Lonesome Town Read online

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  _Only at the threat of her raised crop did he drop thegrasped bridle rein._]

  LONESOME TOWN

  BY

  ETHEL _and_ JAMES DORRANCE

  AUTHORS OF "Glory Rides the Range," "Get Your Man," etc.

  FRONTISPIECE BY G. W. GAGE

  NEW YORK THE MACAULAY COMPANY

  _Copyright, 1922, by_ THE MACAULAY COMPANY

  PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

  To FATHER KNICKERBOCKER

  WHO HAS WILLED TO HIS HEIRS FOREVER THE GREAT HERITAGE OF CENTRAL PARK

  CONTENTS

  - CHAPTER I--SOME PLACE LIKE HOME

  - CHAPTER II--A TIP FROM THE TOP

  - CHAPTER III--THE SKY SIGN

  - CHAPTER IV--DOUBLE FOCUS

  - CHAPTER V--ONLY THE BRAVE

  - CHAPTER VI--JUST AU REVOIR

  - CHAPTER VII--THE EMERGENCY MAN

  - CHAPTER VIII--EMPTY

  - CHAPTER IX--SNUFFED

  - CHAPTER X--THE OLD PARK LADY

  - CHAPTER XI--DUE EAST

  - CHAPTER XII--WHAT A WELCOME!

  - CHAPTER XIII--IN HER SERVICE

  - CHAPTER XIV--THE CREDIT PLAN

  - CHAPTER XV--THE LIMIT OF TRUST

  - CHAPTER XVI--AN ACCEPTED ALLY

  - CHAPTER XVII--POPLARS FOUR

  - CHAPTER XVIII--TOO READY RESCUE

  - CHAPTER XIX--TEN OF TO-MORROW MORN

  - CHAPTER XX--ONE LIVELY ESCUTCHEON

  - CHAPTER XXI--IGNORING IRENE

  - CHAPTER XXII--BEEF ON THE HOOF

  - CHAPTER XXIII--THE MAN BEHIND

  - CHAPTER XXIV--LOST YET WON

  - CHAPTER XXV--HUNTERS HUNTED

  - CHAPTER XXVI--HOUSE OF BLOCKS

  - CHAPTER XXVII--"FORTUNE FOREVERMORE"

  LONESOME TOWN

  CHAPTER I--SOME PLACE LIKE HOME

  The trail spilled into a pool of shadows at the bottom of the gorge. Asif doubtful of following it, the lone rider in chaps and a flannel shirtdrew up for a "breathing." This was gratefully advantaged by his mount.Evidently they had come at speed, whatever the distance, for the reinswere lathered and foam flecked the bit corners.

  The man removed his white sombrero and mopped his brow with a purplebandanna. The fingers with which he combed back his moist thatch nicelymatched the hair in color--sunburn brown. His head bulged slightly atthe back, but was balanced on a neck and shoulders splendidlyproportioned. His rather plain face was not covered with stubble ormustache--cheek bones high, jaw sloping in at an angle, nose straight,lips thin by contrast with their width.

  While he rests in his saddle, every pore of him exuding healthfully tothe midsummer heat of an unusual spring, meet "Why-Not" Pape, ofHellroaring Valley, Montana. But don't expect to understand--not atfirst hand grasp--how one christened Peter Stansbury Pape somethirty-odd years before, had come by his interrogatory sobriquet. Nomore could you have seen in his expression excuse for the pace to whichhe had put his horse. His eyes--the best of his features--looked pleasedand told of peace with the world; gray, with dark lashes and irises,they scanned the granite wall rising sheer from the trail-side. Sightinga bull snake that peered down at him from its crevasse, both of themsmiled and one amiably winked.

  You must have been something of a psychoanalyst--able to go below thesurface of day-time and sleep-time dreams--to have realized theunreliability in this case of surface indications. Only by suchsuper-sight could you have seen that Why-Not Pape merely appeared to bepeaceful and pleased. As a matter of fact, his head and his heart wereheavy with disappointment. But then, a subject so deep and personalshouldn't be broached at this first formal introduction.

  Meet also, if you please, Polkadot Pape, a cross-bred cow-pony who sooncould quip the interest of any horse-worthy he-man and who, by virtue ofhis weird and wicked style of beauty, could command the admiration ofthe fair. Had you stood on the trail before him and made the slightestfriendly overture, he would have bent a foreleg--the right one--andoffered you a hoof-shake without so much as a nudge from the rider whomost times was his master-mind. Contrary to the suggestion of his givenname, his coat was not dotted; rather, was splotched with threecolors--sorrel and black on a background of white. The extra splotchtook him out of the pinto class and made him a horse apart. And alwayshe gaited himself with the distinctive style of the bold, black spotbeneath his left eye. This late afternoon, however, despite the toss ofhis head and swish of his long white tail, his manner, like his man's,was superficial--the mere reflex from a habit of keeping up appearances.Circumstances over which he had no control darkened around him like aswarm of horse-flies.

  Below a shadow pool lured. Beyond, the thin trail beckoned. Pape glancedupward. A white circle upon a dying elm--one of a group that struggledfor their lives up over the rocks forming the east side of thegorge--caught his eye. Above he saw a second white circle upon ahalf-withered red birch; still higher, a third upon a bald cypress.Aware that no elm, birch, or cypress, alive or half alive or dead,reproduced perfect white circles on its trunk, he decided that these hadbeen painted there with a purpose by the hand of man.

