Colin Whitford went straight to his daughter.

"Honey, this man Durand has just brought me a story about Clarendon. He says he paid him to get Clay into trouble at the Omnium Club in order to discredit him with us."

"Oh, Dad!"

"I'm going to see Clarendon. If it's true I don't want you to see him again. Authorize me to break the engagement for you."

They talked it over for a few minutes. Beatrice slipped the engagement ring from her finger and gave it to her father with a sigh.

"You can't do wrong without paying for it, Dad."

"That's right. Bromfield—"

"I'm not thinking of Clarendon. I'm thinking about me. I feel as if I had been dragged in the dust," she said wearily.



CHAPTER XXXVII

ON THE CARPET

The question at issue was not whether Beatrice would break with her fiance, but in what way it should be done. If her father found him guilty of what Durand had said, he was to dismiss him brusquely; if not, Beatrice wanted to disengage herself gently and with contrition.

Whitford summoned Bromfield to his office where the personal equation would be less pronounced. He put to him plainly the charge made by Jerry and demanded an answer.

The younger man was between the devil and the deep sea. He would have lied cheerfully if that would have availed. But a denial of the truth of Durand's allegations would be a challenge for him to prove his story. He would take it to the papers and spread it broadcast. From that hour Clarendon Bromfield would be an outcast in the city. Society would repudiate him. His clubs would cast him out. All the prestige that he had built up by a lifetime of effort would be swept away.

No lie could save him. The only thing he could do was to sugarcoat the truth. He set about making out a case for himself as skillfully as he could.

"I'm a man of the world, Mr. Whitford," he explained. "When I meet an ugly fact I look it in the face. This man Lindsay was making a great impression on you and Bee. Neither of you seemed able quite to realize his—his deficiencies, let us say. I felt myself at a disadvantage with him because he's such a remarkably virile young man and he constantly reminded you both of the West you love. It seemed fair to all of us to try him out—to find out whether at bottom he was a decent fellow or not. So I laid a little trap to find out."

Bromfield was sailing easily into his version of the affair. It was the suavest interpretation of his conduct that he had been able to prepare, one that put him in the role of a fair-minded man looking to the best interests of all.

"Not the way Durand tells it," answered the miner bluntly. "He says you paid him a thousand dollars to arrange a trap to catch Lindsay."

"Either he misunderstood me or he's distorting the facts," claimed the clubman with an assumption of boldness.

"That ought to be easy to prove. We'll make an appointment with him for this afternoon and check up by the dictagraph."

Bromfield laughed uneasily. "Is that necessary, Mr. Whitford? Surely my word is good. I have the honor to tell you that I did nothing discreditable."

"It would have been good with me a week ago," replied the Coloradoan gravely. "But since then—well, you know what's happened since then. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Clarendon, but I may as well say frankly that I can't accept your account without checking up on it. That, however, isn't quite the point. Durand has served notice that unless we call off the prosecution of him he's going to ruin you. Are you satisfied to have us tell him he can go to the devil?"

"I wouldn't go that far." Bromfield felt for his words carefully. "Maybe in cold type what I said might be misunderstood. I wouldn't like to push the fellow too far."

Whitford leaned back in his swivel chair and looked steadily at the man to whom his daughter was engaged. "I'm going to the bottom of this, Bromfield. That fellow Durand ought to go to the penitentiary. We're gathering the evidence to send him there. Now he tells me he'll drag you down to ruin with him it he goes. Come clean. Can he do it?"

"Well, I wouldn't say—"

"Don't evade, Bromfield. Yes or no."

"I suppose he can." The words came sulkily after a long pause.

"You did hire him to destroy Lindsay's reputation."

"Lindsay had no business here in New York. He was disturbing Bee's peace of mind. I wanted to get rid of him and send him home."

"So you paid a crooked scoundrel who hated him to murder his reputation."

"That's not what I call it," defended the clubman.

"It doesn't matter what you call it. The fact stands."

"I told him explicitly—again and again—that there was to be no violence. I intended only to show him up. I had a right to do it."

