第23章

THE CALL OF THE TAME.

When the inauguration was accomplished--the proceedings were made smooth by the presence of the Rough Riders--it is well known that a herd of those competent and loyal ex-warrriors paid a visit to the big city.The newspaper reporters dug out of their trunks the old broad-brimmed hats and leather belts that they wear to North Beach fish fries, and mixed with the visitors.No damage was done beyond the employment of the wonderful plural "tenderfeet"in each of the scribe's stories.The Westerners mildly contemplated the skyscrapers as high as the third story, yawned at Broadway, hunched down in the big chairs in hotel corridors, and altogether looked as bored and dejected as a member of Ye Ancient and Honorable Artillery separated during a sham battle from his valet.

Out of this sightseeing delegations of good King Teddy's Gentlemen of the Royal Bear-hounds dropped one Greenbrier Nye, of Pin Feather, Ariz.

The daily cyclone of Sixth Avenue's rush hour swept him away from the company of his pardners true.The dust from a thousand rustling skirts filled his eyes.The mighty roar of trains rushing across the sky deafened him.The lightning-flash of twice ten hundred beaming eyes confused his vision.

The storm was so sudden and tremendous that Greenbrier's first impulse was to lie down and grab a root.And then he remembered that the disturbance was human, and not elemental; and he backed out of it with a grin into a doorway.

The reporters had written that but for the widebrimmed hats the West was not visible upon these gauchos of the North.Heaven sharpen their eyes! The suit of black diagonal, wrinkled in impossible places; the bright blue four-in-hand, factory tied; the low, turned-down collar, pattern of the days of Seymour and Blair, white glazed as the letters on the window of the open-day-and-night-except-Sunday restaurants; the out-curve at the knees from the saddle grip; the peculiar spread of the half-closed right thumb and fingers from the stiff hold upon the circling lasso; the deeply absorbed weather tan that the hottest sun of Cape May can never equal; the seldom-winking blue eyes that unconsciously divided the rushing crowds into fours, as though they were being counted out of a corral; the segregated loneliness and solemnity of expression, as of an Emperor or of one whose horizons have not intruded upon him nearer than a day's ride--these brands of the West were set upon Greenbrier Nye.Oh, yes; he wore a broadbrimmed hat, gentle reader--just like those the Madison Square Post Office mail carriers wear when they go up to Bronx Park on Sunday afternoons.

Suddenly Greenbrier Nye jumped into the drifting herd of metropolitan cattle, seized upon a man, dragged him out of the stream and gave him a buffet upon his collarbone that sent him reeling against a wall.

The victim recovered his hat, with the angry look of a New Yorker who has suffered an outrage and intends to write to the Trib.about it.But he looked at his assailant, and knew that the blow was in consideration of love and affection after the manner of the West, which greets its friends with contumely and uproar and pounding fists, and receives its enemies in decorum and order, such as the judicious placing of the welcoming bullet demands.

"God in the mountains!" cried Greenbrier, holding fast to the foreleg of his cull."Can this be Longhorn Merritt?"The other man was--oh, look on Broadway any day for the pattern--business man--latest rolled-brim derby--good barber, business, digestion and tailor.

"Greenbrier Nye!" he exclaimed, grasping the hand that had smitten him."My dear fellow! So glad to see you! How did you come to--oh, to be sure--the inaugural ceremonies--I remember you joined the Rough Riders.You must come and have luncheon with me, of course."Greenbrier pinned him sadly but firmly to the wall with a hand the size, shape and color of a McClellan saddle.

"Longy," he said, in a melancholy voice that disturbed traffic, "what have they been doing to you? You act just like a citizen.

They done made you into an inmate of the city directory.You never made no such Johnny Branch execration of yourself as that out on the Gila.'Come and have lunching with me!' You never defined grub by any such terms of reproach in them days.""I've been living in New York seven years," said Merritt."It's been eight since we punched cows together in Old Man Garcia's outfit.Well, let's go to a caf'e, anyhow.It sounds good to hear it called 'grub' again."They picked their way through the crowd to a hotel, and drifted, as by a natural law, to the bar.

"Speak up," invited Greenbrier.

"A dry Martini," said Merritt.

"Oh, Lord!" cried Greenbrier; "and yet me and you once saw the same pink Gila monsters crawling up the walls of the same hotel in Ca~non Diablo! A dry--but let that pass.Whiskey straight--and they're on you."Merritt smiled, and paid.

They lunched in a small extension of the dining room that connected with the caf'e.Merritt dexterously diverted his friend's choice, that hovered over ham and eggs, to a pur'ee of celery, a salmon cutlet, a partridge pie and a desirable salad.