CHAPTER VII
ARIZONA FOLLOWS ITS LAWLESS IMPULSE
When Clay two hours later took the Sixth Avenue L for a plunge intoBohemianism he knew no more about Greenwich Village than asix-months-old pup does about Virgil. But it was characteristic of himthat on his way downtown he proceeded to find out from his chanceseat-mate something about this unknown terrain he was about to visit.
The man he sat beside was a patrolman off duty, and to this engagingWesterner he was quite ready to impart any information he might have.
"Fakirs," he pronounced promptly. "They're a bunch of long-hairednuts, most of 'em--queer guys who can't sell their junk and kidthemselves into thinking they're artists and writers. They pull a lotof stuff about socialism and anarchy and high art."
"Just harmless cranks--gone loco, mebbe?"
"Some of 'em. Others are there for the mazuma. Uptown the Village issupposed to be one hell of a place. The people who own the dumps downthere have worked up that rep to draw the night trade. They make aliving outa the wickedness of Greenwich. Nothin' to it--all fakestuff. They advertise September Morn balls with posters somethingfierce, and when you go they are just like any other dances. Bumdrawings of naked women on the walls done by artist yaps, decorationsof purple cows, pirates' dens--that's the kind of dope they have."
The Sea Siren was already beginning to fill up when Clay descendedthree steps to a cellar and was warily admitted. A near-Hawaiianorchestra was strumming out a dance tune and a few couples were on thefloor. Waitresses, got up as Loreleis, were moving about among theguests delivering orders for refreshments.
The Westerner sat down in a corner and looked about him. The wallswere decorated with crude purple crayons of underfed sirens. A statueof a nude woman distressed Clay. He did not mind the missing clothes,but she was so dreadfully emaciated that he thought it wise for her tocling to the yellow-and-red draped barber pole that rose from thepedestal. On the base was the legend, "The Weeping Lady." After hehad tasted the Sea Siren fare the man from Arizona suspected that bothher grief and her anaemia arose from the fact that she had been fed onit.
A man in artist's velveteens, minus a haircut, with a large, fat, pastyface, sat at an adjoining table and discoursed to his friends.Presently, during an intermission of the music, he rose and took therest of those present into his confidence. With rapt eyes on thefaraway space of distant planets he chanted his apologia.
"I believe in the Cosmic Urge, in the Sublimity of my Ego. I follow myLawless Impulse where the Gods of Desire shall drive. I am what I Am,Son of the Stars, Lord of my Life. With Unleashed Love I answer thepsychic beat of Pulse to Pulse, Laughter, Tears and Woe, the keen edgeof Passion, the Languor of Satiety: all these are life. Open-armed, Iembrace them. I drink and assuage my thirst. For Youth is hereto-day. To-morrow, alas, it has gone. Now I am. In the Then I shallnot be. Kismet!"
The poet's fine frenzy faded. He sank back into his chair, apparentlyworn out by his vast mental effort.
Clay gave a deep chuckle of delight. This was good.
"Heap much oration," he murmured. "Go to it, old-timer. Steam offagain. Git down in yore collar to it."
To miss none of the fun he hitched a little closer on the bench. Butthe man without the haircut was through effervescing. He began to talkin a lower voice on world politics to admiring friends who were baskingin his reflected glory.
"Bourgeois to the core," he announced with finality, speaking of theUnited States, in answer to a question. "What are the idols weworship? Law, the chain which binds an enslaved people; thrift, bornof childish fear; love of country, which is another name for crassprovincialism. I--I am a Cosmopolite, not an American. Bohemia is myland, and all free souls are my brothers. Why should I get wrinklesbecause Germany sunk the Lusitania a month or two ago? That's herbusiness, not mine."
Clay leaned forward on a search for information. "Excuse me forbuttin' in, and me a stranger. But isn't it yore business when shemurders American women and children?"
The pasty-faced man looked at him with thinly disguised contempt. "Youwouldn't understand if I explained."
