“Sook, bossy! That’s cow language, if you get me. You’re an absolute dar-rling and I know it. You can’t scare me off with those mean glances. Understand me, I like ’em fierce. The fiercer the fonder.”
Now, it is highly improbable that the beef-brute took her dare or even grasped a word of it; more likely that the fresh scent of the roses rewoke his longing for what he had smelled and striven toward and failed to attain on his first whiff of Central Park. Or perhaps their color was wholly responsible—perhaps it acted as a red flag upon inherited bull instincts.
At any rate, the Stansbury-Pape escutcheon threw up his part with a violent coördination of horns, head and heels. And he let out a bawl that announced to the humans about him and their neighbors all his return in spirit to the wild. The tumult of the moment opened with a wild-eyed charge upon the nearer of the attendant punchers. So sudden was this that it could not be avoided—both mount and man “bit” the asphalt. In falling, the unfortunate had sufficient presence of mind to throw off the hitch of rope about his saddle horn and save himself being burned in the tangle of hemp.
Half free, the red torpedo started in ponderous pursuit of a Fire Department runabout that chanced at the moment to clang a right-of-way for him up the avenue. The puncher still attached braced his cayuse to throw the steer when the slack of his rope was taken up. This proved a tactical error. While he did not over-rate the strength and willingness of his mount, he did that of the lariat. At the severance of its strands, the reddest wearer of the Queer Question Brand was quite free and going strong in the general direction of Harlem. The trailing length of one rope and fragment of the other seemed to urge him into increased efforts to outrun them. His head held high. His horns tossed threateningly. His nostrils snorted acceptance of the invitation of the grass.
At the beginning of the steer’s initiative the issue of East vs. West had been unanimously postponed. Pape had sprung to his thrown aide, dragged him from under the floundering horse and made sure that the leg which had been caught was not seriously injured.
“Jane—Mrs. Sturgis, won’t you——”
His appeal to the New Yorkers, started in words and finished in gesture, consigned the man injured within their gates—had they had any gates—to their mercy. Ordering the puncher of the tactical error to follow, he lofted into his own saddle and was off in pursuit of his imported beef on the hoof.
Scarcely three minutes later—certainly not more—Mrs. Helene Sturgis stood deserted upon her front steps, staring up the world-famed highway after the strangest chase which she, at least, had witnessed in its history. She was all a-tremble from the various and violent protests she had shrilled—to Jane, to Harfy, to Irene. Her hands were clutched together in remonstrance over what had been. Her face was drawn with terror over what was. Keen was her dread of what might be. A prairie steer scarcely could run amuck in the heart of New York without spreading more or less havoc. And the responsibility—would her own innocent child, through participation in the pursuit, be forced to share in that?
On the sidewalk below, the injured puncher was feeling his leg, the pain wincing his weathered face. She heard some one come out the door above.
“Jasper?”