Whitford got up and walked up and down the room. He felt like laying hands on this well-dressed scamp and throwing him out of the office. He tasted something of his daughter's sense of degradation at ever having been connected with a man of so little character. The experience was a bitterly humiliating one to him. For Bee was, in his opinion, the cleanest, truest little thoroughbred under heaven. The only questionable thing he had ever known her to do was to engage herself to this man.

Colin came to a halt in front of the other.

"We've got to protect you, no matter how little you deserve it. I can't have Bee's name dragged into all the papers of the country. The case against Durand will have to be dropped. He's lost his power anyhow and he'll never get it back."

"Then it doesn't matter much whether he's tried or not."

That phase of the subject Whitford did not pursue. He began to feel in his vest pocket for something.

"Of course you understand that we're through with you, Bromfield. Neither Beatrice nor I care to have anything more to do with you."

"I don't see why," protested Bromfield. "As a man of the world—"

"If you don't see the reason I'm not able to explain it to you." Whitford's fingers found what they were looking for. He fished a ring from his pocket and put it on the desk. "Beatrice asked me to give you this."

"I don't think that's fair. If she wants to throw me over she ought to tell me her reasons herself."

"She's telling them through me. I don't want to be more explicit unless you force me."

"Of course I'm not good enough. I know that. No man's good enough for a good woman. But I'm as good as other fellows. We don't claim to be angels. New York doesn't sprout wings."

"I'm not going to argue this with you. And I'm not going to tell you what I think of you beyond saying that we're through with you. The less said about it the better. Man, don't you see I don't want to have any more talk about it? The engagement was a mistake in the first place. Bee never loved you. Even if you'd been what we thought you, it wouldn't have done. She's lucky to have found out in time."

"Is this a business rupture, too, Mr. Whitford?"

"Just as you say about that, Bromfield. As an investor in the Bird Cage you're entitled to the same consideration that any other stockholder is. Since you're the second largest owner you've a right to recognition on the board of directors. I'm not mixing my private affairs with business."

"Good of you, Mr. Whitford." The younger man spoke with a hint of gentle sarcasm. He flicked a speck of dirt from his coat-sleeve and returned to the order of the day. "I understand then that you'll drop the case against Durand on condition that he'll surrender anything he may have against me and agree to keep quiet."

"Yes. I think I can speak for Lindsay. So far most of the evidence is in our hands. It is not yet enough to convict him. We can probably arrange it with the district attorney to have the thing dropped. You can make your own terms with Durand. I'd rather not have anything to do with it myself."

Bromfield rose, pulled on the glove he had removed, nodded good-bye without offering to shake hands, and sauntered out of the office. There was a look on his face the mining man did not like. It occurred to Whitford that Clarendon, now stripped of self-respect by the knowledge of the regard in which they held him, was in a position to strike back hard if he cared to do so. The right to vote the proxies of the small stockholders of the Bird Cage Company had been made out in his name at the request of the president of the corporation.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

A CONVERSATION ABOUT STOCK

The case against Durand was pigeon-holed by the district attorney without much regret. All through the underworld where his influence had been strong, it was known that Jerry had begged off. He was discredited among his following and was politically a down-and-outer. But he knew too much to permit him to be dragged into court safely. With his back to the wall he might tell of many shady transactions implicating prominent people. There were strong influences which did not want him pressed too hard. The charge remained on the docket, but it was set back from term to term and never brought to trial.

Colin Whitford found his attention pretty fully absorbed by his own affairs. Bromfield had opened a fight against him for control of the Bird Cage Company. The mine had been developed by the Coloradoan from an unlikely prospect into a well-paying concern. It was the big business venture of his life and he took a strong personal interest in running it. Now, because of Bromfield's intention to use for his own advantage the proxies made out in his name, he was likely to lose control. With Bromfield in charge the property might be wrecked before he could be ousted.

"Dad's worrying," Beatrice told Lindsay. "He's afraid he'll lose control of the mine. There's a fight on against him."

"What for? I thought yore father was a mighty competent operator. Don't the stockholders know when they're well off?"

She looked at him enigmatically. "Some one he trusted has turned out a traitor. That happens occasionally in business, you know."

It was from Colin himself that Clay learned the name of the traitor.

