The Big-Town Round-Up Part 10

Presently, during an intermission of the music, he rose and took the rest of those present into his confidence. With rapt eyes on the faraway s.p.a.ce of distant planets he chanted his apologia.

"I believe in the Cosmic Urge, in the Sublimity of my Ego. I follow my Lawless Impulse where the G.o.ds of Desire shall drive. I am what I Am, Son of the Stars, Lord of my Life. With Unleashed Love I answer the psychic beat of Pulse to Pulse, Laughter, Tears and Woe, the keen edge of Pa.s.sion, the Languor of Satiety: all these are life. Open-armed, I embrace them. I drink and a.s.suage my thirst. For Youth is here to-day. To-morrow, alas, it has gone. Now I am. In the Then I shall not be. Kismet!"

The poet's fine frenzy faded. He sank back into his chair, apparently worn out by his vast mental effort.

Clay gave a deep chuckle of delight. This was good.

"Heap much oration," he murmured. "Go to it, old-timer. Steam off again. Git down in yore collar to it."

To miss none of the fun he hitched a little closer on the bench. But the man without the haircut was through effervescing. He began to talk in a lower voice on world politics to admiring friends who were basking in his reflected glory.

"Bourgeois to the core," he announced with finality, speaking of the United States, in answer to a question. "What are the idols we wors.h.i.+p? Law, the chain which binds an enslaved people; thrift, born of childish fear; love of country, which is another name for cra.s.s provincialism. I--I am a Cosmopolite, not an American. Bohemia is my land, and all free souls are my brothers. Why should I get wrinkles because Germany sunk the Lusitania a month or two ago? That's her business, not mine."

Clay leaned forward on a search for information. "Excuse me for b.u.t.tin' in, and me a stranger. But isn't it yore business when she murders American women and children?"

The pasty-faced man looked at him with thinly disguised contempt. "You wouldn't understand if I explained."

"Mebbeso I wouldn't, but you take a whirl at it and I'll listen high, wide, and handsome."

The man in velveteens unexpectedly found himself doing as he was told.

There was a suggestion of compulsion about the gray-blue eyes fastened on his, something in the clamp of the strong jaw that brought him up for a moment against stark reality.

"The intelligentsia of a country knows that there can be no freedom until there is no law. Every man's duty is to disregard duty. So, by faring far on the wings of desire, he helps break down the slavery that binds us. Obey the Cosmic Urge of your soul regardless of where it leads you, young man."

It was unfortunate for the poet of Bohemia that at this precise moment Kitty Mason, dressed in sandals and a lilac-patterned smock, stood before him with a tray of cigarettes asking for his trade. The nave appeal in her soft eyes had its weight with the poet. What is the use of living in Bohemia if one cannot be free to follow impulse? He slipped an arm about the girl and kissed the crimson lips upturned to him.

Kitty started back with a little cry of distress.

The freedom taken by the near-poet was instantly avenged.

A Cosmic Urge beat in the veins of the savage from Arizona. He took the poet's advice and followed his Lawless Impulse where it led.

Across the table a long arm reached. Sinewy fingers closed upon the flowing neckwear of the fat-faced orator and dragged him forward, leaving overturned gla.s.ses in the wake of his course.

The man in velveteens met the eyes of the energetic manhandler and quailed. This brown-faced barbarian looked very much like business.

"Don't you touch me! Don't you dare touch me!" the apostle of anarchy shrilled as the table crashed down. "I'll turn you over to the police!"

Clay jerked him to his feet. Hard knuckles pressed cruelly into the soft throat of the Villager. "Git down on yore ham bones and beg the lady's pardon, Son of the Stars, or I'll sure make you see a whole colony of yore ancestors. Tell her you're a yellow pup, but you don't reckon you'll ever pull a bone like that again. Speak right out in meetin' _p.r.o.nto_ before you b.u.mp into the tears and woe you was makin'

heap much oration about."

The proprietor of the cafe seized the cowpuncher by the arm hurriedly.

"Here, stop that! You get out of the place! I'll not stand for any rough-house." And he murmured something about getting in bad with the police. Clay tried to explain. "Me, I'm not rough-housing. I'm tellin' this here Lord of Life to apologize to the little lady and let her know that he's sorry he was fresh. If he don't I'll most ce'tainly muss up the Sublimity of his Ego."

The companions of the poet rushed forward to protest at the manhandling of their leader. Those in the rear jammed the front ones close to Clay and his captive. The cowpuncher gently but strongly pushed them back.

"Don't get on the prod," he advised in his genial drawl. "The poet he's got an important engagement right now."

A kind of scuffle developed. The proprietor increased it by his hysterical efforts to prevent any trouble. Men joined themselves to the noisy group of which Clay was the smiling center. The excitement increased. Distant corners of the room became the refuge of the women.

Some one struck at the cowpuncher over the heads of those about him.

The ma.s.s of closely packed human beings showed a convulsive activity.

It became suddenly the most popular indoor sport at the Sea Siren to slay this barbarian from the desert who had interfered with the amus.e.m.e.nts of Bohemia.

