The Big-Town Round-Up Read online

  CHAPTER III

  THE BIG TOWN

  When Clay stepped from the express into the Pennsylvania Station hewondered for a moment if there was a circus or a frontier-day show intown. The shouts of the porters, the rush of men and women toward thegates, the whirl and eddy of a vast life all about him, took him backto the few hours he had spent in Chicago.

  As he emerged at the Thirty-Fourth Street entrance New York burst uponhim with what seemed almost a threat. He could hear the roar of itlike a river rushing down a canon. Clay had faced a cattle stampede.He had ridden out a blizzard hunched up with the drifting herd. He hadlived rough all his young and joyous life. But for a moment he felt achill drench at his heart that was almost dread. He did not know asoul in this vast populace. He was alone among seven or eight millioncrazy human beings.

  He had checked his suitcase to be free to look about. He had nodestination and was in no hurry. All the day was before him, all ofmany days. He drifted down the street and across to Sixth Avenue. Heclung to the safety of one of the L posts as the traffic surged past.The clang of surface cars and the throb of motors filled the airconstantly. He wondered at the daring of a pink-cheeked slip of a girldriving an automobile with sure touch through all this tangle oftraffic. While he waited to plunge across the street there came a roaroverhead that reminded him again of a wall of water he had once heardtearing down a canon in his home land.

  Instinctively one arm clutched at the post. A monster went flyingthrough the air with a horrible, grinding menace. It was only theElevated on its way uptown. Clay looked around in whimsical admirationof the hurrying people about him. None of them seemed aware either ofthe noise or the crush of vehicles. They went on their preoccupied wayswiftly and surely.

  "I never did see such a town, and me just hittin' the fringes of ityet," Clay moaned aloud in comic despair, unaware that even New Yorkhas no noisier street than Sixth Avenue.

  Chance swept him up Sixth to Herald Square. He was caught in the riverof humanity that races up Broadway. His high-heeled boots clicked onthe pavement of one of the world's great thoroughfares as far asForty-Second Street. Under the shadow of the Times Building he stoppedto look about him. Motor-cars, street-cars, and trucks rolled past inendless confusion. Every instant the panorama shifted, yet it wasalways the same. He wondered where all this rush of people was going.What crazy impulses sent them surging to and fro? And the girls--Claysurrendered to them at discretion. He had not supposed there were somany pretty, well-dressed girls in the world.

  "I reckon money grows on trees in New York," he told himself aloud witha grin.

  Broadway fascinated him. He followed it uptown toward Longacre Circle.The street was as usual in a state of chronic excavation. His footslipped and he fell into a trench while trying to cross. When heemerged it was with a pound or two of Manhattan mud on his corduroysuit. He looked at himself again with a sense that his garb did notquite measure up to New York standards.

  "First off I'm goin' to get me a real city suit of clothes," hepromised himself. "This here wrinkled outfit is some too woolly forthe big town. It's a good suit yet--'most as good as when I bought itat the Boston Store in Tucson three years ago. But I reckon I'll saveit to go home in."

  To a policeman directing traffic at a crossing he applied forinformation.

  "Can you tell me where there's a dry-goods store in this man's town?"he asked. "I fell into this here Broadway and got kinda messed up."

  "Watchawant?"

  "Suit o' clothes."

  The traffic cop sized him up in one swift glance. "Siventh Avenue," hesaid, and pointed in that direction.

  Clay took his advice. He stopped in front of a store above which wasthe legend "I. Bernstein, Men's Garments." A small man with sharplittle eyes and well-defined nose was standing in the doorway.

  "Might you would want a good suit of qvality clothes, my friendt," hesuggested.

  "You've pegged me right," agreed the Westerner with his ready smile."Lead me to it."

  Mr. Bernstein personally conducted his customer to the suit department."I wait on you myself on account you was a stranger to the city," heexplained.

  The little man took a suit from a rack and held it at arm's length toadmire it. His fingers caressed the woof of it lovingly. He evidentlycould bring himself to part with it only after a struggle.

  "Worsted. Fine goods." He leaned toward the range-rider and whispereda secret. "Imported."

  Clay shook his head. "Not what I want." His eyes ranged the racks."This is more my notion of the sort of thing I like." He pointed to ablue serge with a little stripe in the pattern.

  The eyes of Mr. Bernstein marveled at the discrimination of hiscustomer. "If you had taken an advice from me, it would have been tobuy that suit. A man gets a chance at a superior garment like that,understan' me, only once in a while occasionally."

  "How much?" asked Lindsay.

  The dealer was too busy to hear this crass question. That suit, Claygathered, had been the pride of his heart ever since he had seen itfirst. He detached the coat lovingly from the hanger and helped hiscustomer into it. Then he fell back, eyes lit with enthusiasticamazement. Only fate could have brought together this man and thissuit, so manifestly destined for each other since the hour when Evebegan to patch up fig leaves for Adam.

  "Like a coat of paint," he murmured aloud.

  The cowpuncher grinned. He understood the business that went withselling a suit in some stores. But it happened that he liked this suithimself. "How much?" he repeated.

  The owner of the store dwelt on the merits of the suit, its style, itsdurability, the perfect fit. He covered his subject with artisticthoroughness. Then, reluctantly, he confided in a whisper the price atwhich he was going to sacrifice this suit among suits.

  "To you, my friendt, I make this garment for only sixty-five dollars."He added another secret detail. "Below wholesale cost."

  A little devil of mirth lit in Lindsay's eye. "I'd hate to have yourob yoreself like that. And me a perfect stranger to you too."

  "Qvality, y' understan' me. Which a man must got to live garments likeI done to appreciate such a suit. All wool. Every thread of it.Unshrinkable. This is a qvality town. If you want the best it costs alittle more, but you got anyhow a suit which a man might be married inwithout shame, understan' me."

  The Arizonan backed off in apparent alarm. "Say, is this a weddin'garment you're onload'n' on me? Do I have to sashay down a churchaisle and promise I do?"

  Mr. Bernstein explained that this was not obligatory. All he meant wasthat the suit was good enough to be married in, or for that matter tobe buried in.

  "Or to be born anew in when Billy Sunday comes to town and I hit thesawdust trail," suggested the purchaser.

  Mr. Bernstein caressed it again. "One swell piece of goods," he toldhimself softly, almost with tears in his eyes.

  "All wool, you say?" asked Clay, feeling the texture. He had made uphis mind to buy it, though he thought the price a bit stiff.

  Mr. Bernstein protested on his honor that there was not a thread ofcotton in it. "Which you could take it from me that when I sell a suitof clothes it is like I am dealing with my own brother," he added."Every garment out of this store takes my personal guarantee."

  Clay tried on the trousers and looked at himself in the glass. So faras he could tell he looked just like any other New Yorker.

  The dealer leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. Apparently he wasashamed of his softness of heart. "Fifty-five dollars--to you."

  "I'll take it," the Westerner said.

  The clothier called his tailor from the rear of the store to make anadjustment in the trousers. Meanwhile he deftly removed the tags whichtold him in cipher that the suit had cost him just eleven dollars andseventy-five cents.

  Half an hour later Clay sat on top of a Fifth-Avenue bus which wasjerking its way uptown. His shoes were shined to mirror brightness.He was garbed in a blue serge su
it with a little stripe running throughthe pattern. That suit just now was the apple of his eye. It provedhim a New Yorker and not a wild man from the Arizona desert.