"It's that fellow Bromfield," he explained. "He's the secretary and second largest stockholder in the company. The annual election is to be to-morrow afternoon. He's got me where the wool's short. I was fool enough to ask the smaller stockholders to make out their proxies in his name. At that time he was hand in glove with us. Now I'm up against it. He's going to name the board of directors and have himself made president."

Clay ventured on thin ice. The name of Bromfield had not been mentioned to him before in the last twenty-four hours by either Beatrice or her father. "Surely Bromfield wouldn't want to offend you."

"That's exactly what he would want to do."

"But—"

"He's got his reasons."

"Isn't there some way to stop him, then?"

"I've been getting a wrinkle trying to figure out one. I'd certainly be in your debt if you could show me a way."

"When is the election?"

"At three o'clock."

"Where?"

"At the company offices."

"Perhaps if I talked with Bromfield—"

Whitford laughed shortly. "I'd talk an arm off him if it would do any good. But it won't. He's out for revenge."

Clay's eyes alighted swiftly on the older man. They asked gravely a question and found an answer that set his heart singing. Beatrice had broken her engagement with Bromfield.

"He won't do, Clay. He's off color." Whitford did a bit of mental acrobatics. "Why do you suppose he took you to Maddock's?"

Again Lindsay's appraising gaze rested on his friend. "I've never worked that out to my satisfaction. It wasn't the kind of place he would be likely to go for pleasure. But I don't think he'd arranged a trap for me, if that's what you mean. It doesn't look reasonable that he would want me killed."

Whitford told him all he knew about the affair. The story told him banished any doubts Clay may have had about a certain step he had begun during the last few minutes to hold in consideration. It did more. It hardened a fugitive impulse to a resolution. Bromfield was fair game for him.

It was a little after eleven o'clock next morning when the cattleman walked into an apartment house for bachelors, took the elevator, and rang the bell at Bromfield's door.

Clarendon, fresh from the hands of his valet, said he was glad to see Lindsay, but did not look it. He offered his guest a choice of liquors and selected for himself a dry martini. Cigars and cigarettes were within reach on a tabouret.

Clay discovered that one difficulty he had expected to meet did not complicate the problem. The valet had left to select the goods for half a dozen custom-made shirts, Bromfield explained apologetically, apropos of the lack of service. He would not return till late in the afternoon.

"I've come to see about that Bird Cage business, Mr. Bromfield," his visitor explained. "I've been millin' it over in my mind, and I thought I'd put the proposition up to you the way it looks to me."

Bromfield's eyebrows lifted. His face asked with supercilious politeness what the devil business it was of his.

"Mr. Whitford has put in twenty years of his life building up the Bird Cage into a good property. It's a one-man mine. He made it out of a hole in the ground, developed it, expanded it, gave it a market value. He's always protected the stockholders and played the game square with them. Don't it look like he ought to stay in control of it?"

"Did he send you here to tell me that?"

"No, he didn't. But he's gettin' along in years, Bromfield. It don't look hardly right to me for you to step in and throw him out. What do you think about it, yourself?"

The clubman flushed with anger. "I think that it's damned impertinent of you to come here meddling in my business. I might have expected it. You've always been an impertinent meddler."

"Mebbeso," agreed Clay serenely, showing no surprise at this explosion. "But I'm here. And I put a question. Shall I ask it again?"

"No need. I'm going to take what the law allows me—what I and my friends have bought and paid for in the open market. The more it hurts Whitford the better I'll be pleased," answered Bromfield, his manner of cynical indifference swept away by gathering rage. The interference of this "bounder" filled him with a passion of impotent hate.

"Is that quite correct? Did you buy control in the market? In point of fact, aren't you holdin' a bunch of proxies because Whitford wrote and asked the stockholders to sign them for you to vote? What you intend doing is a moral fraud, no matter what its legal aspect is. You'd be swindling the very stockholders you claim to represent, as well as abusing the confidence of Whitford."

"What you think isn't of the least importance to me, Mr. Lindsay. If you're here merely to offer me your advice, I suppose I shall now have regretfully to say good-day." The New Yorker rose, a thin lip smile scarcely veiling his anger at this intruder who had brought his hopes to nothing.