But Clay took a lot of slaying. In the rough-and-tumble life of the outdoor West he had learned how to look out for his own hand. The copper hair of his strong lean head rose above the tangle of the melee like the bromidic Helmet of Navarre. A reckless light of mirth bubbled in his dare-devil eyes. The very number of the opponents who interfered with each other trying to get at him was a guarantee of safety. The blows showered at him lacked steam and were badly timed as to distance.

The pack rolled across the room, tipped over a table, and deluged an artist and his affinity with hot chocolate before they could escape from the avalanche. Chairs went over like ninepins. Stands collapsed.

Men grunted and shouted advice. Girls screamed. The Sea Siren was being wrecked by a cyclone from the bad lands.

Against the wall the struggling mob brought up with a crash. The velveteen poet caught at "The Weeping Lady" to save himself from going down. She descended from her pedestal into his arms and henceforth waltzed with him as a part of the subsequent proceedings.

The writhing ma.s.s caromed from the wall and revolved toward the musicians. A colored gentleman jumped up in alarm and brandished his instrument as a weapon.

"Keep away from this heah n.i.g.g.ah!" he warned, and simultaneously he aimed the drum of the mandolin at the red head which was the core of the tangle. His aim was deflected and the wood crashed down upon the crown of "The Weeping Lady." For the rest of the two-step it hung like a large ruff around her neck.

Arms threshed wildly to and fro. The focal point of their destination was the figure at the center of the disturbance. Most of the blows found other marks. Four or five men could have demolished Clay.

Fifteen or twenty found it a tough job because they interfered with each other at every turn. They were packed too close for hard hitting.

Clay was not fighting but wrestling. He used his arms to push with rather than to strike blows that counted.

The Arizonan could not afterward remember at exactly what stage of the proceedings the face of Jerry Durand impinged itself on his consciousness. Once, when the swirl of the crowd flung him close to the door, he caught a glimpse of it, tight-lipped and wolf-eyed, turned to him with relentless malice. The gang leader was taking no part in the fight.

The crowd parted. Out of the pack a pair of strong arms and lean broad shoulders ploughed a way for a somewhat damaged face that still carried a debonair smile. With pantherish litheness the Arizonan ducked a swinging blow. The rippling muscles of the plunging shoulders tossed aside a little man in evening dress clawing at him. Yet a moment, and he was outside taking the three steps that led to the street.

Into his laboring lungs he drew deliciously the soft breath of the night. It cooled the fever of his hammered face, was like an icy bath to his hot body. A little dizzy from the blows that had been rained on him, he stood for a moment uncertain which way to go. From his throat there rippled a low peal of joyous mirth. The youth in him delighted in the free-for-all from which he had just emerged.

Then again he became aware of Durand. The man was not alone. He had with him a hulking ruffian whose heavy, hunched shoulders told of strength. There was a hint of the gorilla in the way the long arms hung straight from the shoulders as he leaned forward. Both of the men were watching the cowpuncher as steadily as alley cats do a housefinch.

"h.e.l.l's going to pop in about three seconds," announced Clay to himself.

Silently, without lifting their eyes from their victim for an instant, the two men moved apart to take him on both sides. He clung to the wall, forcing a frontal attack. The laughter had gone out of his eyes now. They had hardened to pinpoints. This time it was no amateur horseplay. He was fighting for his life. No need to tell Clay Lindsay that the New York gangster meant to leave him as good as dead.

The men rushed him. He fought them back with clean hard blows. Jerry bored in like a wild bull. Clay caught him off his balance, using a short arm jolt which had back of it all that twenty-three years of clean outdoors Arizona could give. The gangster hit the pavement hard.

He got up furious and charged again. The Arizonan, busy with the other man, tried to sidestep. An uppercut jarred him to the heel. In that instant of time before his knees began to sag beneath him his brain flashed the news that Durand had struck him on the chin with bra.s.s knucks. He crumpled up and went down, still alive to what was going on, but unable to move in his own defense. Weakly he tried to protect his face and sides from the kicks of a heavy boot. Then he floated balloon-like in s.p.a.ce and vanished into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER VIII

"THE BEST SINGLE-BARRELED SPORT IVER I MET"

Clay drifted back to a world in which the machinery of his body creaked. He turned his head, and a racking pain shot down his neck.

He moved a leg, and every muscle in it ached. From head to foot he was sore.

Voices somewhere in s.p.a.ce, detached from any personal owners.h.i.+p, floated vaguely to him. Presently these resolved themselves into words and sentences.

"We're not to make a pinch, Tim. That's the word he gave me before he left. This is wan av Jerry's private little wars and he don't want a judge askin' a lot of unnicessary questions, y' understand."

"Mother av Moses, if this he-man from h.e.l.l's Hinges hadn't the luck av the Irish, there'd be questions a-plenty asked. He'd be ready for the morgue this blissed minute. Jerry's a murderin' divvle. When I breeze in I find him croakin' this lad proper and he acts like a crazy man when I stand him and Gorilla Dave off till yuh come a-runnin'. At that they may have given the bye more than he can carry. Maybe it'll be roses and a nice black carriage for him yet."