Into his laboring lungs he drew deliciously the soft breath of the night. It cooled the fever of his hammered face, was like an icy bath to his hot body. A little dizzy from the blows that had been rained on him, he stood for a moment uncertain which way to go. From his throat there rippled a low peal of joyous mirth. The youth in him delighted in the free-for-all from which he had just emerged.
Then again he became aware of Durand. The man was not alone. He had with him a hulking ruffian whose heavy, hunched shoulders told of strength. There was a hint of the gorilla in the way the long arms hung straight from the shoulders as he leaned forward. Both of the men were watching the cowpuncher as steadily as alley cats do a housefinch.
"Hell's going to pop in about three seconds," announced Clay to himself.
Silently, without lifting their eyes from their victim for an instant, the two men moved apart to take him on both sides. He clung to the wall, forcing a frontal attack. The laughter had gone out of his eyes now. They had hardened to pinpoints. This time it was no amateur horseplay. He was fighting for his life. No need to tell Clay Lindsay that the New York gangster meant to leave him as good as dead.
The men rushed him. He fought them back with clean hard blows. Jerry bored in like a wild bull. Clay caught him off his balance, using a short arm jolt which had back of it all that twenty-three years of clean outdoors Arizona could give. The gangster hit the pavement hard.
He got up furious and charged again. The Arizonan, busy with the other man, tried to sidestep. An uppercut jarred him to the heel. In that instant of time before his knees began to sag beneath him his brain flashed the news that Durand had struck him on the chin with brass knucks. He crumpled up and went down, still alive to what was going on, but unable to move in his own defense. Weakly he tried to protect his face and sides from the kicks of a heavy boot. Then he floated balloon-like in space and vanished into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER VIII
"THE BEST SINGLE-BARRELED SPORT IVER I MET"
Clay drifted back to a world in which the machinery of his body creaked. He turned his head, and a racking pain shot down his neck. He moved a leg, and every muscle in it ached. From head to foot he was sore.
Voices somewhere in space, detached from any personal ownership, floated vaguely to him. Presently these resolved themselves into words and sentences.
"We're not to make a pinch, Tim. That's the word he gave me before he left. This is wan av Jerry's private little wars and he don't want a judge askin' a lot of unnicessary questions, y' understand."
"Mother av Moses, if this he-man from Hell's Hinges hadn't the luck av the Irish, there'd be questions a-plenty asked. He'd be ready for the morgue this blissed minute. Jerry's a murderin' divvle. When I breeze in I find him croakin' this lad proper and he acts like a crazy man when I stand him and Gorilla Dave off till yuh come a-runnin'. At that they may have given the bye more than he can carry. Maybe it'll be roses and a nice black carriage for him yet."
The other policeman, a sergeant—by this time the voices had localized themselves in persons—laughed with reluctant admiration.
"Him! He's got siven lives like a cat. Take a look at the Sea Siren, Tim. 'T is kindling the lad has made of the place. The man that runs the dump put up a poor mouth, but I told him and the nuts that crowded round squawkin' for an arrest that if they hollered the police would close the place and pull the whole bunch for disorderly conduct. They melted away, believe me." He added, with an access of interest, "Yuh've heard the byes tell the story of the rube that tied up the Swede janitor on the Drive into a knot with his own hose. This'll be the same lad, I'm thinkin'."
The other nodded. He was bending over Clay and sprinkling water on his face. "He'll be black and blue ivery inch of him, but his eyelids are flickering. Jerry's an ill man to cross, I've heard tell. Yuh'd think this lad had had enough. But Jerry's still red-eyed about him and swears they can't both live in the same town. You'll remember likely how Durand did for Paddy Kelly? It was before my time."
"Yuh're a chump copper, Tim Muldoon, else yuh'd know we don't talk about that in the open street. Jerry has long ears," the older man warned, lowering his voice.
Clay opened his eyes, flexed his arm muscles, and groaned. He caressed tenderly his aching ribs.
