The Main Chance Part 23

"Yes; for the club house."

"That's poor golf, to give up just because you're bunkered. And yet my caddy said you were the greatest."

They walked over the course toward the club house, discussing their encounter.

"What hole were you playing when the meek-eyed kine invaded the field?"

"Oh, I was doing very badly. I was only at the fourth, and breaking all my records," said John. "I was glad of a diversion. The gentle footprints of that steer didn't improve the quality of this course," he added, looking about. The ground was soft from recent rains, and the hoofs of the animal had dug into it and marred the turf.

"It's a rule of the club," said Evelyn, "that players must replace their own divots. That can hardly be enforced against that ferocious beast."

"Hardly; but he was easily master of the game while he remained with us." The caddies had recovered the scattered equipment of the players, and were following, discussing the incidents of the busiest quarter of an hour they had known in their golfing experience.

Evelyn turned suddenly upon John.

"Did I look very foolish?" she demanded.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do, Mr. Saxton. A woman always looks ridiculous when she runs." She laughed. "I'm sure I must have looked so. But you couldn't have seen me; you were pretty busy yourself just then."

"Well, of course, if I'm asked about it, I'll have to tell of your sprinting powers; I'm not sure that you didn't lower a record."

"Oh, you're the hero of the occasion! I cut a sorry figure in it. I suppose, though, that as the maiden in distress I'll get a little glory--just a little."

"And your picture in the Sunday papers."

"Horrors, no! But you will appear on your fiery steed swinging the la.s.so."

He threw up his hands.

"That would never do! It would ruin my social reputation."

"In Boston?"

"No; down there they'd like it. It would be proof positive of the woolliness of the West. Golf playing interrupted by a herd of wild cattle--cowboys, la.s.soes--Buffalo Bill effects. Down East they're always looking for Western atmosphere."

"You don't dislike the West very much, do you?" asked Evelyn. "We aren't so bad, do you think?"

"Dislike it?" John looked at her. He had never liked anything so much as this place and hour. "I altogether love it," he declared; and then he was conscious of having used a verb not usual in his vocabulary.

"And so you learned how to do all the cowboy tricks up in Wyoming?"

Evelyn went on. "I wish Annie Warren had seen that!" and she laughed; it seemed to John that she was always laughing.

"I wasn't very much of a cowboy," John said. "That is, I wasn't very good at it." He was an honest soul and did not want Evelyn Porter to think that he was posing as a dramatic and c.o.c.ksure character. "Roping a cow is the easiest thing in the business, and then a tame, foolish, domestic co-bos like that one!"

"Co-bos! If this is likely to happen again they ought to provide a box of salt at every tee."

When Evelyn had gone into the club house, John gathered the caddies into a corner and bestowed a dollar on each of them and promised them other bounty if they maintained silence touching the events of the afternoon in which he had partic.i.p.ated. They and the drovers were the only witnesses besides the more active partic.i.p.ants, and he would have to take chances with the drovers. Then, having bribed the boys, he also threatened them. He was walking across the veranda when he met Evelyn, whose horse he had already called for.

"If you're not driving, I'd be glad to have you share my cart."

"Thanks, very much," said John. "The street car would be rather a heavy slump after this afternoon's gaiety."

"I spoiled your game and endangered your social reputation; I can hardly do less."

John thought that she could hardly do more. He had known men whom girls drove in their traps, but he had never expected to be enrolled in their cla.s.s. It was pleasant, just once, not to be walking in the highway and taking the dust of other people's wheels--pleasant to find himself tolerated by a pretty girl. She was prettier than any he had ever seen at cla.s.s day, or in the grand stands at football games, or on the observation trains at New London, when he had gone alone, or with a sober college cla.s.smate, to see the boat races.

Deep currents of happiness coursed through him which were not all because of the October sunlight and the laughing talk of Evelyn Porter.

