"Here we are."
There was an old-fashioned garden of roses and mignonettes and hollyhocks, with crimson ramblers rioting over the wire trellis in front of the broad porch. A girl with soft, thick, blue-black hair was bending over a rosebush. She was snipping dead shoots with a pair of scissors. At the sound of their feet crunching the gravel of the walk, her slender figure straightened and she turned to them. The ripe lips parted above pearly teeth in a smile of welcome to the camera man.
"I've come begging again, Miss Ruth," explained Farrar. "This is Mr. Yeager, a new member of our company. He wants to find a good boarding-place, so of course I thought of your mother. Don't tell me that you can't take him."
A little frown of doubt furrowed her forehead. "I don't know, Mr. Farrar. Our tables are about full. I'll ask mother."
The eyes of the girl rested for an instant on the brown-faced youth whose application the camera man was backing. He had taken off his hat, and the sun-pour was on his tawny hair, on the lean, bronzed face and broad, muscular shoulders. In his torn, discolored hat, his stained and travel-worn clothes, he looked a very prince of tramps. But in his quiet, steady gaze was the dynamic spark of self-respect that forebade her to judge him by his garb.
A faint flush burned in the dusky cheeks to which the long lashes drooped because of a touch of embarrassment. He had seemed to read her hesitation with an inner amusement that found expression in his gray-blue eyes.
"Tell her I'll be much obliged if she'll take me," Yeager said in his gentle drawl.
Considering his request, she stripped the gauntlet without purpose from one of her little brown hands. A solitaire sparkled on the third finger. Again she murmured, "I'll ask mother"; then turned and flashed up the steps, her slender limbs carrying with fluent grace the pliant young body.
Presently appeared on the porch a plump, matronly woman of a wholesome cleanness without and within. Judging by fugitive dabs of flour which decorated her temple and her forehead, she had been making bread or pies at the time she had been called by her daughter. Much of her life she had lived in the Southwest, and one glance at Yeager was enough to satisfy her. Through the dust and tarnished clothes of him youth shone resplendent. The sun was still in his brindle hair, in his gay eyes. She had a boy of her own, and the heart of her warmed to him.
In five sentences they had come to an arrangement. The barn behind the house had been remodeled so that it contained several bedrooms. Into one of these Yeager was to move his scant effects at once.
He and Farrar walked back to the hotel together. Harrison was waiting for them on the porch. As soon as he caught sight of the cowpuncher he strode forward. The straight line of his set mouth looked like a gash in a melon.
"Will you have it here or back of the garage?" he demanded, getting straight to business.
"Any place that suits you," agreed Steve affably. "Won't the bulls pinch us if we do a roughhouse here?"
Harrison turned with triumphant malice to Farrar.
"Get your camera. You say you don't like phony stuff. Good enough. I'll pull off the real goods for you in licking a rube. There's plenty of room back of the garage."
The camera man protested. "See here, Harrison. Yeager ain't looking for trouble. He told you he was sorry. It was an accident. What's the use of bearing a grudge?"
The heavy glared at him. "You in this, Mr. Farrar? You're liable to have a heluvatime if you butt into my business without an invite. Shack—and git that camera."
Yeager nodded to his new friend. "Go ahead and get it. We'll be waiting back of the garage."
Farrar hesitated, the professional instinct in him awake and active.
"If you're dead keen on a mix-up, Harrison, why not come over to the studio where I can get the best light? We'll make an indoor set of it."
"Go you," promptly agreed Harrison. His vanity craved a picture of him thrashing the extra, a good one that the public could see and that he could afterwards gloat over himself.
Yeager laughed in his slow way. "I'm to be massa-creed to make a Roman holiday, am I? All right. Might as well begin earning that two-fifty per I've been promised."
The news spread, as if on the wings of the wind. Before Farrar had a stage arranged to suit him and his camera ready, a dozen members of the company drifted in with a casual manner of having arrived accidentally. Fleming Lennox, leading man, appeared with Cliff Manderson, chief comedian for the Lunar border company. Baldy Cummings, the property man, strolled leisurely in to look over some costumes. But Steve observed that he was panting rapidly.
