CHAPTER XXII-BEEF ON THE HOOF

Often the entrances to Central Park had spanned a couple of thousand miles for Peter Pape and his "Friend Equus." Now it seemed to do as much for the Montana bovine. In the expanses he sighted freedom. Off the spring breeze he breathed the joy of life. More riotously tossed his horns. Faster and harder pounded his hoofs in a fresh access of speed.

Through the early afternoon lull, his pa.s.sage was terrifying, indeed.

Slow-strollers and bench-warmers suddenly became animated into record retreat. Nursemaids shrieked as they trundled baby-carriages behind protecting tree trunks or s.n.a.t.c.hed toddlers out of danger's path. An equestrian pair who came cantering along took the nearest bank like chamois. Fortunate was it that the season and hour were not later, when the great, green melting-pot would have been brimful and possibilities of casualty greater.

So far, any interference along the way had served but to accelerate the steer's stampede. The one pedestrian on the avenue who had dared seize the snake-writhing lariat that trailed from its unyielding horn-hold had been thrown to a fall on the oiled asphalt before he could snub the rope about a tree. A policeman on beat who had essayed the same feat farther along had let go in time to save himself a worse sprawl. Now the rope was suffering a rapid curtailment as it frayed against shrubs, trees and rocks.

When Polkadot had cleared the stone wall with inches to spare, landed lightly and gone on without losing a stride, Pape turned to wave orders for the transplanted cowboy to spread out. Not until another day did he understand the disappearance of his aide-that he lay stunned at the base of the wall where he had been thrown. Instead, he saw Irene Sturgis coming over the top.

A thrill caught him as she closed up with all the recklessness of a cow-girl-a thrill that forced forgiveness for all the heart-wrenching wrongs she had done him. A flashed thought of Jane brought both relief and regret. If only she, too, had leaped to saddle and followed him-had yielded to the impulse of interest regained or never lost! Deeds, not words told the heart. He tried to be glad that she had thought first of herself, yet was sorry that he did not rank before the first in action's hour.

Polkadot's pace, however, soon outran vain regrets; caught up with hopes ahead. Through the scattered trees that fringe the park and across the bridle path led the steer. Down the asphalted roadway he pounded with such disregard of ent.i.tled traffic that drivers reached for their emergency brakes. A congestion of cars which forced Pape to pull up momentarily gave the runaway a gain upon his owner-pursuer. By the time egress was effected the big red had crossed the Mall and entered the meadow beyond.

As acre after acre of turf unrolled ahead, the too-live-stock loosened to the going. Pape put the pinto to an emulative gallop. Only a glance to one side did he spare when the shrill of a whistle located the fat figure of Pudge O'Shay, both hands and feet animated by a frenzy of outraged authority.

"No Queer Questioner stops for a quail-quit your tooting at us!" Pape shouted as, far from keeping "off the gra.s.s," he urged his mount to deeper digs and an appreciable increase of speed.

At sound of hoof-beats behind, he turned, thinking to reinstruct the puncher. Instead, he saw that Irene, luckier than he in crossing the road and Mall, was closing up. The red roses still clutched in her waving hand bespoke excitement's forgetfulness.

The steer changed his direction, although not at order of the jumping-jack in police blue. From the traverse road and out over the meadow directly toward the outlaw a second woman rider had dashed. A shout from behind her announced a male escort who followed, but could not detain her. Straight on she came, a slim streak of black and white that blent in the color of courage. And as she came, a single-syllabled cry from before greeted her-a salute from one man's heart of fear-full grat.i.tude.

"Jane!"

Deeds, then, did speak for his self-selected one! The climacteric impulse of woman to follow her man, to do and dare for him, if need be to die with him had conquered her tutored calm in this emergency. The repose of her face was a mask. Her spirit now dared his own. Why? Why not? Thank G.o.d, _why not_?

The rider behind her was Mills Harford. That Pape had seen at second glance. But any hope of him as an active aide in recapturing the run-amuck was gainsaid by his efforts to get the girl out of the chase.

He caught up with her, argued with her, tried himself to turn about her mount by force. Only at threat of her crop did he drop the grasped bridle rein.

Pape decided if possible to draft him into service against the bovine enemy.

