His chortle of relief that he was at ordeal’s end proved to be premature. Peering coldly and pointedly at him from across the room, their twin rows of pop-eyes perpendicularly placed, stood his patent leathers. Clear through his arches he already had felt their maliciousness and, as the worst of his trials, had left them to the last. All too late he recalled the fact that brand new buttoned shoes only meet across insteps and ankles by suasion of a hook, even as range boots yield most readily to jacks. Prolific as had been the growth of his toilet articles since a week ago, that small instrument of torture was not yet a fruit thereof. Further delay ensued before response to the order which he telephoned the desk for “one shoe-hooker—quick.”
Peter Stansbury Pape had emerged from the West of his upgrowing and self-making with two projects in view—one grave, one much less so. The grave, when its time came, would involve a set-to in the street called Wall with a certain earnest little group of shearers who, seeming to take him for a woolly lamb, almost had lifted his fleece. Animated by a habit of keeping his accounts in life square, steady in his stand as the mountain peaks that surrounded his home ranch, his courage fortified against fear because he recognized it at first sight and refused to yield to it, he was biding the right time to betake himself “down-town” for the round-up reckoning. But of all that, more anon.
His “less so” was to learn life as it is lived along Gay Way, although he had made no promise to himself to become a part thereof. A sincere wish to explore the greatest Main Street on any map, whose denizens so far had shown themselves elusive as outlaw broncs to a set-down puncher, had moved him to acceptance of the suggestion of ’Donis Moore.
While awaiting the pleasure—or the pain—of the shoe-hook, he considered the indifference of his reception at the Astor, a hotel selected for its location “in the heart of things.” In the heart of things—in the thick of the fight—in the teeth of the wind—right there was where Pape liked best to be. But the room-clerk had seemed unimpressed by his demand for the most luxurious one-man apartment on their floor plan. The cashier had eyed coldly the “herd” of New York drafts which he had offered for “corralling” in the treasury of the house. Clerks, elevator boys, even the dry-bar tenders had parried his questions and comments with that indifferent civility which had made this world, said to be the Real, seem false as compared with his hale and hearty Out-West.
The reply to his first inquiry, anent hotel stable accommodations for the intimate equine friend who, as a matter of course, had accompanied him on an American Express Company ticket, had been more of a shock to him than the height of Mt. Woolworth, first seen while ferrying the Hudson. Mr. Astor’s palace, he was told, had a garage of one-hundred-car capacity, but no stable at all, not even stall space for one painted pony. There were more rooms in the “one-man” suite than he knew how to utilize in his rather deficient home life, but the idea of attempting to smuggle Polkadot to the seventh landing, as suggested by the boast of a more modern hostelry that it elevated automobiles to any floor, was abandoned as likely to get them both put out. He had tramped many side-street trails before he had found, near the river, the stable of a contractor who still favored horses. Only this day had he learned of a riding academy near the southern fringe of Central Park where the beast might be boarded in style better suited to his importance in one estimation at least.
It is a pleasure to state that money really didn’t matter with Pape; in any calculable probability, never would. That constitutional demand of his—why not, why not?—had drilled into certain subterranean lakes beneath the range on which his unsuspecting cattle had grazed for years; had drilled until fonts of oleose gold had up-flowed. For months past his oil royalties literally had swamped the county-seat bank. He had been forced to divert the tide to Chicago and retain an attorney to figure his income tax. Upon him—in the now, instead of the hazy, hoped-for future—was the vacation time toward which he had toiled physically through the days of the past and through the nights had self-trained his mind with equal vigor.
The time had come. But the place—well, so far, America’s Bagdad had offered nothing approaching his expectations. Perhaps the fault had been in his surface unfitness for the censorious gaze of the Bagdadians. Perhaps clothes had unmade his outer man to folks too hurried to learn his inner. However, thanks to the official Sage of Traffic Squad “B,” he now had remedied superficial defects.
In truth, any one fairly disposed who saw his descent of the Astor’s front steps, would have conceded that. Despite the vicissitudes of preparation, the result was good. A tall, strong-built, free-swinging young man came to a halt at curb’s edge, a young man immaculately arrayed, from silky top of hat to tips of glistening boots. His attention, however, was not upon the impression which he might or might not be making. Having done his best by himself, he was not interested in casual applause. There was a strained eagerness in his eyes as, leaning outward, he peered up The Way.
The night was cloudy, so that the overhead darkness of eight-thirty was not discounted by any far-off moon or wan-winking stars. The sky looked like a black velvet counter for the display of man-made jewelry—Edison diamonds in vast array—those great, vulgar “cluster pieces” of Stage Street.
And high above all others—largest, most brilliant, most vulgar, perhaps—was a trinket transformed from some few bubbles of oil, the latest acquisition of one Westerner.