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 passage 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 snatched 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 entitled 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 grass," 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
gratitude.
"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 God, _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 grass 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
Hellroaring days and deeds. With full realization of what the man-master
expected of him, he winged across intervening spaces like a compact
tornado. Pape unlimbered his lariat for a throw calculated to bring down
the red for hog-tying.
While passing 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
spaces 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 encompassed 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-scraper 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 grass 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 Hellroaring.
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 knobs that were
too slippery for climbing, ran the race. Once the brute leader
miscalculated the space 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
circumscribing 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 butte-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 assured 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 butte 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.
Answer to this prayer came with the unexpectedness which all afternoon
had been marked--an answer decisive as the bluff-edge ahead. In his
head-down rush the excited animal had not seen until too late the
precipice that marked trail's end. With a conclusive back flop in
midair, he disappeared.
Hot on his hoofs, just out of rope reach, pounded Polkadot. But he, with
super-instinct, sensed the drop in time to swerve on the shale of the
brink. Frantically he then began a struggle to overcome its shift.
A lake lapped the bottom of the void--one of the several that add their
quiet blues and rippling whites to the color scheme of the park and of a
Sunday furnish exercise for as many enthusiastic "crab-catchers" as
there are flat-bottomed row boats to rent. Pape saw it from cliff's
edge. He did not shiver--time for that if they went down. Flinging from
the saddle, he spread his length upon the ground, digging in with toes
and elbows to increase the weight of the drag made by his body. As
determined to save his equine pal as himself, he threw all the strength
of his arms into a steady pull upon the reins.