"Some wreck," he gasped weakly. "They didn't do a thing to me—outside of beatin' me up—and stompin' on me—and runnin' a steam roller—over the dear departed."
"Whose fault will that be? Don't yuh know better than to start a fight with a rigiment?" demanded the sergeant of police severely.
"That wasn't a fight. It was a waltz." The faint, unconquered smile of brown Arizona, broke through the blood and bruises of the face. "The fight began when Jerry Durand and his friend rushed me—and it ended when Jerry landed on me with brass knucks. After that I was a football." The words came in gasps. Every breath was drawn in pain.
"We'd ought to pinch yuh," the sergeant said by way of reprimand.
"Think yuh can come to New York and pull your small-town stuff on us?
We'll show youse. If yuh wasn't alfalfa green I'd give yuh a ride."
"You mean if Durand hadn't whispered in yore ear. I'll call that bluff, sheriff. Take me to yore calaboose. I've got one or two things to tell the judge about this guy Durand."
The officer dropped his grumbling complaint to a whisper. "Whisht, bye. Take a straight tip from a man that knows. Beat it out of town. Get where the long arm of—of a friend of ours—can't reach yuh. Yuh may be a straight guy, but that won't help yuh. Yuh'll be framed the same as if yuh was a greengoods man or a gopher or a porch-climber. He's a revingeful inemy if ever there was wan."
"You mean that Durand—"
"I'm not namin' names," the officer interrupted doggedly. "I'm tellin' yuh somethin' for your good. Take it or leave it."
"Thanks, I'll leave it. This is a free country, and no man livin' can drive me away," answered Clay promptly. "Ouch, I'm sore. Give me a lift, sergeant."
They helped the cowpuncher to his feet. He took a limping step or two.
Every move was torture to his outraged flesh.
"Can you get me a taxi? That is, if you're sure you don't want me in yore calaboose," the range-rider said, leaning against the wall.
"We'll let yuh go this time."
"Much obliged—to Mr. Jerry Durand. Tell him for me that maybe I'll meet up with him again sometime—and hand him my thanks personal for this first-class wallopin'." From the bruised, bleeding face there beamed again the smile indomitable, the grin still gay and winning. Physically he had been badly beaten, but in spirit he was still the man on horseback.
Presently he eased himself into a taxi as comfortably as he could.
"Home, James," he said jauntily.
"Where?" asked the driver.
"The nearest hospital," explained Clay. "I'm goin' to let the doctors worry over me for a while. Much obliged to both of you gentlemen. I always did like the Irish. Friend Jerry is an exception."
The officers watched the cab disappear. The sergeant spoke the comment that was in the mind of them both.
"He's the best single-barreled sport that iver I met in this man's town. Not a whimper out of the guy and him mauled to a pulp. Game as they come. Did youse see that spark o' the divvle in his eye, and him not fit to crawl into the cab?"
"Did I see it? I did that. If iver they meet man to man, him and
Jerry, it'll be wan grand little fight."
"Jerry's the best rough-and-tumble fighter on the island."
"Wan av the best. I wouldn't put him first till after him and this guy had met alone in a locked room. S'long, Mike."
"S'long, Tim. No report on this rough-house, mind yuh."
"Sure, Mike."
CHAPTER IX
BEATRICE UP STAGE
If you vision Clay as a man of battles and violent deaths you don't see
him as he saw himself. He was a peaceful citizen from the law-abiding
West. It was not until
he had been flung into the whirlpool of New
York that violent and melodramatic mishaps befell this innocent. The
Wild East had trapped him into weird adventure foreign to his nature.
This was the version of himself that he conceived to be true and the one he tried to interpret to Bee Whitford when he emerged from the hospital after two days of seclusion and presented himself before her.
It was characteristic of Beatrice that when she looked at his battered face she asked no questions and made no exclamations. After the first startled glance one might have thought from her expression that he habitually wore one black eye, one swollen lip, one cauliflower ear, and a strip of gauze across his check.
The dark-lashed eyes lifted from him to take on a business-like directness. She rang for the man.