"I reckon I'll not hurry off, Mr. Bromfield," Clay replied easily. "You might think I was mad at you. I'll stick around awhile and talk this over."

"Unfortunately I have an engagement," retorted the other icily.

"When?"

"I really think, Mr. Lindsay, that is my business."

"I'm makin' it mine," said Clay curtly.

Bromfield stared. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said it was mine too. You see I bought a coupla shares of Bird Cage stock yesterday. I'd hate to see Whitford ousted from control. I've got confidence in him."

"It's your privilege to vote that stock this afternoon. At least it would be if it had been transferred to you on the books. I'll vote my stock according to my own views."

"I wonder," murmured Clay aloud.

"What's that?" snapped Bromfield.

"I was just figurin' on what would happen if you got sick and couldn't attend that annual meeting this afternoon," drawled the Westerner. "I reckon mebbe some of the stockholders you've got lined up would break away and join Whitford."

The New Yorker felt a vague alarm. What idea did this fellow have in the back of his head. Did he intend to do bodily violence to him? Without any delay Bromfield reached for the telephone.

The large brown hand of the Westerner closed over his.

"I'm talkin' to you, Mr. Bromfield. It's not polite for you to start 'phoning, not even to the police, whilst we're still engaged in conversation."

"Don't you try to interfere with me," said the man who paid the telephone bill. "I'll not submit to such an indignity."

"I'm not the only one that interferes. You fixed up quite an entertainment for me the other night, didn't you? Wouldn't you kinda call that interferin' some? I sure ought to comb yore hair for it."

Bromfield made a hasty decision to get out. He started for the door. Clay traveled in that direction too. They arrived simultaneously. Clarendon backed away. The Arizonan locked the door and pocketed the key.

His host grew weakly violent. From Whitford he had heard a story about two men in a locked room that did not reassure him now. One of the men had been this cattleman. The other—well, he had suffered. "Let me out! I'll not stand this! You can't bully me!" he cried shrilly.

"Don't pull yore picket-pin, Bromfield," advised Lindsay. "I've elected myself boss of the rodeo. What I say goes. You'll save yorese'f a heap of worry if you make up yore mind to that right away."

"What do you want? What are you trying to do? I'm not a barroom brawler like Durand. I don't intend to fight with you."

"You've ce'tainly relieved my mind," murmured Clay lazily. "What's yore own notion of what I ought to do to you, Bromfield? You invited me out as a friend and led me into a trap after you had fixed it up. Wouldn't a first-class thrashin' with a hawsswhip be about right?"

Bromfield turned pale. "I've got a weak heart," he faltered.

"I'll say you have," agreed Clay. "It's pumpin' water in place of blood right now, I'll bet. Did you ever have a real honest-to-God lickin' when you was a boy?"

The New Yorker knew he was helpless before this clear-eyed, supple athlete who walked like a god from Olympus. One can't lap up half a dozen highballs a day for an indeterminate number of years, without getting flabby, nor can he spend himself in feeble dissipations and have reserves of strength to call upon when needed. The tongue went dry in his mouth. He began to swallow his Adam's apple.

"I'm not well to-day," he said, almost in a whisper.

"Let's look at this thing from all sides," went on Clay cheerfully. "If we decide by a majority of the voting stock—and I'm carryin' enough proxies so that I've got control—that you'd ought to have a whalin', why, o' course, there's nothin' to it but get to business and make a thorough job."

"Maybe I didn't do right about Maddock's."

"No mebbe about that. You acted like a yellow hound."

"I'm sorry. I apologize."

"I don't reckon I can use apologies. I might make a bargain with you."

"I'll be glad to make any reasonable bargain."

"How'd this do? I'll vote my stock and proxies in the Bromfield Punishment Company, Limited, against the whalin', and you vote yore stock and proxies in the Bird Cage Company to return the present board and directorate."

"That's coercion."

"Well, so it is."

"The law—"

"Did you go hire a lawyer for an opinion before you paid Durand to do me up?"

"You've got no right to hold me a prisoner here to help Whitford."

"All right, I won't. I'll finish my business with you and when I'm through, you can go to the annual meetin'—if you feel up to travelin' that far."

"I'll give you a thousand dollars to let me alone."