"Spread out and turn the steer!" he shouted across the meadow. "Head him this way so I can rope him."

Harford looked around as though he had heard. Then, instead of following directions, he rode full tilt after the beast, brandishing his hat and shouting in _a_ manner calculated to continue the stampede.

Whether he had misunderstood through ignorance of range practice or was deliberately attempting to make more serious the predicament of one for whom he had that day shown such cordial dislike, Pape had no time to ponder. He swung Polkadot into an oblique course on the chance of preventing the runaway's escape into that roughest cross-section of the park which begins just north of the Seventy-second-Street "parallel."

The syncopated patter of hoofs just behind him told that Irene, too, had swerved and was carrying on. Ahead, Jane urged her mount after Harford and his ill-conceived move.

For several minutes the four-party pursuit pounded over the keep-off meadow, whose gra.s.s was being held in reserve against the hot waves of next summer, when it would be thrown open to furnish cool green couches for thousands of tenement swelterers. So unseemly was the interruption as to draw gapes of amazement from such onlookers as held the border walks and bellows of command from outraged policemen.

The pinto's full-speed-ahead was reminiscent in terms of motion of h.e.l.lroaring days and deeds. With full realization of what the man-master expected of him, he winged across intervening s.p.a.ces like a compact tornado. Pape unlimbered his lariat for a throw calculated to bring down the red for hog-tying.

While pa.s.sing Jane, he shouted an order that she pull up and keep out of the scrimmage likely to attend the fight's finish. A dozen rods farther on and almost within rope reach, he called to Harford.

"Out of the way-I'm going to hang my string on him!"

"What's that?"

The real-estater, who was showing superb riding form, turned in his saddle and leaned to listen, as though he had not heard. But he scarcely could have failed to see the noose over Pape's head circling rounder and faster with his onward rush. His next move was unaccountable. As the Montanan's rope slithered suddenly straight ahead from an aim calculated to pick up the steer's hind hoof for a fall, the Gothamite spurred his mount and cut directly across it. The throw fell short, borne out of line by the body of Harford's black thoroughbred. In the moment lost to free it from entanglement the steer took to the rocks with the agility of a mountain goat.

At last Pape whipped his gun from its under-coat holster. Infuriated by this second exhibition of what was either extreme stupidity or deliberate malice, he was tempted to throw down on the human rather than the splendid Queer Question specimen, now well up the height, which he had wished to take alive.

But he did not press the trigger. Although a steer more or less was incidental in his life and cruelty to animals was not to be weighed in the same scales with the catastrophes possible in a continuance of the stampede, second thought had advised the improbability of inflicting a vital wound in that huge body with a revolver shot from the rear.

Anything short of a _coup de grace_ would serve only to increase potential dangers.

Through the untangling and winding of his rope the Westerner voiced no complaint of Harford's interference, but his face went chalk-white beneath its burn and his jaw set hard. His one direct glance read triumph in the New Yorker's grin and decided him to finish the battle begun on the Sturgis front steps whenever and wherever he could spare the time. Just now--

"Wait for me here-all of you," he commanded the three.

Straightway he put Polkadot to the height.

There is an abruptness and complexity about the upheaval of primary rock marking the park's center that has been of advantage to renegades since that great playground's inception in the late 50's. Although lately most of the caves have been electric-lighted and railings placed on the more dangerous cliff-edge paths, there remain dribbling recesses and shadowy s.p.a.ces between trap-rock bowlders which suggest hide-outs. This physical condition now favored the Queer Question outlaw; enabled him to disappear from sight before Pape had resumed the chase.

The painted pony, used to rocky going about the borders of the home ranch, did not hesitate over essay of the goat trail into the park's rough heart taken by the red. In the upward scramble, his rider shifted weight in the saddle according to the conformation. Ultimately, if by devious ways, they gained the highest point in Manhattan's eight-hundred-forty acre "paradise"-the snub-nosed pinnacle that lies off Seventy-ninth Street.

Drawing rein, Pape rose in the stirrups and scanned the upturned region.

From near to far, until his gaze encompa.s.sed the bench-studded walks and auto-crowded roadways on its skirts, he noted all details. So remindful of his own Yellowstone in physical features was this tamed wild-wood-and yet so different!

