CHAPTER I

On an afternoon in early spring a man lounged against the wall of the station waiting for the express from the east. Slender of waist and hip, stalwart of shoulder, some seventy-two inches of sinewy height, he was the figure of the typical cattleman. His eyes were deep-set and far-seeing; his lean, brown face, roughened by outdoor life, was austere and resolute in expression.

The train had barely stopped when a boyish-looking, lithe-limbed youth leaped from the platform. The blue serge suit and checked cap he wore did not disguise the fact that his working clothes – his field uniform – were those of a cow-puncher. A few quick strides brought him to the man in waiting.

“Hoped you’d be on hand to meet me, Kurt, so I could get out to the ranch to-night. How’s things up there?”

“Just the same as they were when you left, Jo,” said the one addressed in whimsical tone. “You’ve only been gone ten days, you know.”

“You don’t say!” ejaculated Jo, following his companion through the depot. “City does age a man.”

Gone are the days of The Golden West when spurred and revolvered horsemen sprang into saddles and loped out of the brush, or skimmed over matted mesquite on a buckboard drawn by swift-running ponies.

A long racing car was waiting for the two men and they were soon speeding over a hard-baked, steel-like road that led up, around and over the far-flung, undulating hills before them.

“I thought Kingdon’s best car was worth a million bucks before I went to Chicago,” said Joe critically, “but it sure would look like a two-spot on Michigan Avenue.”

The other smiled indulgently.

“I trust everything out here won’t suffer by comparison with the things you have seen during your journey.”

“I should say not! It all looks pretty good to me. I wouldn’t change this trail to Top Hill for all the boulevards and asphalts of Chicago, and our ranch-house has got any hotel I saw skinned by a mile for real living. I had some vacation, though, and it was mighty good of you to send me on that business. I ’tended to it, all right as soon as I got there, before I took in any of the sights or let loose for my ‘time.’ I won’t forget it in you, Kurt – to send me instead of going yourself.”

“Well, Jo, you’d been cooped up here a long time for a youngster,” said Kurt, laying a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, “and I saw you were rarin’ for a little recreation. I thought you would settle down to a hard season’s work if you let out a little. I received your report and check. You managed that cattle deal very shrewdly. Kingdon was much pleased.”

“That’s encouraging, but I feel better at pleasing you, Kurt.”

They rode on without talking for some distance. From time to time Kurt cast a searching glance at the young man whose eyes shone with a strange, steady light – a look of exaltation and despair combined.

The car slowed down to conversational need.

“What ’tis, Jo? Did you come to grief when you ‘let loose?’ Let go all your earnings in one big game without any way-slips, or did you have such a round of theatres, cabarets and night-life that you are feeling the depression of reaction?”

“You’re guessing wrong,” replied Jo quietly. “I know that’s the way most of us grass-fed men act when we get a chance at white lights. I had a beautiful time that was as short and as far off as a pleasant dream. As I said, I started out for a regular time, but I didn’t take a drink, or touch a card, or – say, Kurt, I think I’d like to tell you about it! I know you won’t kid me, for I’m in earnest and – in trouble.”

Another quick glance at the blue eyes, usually so brimming with sparkling gayety but which were now serious and despondent, brought a transformation to the grim face of the older man, making him look kinder, warmer, younger.

“Shoot, Jo!” was all he said, but the lad felt that the crude word was backed up by a real interest, a readiness to hear and advise.

“Some one gave me a steer to a dance place,” he began. “Hurricane Hall, I think it was called, and as soon as I looked in, I saw it was tougher even than a cowboy’s cravings called for; but I sort of stuck around until I happened to look at one of the tables over in a cornered-off place. A little girl was sitting there alone, different from all those other fierce-looking ones who were dressed in high water skirts and with waists that looked as if they needed inside blinds to get by.

“She had on a white dress, a real dress – not a skirt and bib – that covered her, and without much fixings. Her hair was drawn back plain like a kid’s. I knew right off she’d got in wrong, and I thought it was up to me to get her out of that joint.

“I went over to her and said: ‘Excuse my nerve, little girl, but I guess you’re in the wrong pew.’

“She looked at me sort of funny; then she smiled and said: ‘Same to you!’

“Her voice sounded like low, soft music – contralto kind.

“‘Yes;’ I said. ‘You’re right. I’m a cowboy, not a country boy, and I’m in Chicago to see the sights; but I’d ask for blinders if I stayed around here much longer. Who brought you here?’

“‘Nobody,’ she said, looking down. ‘I came by myself.’

“‘I’m glad of it,’ I tell her, ‘and I’m the guy that’s going to take you away from here.’

“‘Why?’ she asked me, ‘and how do you know I’ll go with you.’

“She’d kept her eyes away from me all this time. I said: ‘Look at me.’

“She did. Right at me, the way kids do – not bold – just curious. Good night! It did something to my heart when her eyes looked into mine that way.

“‘Can you trust me?’ I asked after a minute.

“‘Yes,’ she said; and I knew she meant it.

“‘I want to dance with you,’ I told her, ‘but I don’t want to do it here.’

“‘Where can we go?’ she asked.