"That'd be a thousand and fifty you had given me, wouldn't it?" returned Lindsay gayly.

Tears of vexation stood in Bromfield's eyes. "All right. Let me go. I'll be fair to Whitford and arrange a deal with him."

"Get the stockholders who're with you on the 'phone and tell 'em to vote their stock as Whitford thinks best. Get Whitford and tell him the fight's off."

"If I do, will you let me go?"

"If you don't, we'll return to the previous question—the annual meeting of the Bromfield Punishment Company, Limited."

Bromfield got busy with the telephone.

When he had finished. Clay strolled over to a bookcase, cast his eyes over the shelves, and took out a book. It was "David Harum." He found an easy-chair, threw a leg over one arm, and presently began to chuckle.

"Are you going to keep me here all day?" asked his host sulkily.

"Only till about four o'clock. We're paired, you and me, so we'll both stay away from the election. Why don't you pick you a good book and enjoy yoreself? There's a lot of A 1 readin' in that case over there. It'll sure improve yore mind."

Clarendon ground his teeth impotently.

His guest continued to grin over the good stories of the old horse-trader. When he closed the book at last, he had finished it. His watch told him that it was twenty minutes to five. Bromfield's man was at the door trying to get in. He met Lindsay going out.

"No, I can't stay to tea to-day, Mr. Bromfield," the Arizonan was saying, a gleam of mirth in his eyes. "No use urging me. Honest, I've really got to be going. Had a fine time, didn't we? So long."

Bromfield used bad language.



CHAPTER XXXIX

IN CENTRAL PARK

Johnnie burst into the kitchen beaming. "We're gonna p'int for the hills, Kitty. Clay he's had a letter callin' him home."

"When are you going?"

"Thursday. Ain't that great?"

She nodded, absently. Her mind was on another tack already. "Johnnie, I'm going to ask Miss Whitford here for dinner to-night."

"Say, you ce'tainly get the best notions, honeybug," he shouted.

"Do you think she'll come?"

"Sure she'll come."

"I'll fix up the bestest dinner ever was, and maybe—"

Her conclusion wandered off into the realm of unvoiced hopes, but her husband knew what it was as well as it she had phrased it.

When Clay came home that evening he stopped abruptly at the door. The lady of his dreams was setting the table in the dining-room and chatting gayly with an invisible Kitty in the kitchen. Johnnie was hovering about her explaining some snapshots of Clay he had gathered.

"Tha's the ol' horn-toad winnin' the ropin' championship at Tucson. He sure stepped some that day," the Runt boasted.

The delicate fragrance of the girl's personality went to Clay's head like wine as he stepped forward and shook hands. To see her engaged in this intimate household task at his own table quickened his pulse and sent a glow through him.

"You didn't know you had invited me to dinner, did you?" she said, little flags a-flutter in her cheeks.

They had a gay dinner, and afterward a pleasant hour before Clay took her home.

Neither of them was in a hurry. They walked through Central Park in the kindly darkness, each acutely sensitive to the other's presence.

Her gayety and piquancy had given place to a gentle shyness. Clay let the burden of conversation fall upon her. He knew that he had come to his hour of hours and his soul was wrapped in gravity.

She had never before known a man like him, a personality so pungent, so dynamic. He was master of himself. He ran a clean race. None of his energy was wasted in futile dissipation. One could not escape from his strength, and she had already discovered that she did not want to escape it. If she gave herself to him, it might be for her happiness or it might not. She must take her chance of that. But it had come to her that a woman's joy is to follow her heart—and her heart answered "Here" when he called.

She too sensed what was coming, and the sex instinct in her was on tiptoe in flight. She was throbbing with excitement. Her whole being longed to hear what he had to tell her. Yet she dodged for a way of escape. Silences were too significant, too full-pulsed. She made herself talk. It did not much matter about what.

"Why didn't you tell us that it was Mr. Bromfield who struck down that man Collins? Why did you let us think you did it?" she queried.

"Well, folks in New York don't know me. What was the use of gettin' him in bad?"

"You know that wasn't the reason. You did it because—" She stopped in the midst of the sentence. It had occurred to her that this subject was more dangerous even than silence.

"I did it because he was the man you were goin' to marry," he said.

