Under Handicap. Jackson Gregory
companion, stretching his legs a bit farther under the table, made no answer.
"I said something then," the lavender young gentleman said, peevishly. "What's the matter with you, Greek?"
Greek took his arms down from the back of his chair where he had clasped his hands behind his head, and finished his own high-ball. Nature in the beginning of things for him had been more kind than to his petulant friend. He was scarcely more than a boy—twenty-five, perhaps, from the looks of him—but physically a big man. He might have weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, and he was maybe an inch over six feet. But evidently where nature had left off there had been nobody to go on save the tailor. His gray suit was faultlessly correct, his linen immaculate, his hose silken and of a brilliant, dazzling blue. His face was fine, even handsome, but indicating about as much purpose as did his faultlessly correct shoes. There was an extreme, unruffled good humor in his eyes and about his mouth, and with it all as much determination of character as is commonly put into the rosy face of a wax doll.
"Seeing that you have made the same remark seventeen times since breakfast," Greek replied, when he had set his empty glass back upon the tray, "I didn't know that an answer was needed."
"Well, it's so," the pale youth maintained, irritably.
Greek nodded wearily and selected a cigarette from a silver monogrammed case. The cigarettes themselves were monogrammed, each one bearing a delicately executed W. C. His companion reached out a shapely hand for the case, at the same time regarding his empty glass.
"Suppose we have another, eh?"
Again Greek nodded. The lavender young man reached the button, and a bell tinkled in the little buffet at the far end of the car. The negro lazily polishing a glass put it down, glanced at the indicator, and hastened to put glasses and bottles upon a tray.
"The same, suh?" he asked, coming to the table and addressing Greek.
It was the pale young man who assured him that it was to be the same, but it was Greek who threw a dollar bill upon the tray.
"Thank you, suh. Thank you." The negro bobbed as he made the proper change—and returned it to his own pocket.
Greek appeared not to have seen him or heard. He poured his own drink and shoved the bottles toward his friend, who helped himself with skilful celerity.
"Suppose the old gent will hold out long this time, Greek?" came the query, after a swallow of the whisky and seltzer, a shrewd look in the pale eyes.
Greek laughed carelessly.
"I guess we'll have time to see a good deal of San Francisco before he caves in. The old man put what he had to say in words of one syllable. But we won't worry about that until we get there."
"Did he shell out at all?"
"He didn't quite give me carte blanche," retorted Greek, grinning. "A ticket to ride as far as I wanted to, and five hundred in the long green. And it's going rather fast, Roger, my boy."
"And my tickets came out of the five hundred?"
Greek nodded.
"It's devilish the way my luck's gone lately," grumbled Roger. "I don't know when I can ever pay—"
Greek put up his hand swiftly.
"You don't pay at all," he said, emphatically. "This is my treat. It was mighty decent of you to drop everything and come along with me into this d——d exile. And," he finished, easily, "I'll have more money than I'll know what to do with when the old man gets soft-hearted again."
"He's d——d hard on you, Greek. He's got more—"
"Oh, I don't know." Greek laughed again. "He's a good sort, and we get along first rate together. Only he's got some infernally uncomfortable ideas about a man going to work and doing something for himself in this little old vale of tears. He shaves himself five times out of six, and I've seen him black his own boots!" He chuckled amusedly. "Just to show people he can, you know."
Roger shook his head and applied himself to his glass, failing to see the humor of the thing. And while the bigger man continued to muse with twinkling eyes over the idiosyncrasies of an enormously wealthy but at the same time enormously hard-headed father, with old-fashioned ideas of the dignity of labor, Roger sat frowning into his glass.
The silence, into which the click of the rails below had entered so persistently as to become a part of it rather than to disturb it, was broken at last by the clamorous screaming of the engine. The train was slackening its speed. Greek flipped up the shade and looked out.
"Another one of those toy villages," he called over his shoulder. "Who in the devil would want to get off here?"
Roger sank a trifle deeper into his chair, indicating no interest. The fat man had dropped his newspaper to the floor and was leaning out the window.
"Great country, ain't it?" he called to Greek.
"Yes, it certainly ain't! What gets me is, why do people live in a place like this? Are they all crazy?"
The train now was jerking and bumping to a standstill. Sixty yards away was a little, bluish-gray frame building, by far the most pretentious of the clutter of shacks, flaunting the legend, "Prairie City." Beyond the station was the to-be-expected general store and post-office. A bit farther on a saloon. Beyond that another, and then straggling at intervals a dozen rough, rambling, one-storied board houses. For miles in all directions the desert stretched dry and barren. The faces of women and children peered out of windows, the forms of roughly garbed men lounged in the doorways of the store and the saloons. All the denizens of Prairie City manifested a mild interest in the arrival of Number 1.
"I guess you called the turn," sputtered the fat man. "Here come the crazy folks now!"
A cloud of dust swirling higher and higher in the still air, the clatter of hoofs, and two horses swept around the farthest house, carrying their riders at breakneck speed into the one and only street. At first Greek took it to be a race, and then he thought it a runaway. As it was the first interesting incident since Grand Central Station had dropped out of sight four days ago, he craned his neck to watch.
The two riders were half-way down the street now, a tall bay forging steadily ahead of a little Mexican mustang until ten feet or more intervened between the two horses. The train jerked; the Wells Fargo man, with his truck alongside the express-car far ahead, yelled something to the man who had taken his packages aboard.
"The bay wins," grinned the fat man. "It looks—Gad! It's a woman!"
Greek saw that it was a woman in khaki riding-habit, and that the spurs she wore were gnawing into her horse's flanks. He began to take a sudden, stronger interest. He leaned farther out, hardly realizing that he had called to the conductor to hold the train a moment. For it was at last clear that these were not mad people, but merely a couple of the dwellers of the desert anxious to catch Number 1. But the conductor had waved his orders and was swinging upon the slowly moving steps. From the windows of the train a score of heads were thrust out, a score of voices raised in shouting encouragement. And down to the tracks the woman and the man behind her rushed, their horses' feet seeming never to touch the ground.
A bump, a jar, a jerk, and the Limited was drawing slowly away from the station. The woman was barely fifty yards away. As she lifted her head Greek saw her face for the first time. And, having seen her ride, he pursed his lips into a low whistle of amazement.
"Why, she's only a kid of a girl!" gasped the fat man. "And, say, ain't she sure a peach!"
Greek didn't answer. He was busy inwardly cursing the conductor for not waiting a second longer. For it was obvious to him that the girl was going to miss the train by hardly more than that.
But she had not given up. She had dropped her head again and was rushing straight toward the side of the string of cars. Greek held his breath, a swift alarm for her making his heart beat trippingly. He did not see how she could stop in time.
Again a clamor of