The Big-Town Round-Up Part 3

The floor of the vestibule had been raised and the outer door of the car opened. Durand found time to wonder why.

The cowpuncher turned on him with an abrupt question. "Can you swim?"

The eyes of the ward boss narrowed. "What's that to you?" he demanded truculently.

"Nothin' to me, but a good deal to you. I'm aimin' to drop you in the river when we cross."

"Is that so?" snarled Durand. "You're quite a joker, ain't you? Well, you can't start somethin' too soon to suit me. But let's get this clear so we'll know where we're at. What's ailin' you, rube?"

"I don't like the color of yore hair or the cut of yore clothes,"

drawled Lindsay. "You've got a sure-enough bad eye, and I'm tired of travelin' in yore company. Let's get off, me or you one."

In the slitted eyes of the Bowery graduate there was no heat at all.

They were bleak as a heavy winter morn. "Suits me fine. You'll not travel with me much farther. Here's where you beat the place."

The professional lashed out suddenly with his left. But Clay was not at the receiving end of the blow. Always quick as chain lightning, he had ducked and clinched. His steel-muscled arms tightened about the waist of the other. A short-arm jolt to the cheek he disregarded.

Before Durand had set himself to meet the plunge he found himself flying through s.p.a.ce. The gambler caught at the rail, missed it, landed on the cinders beside the roadbed, was flung instantly from his feet, and rolled over and over down an incline to a muddy gully.

Clay, hanging to the bra.s.s railing, leaned out and looked back. Durand had staggered to his feet, plastered with mud from head to knees, and was shaking furiously a fist at him. The face of the man was venomous with rage.

The cowpuncher waved a debonair hand and mounted the steps again. The porter was standing in the vestibule looking at him with amazement.

"You throwed a man off'n this train, mistah," he charged.

"So I did," admitted Clay, and to save his life he could not keep from smiling.

The porter sputtered. This beat anything in his previous experience.

"But--but--it ain't allowed to open up the cah. Was you-all havin'

trouble?"

"No trouble a-tall. He bet me a cigar I couldn't put him off."

Clay palmed a dollar and handed it to the porter as he pa.s.sed into the car. The eyes of that outraged official rolled after him. The book of rules did not say anything about wrestling-matches in the vestibule.

Besides, it happened that Durand had called him down sharply not an hour before. He decided to brush off his pa.s.sengers and forget what he had seen.

Clay stopped in front of Kitty and said he hoped she would have no trouble making her transfer in the city. The girl was no fool. She had sensed the antagonism that had flared up between them in that moment when they had faced each other five minutes before.

"Where's Mr. Durand?" she asked.

"He got off."

"But the train hasn't stopped."

"It's just crawlin' along, and he was in a hurry."

Her gaze rested upon an angry bruise on his cheek. It had not been there when last she saw him. She started to speak, then changed her mind.

Clay seated himself beside her. "Chicago is a right big town, I reckon. If I can help you any, Miss Kitty, I'd be glad to do what I can."

The girl did not answer. She was trying to work out this puzzle of why a man should get off before the train reached the station.

"I'm a stranger myself, but I expect I can worry along somehow," he went on cheerfully.

"Mr. Durand didn't say anything to me about getting off," she persisted.

"He made up his mind in a hurry. Just took a sudden notion to go."

"Without saying anything about his suitcases?"

"Never mentioned 'em."

"You didn't have--any trouble with him?" she faltered.

"Not a bit," he told her genially. "Sorry our tickets take us by different roads to New York. Maybe we'll meet up with each other there, Miss Kitty."

"I don't understand it," she murmured, half to herself. "Why would he get off before we reach the depot?"

She was full of suspicions, and the bruise on the Westerner's cheek did not tend to allay them. They were still unsatisfied when the porter took her to the end of the car to brush her clothes.

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 pa.s.sionate 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 canon. 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.