COWBOYS in the garb of their occupation are common enough in the fall in the stock-yards district. They excited no comment when, having turned over their cattle, they went to a small hotel nearby and engaged a modest room. There was no hurry; a week or even ten days in the big town was their privilege, and their contract tickets guaranteed their return trip.
Tom was in high spirits. He sang as he shaved, and as he carefully polished his boots on the under side of the mattress, and when later on they found themselves on Michigan Avenue he swaggered, rather, and eyed the girls as they stared at him.
"It's a hick town," he confided to Bill. "I'll bet there's not a fellow in it could snap a bronc."
But Bill was not happy. The size of the buildings, the noise and confusion of the traffic, daunted him. When they finally wandered to the lake front he settled himself there with his back to the town.
"Lemme be," he said. "I want an eyeful of this water while I got a chance. Looks like there's enough water there to irrigate the whole Northwest and have some left over."
A policeman sauntered over to them and inspected them.
"Rodeo coming to town?" he asked.
"Yeah," said Tom. "We're the advance agents. We're just settling to move some of those buildings back. This town hasn't got room enough for us."
That night, still seeking the gayety they had hoped for, they found a combination vaudeville and moving picture house and went in. But the picture purported to be a western one, and after watching it somberly for some time Tom said in a loud disgusted tone: "Oh, my God!" After that they were asked to leave. They went back to the hotel and sat drearily in their bedroom, hearing on the street and all about them a life with which they had no contact. They had not even found a bootlegger.
It was on the second day that Bill, turning on his bench at a figure which had suddenly loomed up beside him, sprang to his feet and let out a whoop.
"Ride 'em, cowboy!" he shouted, and then fell into rapt and admiring silence. From head to foot Tom had lost his identity. He wore a violently blue ready-to-wear suit, a trifle short in the waist and tight across the back, tan shoes and colored socks, and to top it all a soft hat which sat rather high on his head.
"Some outfit, eh?"
"You tell 'em," said Bill. "You go back in those clothes and stand trial, and the jury won't only acquit you. It'll kiss you."
They were a queerer combination than ever after that, Bill in his old clothes which he obstinately refused to change, his battered Stetson, his stocky figure, his bowed legs—the short man's penalty for years in the saddle. And Tom in his outrageously bad clothes and his tight yellow shoes which hurt his feet. But still gayety escaped them. They tried for it. They went back to the same theater the next night and found the stage entrance. But it was cold and dark, and Tom's feet burned like fire, and after all the girls who came out were not the creatures of enchantment they had seemed, but tired looking young women who might have been Clare Hamel, or any of the town girls who walked the streets of Ursula at twilight.
Partly out of bravado, partly out of sheer loneliness, Tom spoke to one of them, but after a quick look up at him she shook her head.
"On your way, little boy," she said, not unamiably. "And don't let the door-man see you. He'll whistle for a cop."
On the third day Bill announced his intention of going back home, and Tom hesitated. So far it had been dull enough, but the thought of going back, to Clare, to that fool Indian business, was worse. Much worse.
"I'm staying," he said at last. "There must be some way in this man's town for a fellow to forget his troubles, and I'm looking for it."
"Looking for trouble's what you mean," Bill said pessimistically. "And if you're looking for it you'll sure find it."
Bill left that night in a day coach for the West, and Tom was left alone. He wandered about, limping slightly, but neither trouble nor pleasure offered itself. Once he found a shooting gallery, somewhere near East Madison Street, and spent some time popping away with a small .22 rifle at rows of white clay pipes. A small admiring group of men formed around him; and because he was lonely and because applause was meat to him; he swaggered a bit and kept on.
"Sure can shoot!"
"Huh, you call this shooting? Come out to my country where bears are ripe and I'll show you something!"
But even admiration palled on him. He went back to the hotel, and with the tan shoes still on his feet, patiently soaked them in hot water and went to bed in them. He slept little, but they had stretched somewhat by morning.
It was in the intervals of waking that he began once more to think of Kay. So far he had fought her back with fair success. The round-up and the drive had left him little time, and on the train the incessant poker game, broken only by stops for food and sleep or to look after the cattle, had been a consistent distraction. But that night, lying diagonally on a bed which was too short for him, she came to him again in all her youth, her charm and her love for him. A hundred pictures of her began to torture him; he saw her gallantly riding, the wind blowing back her short hair, he saw her attentively watching him while he made coffee, up on the North fork.
"Why, it's quite easy, isn't it!"
"Mean to say you've never made coffee? You'll be a fine wife for some fellow!"
And most of all he saw her that last night.
"The best thing that can happen to me is to break my neck and be done with it."
"It would break my heart, too."
He gave up the effort to sleep, and began to pace the floor. Suppose he didn't go back West at all? Suppose he stayed in the East and tried to make something of himself? Cut the whole outfit, Clare and Bob Allison and all, and got a job here?
But what could he do? Go into a store and sell neckties, like that little shrimp he had bought his from a couple of days ago?
"If you like a bit of dash, here's one. Lots of class to that tie. They're using more color this year."
God Almighty, that was a man's job!
After half an hour of pacing, the loose boards of the floor creaking under him, he was brought up by a light tapping at the door, and opening it an inch or so saw a girl outside in a pink kimono over her nightdress.