They moved side by side through the shadows. In the faint light he could make out the fine line of her exquisite throat. After a moment she spoke. "You're a good friend, Clay. It was a big thing to do. I don't know anybody else except Dad that would have done it for me."

"You don't know anybody else that loves you as much as I do."

It was out at last, quietly and without any dramatics. A flash of soft eyes darted at him, then veiled the shining tenderness beneath long lashes. She paced a little faster, chin up, nerves taut.

"I've had an attack of common sense," he went on, and in his voice was a strength both audacious and patient. "I thought at first I couldn't hope to win you because of your fortune and what it had done for you. Even when I knew you liked me I felt it wouldn't be fair for me to ask you. I couldn't offer you the advantages you'd had. But I've changed my mind. I've been watching what money does to yore friends. It makes them soft. They flutter around like butterflies. They're paupers—a good many of them—because they don't pay their way. A man's a tramp if he doesn't saw wood for his breakfast. I don't want you to get like that, and if you stay here long enough you sure will. It's in my heart that if you'll come with me we'll live."

In the darkness she made a rustling movement toward him. A little sob welled up in her throat as her hands lifted to him. "Oh, Clay! I've fought against it. I didn't want to, but—I love you. Oh, I do love you!"

He took her lissom young body in his arms. Her lips lifted to his.

Presently they walked forward slowly. Clay had never seen her more lovely and radiant, though tears still clung to the outskirts of her joy.

"We're going to live—oh, every how!" she cried to the stars, her lover's hand in hers.



CHAPTER XL

CLAY PLAYS SECOND FIDDLE

Johnnie felt that Kitty's farewell dinner had gone very well. It was her first essay as a hostess, and all of them had enjoyed themselves. But, so far as he could see, it had not achieved the results for which they had been hoping.

Clay came home late and next morning was full of plans about leaving. He discussed the packing and train schedules and affairs at the B-in-a-Box. But of Beatrice Whitford he made not even a casual mention.

"Two more days and we'll hit the trail for good old Tucson," he said cheerfully.

"Y'betcha, by jollies," agreed his bandy-legged shadow.

None the less Johnnie was distressed. He believed that his friend was concealing an aching heart beneath all this attention to impending details. As a Benedict he considered it his duty to help the rest of the world get married too. A bachelor was a boob. He didn't know what was best for him. Same way with a girl. Clay was fond of Miss Beatrice, and she thought a heap of him. You couldn't fool Johnnie. No, sirree! Well, then?

Mooning on the sad plight of these two friends who were too coy or too perverse to know what was best for them, Johnnie suddenly slapped himself a whack on the thigh. A brilliant idea had flashed into his cranium. It proceeded to grow until he was like to burst with it.

When Lindsay rose from breakfast he was mysteriously beckoned into another room. Johnnie outlined sketchily and with a good deal of hesitation what he had in mind. Clay's eyes danced with that spark of mischief his friends had learned to recognize as a danger signal.

"You're some sure-enough wizard, Johnnie," he admitted. "I expect you're right about girls not knowin' their own minds. You've had more experience with women than I have. If you say the proper thing to do is to abduct Miss Whitford and take her with us, why—"

"That's whatever. She likes you a heap more than she lets on to you. O' course it would be different if I wasn't married, but Kitty she can chaperoon Miss Beatrice. It'll be all accordin' to Hoyle."

The cattleman gazed at the puncher admiringly. "Don't rush me off my feet, old-timer," he said gayly. "Gimme a coupla hours to think of it, and I'll let you know what I'll do. This is real sudden, Johnnie. You must 'a' been a terror with the ladies when you was a bachelor. Me, I never kidnaped one before."

"Onct in a while you got to play like you're gonna treat 'em rough," said Mr. Green sagely, blushing a trifle nevertheless.

"All right. I'll let you engineer this if I can make up my mind to it after I've milled it over. I can see you know what you're doin'."

When Johnnie returned from a telephone call at the office two hours later, Kitty had a suspicion he was up to something. He bubbled mystery so palpably that her curiosity was piqued. But the puncher for once was silent as a clam. He did not intend to get Kitty into trouble if his plan miscarried. Moreover, he had an intuition that if she knew what was under way she would put her small, competent foot through the middle of the project.

