He gave a strangled whoop and charged straight at the man behind the hose. The two clinched. While they struggled, the writhing hose slapped back and forth between them like an agitated snake. Clay had one advantage. He was wet through anyhow. It did not matter how much of the deluge struck him. The janitor fought to keep dry and he had not a chance on earth to succeed.
For one hundred and seventy-five pounds of Arizona bone and muscle, toughened by years of hard work in sun and wind, had clamped itself upon him. The nozzle twisted toward the janitor. He ducked, went down, and was instantly submerged. When he tried to rise, the stream beat him back. He struggled halfway up, slipped, got again to his feet, and came down sitting with a hard bump when his legs skated from under him.
A smothered "Vat t'ell!" rose out of the waters. It was both a yelp of rage and a wail of puzzled chagrin. The janitor could not understand what was happening to him. He did not know that he was being treated to a new form of the water cure.
Before his dull brain had functioned to action an iron grip had him by the back of the neck. He was jerked to his feet and propelled forward to the curb. Every inch of the way the heavy stream from the nozzle broke on his face and neck. It paralyzed his resistance, jarred him so that he could not gather himself to fight. He was still sputtering "By damn," when Clay bumped him up against a hitching-post, garroted him, and swung the hose around the post in such a way as to encircle the feet of the man.
The cowpuncher drew the hose tight, slipped the nozzle through the iron ring, and caught the flapping arms of the man to his body. With the deft skill of a trained roper Clay swung the rubber pipe round the body of the man again and again, drawing it close to the post and knotting it securely behind. The Swede struggled, but his furious rage availed him nothing. He was in the hands of the champion roper of Graham County, a man who had hogtied a wild hill steer in thirty-three seconds by the watch.
It took longer than this to rope up the husky janitor with a squirming hose, but when Clay stepped back to inspect his job he knew he was looking at one that had been done thoroughly.
"I keel you, by damn, ef you don't turn me loose!" roared the big man in a rage.
The range-rider grinned gayly at him. He was having the time of his young life. He did not even regret his fifty-five-dollar suit. Already he could see that Arizona had nothing on New York when it came to getting action for your money.
"Life's just loaded to the hocks with disappointment, Olie," he explained, and his voice was full of genial sympathy. "I'll bet a dollar Mex you'd sure like to beat me on the haid with a two by four. But I don't reckon you'll ever get that fond wish gratified. We're not liable to meet up with each other again pronto. To-day we're here and to-morrow we're at Yuma, Arizona, say, for life is short and darned fleeting as the poet fellow says."
He waved a hand jauntily and turned to go. But he changed his mind. His eye had fallen on a young woman standing at a French window of the house opposite. She was beckoning to him imperiously.
The young woman disappeared as he crossed the street, but in a few moments the door opened and she stood there waiting for him. Clay stared. He had never before seen a girl dressed like this. She was in riding-boots, breeches, and coat. Her eyes dilated while she looked at him.
"Wyoming?" she asked at last in a low voice.
"Arizona," he answered.
"All one. Knew it the moment I saw you tie him. Come in." She stood aside to let him pass.
That hall, with its tapestried walls, its polished floors, and Oriental rugs, was reminiscent of "the movies" to Clay. Nowhere else had he seen a home so stamped with the mark of ample means.
"Come in," she ordered again, a little sharply.
He came in and she closed the door.
"I'm sopping wet. I'll drip all over the floor."
"What are you going to do? You'll be arrested, you know." She stood straight and slim as a boy, and the frank directness of her gaze had a boy's sexless unconsciousness.
"Thought I'd give myself up to the marshal."
She laughed outright at this. "Not in this town. A stranger like you would have no chance. Listen." There came to them from outside the tap-tap-tap-tap of a policeman's night stick rattling on the curbstone. "He's calling help."
"I can explain how it happened."
"No. He wouldn't understand. They'd find you guilty."
He moved from the rug where he was standing to let the water drip on the hardwood floor.
"Sho! Folks are mostly reasonable. I'd tell the judge how it come about."
"No."
"Well, I can't stay here."
"Yes—till they've gone."
Her imperative warmed his heart, but he tried to explain gently why he could not. "I can't drag you into this. Like as not the Swede saw me come in."
To a manservant standing in the background the young woman spoke. "Jenkins, have Nora clean up the floor and the steps outside. And remember—I don't want the police to know this gentleman is here."
"Yes, Miss."
"Come!" said the girl to her guest. She led Clay to the massive stairway, but stopped at the first tread to call back an order over her shoulder. "Refer the officers to me if they insist on coming into the house."
"I'll see to it, Miss."
Clay followed his hostess to the stairs and went up them with her, but he went protesting, though with a chuckle of mirth. "He sure ruined my clothes a heap. I ain't fit to be seen."
The suit he had been so proud of was shrinking so that his arms and legs stuck out like signposts. The color had run and left the goods a peculiar bilious-looking overall blue.
She lit a gas-log in a small library den.
"Just a minute, please."
She stepped briskly from the room. In her manner was a crisp decision, in her poise a trim gallantry that won him instantly.
"I'll bet she'd do to ride with," he told himself in a current Western idiom.
When she came back it was to take him to a dressing-room. A complete change of clothing was laid out for him on a couch. A man whom Clay recognized as a valet—he had seen his duplicate in the moving-picture theaters at Tucson—was there to supply his needs and attend to the temperature of his bath.
"Stevens will look after you," she said; "when you are ready come back to Dad's den."
His eyes followed to the door her resilient step. Once, when he was a boy, he had seen Ada Rehan play in "As You Like It." Her acting had entranced him. This girl carried him back to that hour. She was boyish as Rosalind, woman in every motion of her slim and lissom body.
At the head of the stairway she paused. Jenkins was moving hurriedly up to meet her.
"It's a policeman, Miss. 'E's come about the—the person that came in, and 'e's talkin' to Nora on the steps. She's a-jollyin' 'im, as you might say, Miss."
His young mistress nodded. She swept the hall with the eye of a general. Swiftly she changed the position of a Turkish rug so as to hide a spot on the polished floor that had been recently scrubbed and was still moist. It seemed best to discover Nora's plan of campaign before taking over the charge of affairs.
"Many's the time I've met yuh goin' down the Avenoo with your heels clickin' an' your head high," came the rich brogue of Nora O'Flannigan. "An' I've said to myself, sez I, who's the handsome officer that sets off his uniform so gr-rand?"
The girl leaned on her mop and gave the policeman a slant glance out of eyes of Irish brown. It was not Nora's fault that she was as pretty a colleen