"Have the runabout brought round at once, Stevens. I'll drive myself," she gave orders.
With the light ease that looked silken strong she swept the car into the Park. Neither she nor Clay talked. Both of them knew that an explanation of his appearance was due her and in the meantime neither cared to fence with small talk. He watched without appearing to do so the slender girl in white at the wheel. Her motions delighted him. There was a very winning charm in the softly curving contours of her face, in that flowerlike and precious quality in her personality which lay back of her boyish comradeship.
She drew up to look at some pond lilies, and they talked about them for a moment, after which her direct eyes questioned him frankly.
He painted with a light brush the picture of his adventure into Bohemia. The details he filled in whimsically, in the picturesque phraseology of the West. Up stage on his canvas was the figure of the poet in velveteens. That Son of the Stars he did full justice. Jerry Durand and Kitty Mason were accessories sketched casually.
Even while her face bubbled with mirth at his story of the improvised tango that had wrecked the Sea Siren, the quick young eyes of the girl were taking in the compelling devil-may-care charm of Lindsay. Battered though he was, the splendid vigor of the man still showed in a certain tigerish litheness that sore, stiff muscles could not conceal. No young Greek god's head could have risen more superbly from the brick-tanned column of his neck than did this bronzed one.
"I gather that Mr. Lindsay of Arizona was among those present,"
Beatrice said, smiling.
"I was givin' the dance," he agreed, and his gay eyes met hers.
Since she was a woman, one phase of his story needed expansion for Miss Whitford. She made her comment carelessly while she adjusted the mileage on the speedometer.
"Queer you happened to meet some one you knew down there. You did say you knew the girl, didn't you?"
"We were on the same train out of Denver. I got acquainted with her."
Miss Whitford asked no more questions. But Clay could not quite let the matter stand so. He wanted her to justify him in her mind for what he had done. Before he knew it he had told her the story of Kitty Mason and Durand.
Nor did this draw any criticism of approval or the reverse.
"I couldn't let him hypnotize that little girl from the country, could
I?" he asked.
"I suppose not." Her whole face began to bubble with laughter in the way he liked so well. "But you'll be a busy knight errant if you undertake to right the wrongs of every girl you meet in New York." A dimple flashed near the corner of her mouth. "Of course she's pretty."
"Well, yes. She is right pretty."
"Describe her to me."
He made a lame attempt. Out of his tangled sentences she picked on some fragments. ". . . blooms like a cherokee rose . . . soft like a kitten."
"I'm glad she's so charming. That excuses any indiscretion," the girl said with a gleam of friendly malice. "There's no fun in rescuing the plain ones, is there?"
"They don't most usually need so much rescuin'," Clay admitted.
"Don't you think it possible that you rescued her out of a job?"
The young man nodded his head ruefully. "That's exactly what I did. After all her trouble gettin' one I've thrown her out again. I'm a sure-enough fathead."
"You've been down to find out?" she asked with a sidelong tilt of her quick eyes.
"Yes. I went down this mawnin' with Tim Muldoon. He's a policeman I met down there. Miss Kitty hasn't been seen since that night. We went out to the Pirate's Den, the Purple Pup, Grace Godwin's Garret, and all the places where she used to sell cigarettes. None of them have seen anything of her."
"So that really your championship hasn't been so great a help to her after all, has it?"
"No."
"And I suppose it ruined the business of the man that owns the Sea
Siren."
"I don't reckon so. I've settled for the furniture. And Muldoon says when it gets goin' again the Sea Siren will do a big business on account of the fracas. It's Kitty I'm worried about."
"She's a kind of cuddly little girl who needs the protection of some nice man, you say?"
"That's right."
The eyes of Miss Whitford were unfathomable. "Fluffy and—kind of helpless."
"Yes."
"I wouldn't worry about her if I were you. She'll land on her feet," the girl said lightly.
Her voice had not lost its sweet cadences, but Clay sensed in it something that was almost a touch of cool contempt. He felt vaguely that he must have blundered in describing Kitty. Evidently Miss Whitford did not see her quite as she was.