The conspirators arranged details. Johnnie was the brains of the kidnaping. Clay bought the tickets and was to take charge of the prisoner after the train was reached. They decided it would be best to get a stateroom for the girl.

"We wantta make it as easy as we can for her," said Johnnie. "O' course it's all for her own good, but we don't figure to treat her noways but like the princess she is."

"Yes," agreed Clay humbly.

According to programme, carefully arranged by Johnnie, Beatrice rode down to the train with him and Kitty in their taxicab. She went on board for the final good-byes and chatted with them in their section.

The chief conspirator was as easy as a toad in a hot skillet. Now that it had come down to the actual business of taking this young woman with them against her will, he began to weaken. His heart acted very strangely, but he had to go through with it.

"C-can I see you a minute in the next car, Miss Beatrice?" he asked, his voice quavering.

Miss Whitford lifted her eyebrows, but otherwise expressed no surprise.

"Certainly, Johnnie."

"What do you want to see Miss Whitford about, Johnnie?" his spouse asked. There were times when Kitty mistrusted Johnnie's judgment. She foresaw that he might occasionally need a firm hand.

"Oh, nothin' much. Tell you about it later, honey." The kidnaper mopped the perspiration from his forehead. At that moment he wished profoundly that this brilliant idea of his had never been born.

He led the way down the aisle into the next sleeper and stopped at one of the staterooms. Shakily he opened the door and stood aside for her to pass first.

"You want me to go in here?" she asked.

"Yes'm."

Beatrice stepped in. Johnnie followed.

Clay rose from the lounge and said, "Glad to see you, Miss Whitford."

"Did you bring me here to say good-bye, Johnnie?" asked Beatrice.

The Runt's tongue stuck to the root of his mouth, His eyes appealed dumbly to Clay.

"Better explain to Miss Whitford," said Clay, passing the buck.

"It's for yore good, Miss Beatrice," stammered the villain who had brought her. "We—we—I—I done brought you here to travel home with us."

"You—what?"

Before her slender, outraged dignity Johnnie wilted. "Kitty, she—she can chaperoon you. It's all right, ma'am. I—we—I didn't go for to do nothin' that wasn't proper. We thought—"

"You mean that you brought me here expecting me to go along with you—without my consent—without a trunk—without—"

Clay took charge of the kidnaping. "Johnnie, if I were you I'd light a shuck back to the other car. I see I'll have to treat this lady rough as you advised."

Johnnie wanted to expostulate, to deny that he had ever given such counsel, to advise an abandonment of the whole project. But his nerve unexpectedly failed him. He glanced helplessly at Clay and fled.

He was called upon the carpet immediately on joining Kitty.

"What are you up to, Johnnie? I'm not going to have you make a goose of yourself if I can help it. And where's Mr. Lindsay? You said he'd meet us here."

"Clay, he's in the next car."

"You took Miss Beatrice in there to say good-bye to him?"

"No—she—she's goin' along with us."

"Going along with us? What do you mean, Johnnie Green?"

He told her his story, not at all cheerfully. His bold plan looked very different now from what it had two days before.

Already the chant of the wheels had begun. The train was in the sub-Hudson darkness of the tunnel.

Kitty rose with decision. "Well, of all the foolishness I ever heard, Johnnie, this is the limit. I'm going right to that poor girl. You've spoiled everything between you. She'll hate Mr. Lindsay for the rest of her life. How could he be so stupid?"

Her husband followed her, crestfallen. He wanted to weep with chagrin.

Beatrice opened the door of the stateroom. She had taken off her hat and Clay was hanging it on a hook.

"Come in," she said cordially, but faintly.

Kitty did not quite understand. The atmosphere was less electric than she had expected. She stopped, taken aback at certain impressions that began to register themselves on her brain.

"Johnnie was tellin' me—"

"About how he abducted me. Yes. Wasn't it dear of him?"

"But—"

"I've decided to make the best of it and go along."

"I—your father, Mr. Whitford—" Kitty bogged down.

Beatrice blushed. Little dimples came out with her smile. "I think I'd better let Clay explain."

"We were married two days ago, Kitty."

