The Big-Town Round-Up Part 15

"Sho! I don't make no claims, old sock. Mebbe I'm handy with a fry-pan, mebbe I ain't. Likely you're jest partial to my flapjacks,"

the little man said in order to have his modest suggestion refuted.

"They suit me, Johnnie." And Clay reached for the maple syrup. "Best flapjacks ever made in this town."

The Runt beamed all over. If he had really been a puppy he would have wagged his tail. Since he couldn't do that he took it out in grinning.

Any word of praise from Clay made the world a sunshiny one for him.

"This here place ain't Arizona, but o' course we got to make the best of it. You know I can cook when I got the fixin's," he agreed.

The two men were batching it. They had a little apartment in the Bronx and Johnnie looked after it for his friend. One of Johnnie's vices--according to the standard of the B-in-a-Box boys--was that he was as neat as an old maid. He liked to hang around a mess-wagon and cook doughnuts and pies. His talent came in handy now, for Clay was no housekeeper.

After the breakfast things were cleared away Johnnie fared forth to a certain house adjoining Riverside Drive, where he earned ten dollars a week as outdoors man. His business was to do odd jobs about the place.

He cut and watered the lawn. He made small repairs. Beatrice had a rose garden, and under her direction he dug, watered, and fertilized.

Incidentally, the snub-nosed little puncher with the unfinished features adored his young mistress in the dumb, uncritical fashion a schoolboy does a Ty Cobb or an Eddie Collins. For him the queen could do no wrong. He spent hours mornings and evenings at their rooms telling Clay about her. She was certainly the finest little lady he ever had seen. In his heart he had hopes that Clay would fall in love with and marry her. She was the only girl in the world that deserved his paragon. But her actions worried him. Sometimes he wondered if she really understood what a catch Clay was.

He tried to tell her his notions on the subject the morning Clay praised his flapjacks.

She was among the rose-bushes, gloved and hatted, clipping American Beauties for the dining-room, a dainty but very self-reliant little personality.

"Miss Beatrice, I been thinkin' about you and Clay," he told her, leaning on his spade.

"What have you been thinking about us?" the girl asked, snipping off a big rose.

She liked Johnnie and listened often with amus.e.m.e.nt to his point of view. It was so different from that of anybody else she had ever met.

Perhaps this was why she encouraged him to talk. There may have been another reason. The favorite theme of his conversation interested her.

"How you're the best-lookin' couple that a man would see anywheres."

Into her clear cheeks the color flowed. "If I thought nonsense like that I wouldn't say it," she said quietly. "We're not a couple. He's a man. I'm a woman. I like him and want to stay friends with him if you'll let me."

"Sure. I know that, but--" Johnnie groped helplessly to try to explain what he had meant. "Clay he likes you a heap," he finished inadequately.

The eyes of the girl began to dance. There was no use taking offense at this simple soul. After all he was not a servant, but a loyal follower whose brain was not quite up to the job of coping with the knotty problem of bringing two of his friends together in matrimony.

"Does he? I'm sure I'm gratified," she murmured, busy with her scissors among the roses.

"Yep. I never knowed Clay to look at a girl before. He sure thinks a heap of you."

She gave a queer little bubbling laugh. "You're flattering me."

"Honest, I ain't." Johnnie whispered a secret across the rose-bushes.

"Say, if you work it right I believe you can get him."

The girl sparkled. Here was a new slant on matrimonial desirability.

Clearly the view of the little cow-puncher was that Clay had only to crook his fingers to summon any girl in the world that he desired.

"Do you think so--with so many attractive girls in New York?" she pleaded.

"He don't pay no 'tention to them. Honest, I believe you can if you don't spill the beans."

"What would you advise me to do?" she dimpled.

"Sho! I dunno." He shyly unburdened himself of the warning he had been leading up to. "But I'd tie a can to that dude fellow that hangs around--the Bromfield guy. O' course I know he ain't one two three with you while Clay's on earth, but I don't reckon I'd take any chances, as the old sayin' is. No, ma'am, I'd ce'tainly lose him _p.r.o.nto_. Clay might get sore. Better get shet of the dude."

