“Not born—made.” The ranchman’s look slashed through the space between him and the Gothamite. “Out in Montana, Harfy, that escutcheon means a lot—to stock rustlers and brand-blotters and oil share fakers. Make a note of the fact that Why-Not Pape queer-questions every man that gets in his way. Few—and I don’t think you—can answer straight.”
“You don’t think—You take that back, you ill-bred bounder or I’ll—I’ll——”
With a spring from step to pavement, Harford squared off to make good his unfinished threat. His face and eyes went as red as his hair. His fingers tightened as if to the curve of a throat.
Pape met him with a well-pleased look.
Forgetful of the metropolitan scene, of those possible eyes and eyes of behind-shutter neighbors and of the fears of their own fair, the two closed in that desire-to-conquer conflict which, from primordial times through the hazy stretch of days-after-to-morrows-and-morrows, ever has been and ever shall be the lust of love. There was no preliminary feinting. From its start the fight promised to go the limit which, in this case, would be the finish.
A suppressed shriek escaped Mrs. Sturgis, then she rushed to her niece and demanded that the two be separated and the scandal of a street brawl before her house averted. Jane did not answer in words, but she threw off the clutch with which her relative was both urging and staying her, and started toward the passion-flaring pair.
Denied his throat hold by queer-question tactics, Harford settled back to a slugging match in which his heavier weight might lend him an advantage. Again, as on the park butte-top in a recent electric-lighted mill, Pape adopted grizzly form.
If any one of the excited group heard, none attended certain regardless utterances with which Irene, the while, had been wooing to win her glare-eyed gift of gratitude. Poised daintily on the curb’s edge, she was endeavoring to regale the steer with a whiff of the long-stemmed red roses which she had brought from the house.
“Here bossy, poor old bossy, see what Rene has brought out for you. My nice moo-moo. Oh, don’t shake your horns! Why not enjoy the little things in life while you may? C’mon, have a sniff on me!”
Leaning far out, she continued to tease his nostrils with her offering as the two punchers steadied the beast with remindful pulls upon the “strings” which they had about his horns.