"What!" shouted the Runt.

"We intended to ask you both to the wedding, but when Johnnie proposed to abduct Miss Whitford, I thought it a pity not to let him. So we—"

Johnnie fell on him and beat him with both fists. "You daw-goned ol' scalawag! I never will help you git married again!" he shouted gleefully.

Clay sat down on the seat and gave way to mirth. He rocked with glee. Beatrice began to chuckle. She, too, yielded to laughter. Kitty, and then Johnnie, added to the chorus.

"Oh, Johnnie—Johnnie—you'll be the death of me!" cried Clay. "It'll never be a dull old world so long as you stay a bandit."

"Did you really advise him to beat me, Johnnie?" asked Beatrice sweetly. "I never would have guessed you were such a cave man."

Johnnie flamed to the roots of his hair. "Now, ma'am, if you're gonna believe that—"

Beatrice repented and offered him her hand.

"We'll not believe anything of you that isn't good? even if you did want to kidnap me," she said.



CHAPTER XLI

THE NEW DAY

The slapping of the wind against the tent awakened Beatrice. She could hear it soughing gently through the branches of the live oaks. An outflung arm discovered Clay missing.

Presently she rose, sleep not yet brushed fully from her eyes, drew the tent flaps together modestly under her chin, and looked out upon a world which swam in the enchanted light of a dawn primeval. The eastern sky was faintly pink with the promise of a coming sun. The sweet, penetrating lilt of the lark flung greeting at her.

Her questing glance found Clay, busy over the mesquite fire upon which he was cooking breakfast. She watched him move about, supple and light and strong, and her heart lifted with sheer joy of the mate she had chosen. He was such a man among men, this clear-eyed, bronzed husband of a week. He was so clean and simple and satisfying. As she closed the flaps she gave a deep sigh of content.

Every minute till she joined him was begrudged. For Beatrice had learned the message of her heart. She knew that she was wholly and completely in love with what life had brought her.

The hubbub of the city seemed to her now so small and so petty. Always she had known a passionate love of things fine and good. But civilization had thwarted her purposes, belittled her expression of them. Environment had driven her into grooves of convention. Here at last she was free.

And she was amazingly, radiantly happy. What did motor-cars or wine-suppers or Paris gowns matter? They were the trappings that stressed her slavery. Here she moved beside her mate without fear or doubt in a world wonderful. Eye to eye, they spoke the truth to each other after the fashion of brave, simple souls.

Glowing from the ice-cold bath of water from a mountain stream, she stepped down the slope into a slant of sunshine to join Clay. He looked up from the fire and waved a spoon gayly at her. For he too was as jocund as the day which stood tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops. They had come into the hills to spend their honeymoon alone together, and life spoke to him in accents wholly joyous.

The wind and sun caressed her. As she moved toward him, a breath of the morning flung the gown about her so that each step modeled anew the slender limbs.

Her husband watched the girl streaming down the slope. Love swift as old wine flooded his veins. He rose, caught her to him, and looked down into the deep, still eyes that were pools of happiness.

"Are you glad—glad all through, sweetheart?" he demanded.

A little laugh welled from her throat. She gave him a tender, mocking smile.

"I hope heaven's like this," she whispered.

"You don't regret New York—not a single, hidden longing for it 'way down deep in yore heart?"

She shook her head. "I always wanted to be rescued from the environment that was stifling me, but I didn't know a way of escape till you came," she said.

"Then you knew it?"

"From the moment I saw you tie the janitor to the hitching-post. You remember I was waiting to go riding with Mr. Bromfield. Well, I was bored to death with correct clothes and manners and thinking. I knew just what he would say to me and how he would say it and what I would answer. Then you walked into the picture and took me back to nature."

"It was the hitching-post that did it, then?"

"The hitching-post began it, anyhow." She slipped her arms around his neck and held him fast. "Oh, Clay, isn't it just too good to be true?"

A ball of fire pushed up into the crotch between two mountain-peaks and found them like a searchlight, filling their little valley with a golden glow.

The new day summoned them to labor and play and laughter, perhaps to tears and sorrow too. But the joy of it was that the call came to them both. They moved forward to life together.

THE END