Miss Whitford bit her lip to keep from exploding in a sudden gale of mirth. But the sight of her self-appointed chaperon set her off into peals of laughter in spite of herself. Every time she looked at Johnnie she went off into renewed chirrups. He was so homely and so deadly earnest. The little waif was staring at her in perplexed surprise, mouth open and chin fallen. He could see no occasion for gayety at his suggestion. There was nothing subtle about the Runt. In his social code wealth did not figure. A forty-dollar-a-month bronco buster was free to offer advice to the daughter of a millionaire about her matrimonial prospects if it seemed best.

And just now it seemed to Johnnie decidedly best. He scratched his tow head, for he had mulled the whole thing over and decided reluctantly to do his duty by the girl. So far as he could make out, Beatrice Whitford played no favorites in her little court of admirers. Clay Lindsay and Clarendon Bromfield were with her more than any of the others. If she inclined to either of the two, Johnnie could see no evidence of it. She was gay and frank with both, a jolly comrade for a ride, a dinner dance, or a theater party.

This was what troubled Johnnie. Of course she must be in love with Clay and want to marry him, since she was a normal human being. But if she continued to play with Bromfield the Westerner might punish her by sheering off. That was the reason why the Runt was doing his conscientious duty this fine morning.

"Clay ain't one o' the common run of cowpunchers, ma'am. You bet you, by jollies, he ain't. Clay he owns a half-interest in the B-in-a-Box.

O' course it ain't what he's got, but what he is that counts. He's the best darned pilgrim ever I did see."

"He's all right, Johnnie," the girl admitted with an odd little smile.

"Do you want me to tell him that I'll be glad to drop our family friends to meet his approval? I don't suppose he asked you to speak to me about it, did he?"

The little range-rider missed the irony of this. "No, ma'am, I jest b.u.t.ted in. Mebbe I hadn't ought to of spoke."

The frank eyes of the girl met his fairly. A patch of heightened color glowed in her soft cheeks. "That would have been better, Johnnie. But since you have introduced the subject, I'll tell you that Mr. Lindsay and I are friends. Neither of us has the slightest intention of being anything more. You may not understand such things."

"No'm," he admitted humbly. "I reckon I'm a plumb idjit."

His att.i.tude was so dejected that she relented.

"You needn't feel badly, Johnnie. There's no harm done--if you don't say anything about it to Mr. Lindsay. But I don't think you were intended for a match-maker. That takes quite a little finesse, doesn't it?"

The word "finesse" was not in Johnnie's dictionary, but he acquiesced in her verdict.

"I reckon, ma'am, you're right."

CHAPTER XII

CLAY READS AN AD AND ANSWERS IT

Clay was waiting for lunch at a _rotisserie_ on Sixth Avenue, and in order to lose no time--of which he had more just now than he knew what to do with--was meanwhile reading a newspaper propped against a water-bottle. From the personal column there popped out at him three lines that caught his attention:

If this meets the eye of C. L. of Arizona please write me. Box M-21, The Herald.

Am in trouble. KITTY M.

He read it again. There could be no doubt in the world. It was addressed to him, and from Kitty. While he ate his one half spring chicken Clay milled the situation over in his mind. She had been on the lookout for him, just as he had been searching for her. By good luck her shot at a venture had reached him. He remembered now that on the bus he had casually mentioned to her that he usually read the "Herald."

After he had eaten, Clay walked down Broadway and left a note at the office of the "Herald" for Kitty.

The thought of her was in his mind all day. He had worried a good deal over her disappearance. It was not alone that he felt responsible for the loss of her place as cigarette girl. One disturbing phase of the situation was that Jerry Durand must have seen her. What more likely than that he had arranged to have her spirited away? Lindsay had read that hundreds of girls disappeared every year in the city. If they ever came to the surface again it was as dwellers in that underworld in the current of which they had been caught.