"Are you sick or anything?" she asked. "I can hear you walking. I'm in the next room."
"Sorry I waked you up. I'm breaking in a pair of shoes."
"You're—what?" she asked. And then burst into uncontrollable merriment. He grinned sheepishly. But she did not move. She stood gazing up at him with bright interested eyes.
"You're a queer one," she said. "Don't you think you owe me a cigarette for disturbing me?"
"I'll have to roll one."
She laughed again at that, and while he closed the door and got into his trousers she stood, smiling and amused, outside. When he opened the door again she stepped in and closed it behind her, watching him interestedly while he made her cigarette.
"Cowboy, aren't you?"
"Yeah. What do you want to smoke and spoil a good set of teeth for, anyhow?"
"It hasn't hurt yours any!"
She was young, pretty and quite composed. When he turned from finding a match for her, she had seated herself on a chair and drawn her bare feet up under her. He was surprised and slightly shocked.
He lighted her cigarette and then indicated the door.
"All right," he said. "And now run along to your little bed, sister. I'm busy."
"Busy! What about?"
"I've got behind in my sleeping tonight. I'll have to try and catch up."
She eyed him shrewdly. Whatever her idea had been in coming in, she probably abandoned it then, but she made no move to go.
"Let me finish this, anyhow."
He smiled at that, rolled himself a cigarette and sat down on the bed.
"That's right. Now—what else, besides the shoes?"
"I've told you. You soak 'em and"
Suddenly she laughed.
"You're a funny boy," she said. "You could do that in bed, if that's the idea. Come on, tell me. Is it a girl?"
He stiffened.
"It is, isn't it?"
"You finish and vamoose, before we both get thrown out of this hotel."
"Oh, that's all right," she said easily. "They know me. Doesn't she like you?"
"That's not the trouble."
"Is she married?"
"No."
"Or you?"
"No."
She got up, flicking the cigarette into his wash basin, and drawing her kimono around her.
"Then what's the matter with you?" she said. "Go and get her. With your looks you should worry."
The next moment she was gone. He stood staring at the door after she had closed it behind her. Go and get her. Go and get her. Well, go and see her anyhow. See how things stood between them. He reached into his trousers pocket and began to count his money.
With daylight he was somewhat less assured, and his feet hurt him damnably. But when he went downstairs there was the girl again, on her way out and looking quite neat and bright, and not at all the sort she had seemed in the night. And she came up to him and said:
"Remember what I told you. That's the stuff!"
He never saw her again; she played her small part in his life and disappeared. Later on he was to know others like her, girls pouring out their youth like wine to satisfy the thirsts of men, but he never saw her again.
At noon that day he sat in the day coach of a through train, on his way East.
No poker now to distract his mind, no girls to wave gayly at the caboose windows. No one even to talk to, save a woman with two children on her way to hunt up a husband who had deserted them.
"I should think you'd let him go, if that's the way he's acted."
"Let him go! And me with these kids to bring up! He's got to see to them. He brought them into this world."
Tom considered this last statement with a certain humor.
"Must be a queer sort of fellow!"
"He's all that and then some."
But she got off toward night of the first day. He missed the children. He had not known many children, and the feeling of their little bodies crawling over him was new and warming. Even when he found that his new blue clothes were undeniably spotted from these contacts, he smiled at the thought of them.
"Funny little fellers," he muttered. He was saying "feller" again.
He slept in his seat that night, and emerged at noon the next day from the train considerably disreputable as to clothing and unhappy in his mind. Suppose he did see Kay? What could he say to her?
"Here I am! The Sheriff's after me, back home, and I'm engaged to a girl there. Also what I have in my pocket is all I have in the world. But aside from that I'm all right, so if you'll just step around to the preacher's with me!"
He stopped in the middle of a street when that struck him, and narrowly escaped being run over by a taxicab.
"Not city-broke yet," he told himself ruefully, and went on.
And then he found that the Dowlings were in the country. He was suddenly very tired and depressed. His big shoulders sagged under the tight blue coat, the hat which was too small sat at a less rakish angle. But he had come too far to go back now, and the excitement of being near to Kay upheld him. He set his teeth, went back again to the railroad station, spent more of his small hoard for a ticket and got on another train. This was different, however. All around him were prosperous men reading newspapers, casually getting up at their stops and later climbing into cars with cap-touching chauffeurs; well-dressed women and girls, mincing along the aisles in high-heeled slippers; glimpses here and there of big houses, with carefully shaved lawns under trees beginning to turn with the early frosts.
And he had planned no campaign. The chances were, if he went to the house, that they would not let him see Kay. They might not even admit him.
"Not if they see me first!" he told himself grimly. "I'd be as welcome as a rattler in a prairie dog hole."
He decided to telephone and ask her to meet him some place. So careful had he become of money—he who had never considered money in his life before—that he reluctantly paid for a call, but the information he received was by way of being a relief.
She was not at home. She was at the country club.
When he found that a station hack would cost him a dollar he decided to walk, and weary and lame as he was, the four miles seemed endless. But a sense of exaltation carried him on. It was journey's end. He forgot the big houses, forgot weariness and the loneliness, and the homesickness for the back country where he belonged.
There beyond those gates was Kay, and journey's end.