As he sat on a soap box waiting for Farrar to finish his preparations, Yeager became aware that Lennox was watching him closely. He did not know that the leading man would cheerfully have sacrificed a week's salary to see Harrison get the trimming he needed. The handsome young film actor was an athlete, a trained boxer, but the ex-prizefighter had given him the thrashing of his life two months before. He simply had lacked the physical stamina to weather the blows that came from those long, gorilla-like arms with the weight of the heavy, rounded shoulders back of them. The fight had not lasted five minutes.
"Shapes well," murmured Manderson, nodding toward the new extra.
The leading man agreed without much hope. He conceded the boyish cowpuncher a beautiful trim figure, with breadth of shoulder, grace of poise, and long, flowing muscles that rippled under the healthy skin like those of a panther in motion. But these would serve him little unless he was an experienced boxer. Harrison had tremendous strength and power; moreover, he knew the game from years of battle in the ring.
"He'll lose—won't be able to stand the gaff," Lennox replied gloomily, his eyes fixed on Yeager as the young fellow rose lightly and moved forward to meet his opponent.
The extra was as tall as Harrison, but he looked like a boy beside him, so large and massive did the heavy bulk. The contrast between them was so great that Yeager was scarcely conceded a fighting chance. Steve himself knew quite well that he was in for a licking at the hands of this wall-eyed Hercules with the leathery brown face.
He got it, efficiently and scientifically, but not before Harrison had found out he was in a fight. The big man disdained any defense except that which went naturally with his crouch. He had a tremendously long reach and knew how to get the weight of his shoulders behind his punishing blows. Usually Harrison did all the fighting. The other man was at the receiving end.
It was a little different this time. Yeager met his first rush with a straight left that got home and jarred the prizefighter to his heels. To see the look on the face of the heavy, compound of blank astonishment and chagrin, was worth the price of admission.
Lennox sang out encouragement. "Good boy. Go to him."
Harrison put his head down and rushed. His arms worked like flails. They beat upon Steve's body and face as a hammer does upon an anvil. Only by his catlike agility and the toughness born of many clean years in the saddle did the cowpuncher weather for the time the hurricane that lashed at him. He dodged and ducked and parried by instinct, smothering what blows he could, evading those he might, absorbing the ones he must. Out of that first mêlée he came reeling and dizzy, quartering round and round before the panting professional.
The bully enraged was not a sight pleasant to see. He was too near akin to the primeval brute. He glared savagely at his victim, who grinned back at him with an indomitable jauntiness.
"This is the life," the cowpuncher assured his foe cheerfully after dodging a blow that was like the kick of a mule.
Harrison rocked him with a short stiff uppercut. "Glad you like it," he jeered.
Yeager crossed with his right, catching him flush on the cheek. "Here's your receipt for the same," he beamed.
Like a wild bull the prizefighter was at him again. He beat down the cowpuncher's defense and mauled him savagely with all the punishing skill of his craft. Steve was a man of his hands. He had held his own in many a rough-and-tumble bout. But he had no science except that which nature had
given him. As long as a man could, he stood up to Harrison's trained skill. When at last he was battered to the ground it was because the strength had all oozed out of him.
Harrison stood over him, swaggering. "Had enough?"
Where he had been flung, against one of the studio walls, Steve sat dizzily, his head reeling. He saw things through a mist in a queer jerky way. But still a smile beamed on his disfigured face.
"Surest thing you know."
"Don't want some more of the same?" jeered the victor.
"Didn't hear me ask for more, did you? No, an' you won't either. Me, I love a scrap, but I don't yearn for no encore after I've been clawed by a panther and chewed up by a threshing-machine and kicked by an able-bodied mule into the middle o' next week. Enough's a-plenty, as old Jim Butts said when his second wife died."
The prizefighter looked vindictively down at him. He was not satisfied, though he had given the range-rider such a whaling as few men could stand up and take. For the conviction was sifting home to him that he had not beaten the man at all. His pile-driver blows had hammered down his body, but the spirit of him shone dauntless out of the gay, unconquerable eyes.
