Love stories; Mystery fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Ranchers -- Fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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