The Big-Town Round-Up Part 31

"Joe's tied up in a back room," he said over his shoulder.

Thirty seconds later Clay stepped into the street. He walked across to a subway station and took an uptown train.

Men looked at him curiously. His face was bruised and bleeding, his clothes disheveled, his hat torn. Clay grinned and thought of the old answer:

"They'd ought to see the other man."

One young fellow, apparently a college boy, who had looked upon the wine when it was red, was moved to come over and offer condolence.

"Say, I don't want to b.u.t.t in or anything, but--he didn't do a thing to you, did he?"

"I hit the edge of a door in the dark," explained Clay solemnly.

"That door must have had several edges." The youth made a confidential admission. "I've got an edge on myself, sort of."

"Not really?" murmured Clay politely.

"Surest thing you know. Say, was it a good sc.r.a.p?"

"I'd hate to mix in a better one."

"Wish I'd been there." The student fumbled for a card. "Didn't catch your name?"

Clay had no intention of giving his name just now to any casual stranger. He laughed and hummed the chorus of an old range ditty:

"I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, And a long way from home."

CHAPTER XXIII

JOHNNIE COMES INTO HIS OWN

When Clay shot off at a tangent from the car and ceased to function as a pa.s.senger, Johnnie made an effort to descend and join his friend, but already the taxi was traveling at a speed that made this dangerous. He leaned out of the open door and shouted to the driver.

"Say, lemme out, doggone you. I wantta get out right here."

The chauffeur paid not the least attention to him. He skidded round a corner, grazing the curb, and put his foot on the accelerator. The car jumped forward.

The pa.s.senger, about to drop from the running-board, changed his mind.

He did not want to break a bone or two in the process of alighting.

"'F you don't lemme off right away I'll not pay you a cent for the ride," Johnnie shouted. "You got no right to pack me off thisaway."

The car was sweeping down the wet street, now and again skidding dangerously. The puncher felt homesick for the security of an outlaw bronco's back. This wild East was no place for him. He had been brought up in a country where life is safe and sane and its inhabitants have a respect for law. Tame old Arizona just now made a big appeal to one of its sons.

The machine went drunkenly up the street, zigzagging like a homeward-bound reveler. It swung into Fourth Avenue, slowing to take the curve. At the widest sweep of the arc Johnnie stepped down. His feet slid from under him and he rolled to the curb across the wet asphalt. Slowly he got up and tested himself for broken bones. He was sure he had dislocated a few hips and it took him some time to persuade himself he was all right, except for some bruises.

But Johnnie free had no idea what to do. He was as helpless as Johnnie imprisoned in the flying cab. Of what Clay's plan had been he had not the remotest idea. Yet he could not go home and do nothing. He must keep searching. But where? One thing stuck in his mind. His friend had mentioned that he would like to get a chance to call the police to find out whether Kitty had been rescued. He was anxious on that point himself. At the first cigar-store he stopped and was put on the wire with headquarters. He learned that a car supposed to be the one wanted had been driven into Central Park by the police a few minutes earlier.

Johnnie's mind carried him on a straight line to the simplest decision.

He ran across to Fifth Avenue and climbed into a bus going uptown. If Kitty was in Central Park that was the place to search for her. It did not occur to him that by the time he reached there the car of the abductors would be miles away, nor did he stop to think that his chances of finding her in the wooded recesses of the Park would not be worth the long end of a hundred to one bet.

At the Seventy-Second Street entrance Johnnie left the bus and plunged into the Park. He threaded his way along walks beneath the dripping trees. He took a dozen shower baths under water-laden shrubbery.

Sometimes he stopped to let out the wild war-whoop with which he turned cattle at the point in the good old days a month or so ago.

The G.o.ds are supposed to favor fools, children, and drunken men.

Johnnie had been all of these in his day. To-night he could claim no more than one at most of these reasons for a special dispensation. He would be twenty-three "comin' gra.s.s," as he would have expressed it, and he hadn't taken a drink since he came to New York, for Clay had voted himself dry years ago and just now he carried his follower with him.

But the impish G.o.ds who delight in turning upside down the best-laid plans of mice and men were working overtime to-night. They arranged it that a girl cowering among the wet bushes bordering an unfrequented path heard the "Hi--yi--yi" of Arizona and gave a faint cry for help.

That call reached Johnnie and brought him on the run.

A man beside the girl jumped up with a snarl, gun in hand.

But the Runt had caught a sight of Kitty. A file of fixed bayonets could not have kept him from trying to rescue her. He dived through the brush like a football tackler.

A gun barked. The little man did not even know it. He and the thug went down together, rolled over, clawed furiously at each other, and got to their feet simultaneously. But the cowpuncher held the gun now.

The crook glared at him for a moment, and bolted for the safety of the bushes in wild flight.

Johnnie fired once, then forgot all about the private little war he had started. For his arms were full of a sobbing Kitty who clung to him while she wept and talked and exclaimed all in a breath.

"I knew you'd come, Johnnie. I knew you would--you or Clay. They left me here with him while they got away from the police. . . . Oh, I've been so scared. I didn't know--I thought--"

"'S all right. 'S all right, li'l' girl. Don't you cry, Kitty. Me 'n' Clay won't let 'em hurt you none. We sure won't."

"They said they'd come back later for me," she wept, uncertain whether to be hysterical or not.

"I wisht they'd come now," he bragged valorously, and for the moment he did.

She nestled closer, and Johnnie's heart lost a beat. He had become aware of a dull pain in the shoulder and of something wet trickling down his shoulder. But what is one little bullet in your geography when the sweetest girl in the world is in your arms?

"I ain't nothin' but a hammered-down li'l' hayseed of a cowpuncher," he told her, his voice trembling, "an' you're awful pretty an'--an'--"

A flag of color fluttered to her soft cheeks. The silken lashes fell shyly. "I think you're fine and dandy, the bravest man that ever was."

"Do you--figure you could--? I--I--I don't reckon you could ever--"

He stopped, abashed. To him this creature of soft curves was of heaven-sent charm. All the beauty and vitality of her youth called to him. It seemed to Johnnie that G.o.d spoke through her. Which is another way of saying that he was in love with her.

She made a rustling little stir in his arms and lifted a flushed face very tender and appealing. In the darkness her lips slowly turned to his.

Johnnie chose that inopportune moment to get sick at the stomach.

"I--I'm goin' to faint," he announced, and did. When he returned to his love-story Johnnie's head was in Kitty's lap and a mounted policeman was in the foreground of the scene. His face was wet from the mist of fine rain falling.

"Don't move. Some one went for a car," she whispered, bending over him so that flying tendrils of her hair brushed his cheek. "Are you--badly hurt?"