He had that sensation of pleasure, always a joy to a man of conscience, which is his self-approval for labor well performed. He had worked faithfully ever since he had come to Clarkson; he had traveled much, visiting the properties which the Neponset Trust Company had confided to his care; and he had already so adjusted them that they earned enough to pay taxes and expenses. He had effected a few sales, at prices which the Neponset's clients were glad to accept. He had never been so happy in his work. He had rather grudgingly taken this afternoon off; but here he was, laughing with Evelyn Porter over an amusing adventure that had befallen them, and which, as they talked of it and kept referring to it, seemed to establish between them a real comrades.h.i.+p. He wondered what Raridan would say, and he resolved that he would not tell him of the hasty termination of his golfing; probably Miss Porter would prefer not to have the incident mentioned. He even thought that he would not tell Raridan that she had driven him to town. It was not for him to interpose between Warry Raridan, a man who had brought him the sweetest friends.h.i.+p he had ever known, and the girl whom fate had clearly appointed Warry to marry.

As they turned into the main highway leading townward, a trap came rapidly toward them.

"Miss Margrave's trap," said Evelyn, as they espied it.

The figures were not yet distinguishable, though Mabel's belongings were always unmistakable.

"Then that must be one of 'The Men'?"

John was angry at himself the moment he had spoken, for as the trap came nearer there was no doubt of the ident.i.ty of Mabel's companion. It was Warry. Evelyn bowed and smiled as they pa.s.sed. Mabel gave the quick nod that she was introducing in Clarkson; Saxton and Raridan lifted their hats.

"Miss Margrave has a lot of style; don't you think so, Mr. Saxton?"

"Apparently, yes; but I don't know her, you know;" and he wondered.

Warry Raridan's days were not all lucky. He had been keeping his office with great fidelity of late. He had even found a client or two; and he had determined to rebuke his critics by giving proof of his possession of those staying qualities which they were always denying him. He had been hard at work in his office this afternoon, when a note came to him from Mabel, who begged that he would drive with her to the Country Club.

He had already thought of telephoning to Evelyn to ask her if she would not go with him, but had dropped the idea when he remembered his new resolutions; it was for Evelyn that he was at work now. But Mabel was a friendly soul, and perfectly harmless. It certainly looked very pleasant outside; the next citation in the authorities he was consulting,--Sweetbriar _vs._ O'Neill, 84 N. Y., 26,--would lead him over to the law library, which was a gloomy hole with wretched ventilation. So he had given himself a vacation, with the best grace and excuse in the world.

CHAPTER XVII

WARRY'S REPENTANCE

Saxton dined alone at the Clarkson Club, as he usually did, and went afterward to his office, which he still maintained in the Clarkson National Building. He had been studying the report of an engineering expert on a Colorado irrigation scheme and he was trying to master and correct its weaknesses. As he hung over the blue-prints and the pages of figures that lay before him, the flas.h.i.+ng red wheels of Mabel Margrave's trap kept interfering; he wished Warry had not turned up just as he had.

He thought he understood why his friend had been so occupied in his office of late; but whether Warry and Evelyn Porter were engaged or not, Warry ought to find better use for his talents than in amusing Mabel Margrave. John lighted his pipe to help with the blue-prints, and while he drew it into cozy accord with himself, the elevator outside discharged a pa.s.senger; he heard the click of the wire door as the cage receded, followed by Raridan's quick step in the hall, and Warry broke in on him. "Well, you're the limit! I'd like to know what you mean by roosting up here and not staying in your room where a white man can find you." He stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his top-coat, and glared at Saxton, who lay back in his chair and bit his pipe. "I wish by all the G.o.ds I could rattle you once and shake you out of your d.a.m.ned Harvard aplomb!" Raridan did not usually invoke the G.o.ds, and he rarely d.a.m.ned anything or anybody.

"That's a very pretty coat you have on, Mr. Raridan. It must be nice to be a plutocrat and wear clothes like that."

"The beastly thing doesn't fit," growled Raridan, throwing himself into a chair. "I don't fit, and my clothes don't fit, and--"

"And you're having a fit. You'd better see a nerve specialist." Warry was pounding a cigarette on the back of his case.

"I say, Saxton," he said calmly.

"Well! Has Vesuvius subsided?" Saxton sat up in his chair and watched Raridan breaking matches wastefully in a nervous effort to strike a light.