The young woman pressed the starter button. "We must be going home. I have an engagement to go riding with Mr. Bromfield."
The man beside the girl kept his smile working and concealed the little stab of jealousy that dirked him. Colin Whitford had confided to Lindsay that his daughter was practically engaged to Clarendon Bromfield and that he did not like the man. The range-rider did not like him either, but he tried loyally to kill his distrust of the clubman. If Beatrice loved him there must be good in the fellow. Clay meant to be a good loser anyhow.
There had been moments when the range-rider's heart had quickened with a wild, insurgent hope. One of these had been on a morning when they were riding in the Park, knee to knee, in the dawn of a new clean world. It had come to him with a sudden clamor of the blood that in the eternal rightness of things such mornings ought to be theirs till the youth in them was quenched in sober age. He had looked into the eyes of this slim young Diana, and he had throbbed to the certainty that she too in that moment of tangled glances knew a sweet confusion of the blood. In her cheeks there had been a quick flame of flying color. Their talk had fallen from them, and they had ridden in a shy, exquisite silence from which she had escaped by putting her horse to a canter.
But in the sober sense of sanity Clay knew that this wonderful thing was not going to happen to him. He was not going to be given her happiness to hold in the hollow of his hand. Bee Whitford was a modern young woman, practical-minded, with a proper sense of the values that the world esteems. Clarendon Bromfield was a catch even in New York. He was rich, of a good family, assured social position, good-looking, and manifestly in love with her. Like gravitates to like the land over. Miracles no longer happen in this workaday world. She would marry the man a hundred other girls would have given all they had to win, and perhaps in the long years ahead she might look back with a little sigh for the wild colt of the desert who had shared some perfect moments with her once upon a time.
Bromfield, too, had no doubt that Bee meant to marry him. He was in love with her as far as he could be with anybody except himself. His heart was crusted with selfishness. He had lived for himself only and he meant to continue so to live. But he had burned out his first youth. He was coming to the years when dissipation was beginning to take its toll of him. And as he looked into the future it seemed to him an eminently desirable thing that the fresh, eager beauty of this girl should belong to him, that her devotion should stand as a shield between him and that middle age with which he was already skirmishing. He wante
d her—the youth, the buoyant life, the gay, glad comradeship of her—and he had always been lucky in getting what he desired. That was the use of having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
But though Clarendon Bromfield had no doubt of the issue of his suit, the friendship of Beatrice for this fellow from Arizona stabbed his vanity. It hurt his class pride and his personal self-esteem that she should take pleasure in the man's society. Bee never had been well broken to harness. He set his thin lips tight and resolved that he would stand no nonsense of this sort after they were married. If she wanted to flirt it would have to be with some one in their own set.
The clubman was too wise to voice his objections now except by an occasional slur. But he found it necessary sometimes to put a curb on his temper. The thing was outrageous—damnably bad form. Sometimes it seemed to him that the girl was gratuitously irritating him by flaunting this bounder in his face. He could not understand it in her. She ought to know that this man did not belong to her world—could not by any chance be a part of it.
Beatrice could not understand herself. She knew that she was behaving rather indiscreetly, though she did not fathom the cause of the restlessness that drove her to Clay Lindsay. The truth is that she was longing for an escape from the empty life she was leading, had been seeking one for years without knowing it. Her existence was losing its savor, and she was still so young and eager and keen to live. Surely this round of social frivolities, the chatter of these silly women and smug tailor-made men, could not be all there was to life. She must have been made for something better than that.
And when she was with Clay she knew she had been. He gave her a vision of life through eyes that had known open, wide spaces, clean, wholesome, and sun-kissed. He stood on his own feet and did his own thinking. Simply, with both hands, he took hold of problems and examined them stripped of all trimmings. The man was elemental, but he was keen and broad-gauged. He knew the value of the things he had missed. She was increasingly surprised to discover how wide his information was. It amazed her one day to learn that he had read William James and understood his philosophy much better than she did.
The Big-Town Round-Up Page 6