Within its comparatively cramped quarters more love-as that emotion is known to park-habitues-than he had seen in the whole vast West was on display. The turfed stretches were safety-razored, rather than allowed to grow nature's full beards. The only furred creatures in evidence-except chipmunks and squirrels-were worn about the shoulders of fair bipeds instead of prowling on four feet, uncured, through the underbrush. From the steel framework of a new sky-sc.r.a.per that rose like a fire-stripped forest on the east to the turreted peaks of a range of apartment houses on the west, the scene invited comparison in detail.

But Pape had no time for detail except the one of a live dash of sorrel.

The vital greens of gra.s.s and trees were rife, the deep blues of lakes, the silver of sunlight on the distances and the more mysterious regal purple of shadows. So far as concerned any splash of tabasco red, however, he might better have been seeking a maverick on the outreaches of h.e.l.lroaring.

Twice had he shifted his point of survey when he was rewarded by sudden sight of the steer upon a rhododendron covered mound, not more than a city block away. Unconcernedly the long-horn trotted onto the scene, glanced about, then slowed to a walk and began to browse. The hope of recapturing the fine creature uninjured before he injured others re-awoke in Pape. A cautious approach, a forward swish of rope, a forceful reaction- Unless luck all lay with his too rampant escutcheon, the chapter might be closed.

But luck this afternoon seemed to favor quadrupeds. Just as Polkadot slithered toward the green mound-just as, almost, he had borne his man-mate within roping distance, he chanced to misplace a topply bowlder and sent it crashing down the side of a rock-ribbed gorge, on its way sounding an alarm above the plash of a rainbowed waterfall. Again the steer was off. Again the bone-risking pursuit for man and beast was on.

Around hillocks, hurdling bowlders, dodging cones and k.n.o.bs that were too slippery for climbing, ran the race. Once the brute leader miscalculated the s.p.a.ce between a striped maple and a pignut hickory; for a moment was caught and held in a vise-like grip. But before his pursuer could close in, he had managed to wriggle free, shy only some few tufts of short hair, with no loss of determination to retain the freedom so energetically won.

Bellowing as if in self-congratulation, the steer bore away in an untried direction-one that led up a second summit almost as high as the "top of the park." That this already was preempted by a group of busy beings and a couple of two-wheeled tool cars of the miniature Noah's Ark sort used by highway contractors, did not concern the runaway. The red flag that waved above one of the supply wagons as a warning of blasting powder, however, did. With lowered head he charged, scattering the workers in as many directions as they numbered.

Pape did not stop to consider the danger of an explosion should the steer ram into the explosive. He spurred forward, his rope again circ.u.mscribing his head, ready for a throw the moment opportunity offered.

But the red took no chances of so soon ending his lively afternoon.

Having learned to beware of enemies vehicular through his earlier impact against that Columbus Circle trolley, he dodged between the carts and bore off to the westward.

Pape, in his following rush across the b.u.t.te-top, glimpsed a face that almost caused him to draw rein. Distorted by surprise and annoyance was the expression of the man crouched behind the powder cart, but not enough so to mask one of the hirelings of the Lauderdale enemy.

And the trees then whispering on the breeze-swept height were poplars!

No time to stop to count them-no attention to spare for speculation as to whether the roar of a menagerie-imprisoned Nubian would carry that far. Nevertheless, the concentration of the rider, if not the pace of his mount, slackened somewhat through the continued pursuit of their wide-horned quarry.

"And a bunch of beef shall lead them," paraphrased Pape close to one of Dot's obligingly back-waggled ears.

An hour before he had a.s.sured Jane Lauderdale that his steer, as well as he, was at her service. Now that vicarious promise had been redeemed-the beef-brute sure had served her! The opposition party, probably with the stolen cryptogram in hand, had decided on this particular b.u.t.te top as the likeliest location of treasure buried by eccentric grand-sires and were getting underway some larger scheme of excavation. And he, in pursuit of his too-live-stock, was started on another pursuit of Swinton Welch and his crew.

Pape felt keen to turn in deed, as well as thought. Despite the red's service rendered, he breathed a prayer that something would happen to the beast-anything drastic enough to end his career as pace setter to the queerest of questioners.