The Big-Town Round-Up Part 21

But the woman had gone, swallowed in the semi-darkness of a side street. Clay followed.

Beatrice turned to her father, eyebrows lifted. There was a moment's awkward silence.

"Mr. Lindsay will be back presently," Whitford said. "We'll get in and wait for him out of the way a little farther up the street."

When Clay rejoined them he was without his overcoat. He stood in the heavy rain beside the car, a figure of supple grace even in his evening clothes, and talked in a low voice with Beatrice's father. The mining man nodded agreement and Lindsay turned to the others.

"I'm called away," he explained aloud. "Mr. Whitford has kindly promised to play host in my place. I'm right sorry to leave, but it's urgent."

His grave smile asked Beatrice to be charitable in her findings. The eyes she gave him were coldly hostile. She, too, had caught a glimpse of the haggard face in the shadows and she hardened her will against him. The bottom of his heart went out as he turned away. He knew Beatrice did not and would not understand.

The girl was waiting where Clay had left her, crouched against a bas.e.m.e.nt milliner's door under the shelter of the steps. She was wearing the overcoat he had flung around her. In its pallid despair her face was pitiable.

A waterproofed policeman glanced suspiciously at them as he sloshed along the sidewalk in the splashing rain.

"I--I've looked for you everywhere," moaned the girl. "It's been--awful."

"I know, but it's goin' to be all right now, Kitty," he comforted.

"You're goin' home with me to-night. To-morrow we'll talk it all over."

He tucked an arm under hers and led her along the wet, shining street to a taxicab. She crouched in a corner of the cab, her body shaken with sobs.

The young man moved closer and put a strong arm around her shoulders.

"Don't you worry, Kitty. Yore big brother is on the job now."

"I--I wanted to--to kill myself," she faltered. "I tried to--in the river--and--it was so black--I couldn't." The girl shivered with cold.

She had been exposed to the night rain for hours without a coat.

He knew her story now in its essentials as well as he did later when she wept it out to him in confession. And because she was who she was, born to lean on a stronger will, he acquitted her of blame.

They swung into Broadway and pa.s.sed taxis and limousines filled with gay parties just out of the theaters. Young women in rich furs, wrapped from the cruelty of life by the caste system in which wealth had encased them, exchanged badinage with sleek, well-dressed men. A ripple of care-free laughter floated to him across the gulf that separated this girl from them. By the cl.u.s.ter lights of Broadway he could see how cruelly life had mauled her soft youth. The bloom of her was gone, all the brave pride and joy of girlhood. It would probably never wholly return.

He saw as in a vision the infinite procession of her hopeless sisters who had traveled the road from which he was rescuing her, saw them first as sweet and merry children bubbling with joy, and again, after the world had misused them for its pleasure, haggard and tawdry, with dragging steps trailing toward the oblivion that awaited them. He wondered if life must always be so terribly wasted, made a bruised and broken thing instead of the fine, brave adventure for which it was meant.

CHAPTER XVII

JOHNNIE MAKES A JOKE

As Kitty stepped from the cab she was trembling violently.

"Don't you be frightened, li'l' pardner. You've come home. There won't anybody hurt you here."

The soft drawl of Clay's voice carried inexpressible comfort. So too did the pressure of his strong hand on her arm. She knew not only that he was a man to trust, but that so far as could be he would take her troubles on his broad shoulders. Tears brimmed over her soft eyes.

The Arizonan ran her up to his floor in the automatic elevator.

"I've got a friend from home stayin' with me. He's the best-hearted fellow you ever saw. You'll sure like him," he told her without stress as he fitted his key to the lock.

He felt her shrink beneath his coat, but it was too late to draw back now. In another moment Lindsay was introducing her casually to the embarra.s.sed and astonished joint proprietor of the apartment.

The Runt was coatless and in his stockinged-feet. He had been playing a doleful ditty on a mouth-organ. Caught so unexpectedly, he blushed a beautiful brick red to his neck.

Johnnie ducked his head and sc.r.a.ped the carpet with his foot in an attempt at a bow. "Glad to meet up with you-all, Miss. Hope you're feelin' tol'able."

Clay slipped the coat from her shoulders and saw that the girl was wet to the skin.

"Heat some water, Johnnie, and make a good stiff toddy. Miss Kitty has been out in the rain."

He lit the gas-log and from his bedroom brought towels, a bathrobe, pajamas, a sweater, and woolen slippers. On a lounge before the fire he dumped the clothes he had gathered. He drew up the easiest armchair in the room.

"I'm goin' to the kitchen to jack up Johnnie so he won't lay down on his job," he told her cheerily. "You take yore time and get into these dry clothes. We'll not disturb you till you knock. After that we'll feed you some chuck. You want to brag on Johnnie's cookin'. He thinks he's it when it comes to monkeyin' 'round a stove."

When her timid knock came her host brought in a steaming cup. "You drink this. It'll warm you good."

"What is it?" she asked shyly.

"Medicine," he smiled. "Doctor's orders."

While she sipped the toddy Johnnie brought from the kitchen a tray upon which were tea, fried potatoes, ham, eggs, and b.u.t.tered toast.

The girl ate ravenously. It was an easy guess that she had not before tasted food that day.

Clay kept up a flow of talk, mostly about Johnnie's culinary triumphs.

Meanwhile he made up a bed on the couch.

Once she looked up at him, her throat swollen with emotion. "You're good."

"Sho! We been needin' a li'l' sister to brace up our manners for us.

It's lucky for us I found you. Now I expect you're tired and sleepy.

We fixed up yore bed in here because it's warmer. You'll be able to make out with it all right. The springs are good." Clay left her with a cheerful smile. "Turn out the light before you go to bed, Miss Colorado. Sleep tight. And don't you worry. You're back with old home folks again now, you know."

They heard her moving about for a time. Presently came silence. Tired out from tramping the streets with out food and drowsy from the toddy she had taken, Kitty fell into deep sleep undisturbed by troubled dreams.

The cattleman knew he had found her in the nick of time. She had told him that she had no money, no room in which to sleep, no prospect of work. Everything she had except the clothes on her back had been p.a.w.ned to buy food and lodgings. But she was young and resilient.

When she got back home to the country where she belonged, time would obliterate from her mind the experiences of which she had been the victim.

It was past midday when Kitty woke. She heard a tuneless voice in the kitchen lifted up in a doleful song:

"There's hard times on old Bitter Creek That never can be beat.

It was root hog or die Under every wagon sheet.

We cleared up all the Indians, Drank all the alkali, And it's whack the cattle on, boys-- Root hog or die."

Kitty found her clothes dry. After she dressed she opened the door that led to the kitchen. Johnnie was near the end of another stanza of his sad song: