The young fellow denied the wistful appeal. “Hombre! a million wouldn’t release my girl’s mortgage.”
With a regretful sigh Bull struck hands on the compact. While they were talking the train had ambled through the brown adobe skirts of Juarez, the squalid Mexican town across the Rio Grande, whence they were presently shot by automobile over the international bridge into the spacious bosom of El Paso’s largest hotel. Bull had calculated to go out, at once, on his search, but while they sat at breakfast there descended upon them a host of reporters and correspondents, ravenous for news and aching to dispense hospitality.
“Might as well put it off till to-morrow, Diogenes.” His friend had already named Bull after the person who had such a deuce of a time hunting an honest man among the grafters and ward heelers of ancient Greece. “We’ll devote to-day to the irrigation of our desiccated systems, then go to it mañana like hungry dogs. But safety first! Take a ten out of your wad and give the rest to the clerk.”
Instead of one day, however, three passed during which Bull’s huge bulk upreared alongside a hundred bars. In all that time he never went to bed, for, intensified by long abstinence, the outbreak proved unusually virulent. Generally the conclusion of his debauches found him broke. But, thanks to the correspondent’s prevision, he awoke on the fourth morning, in bed at the hotel, with the bulk of his money still in the office safe. While he was draining the water-jug according to time-honored precedents, his friend appeared in the doorway of the adjoining room. His own head was swathed in a wet towel that almost hid his rueful grin.
“One never knows what one is starting. You certainly went the limit, Diogenes. Are you quite sure you’re through?”
Bull nodded and put down the jug with a satisfied sigh. “It’s a bit of a strain, this fathering an’ mothering a lone girl, a feller’s gotter keep so straight.” He added, apologetically, “I was jest plumb ripe for a bust, but I reckon this orter hold me for another three months.”
“Very well, then, let’s get down to work. At intervals, while I could still see, I kept one eye open for possibles. But it’s like looking for gold or diamonds; the supply doesn’t touch the demand. The few prospects all proved to have attachments in the shape of sweetheart or wife. Good ones, I suppose, are so rare that the girls grab them at sight like marked-down waists on a bargain-counter.”
After two days of vain search through the plazas and parks, hotel lobbies, streets, and bars of El Paso, Bull was almost driven to the same conclusion. Short men, tall men, thin men, broad men; some that were ugly, others handsome; well and ill clad from all walks of life – passed under his observation. The few he trailed were either engulfed within the sacred precincts of some bank or met at the doors of suburban bungalows and there warmly kissed by young and pretty wives. Without fulfilling the specifications called for in the potential husband, it would have been difficult enough to have enlisted an ordinary ranch hand for service across the line. At the close of the second day Bull reported as much to the correspondent when they met in the hotel lobby.
“Guess I’ll have to give it up.”
“Now if that was only free.” The other bowed, just then, to a young man who had just walked in from the street. “Look at him! Five-eleven in his socks, hazel eyes, brown hair, good strong jaw, flat shoulders and flanks, deep chest; walks the earth like he owned it. Some dresser, too. That mixed plaid cost a hundred at his New York tailor’s.”
“Some banker’s son, I’ll bet you,” Bull grumbled.
“That or better. I had a little chat with him this morning. A ’varsity man by his accent and manner. Seemed to know the Mexican situation down to the ground from the Wall Street end, so papa’s probably a broker. Holy snakes! Look at that! Neat work! Neat work!”
Walking up to the counter, the young man had held out his hand – evidently for the key of his room – while his indifferent gaze traveled around the lobby. The clerk, who departed in no wise from the casual specifications of his supercilious breed, glanced at the hand contemptuously. Turning, the young man spoke. Then as, without glancing up, the clerk answered, he snatched, hauled that superior person across the counter, and slammed him down hard on the floor. Next, as they came on, he felled one large door porter and three oversized bell-boys who had answered the clerk’s yell. This done, he waited, expectantly, quietly surveying the wreck, the hazel eye admired by Naylor transmuted into hard steel flecked with dots of brown light.
Jaw, eyes, pose, all said, “Next!” But the “wreck” was complete. The oversized bell-boys ran off to answer imaginary calls. An automobile party at the door called for the porter’s attention. Deserted, the clerk swiftly retreated behind his counter, behind which, from a safe distance, he issued defiant mutterings. With a slight nod that expressed comprehension and satisfaction, Hazel-Eyes sauntered across the lobby out into the street.
All had passed in the time required for the correspondent to reach the desk. He was back again in five seconds. “He’s broke – owes two weeks’ room rent. Clerk told him to get out; hence the scrap. Diogenes, we’re in luck! Venus and Cupid are in the ascendant. He’s our meat.”
Grabbing Bull’s arm, he hustled him outside, where they spied the quarry turning up a cross-street that led to the plaza. When he finally settled down on an empty bench, the correspondent nudged Bull in the ribs.
“Look at them!” He indicated the hundreds of men idling on the benches or sprawled out on the turf. “Last refuge of the broke, home of the out-of-works. That settles it. Bet you he hasn’t the price of a meal. But, say! he’s plucky. The beggar is actually smiling.”
From the way in which the young fellow’s glance wandered around the assembled out-of-works, it was easy to see that he rather enjoyed the novel situation. When Bull had noted and commented on the fact, the correspondent went on:
“Now, Diogenes, we must proceed with due regard for the traditions. When grand dukes, princes, and caliphs in disguise befriend some worthy person, they invariably begin by testing his honesty – see Arabian Nights and other authorities. Split a couple of tens off your wad and drop them as you stroll past him. I’ll stay here and watch lest he be found wanting.”
Bull managed it, too, quite cleverly, scraping the bills out of his pocket along with his tobacco-pouch. Watching closely, the correspondent saw the young fellow look, pick them up, then run and tap Bull’s shoulder. Leaning back, he shook with silent laughter.
“And they say romance is dead,” his thought ran. “Dead! while this big, black giant stalks around like a knight of old seeking a perfect husband for a girl he’s known only a few weeks. Diogenes, my friend, Don Quixote had nothing on you. Of all the lovely, fine pieces of idiocy that ever helped to raise us out of the muck of commercialism, this is the very finest. And wouldn’t it be queer if it worked? It’s almost too good to be true, and yet – a girl that can move a man to do things like that must be remarkably worth while. Quien sabe? Perhaps it will end like all true romances, with a happy marriage.”
Till the two settled down side by side on a bench, the correspondent watched. Then with a satisfied nod he rose and walked out of Bull’s life in the same casual way he had entered it; to return once more, however, at a critical juncture, many months later.
Thus left to his own devices, Bull carried on the campaign with diplomacy quite foreign to his Goliath makeup. From thanks and casual observations anent the weather, he led by gradual stages to labor conditions as exemplified by the surrounding out-of-works. His simulated astonishment when the young fellow claimed community with them was remarkably well done.
“No-o-o!” he protested.
“Sure!” the other nodded. “I was turned out of my hotel only half an hour ago.”
Quite in the fashion of grand dukes and caliphs, Bull still pretended doubt. “Broke, mebbe, but you don’t belong with these. What was it? Wine, weemen, or cyards?”
The young fellow grinned a little ruefully. “A woman, yes, but not in the usual way. What would you think if I told you – But, pshaw! what’s the use? It would sound