the Park tempted Clay. Its winding paths! The children playing on the grass while their maids in neat caps and aprons gossiped together on the benches near! This was the most human spot the man from Arizona had seen in the metropolis.

  Somewhere in the early three-figure streets he descended from the top of the bus and let his footsteps follow his inclinations into the Park. A little shaver in a sailor suit ran across the path and fell sprawling at the feet of Clay. He picked up and began to comfort the howling four-year-old.

  "That sure was a right hard fall, sonny, but you're not goin' to make any fuss about it. You're Daddy's little man and—"

  A sharp, high voice cut into his consolation.

  "Cedric, come here!"

  The little boy went, bawling lustily to win sympathy. The nursemaid shook him impatiently. "How many times have I told you to look where you're going? Serves you just right. Now be still."

  There was a deep instinct in Clay to stand by those in trouble when they were weak. A child or a woman in distress always had a claim on him.

  "I reckon the li'l' fellow was in a hurry, Miss," he said, smiling. "I 'most always was at his age. But he ain't hurt much."

  The maid looked Clay up and down scornfully before she turned her back on him and began to talk with another nurse.

  Beneath the tan of the range-rider's cheeks the color flamed. This young woman had not mistaken the friendliness of the West for the impudence of a street masher. The impulse of snobbery had expressed itself in her action.

  The cowpuncher followed a path that took him back to the street. He grinned, but there was no smile in his heart. He was ashamed of this young woman who could meet good-will with scorn, and he wanted to get away from her without any unnecessary delay. What were the folks like in this part of the country that you couldn't speak to them without getting insulted?

  He struck across the Drive into a side street. An apartment house occupied the corner, but from the other side a row of handsome private dwellings faced him.

  The janitor of the apartment house was watering the parking beyond the sidewalk. The edge of the stream from the nozzle of the hose sprayed the path in front of Clay. He hesitated for a moment to give the man time to turn aside the hose.

  But the janitor on this particular morning had been fed up with trouble. One of the tenants had complained of him to the agent of the place. Another had moved away without tipping him for an hour's help in packing he had given her. He was sulkily of the opinion that the whole world was in a conspiracy to annoy him. Just now the approaching rube typified the world.

  A little flirt of the hose deluged Clay's newly shined boots and the lower six inches of his trousers.

  "Look out what you're doing!" protested the man from Arizona.

  "I tank you better look where you're going," retorted the one from

  Sweden. He was a heavy-set, muscular man with a sullen, obstinate face.

  "My shoes and trousers are sopping wet."

  "Yust you bate it oop street. I ant look for no trouble with no rubes."

  "I believe you did it on purpose."

  "Tank so? Val, yust one teng I lak to tell you. I got no time for damn fule talk."

  The Westerner started on his way. There was no use having a row with a sulky janitor.

  But the Swede misunderstood his purpose. At Clay's first step forward he jerked round the nozzle and let the range-rider have it with full force.

  Clay was swept back to the wall by the heavy pressure of water that played over him. The stream moved swiftly up and down him from head to foot till it had drenched every inch of the perfect fifty-five-dollar suit. He drowned fathoms deep in a water spout. He was swept over Niagara Falls. He came to life again to find himself the choking center of a world flood. He sputtered furiously while his arms flailed like windmills to keep back the river of water that engulfed him.

  The thought that brought him back to action was one that had to do with the blue serge. The best fifty-five-dollar suit in New York was ruined in this submarine disaster.

  He gave a strangled whoop and charged straight at the man behind the hose. The two clinched. While they struggled, the writhing hose slapped back and forth between them like an agitated snake. Clay had one advantage. He was wet through anyhow. It did not matter how much of the deluge struck him. The janitor fought to keep dry and he had not a chance on earth to succeed.

  For one hundred and seventy-five pounds of Arizona bone and muscle, toughened by years of hard work in sun and wind, had clamped itself upon him. The nozzle twisted toward the janitor. He ducked, went down, and was instantly submerged. When he tried to rise, the stream beat him back. He struggled halfway up, slipped, got again to his feet, and came down sitting with a hard bump when his legs skated from under him.

  A smothered "Vat t'ell!" rose out of the waters. It was both a yelp of rage and a wail of puzzled chagrin. The janitor could not understand what was happening to him. He did not know that he was being treated to a new form of the water cure.

  Before his dull brain had functioned to action an iron grip had him by the back of the neck. He was jerked to his feet and propelled forward to the curb. Every inch of the way the heavy stream from the nozzle broke on his face and neck. It paralyzed his resistance, jarred him so that he could not gather himself to fight. He was still sputtering "By damn," when Clay bumped him up against a hitching-post, garroted him, and swung the hose around the post in such a way as to encircle the feet of the man.

  The cowpuncher drew the hose tight, slipped the nozzle through the iron ring, and caught the flapping arms of the man to his body. With the deft skill of a trained roper Clay swung the rubber pipe round the body of the man again and again, drawing it close to the post and knotting it securely behind. The Swede struggled, but his furious rage availed him nothing. He was in the hands of the champion roper of Graham County, a man who had hogtied a wild hill steer in thirty-three seconds by the watch.

  It took longer than this to rope up the husky janitor with a squirming hose, but when Clay stepped back to inspect his job he knew he was looking at one that had been done thoroughly.

  "I keel you, by damn, ef you don't turn me loose!" roared the big man in a rage.

  The range-rider grinned gayly at him. He was having the time of his young life. He did not even regret his fifty-five-dollar suit. Already he could see that Arizona had nothing on New York when it came to getting action for your money.

  "Life's just loaded to the hocks with disappointment, Olie," he explained, and his voice was full of genial sympathy. "I'll bet a dollar Mex you'd sure like to beat m
e on the haid with a two by four. But I don't reckon you'll ever get that fond wish gratified. We're not liable to meet up with each other again pronto. To-day we're here and to-morrow we're at Yuma, Arizona, say, for life is short and darned fleeting as the poet fellow says."

  He waved a hand jauntily and turned to go. But he changed his mind. His eye had fallen on a young woman standing at a French window of the house opposite. She was beckoning to him imperiously.

  The young woman disappeared as he crossed the street, but in a few moments the door opened and she stood there waiting for him. Clay stared. He had never before seen a girl dressed like this. She was in riding-boots, breeches, and coat. Her eyes dilated while she looked at him.

  "Wyoming?" she asked at last in a low voice.

  "Arizona," he answered.

  "All one. Knew it the moment I saw you tie him. Come in." She stood aside to let him pass.

  That hall, with its tapestried walls, its polished floors, and Oriental rugs, was reminiscent of "the movies" to Clay. Nowhere else had he seen a home so stamped with the mark of ample means.

  "Come in," she ordered again, a little sharply.

  He came in and she closed the door.

  "I'm sopping wet. I'll drip all over the floor."

  "What are you going to do? You'll be arrested, you know." She stood straight and slim as a boy, and the frank directness of her gaze had a boy's sexless unconsciousness.

  "Thought I'd give myself up to the marshal."

  She laughed outright at this. "Not in this town. A stranger like you would have no chance. Listen." There came to them from outside the tap-tap-tap-tap of a policeman's night stick rattling on the curbstone. "He's calling help."

  "I can explain how it happened."

  "No. He wouldn't understand. They'd find you guilty."

  He moved from the rug where he was standing to let the water drip on the hardwood floor.