With a sullen oath Harrison turned away. His sulky glance fell upon Lennox, who was clapping his hands softly.
"You'd be one grand little fighter, Yeager, if you only knew how," the leading man said with enthusiasm.
"Mebbe you'd like to teach him, Mr. Lennox," sneered Harrison.
The star flushed. "Maybe I would, Mr. Harrison."
"Or perhaps you'd rather show him how it's done."
Lennox looked, straight at him. "Nothing doing. And I serve notice right here that I'll have no more trouble with you. If it's got to come to that either you or I will quit the company."
The bully's eyes narrowed. "Which one of us?"
"It'll be up to Threewit to pass on that."
Harrison put on his coat and slouched sulkily out of the building. He knew quite well that if it came to a choice between him and Lennox the director would sacrifice him without a moment's consideration.
Farrar, who had been grinding out pictures since the beginning of hostilities, came forward to greet Yeager with a little whoop of joy.
"Say, you sure go some, Cactus Center. I never did see a fellow eat up such a licking and come up smiling. You're certainly one Mellin's Food baby. I'm for you—strong."
One of Steve's eyes was closing rapidly, but the other had not lost its twinkle.
"Does a fellow's system good to assimilate a tanning oncet in a while—sort o' corrects any mistaken notions he's liable to collect. Gentlemen, hush! Ain't Harrison the boss eat-em-alive white hope that ever turkey-trotted down the pike?"
The melancholy Manderson smiled. "You make a hit with me, Arizona. If I were in your place I'd be waiting for the undertaker. You look like you'd out come of a railroad wreck, two fires, and a cattle stampede over your carcass. Here, boys, hustle along first aid to our friend the punching-bag."
They got him water and towels and a sponge. Steve, protesting humorously, submitted to their ministrations. He was grateful for the friendliness that prompted their kindness. The atmosphere had subtly changed. During the afternoon he had sensed a little aloofness, an intention on the part of the company members to stand off until they knew him better. Now the ice was melted. They had taken him into the family. He had passed with honors his preliminary examination.
* * *
CHAPTER III
CHAD HARRISON
As soon as Steve stepped into the dining-room he knew that the story of his fight with Harrison had preceded him. His battered face became an immediate focus of curious veiled glances. These exhibited an animated interest rather than surprise.
Mrs. Seymour introduced him in turn to each of the other boarders, and the furtive looks stared for a moment their frank questions at him. As he drew in his chair beside a slender, tanned young woman, he knew with some amusement that his arrival had interrupted a conversation of which he had been the theme.
The film actress seated beside Yeager must have been in her very early twenties, but her pretty face, finely modeled, had the provocative effrontery that is the note of twentieth-century young womanhood. Its audacity, which was the quintessence of worldliness, held an alert been-through-it-all expression.
"I hope you like Los Robles, Mr. Yeager. Some of us don't, you know," she suggested.
"Like it fine, Miss Ellington," he answered with enthusiasm, accepting from Ruth Seymour a platter of veal croquettes.
Daisy Ellington slanted mischievous eyes toward him. "Not much doing here. It's a dead little hole. You'll be bored to death—if you haven't been already."
"Me! I've found it right lively," retorted Steve, his eyes twinkling. "Had all the excitement I could stand for one day. You see I come from way back in the cow country, ma'am."
"And I came from New York," she sighed. "When it comes to little old Broadway I'm there with bells on. What d'you mean, cow country? Ain't this far enough off the map? Say, were you ever in New York?"
"Oncet. With a load of steers my boss was shipping to England. Lemme see. It was three years ago come next October."
"Three years ago. Why, that was when I was in the pony ballet with 'Adam, Eve, and the Apple.' Did you see the show?"
"Bet I did."
Her eyes sparkled. "I was in the first row, third from the left in the 'Good-Night' chorus. Some kick to that song, wasn't there?"
"I should say yes. We're old friends, then, aren't we?" exclaimed Yeager promptly. He buried her little hand in his big brown paw, a friendly smile beaming through the disfigurements of his bruised face.
