A CONTRIBUTION TO THE SALVATION ARMY
While Beatrice Whitford waited in the little library for the Arizonan to join her, she sat in a deep chair, chin in hand, eyes fixed on the jetting flames of the gas-log. A little flush had crept into the oval face. In her blood there tingled the stimulus of excitement. For into her life an adventure had come from faraway Cattleland.
A crisp, strong footstep sounded in the hall. Her fingers flew to pat into place the soft golden hair coiled low at the nape of the neck. At times she had a boylike unconcern of s.e.x; again, a spirit wholly feminine.
The clothes of her father fitted Lindsay loosely, for Colin Whitford had begun to take on the flesh of middle age and Clay was lean and clean of build as an elk. But the Westerner was one of those to whom clothes are unimportant. The splendid youth of him would have shone through the rags of a beggar.
"My name is Clay Lindsay," he told her by way of introduction.
"Mine is Beatrice Whitford," she answered.
They shook hands.
"I"m to wait here till my clothes dry, yore man says."
"Then you"d better sit down," she suggested.
Within five minutes she knew that he had been in New York less than three hours. His impressions of the city amused and entertained her.
He was quite simple. She could look into his mind as though it were a deep, clear well. There was something inextinguishably boyish and buoyant about him. But in his bronzed face and steady, humorous eyes were strength and shrewdness. He was the last man in the world a bunco-steerer could play for a sucker. She felt that. Yet he made no pretenses of a worldly wisdom he did not have.
A voice reached them from the top of the stairs.
"Do you know where Miss Whitford is, Jenkins?"
"Hin the Red Room, sir." The answer was in the even, colorless voice of a servant.
The girl rose at once. "If you"ll excuse me," she said, and stepped out of the room.
"h.e.l.lo, Bee. What do you think? I never saw such idiots as the police of this town are. They"re watching this house for a desperado who a.s.saulted some one outside. I met a sergeant on our steps. Says he doesn"t think the man"s here, but there"s just a chance he slipped into the bas.e.m.e.nt. It"s absurd."
"Of course it is." There was a ripple of mirth in the girl"s voice.
"He didn"t come in by the bas.e.m.e.nt at all, but walked in at the front door."
"Who are you talking about?"
"The desperado, Dad."
"The front door!" exploded her father. "What do you mean? Who let him in?"
"I did. He came as my guest, at my invitation."
"What?"
"Don"t shout, Dad," she advised. "I thought I had brought you up better."
"But--but--but--what do you mean?" he sputtered. "Is this ruffian in the house now?"
"Oh, yes. He"s in the Red Room here--and unless he"s very deaf he hears everything we are saying," the girl answered calmly, much amused at the amazement of her father. "Won"t you come in and see him? He doesn"t seem very desperate."
Clay rose, pinpoints of laughter dancing in his eyes. He liked the gay audacity of this young woman, just as he liked the unconventional pluck with which she had intruded herself into his affairs as a rescuer and the businesslike efficiency that had got him out of his wet rags into comfortable clothes.
A moment later he was offering a brown hand to Colin Whitford, who took it reluctantly, with the same wariness a boxer does that of his opponent in the ring. His eyes said plainly, "What the deuce are you doing here, sitting in my favorite chair, smoking one of my imported cigars, wearing my clothes, and talking to my daughter?"
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Whitford. Yore daughter has just saved my life from the police," the Westerner said, and his friendly smile was very much in evidence.
"You make yourself at home," answered the owner of a large per cent of the stock of the famous Bird Cage mine.
"My guests do, Dad. It"s the proof that I"m a perfect hostess,"
retorted Beatrice, her dainty, provocative face flashing to mirth.
"Hmp!" grunted her father dryly. "I"d like to know, young man, why the police are shadowing this house?"
"I expect they"re lookin" for me."
"I expect they are, and I"m not sure I won"t help them find you.
You"ll have to show cause if I don"t."
"His bark is much worse than his bite," the girl explained to Clay, just as though her father were not present.
"Hmp!" exploded the mining magnate a second time. "Get busy, young fellow."
Clay told the story of the fifty-five-dollar suit that I. Bernstein had wished on him with near-tears of regret at parting from it. The cowpuncher dramatized the situation with some native talent for mimicry. His arms gestured like the lifted wings of a startled c.o.c.kerel. "A man gets a chance at a garment like that only once in a while occasionally. Which you can take it from me that when I.
Bernstein sells a suit of clothes it is shust like he is dealing with his own brother. Qvality, my friendts, qvality! Why, I got anyhow a suit which I might be married in without shame, un"erstan" me."
Colin Whitford was of the West himself. He had lived its rough-and-tumble life for years before he made his lucky strike in the Bird Cage. He had moved from Colorado to New York only ten years before. The sound of Clay"s drawling voice was like a message from home. He began to grin in spite of himself. This man was too good to be true. It wasn"t possible that anybody could come to the big town and import into it so navely such a genuine touch of the outdoor West.
It was not possible, but it had happened just the same. Of course Manhattan would soon take the color out of him. It always did out of everybody. The city was so big, so overpowering, so individual itself, that it tolerated no individuality in its citizens. Whitford had long since become a conformist. He was willing to bet a hat that this big brown Arizonan would eat out of the city"s hand within a week. In the meantime he wanted to be among those present while the process of taming the wild man took place. Long before the cowpuncher had finished his story of hog-tying the Swede to a hitching-post with his own hose, the mining man was sealed of the large tribe of Clay Lindsay"s admirers. He was ready to hide him from all the police in New York.
Whitford told Stevens to bring in the fifty-five-dollar suit so that he could gloat over it. He let out a whoop of delight at sight of its still sodden appearance. He examined its sickly hue with chuckles of mirth.
"Guaranteed not to fade or shrink," murmured Clay sadly.
He managed to get the coat on with difficulty. The sleeves reached just below his elbows.
"You look like a lifer from Sing Sing," p.r.o.nounced Whitford joyously.
"Get a hair-cut, and you won"t have a chance on earth to fool the police."
"The color did run and fade some," admitted Clay.
"Worth every cent of nine ninety-eight at a bargain sale before the Swede got busy with it--and he let you have it at a sacrifice for fifty-five dollars!" The millionaire wept happy tears as a climax of his rapture. He swallowed his cigar smoke and had to be pounded on the back by his daughter.
"Would you mind getting yore man to wrop it up for me? I"m goin" to have a few pleasant words with I. Bernstein," said Clay with mock mournfulness.
"When?" asked Whitford promptly.
"Never you mind when, sah. I"m not issuin" any tickets of admission.
It"s goin" to be a strictly private entertainment."
"Are you going to take a water hose along?"