ment of the patronage of these New Yorkers. The
younger man had insulted him, but he knew in his heart now that the
girl's father had meant nothing of the kind. Of course the girl had
forgotten him long since. If he ever came to her mind as a fugitive
memory it would be in the guise of a churlish boor as impossible as his
own hill cattle.

"Question is, could you land a job in New York if you wanted one,"
explained Stace to the dreamer.

"If it's neck meat or nothin' a fellow can 'most always get somethin'
to do," said Lindsay in the gentle voice he used. The vague impulses
of many days crystallized suddenly into a resolution. "Anyhow I'm
goin' to try. Soon as the _rodeo_ is over I'm goin' to hit the trail
for the big town."

"Tucson?" interpreted Johnnie dubiously.

"New York."

The bow-legged little puncher looked at his friend and gasped. Denver
was the limit of Johnnie's imagination. New York was _terra
incognita_, inhabited by a species who were as foreign to him as if
they had dwelt in Mars.

"You ain't really aimin' to go to New York sure enough?" he asked.

Clay flashed on him the warm smile that endeared him to all his
friends. "I'm goin' to ride down Broadway and shoot up the town,
Johnnie. Want to come along?"

CHAPTER II

CLAY APPOINTS HIMSELF CHAPERON

As he traveled east Clay began to slough the outward marks of his
calling. He gave his spurs to Johnnie before he left the ranch. At
Tucson he shed his chaps and left them in care of a friend at the
Longhorn Corral. The six-gun with which he had shot rattlesnakes he
packed into his suitcase at El Paso. His wide-rimmed felt hat flew off
while the head beneath it was stuck out of a window of the coach
somewhere south of Denver. Before he passed under the Welcome Arch in
that city the silk kerchief had been removed from his brown neck and
retired to the hip pocket which formerly held his forty-five.

The young cattleman began to flatter himself that nobody could now tell
he was a wild man from the hills who had never been curried. He might
have spared himself the illusion. Everybody he met knew that this
clean-cut young athlete, with the heavy coat of tan on his good-looking
face, was a product of the open range. The lightness of his stride,
the breadth of the well-packed shoulders, the frankness of the steady
eyes, all advertised him a son of Arizona.

It was just before noon at one of the small plains towns east of Denve