“‘I know a man in Chicago,’ I said, ‘who has asked me to come to his place. It ain’t stylish enough for you, but it’s run right and respectable. It ain’t very far from here. Reilly’s. Know it?’

“‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said, ‘but I’ve never been there.’

“Of course she hadn’t. I’d seen right off she was just a kid and hadn’t been around to places.

“‘Will you go there with me now?’ I asked her.

“‘Yes;’ she said. ‘I know you’re all right.’

“Maybe I wasn’t feeling good when I’d got her out of there and steered her through the streets! She was a little mite of a thing, and young, but very quiet; her eyes had a sad look.

“We went to Reilly’s: He was up here in the hill country once for a vacation – the time you were out on the coast. We fellows gave him some time, and he liked it fine. Well, he told us the place was ours. The music was great, and we started right out on the floor. Say! I was feeling as fit and stepping as lively as if I had had a million drinks, but I hadn’t had one. There was no getting around it. That little girl in her white dress had landed me one right over the heart. She slipped into my arms as quick as she had into my heart, too. I danced the way I felt, and she – well, she was right with me every time: the slickest little stepper I ever saw. Not dance-mad, like those professional kind; she let me set the pace and she followed any lead.

“Reilly came up to us on the floor and offered to introduce us to folks. I asked him if he remembered the time I gave him out west, and he said he could never forget it and he was now aiming to return it best he knew how. ‘Take it from me,’ I said, ‘that I can get right returns from you if you’ll not give any other fellow the chance to butt in on these dances.’ ‘I’m on,’ he said, and he let us alone.

“We danced every time without talking any. When it came closing time, Reilly came up again and said: ‘This is the hour we quit, but it don’t mean for my guests. Come back in this little room and have refreshments on me.’

“He showed us into a little ring-around-the-rosy room with lights half off and asks: ‘What’ll you have?’

“‘Coffee,’ I said quickly and warningly, and the kid said: ‘I’ll have the same.’

“Reilly laughed – because I took coffee, I suppose. We got it good and hot, with sandwiches and pickles thrown in. Then we talked. Someway she got me to do most of the talking. She wanted to hear all about ranches and cowboys and me. Her eyes got bright, and she said it was better than movies, and she wished she could see my country. I told her she would, because I was going to take her there. She didn’t say anything to that. Pretty soon Reilly comes in and tells me he wants to give us the best time he knows how all right, but were we planning to stay to breakfast? When I saw what time it was, I took the hint and we got right up. I asked him what there was to pay, and he said if I tried to pay, I’d have to do it over his dead body. We went out into the night, only ’twas morning. I asked her what her folks would say.

“‘I have no folks,’ she said kind of sad-like.

“That made me feel good.

“‘I am glad of that,’ I told her, ‘because I want you all to myself.’

“Then I thought she must be working, and I told her I was sorry to have kept her up so late because she’d be too tired to go to work. She said she was out of a job, but was expecting something soon.

“‘I am glad of that, too,’ I said.

“She looked sort of surprised, so I knew I’d been too sudden, but you see, time was short with me. I told her I’d be in Chicago another twenty-four hours and would she help show me around. I had never been on one of the big boats and Reilly had told me about a fine tour to take to some Saint place. She knew where he meant, though she had never been there. She said folks who lived in Chicago didn’t go outside much. They left the trips for visitors. She promised to meet me at the dock in a few hours.

“She wouldn’t let me go all the way home with her. She said she had reasons, and made me leave her on a corner which she said was quite close to where she lived. It was an awful poor part of the city, and I suppose she didn’t want me to know how humble her home was. As if I cared for that! It was so near light I knew she would be safe, but I stood there on guard for a few minutes after she left.

“Believe me, I was right on time at the dock, and she came soon after I did. She had on a plain, dark suit, neat, little shoes, and a hat down over her eyes like the girls in movies wear. I’d passed a corner on the way to the boat where they sold flowers. There were some violets that looked like her. I bought a big bunch and when I gave them to her, she sort of gasped and said no one had ever bought flowers for her before. I was glad to hear that. I asked her hadn’t she ever had a fellow, and she said she hadn’t. I told her I couldn’t see why, unless it was because she didn’t want one. She looked up at me sort of shy and said she might have had one most any time, but that there had never been one she cared for before.

“I could have hugged her right there on the dock for that ‘before,’ but it was time for the boat to start. There weren’t many going. It was early in the season, she said. We went up on deck and sat by the rail and maybe old Lake Michigan didn’t look sparkling! Everything looked sparkling to me. She was as happy as a kid with a new doll, because she had never been on a boat before. When we got to the place – St. Joe, she said it was – there were all sorts of things to do that beat Chicago all to bits for a good time. There was a big sandy beach that made me want to go in the water, but she said it was too early. So we sat in the sun-warmed sand and watched the waves, and we got our pictures taken, and tried a Wheel of Fortune. We went to a big hotel and had a good dinner, though they didn’t have any of the things that were down on their program. The waiter said it was a bill of fare left over from last year. We didn’t mind that. After dinner we rode out to a place to see some guys that looked like pictures in the Old Testament. They lived in David’s House, too.