His appeal to the New Yorkers, started in words and finished in gesture, consigned the man injured within their gates—had they had any gates—to their mercy. Ordering the puncher of the tactical error to follow, he lofted into his own saddle and was off in pursuit of his imported beef on the hoof. Scarcely three minutes later—certainly not more—Mrs. Helene Sturgis stood deserted upon her front steps, staring up the world-famed highway after the strangest chase which she, at least, had witnessed in its history. She was all a-tremble from the various and violent protests she had shrilled—to Jane, to Harfy, to Irene. Her hands were clutched together in remonstrance over what had been. Her face was drawn with terror over what was. Keen was her dread of what might be. A prairie steer scarcely could run amuck in the heart of New York without spreading more or less havoc. And the responsibility—would her own innocent child, through participation in the pursuit, be forced to share in that? On the sidewalk below, the injured puncher was feeling his leg, the pain wincing his weathered face. She heard some one come out the door above. “Jasper?” “Yes, madame.” She had the butler help the man into the house and herself followed up the steps. At the top she turned; shivered in the warm spring air; lifting hand to brow, again strained her gaze up the Avenue. That her niece, whom she expected always to be dependable, should have caught the epidemic wildness of this Westerner—that Jane should have leaped her horse and started at top speed after him! And that Mills Harford, after following and overtaking her, should prove too afraid of her temper forcefully to stop her! Worst of all that her own Irene should join the disgraceful and dangerous street race and actually outrun the other two! A hand against a heart heavy with foreboding the matron pressed as she looked.... The cow-creature—it was swerving from the straight-away.... Was it about to—Yes, it _did_ clear the park wall at a bound.... The two hurdling after probably were Pape and the puncher. A mother’s hope that the next horse to top the hazard might be Jane’s died in a groan as she caught the red flash of the roses to which her daughter had clung through all the excitement of the start.... Would she land safely on the other side—this young lady of to-day who once had been her babe-at-breast? Evidently Jane, too late to save the situation, but in good time to save herself a possible fall, had come into some degree of discretion. She and Mills were turning in at a convenient gate. What was it the Why-Not person had said? “Nothing—positively nothing is impossible.”... Perhaps it would do no harm to go inside and pray. There was nothing else a woman of yesterday could do. It might help to bring them all back alive and unbroken as to bones. These modern young folks, what were they coming to—more appropriately, where were they going? CHAPTER XXII—BEEF ON THE HOOF