  His desire to follow a trail so oddly blazed was indulged as quickly asborn. The caress of one knee against saddle leather and the lightestlift of rein notified his tricolored steed. Polkadot sprang from thebeaten path into an upward scramble over the rocks. The going would haveadvised the least astute of mountain goats to watch its step. But Dotwas sure-footed from long practice over the boundary barriers ofHellroaring Valley.

  When the white blaze faded out--when the trees ceased to becircle-marked--neither man nor mount would have considered a stop. Fromappearances, no one ahorse had left that gorge before by that route;probably no one would again. On and up they moved, enticed by themystery of what might or might not be lurking at the top.

  Across a flat bristling with rhododendrons and so small as to beaccounted scarce more than a ledge, trotted the cow-pony; insinuated hisway through a fringe of Forsythia brush just beginning to yellow; dughis shoe-prongs into the earth of a steep, but easier slope. Pape,looking back, could see through the tree tips a mountainous range ofturreted peaks and flat-topped buttes, terminating on the north in amassive green copper dome. The height gained, he was interested by thediscovery of an unroofed blockhouse of rough stone that literallyperched upon a precipitous granite hump. Was it a relic of Indianwar-path days? Had the flintlocks of pioneers spit defiance through theoblong loopholes inserted at intervals in its walls? He wondered.

  "You wouldn't be homesick at all, Dot, if your imagination had the speedof your hoofs," he leaned down to adjure his horse, after a habit formedon many a lonelier trail. "Can't you just hear those old-fashionedpop-guns popping? No? Well, at least you can hear the dogwood yapping?Look around you, horse-alive! Don't this scene remind you of home? Ofcourse you've got to concentrate on things near at hand. But trust me,that's the secret of living to-day--concentration. Look far afield andyou'll lose the illusion, just as you bark your shins when you mixgaits."

  A shrill trill startled both; centered Pape's attention on the brushthat edged the mesa to his right. But the quail he suspected was tooexpert in the art of camouflage to betray its presence except by arepetition of his call, closer and more imperative than the firs
t.

  "That bird-benedict must be sized like a sage hen to toot all that.Maybe he's a Mormon and obliged to get noisy to assemble his wives."

  This sanguinary illusion, along with varied others which had precededit, was dissipated a moment after its inception and rather rudely. Thetrill sounded next from their immediate rear. Both horse and riderturned, to see pounding toward them a man uniformed in blue, between hislips a nickel-bright whistle, in his right hand a short, butofficial-looking club. Of the pair of Westerners who awaited theapproach, one at least remembered that he was two-thousand-odd milesaway from the Hellroaring home range of his over-worked imagination;appreciated that he was in for a set-to with a "sparrow cop" ofAmerica's most metropolitan police.

  Gasping from the effort of hoisting his considerable avoirdupois up theheight and sputtering with offended dignity, the officer stamped to astand alongside and glared fearsomely.

  "What you mean, leaving the bridle path? Say, I'm asking you!"

  "Horse bolted." Pape parried with a half-truth--Dot _had_ sort of boltedup the rocks.

  The official eye fixed derisively on the angora chaps; lifted to theblue flannel shirt; stopped at the stiff-brimmed white Stetson. "One ofthem film heroes, eh?"

  "Film? Not me. You'll be asking my pardon, brother, when you knowwho----"

  The officer interrupted with increasing belligerence: "Trying to playwild and woolly and never been acrost the Hudson River, like as not! Youtake an out-and-outer's advice. Put away them Bill Hart clothes and ridea rocking-chair until you learn to bridle a hoss. I've a good mind torun you in. Why didn't you mind my whistle?"

  "Honest, Mr. Policeman, I thought you were a quail. You sounded justlike----"

  "A quail--_me_? I'll learn you to kid a member of the Force. You climbdown offen that horse, now, and come along with me over to the Arsenal."

  "Why Arsenal? Do you think I'm a big gun or a keg of powder?"

  "The Arsenal's the 33d Precinct Station House. Fresh bird yourself!"

  The officer's look told Pape even louder than his words that the timefor persiflage had passed, unless he really wished a police courtinterval. He had indulged his humor too far in likening this overgrown,formidable "sparrow" to the most succulent tidbit of the fowl species.He brought into play the smooth smile that had oiled troubled waters ofhis past.

  "No offense meant, I assure you. It happens that my hoss and I are fromexceeding far across the river you mention--Montana. We've found yourbig town lonesome as a sheep range. Fact, we only feel comfortable whenwe're sloping around in this park. Parts of it are so like Hellroaringthat----"

  "I can pinch you again for cussin', young feller!"

  "You can't pinch a citizen for merely mentioning the geographical nameof his home valley, which same you can find on any map. As I was aboutto say, there are spots in this stone-fenced ranch that make us think ofGod's country. Just now, when we saw a trail blazed with white circles,we plumb forgot where we were and bolted."

  The guardian of law and order continued to look the part of an indignantbutt of banter.

  "A blazed trail in Central Park, New York?" he scoffed. "You'll show meor you'll come along to the station!"

  "Why not a blazed trail--why not anything in Central Park?"

  Peter Pape put the question with that grin, half ironic and whollyserious, with which he had faced other such posers in his past. To him,the West come East, this park was the heart of the town--Gotham's great,green heart. By its moods it controlled the pulse of rich and pooralike; showed to all, sans price or prejudice, that beauty which is thelove of nature made visible; inspired the most uncouth and unlearnedwith the responses of the cultured and the erudite.

  The human heart was capable of any emotion, from small to great. Anydeed, then, might be done within the people's park.