"He didn't do a thing to you, did he?" she commented, looking him over frankly.
"Not a thing—except run me through a sausage-grinder, drop me out of one of these aeroplanes, hammer my haid with a pile-driver, and jounce me up and down on a big pile of sharp rocks. Outside of trifles like that I had it all my own way."
"I don't see any alfalfa in your hair," she laughed. Then, lowering her voice discreetly, she added: "Harrison's a brute. I'll tell you about him some time when Ruth isn't round."
"Ruth!" Steve glanced at the young girl who moved about the room with such rhythmic grace helping the Chinese waiter serve her mother's guests. "What has she got to do with Harrison?"
"Engaged to him—that's all. See that sparkler on her finger? Wouldn't it give you a jolt that a nice little girl like her would take up with a stiff like Harrison?"
"What's her mother thinking about?" asked the cowpuncher under cover of the conversation that was humming briskly all around the tables.
Daisy lifted her shoulders in a careless little shrug. "Oh, her mother! What's she got to do with it? Harrison has hypnotized the kid, I guess. He throws a big chest, and at that he ain't bad-looking. He's one man too, if he is a rotten bad lot."
The young woman breezed on to another subject in the light, inconsequent fashion she had, and presently deserted Yeager to meet the badinage of an extra sitting at an adjoining table.
After dinner Steve went to his new quarters to get a cigar he had left on the table. It was one Farrar had given him. He was cherishing it because his financial assets had become reduced to twenty cents and he did not happen to know when pay-day was.
Yeager climbed the barn stairs humming a range song:—
"Black Jack Davy came a-riding along,
Singing a song so gayly,
He laughed and sang till the merry woods rang
And he charmed the heart of a lady,
And he charmed—"
Abruptly he pulled up in his stride and in his song. Ruth Seymour was in the room putting new sheets and pillow-cases on the bed.
"I haven't had time before. I didn't think you would be through dinner so soon," she explained in a voice soft and low.
"That's all right. I only dropped up to get a cigar I left on the table. Don't let me disturb you."
Her troubled eyes rested on the strong, l
ean face that went so well with the strong, lean body. One eye was swollen and almost shut. Red bruises glistened on the forehead and the cheeks. A bit of plaster stretched diagonally above the right cheekbone where the prizefighter's knuckles had cut a deep gash. Little ridges covered his countenance as if it had been a contour map of a mountainous country. But through all the havoc that had been wrought flashed his white teeth in a cheerful smile.
The girl's lip trembled. "I'm sorry you—were hurt."
He flashed a quick look at her. "Sho! Forget it, Miss Seymour. I wasn't hurt any—none to speak of. It don't do a big husky like me any harm to be handed a licking."
"You—hit him first, didn't you?"
"Yes, ma'am,—knocked him out cold before he knew where he was at. He was entitled to a come-back. I'm noways hos-tile to him because he's a better man than I am."
She stood with the pillow in her hands, shy as a fawn, but with a certain resolution, too, the trouble of her soul still reflected on the sweet face.
"Why do men—do such things?" she asked with a catch of her breath.
He scratched his curly head in apologetic perplexity. "Search me. I reckon the cave man is lurking around in most of us. We hadn't ought to. That's a fact."
"It was all a mistake, Miss Ellington says. You thought he was hurting Miss Winters. Why didn't you tell him you were sorry? Then it would have been all right."
The cowpuncher did not bat an eye at this innocent suggestion.
"That's right. Why didn't I think of that? Then of course he would have laid off o' me."
"He—Mr. Harrison—is quick-tempered. I suppose all brave men are. But he's generous, too. If you had explained—"
"I reckon you're right. He sure is generous, even in the whalings he gives. But don't worry about me. I'm all right, and much obliged for your kindness in asking."
Steve found his cigar and retired. He carried with him in memory a picture of a troubled young creature with soft, tender eyes gleaming starlike from beneath waves of dark hair.
Yeager met Harrison swaggering up the gravel walk toward the house. A malevolent gleam lit in the cold black eyes of the bully.
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