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 embarra.s.sment. He had seemed to read her hesitation with an inner amus.e.m.e.nt 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 b.u.t.t 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 ma.s.sa-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 c.u.mmings, 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 ma.s.sive 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 melee 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 a.s.sured 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 sc.r.a.p, 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 b.u.t.ts 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 pa.s.s 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.