Steve Yeager. William MacLeod Raine
he came reeling and dizzy, quartering round and round before the panting professional.
The bully enraged was not a sight pleasant to see. He was too near akin to the primeval brute. He glared savagely at his victim, who grinned back at him with an indomitable jauntiness.
"This is the life," the cowpuncher assured his foe cheerfully after dodging a blow that was like the kick of a mule.
Harrison rocked him with a short stiff uppercut. "Glad you like it," he jeered.
Yeager crossed with his right, catching him flush on the cheek. "Here's your receipt for the same," he beamed.
Like a wild bull the prizefighter was at him again. He beat down the cowpuncher's defense and mauled him savagely with all the punishing skill of his craft. Steve was a man of his hands. He had held his own in many a rough-and-tumble bout. But he had no science except that which nature had given him. As long as a man could, he stood up to Harrison's trained skill. When at last he was battered to the ground it was because the strength had all oozed out of him.
Harrison stood over him, swaggering. "Had enough?"
Where he had been flung, against one of the studio walls, Steve sat dizzily, his head reeling. He saw things through a mist in a queer jerky way. But still a smile beamed on his disfigured face.
"Surest thing you know."
"Don't want some more of the same?" jeered the victor.
"Didn't hear me ask for more, did you? No, an' you won't either. Me, I love a scrap, but I don't yearn for no encore after I've been clawed by a panther and chewed up by a threshing-machine and kicked by an able-bodied mule into the middle o' next week. Enough's a-plenty, as old Jim Butts said when his second wife died."
The prizefighter looked vindictively down at him. He was not satisfied, though he had given the range-rider such a whaling as few men could stand up and take. For the conviction was sifting home to him that he had not beaten the man at all. His pile-driver blows had hammered down his body, but the spirit of him shone dauntless out of the gay, unconquerable eyes.
With a sullen oath Harrison turned away. His sulky glance fell upon Lennox, who was clapping his hands softly.
"You'd be one grand little fighter, Yeager, if you only knew how," the leading man said with enthusiasm.
"Mebbe you'd like to teach him, Mr. Lennox," sneered Harrison.
The star flushed. "Maybe I would, Mr. Harrison."
"Or perhaps you'd rather show him how it's done."
Lennox looked, straight at him. "Nothing doing. And I serve notice right here that I'll have no more trouble with you. If it's got to come to that either you or I will quit the company."
The bully's eyes narrowed. "Which one of us?"
"It'll be up to Threewit to pass on that."
Harrison put on his coat and slouched sulkily out of the building. He knew quite well that if it came to a choice between him and Lennox the director would sacrifice him without a moment's consideration.
Farrar, who had been grinding out pictures since the beginning of hostilities, came forward to greet Yeager with a little whoop of joy.
"Say, you sure go some, Cactus Center. I never did see a fellow eat up such a licking and come up smiling. You're certainly one Mellin's Food baby. I'm for you—strong."
One of Steve's eyes was closing rapidly, but the other had not lost its twinkle.
"Does a fellow's system good to assimilate a tanning oncet in a while—sort o' corrects any mistaken notions he's liable to collect. Gentlemen, hush! Ain't Harrison the boss eat-em-alive white hope that ever turkey-trotted down the pike?"
The melancholy Manderson smiled. "You make a hit with me, Arizona. If I were in your place I'd be waiting for the undertaker. You look like you'd out come of a railroad wreck, two fires, and a cattle stampede over your carcass. Here, boys, hustle along first aid to our friend the punching-bag."
They got him water and towels and a sponge. Steve, protesting humorously, submitted to their ministrations. He was grateful for the friendliness that prompted their kindness. The atmosphere had subtly changed. During the afternoon he had sensed a little aloofness, an intention on the part of the company members to stand off until they knew him better. Now the ice was melted. They had taken him into the family. He had passed with honors his preliminary examination.
CHAPTER III
CHAD HARRISON
As soon as Steve stepped into the dining-room he knew that the story of his fight with Harrison had preceded him. His battered face became an immediate focus of curious veiled glances. These exhibited an animated interest rather than surprise.
Mrs. Seymour introduced him in turn to each of the other boarders, and the furtive looks stared for a moment their frank questions at him. As he drew in his chair beside a slender, tanned young woman, he knew with some amusement that his arrival had interrupted a conversation of which he had been the theme.
The film actress seated beside Yeager must have been in her very early twenties, but her pretty face, finely modeled, had the provocative effrontery that is the note of twentieth-century young womanhood. Its audacity, which was the quintessence of worldliness, held an alert been-through-it-all expression.
"I hope you like Los Robles, Mr. Yeager. Some of us don't, you know," she suggested.
"Like it fine, Miss Ellington," he answered with enthusiasm, accepting from Ruth Seymour a platter of veal croquettes.
Daisy Ellington slanted mischievous eyes toward him. "Not much doing here. It's a dead little hole. You'll be bored to death—if you haven't been already."
"Me! I've found it right lively," retorted Steve, his eyes twinkling. "Had all the excitement I could stand for one day. You see I come from way back in the cow country, ma'am."
"And I came from New York," she sighed. "When it comes to little old Broadway I'm there with bells on. What d'you mean, cow country? Ain't this far enough off the map? Say, were you ever in New York?"
"Oncet. With a load of steers my boss was shipping to England. Lemme see. It was three years ago come next October."
"Three years ago. Why, that was when I was in the pony ballet with 'Adam, Eve, and the Apple.' Did you see the show?"
"Bet I did."
Her eyes sparkled. "I was in the first row, third from the left in the 'Good-Night' chorus. Some kick to that song, wasn't there?"
"I should say yes. We're old friends, then, aren't we?" exclaimed Yeager promptly. He buried her little hand in his big brown paw, a friendly smile beaming through the disfigurements of his bruised face.
"He didn't do a thing to you, did he?" she commented, looking him over frankly.
"Not a thing—except run me through a sausage-grinder, drop me out of one of these aeroplanes, hammer my haid with a pile-driver, and jounce me up and down on a big pile of sharp rocks. Outside of trifles like that I had it all my own way."
"I don't see any alfalfa in your hair," she laughed. Then, lowering her voice discreetly, she added: "Harrison's a brute. I'll tell you about him some time when Ruth isn't round."
"Ruth!" Steve glanced at the young girl who moved about the room with such rhythmic grace helping the Chinese waiter serve her mother's guests. "What has she got to do with Harrison?"
"Engaged to him—that's all. See