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There are always plain ones to be had in the stores. Have I hurt your feelings, Emerson?" "Double the ante!" cried the criticised one, greedily. "Give me more of it. There's a way to tote the haberdashery, and I want to get wise to it. Say, you're the right kind of a swell. Anything else to the queer about me?" "Your tie," said Vuyning, "is tied with absolute precision and correctness."
His words were a telescope to the city men, whose eyes had looked upon Youngstown, O., and whose tongues had called it "West." In fact, Emerson had them "going." The next morning at ten he met Vuyning, by appointment, at a Forty-second Street café. Emerson was to leave for the West that day.
"But, suppose we step aside to a quieter place. There is a divan a café over here that will do. Schrumm will give us a private corner." Schrumm established them under a growing palm, with two seidls between them. Vuyning made a pleasant reference to meteorological conditions, thus forming a hinge upon which might be swung the door leading from the thought repository of the other.
I was just thinking how much better this is than a club. Now, shall we go to my tailor?" "Boys, and elderly gents," said Vuyning, five days later at his club, standing up against the window where his coterie was gathered, and keeping out the breeze, "a friend of mine from the West will dine at our table this evening."
At one o'clock Vuyning had luncheon with Miss Allison by previous arrangement. For thirty minutes he babbled to her, unaccountably, of ranches, horses, cañons, cyclones, round-ups, Rocky Mountains and beans and bacon. She looked at him with wondering and half-terrified eyes. "I was going to propose again to-day," said Vuyning, cheerily, "but I won't. I've worried you often enough.
"I tell you what," said Vuyning, whose ennui had taken wings, "I'll take you to my tailor. He'll eliminate the mark of the beast from your exterior. That is, if you care to go any further in the way of expense." "Play 'em to the ceiling," said Emerson, with a boyish smile of joy. "I've got a roll as big around as a barrel of black-eyed peas and as loose as the wrapper of a two-for-fiver.
"You're the goods, duty free, and half-way to the warehouse in a red wagon." "Bacon, toasted on a green willow switch over red coals, ought to put broiled lobsters out of business," said Vuyning. "And you say a horse at the end of a thirty-foot rope can't pull a ten-inch stake out of wet prairie? Well, good-bye, old man, if you must be off."
"Will he ask if we have heard the latest from Denver?" said a member, squirming in his chair. "Will he mention the new twenty-three-story Masonic Temple, in Quincy, Ill.?" inquired another, dropping his nose-glasses. "Will he spring one of those Western Mississippi River catfish stories, in which they use yearling calves for bait?" demanded Kirk, fiercely. "Be comforted," said Vuyning.
He was hungry for something out of the ordinary, and to be accosted by this smooth-faced, keen-eyed, low-voiced, athletic member of the under world, with his grim, yet pleasant smile, had all the taste of an adventure to the convention-weary Vuyning. "Excuse me, friend," said he. "Could I have a few minutes' talk with you on the level?" "Certainly," said Vuyning, with a smile.
"What was that cow-puncher's name?" asked Vuyning, "who used to catch a mustang by the nose and mane, and throw him till he put the bridle on?" "Bates," said Emerson. "Thanks," said Vuyning. "I thought it was Yates. Oh, about that toggery business I'd forgotten that." "I've been looking for some guy to put me on the right track for years," said Emerson.
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