"Mebbeso I wouldn't, but you take a whirl at it and I'll listen high,wide, and handsome."
The man in velveteens unexpectedly found himself doing as he was told.There was a suggestion of compulsion about the gray-blue eyes fastenedon his, something in the clamp of the strong jaw that brought him upfor a moment against stark reality.
"The intelligentsia of a country knows that there can be no freedomuntil there is no law. Every man's duty is to disregard duty. So, byfaring far on the wings of desire, he helps break down the slavery thatbinds us. Obey the Cosmic Urge of your soul regardless of where itleads you, young man."
It was unfortunate for the poet of Bohemia that at this precise momentKitty Mason, dressed in sandals and a lilac-patterned smock, stoodbefore him with a tray of cigarettes asking for his trade. The naiveappeal in her soft eyes had its weight with the poet. What is the useof living in Bohemia if one cannot be free to follow impulse? Heslipped an arm about the girl and kissed the crimson lips upturned tohim.
Kitty started back with a little cry of distress.
The freedom taken by the near-poet was instantly avenged.
A Cosmic Urge beat in the veins of the savage from Arizona. He tookthe poet's advice and followed his Lawless Impulse where it led.Across the table a long arm reached. Sinewy fingers closed upon theflowing neckwear of the fat-faced orator and dragged him forward,leaving overturned glasses in the wake of his course.
The man in velveteens met the eyes of the energetic manhandler andquailed. This brown-faced barbarian looked very much like business.
"Don't you touch me! Don't you dare touch me!" the apostle of anarchyshrilled as the table crashed down. "I'll turn you over to the police!"
Clay jerked him to his feet. Hard knuckles pressed cruelly into thesoft throat of the Villager. "Git down on yore ham bones and beg thelady's pardon, Son of the Stars, or I'll sure make you see a wholecolony of yore ancestors. Tell her you're a yellow pup, but you don'treckon you'll ever pull a bone like that again. Speak right out inmeetin' _pronto_ before you bump into the tears and woe you was makin'heap much oration about."
The proprietor of the cafe seized the cowpuncher by the arm hurriedly."Here, stop that! You get out of the place! I'll not stand for anyrough-house." And he murmured something about getting in bad with thepolice. Clay tried to explain. "Me, I'm not rough-housing. I'mtellin' this here Lord of Life to apologize to the little lady and lether know that he's sorry he was fresh. If he don't I'll most ce'tainlymuss up the Sublimity of his Ego."
The companions of the poet rushed forward to protest at the manhandlingof their leader. Those in the rear jammed the front ones close to Clayand his captive. The cowpuncher gently but strongly pushed them back.
"Don't get on the prod," he advised in his genial drawl. "The poethe's got an important engagement right now."
A kind of scuffle developed. The proprietor increased it by hishysterical efforts to prevent any trouble. Men joined themselves tothe noisy group of which Clay was the smiling center. The excitementincreased. Distant corners of the room became the refuge of the women.Some one struck at the cowpuncher over the heads of those about him.The mass of closely packed human beings showed a convulsive activity.It became suddenly the most popular indoor sport at the Sea Siren toslay this barbarian from the desert who had interfered with theamusements of Bohemia.
But Clay took a lot of slaying. In the rough-and-tumble life of theoutdoor West he had learned how to look out for his own hand. Thecopper hair of his strong lean head rose above the tangle of the meleelike the bromidic Helmet of Navarre. A reckless light of mirth bubbledin his dare-devil eyes. The very number of the opponents whointerfered with each other trying to get at him was a guarantee ofsafety. The blows showered at him lacked steam and were badly timed asto distance.
The pack rolled across the room, ti
pped over a table, and deluged anartist and his affinity with hot chocolate before they could escapefrom the avalanche. Chairs went over like ninepins. Stands collapsed.Men grunted and shouted advice. Girls screamed. The Sea Siren wasbeing wrecked by a cyclone from the bad lands.
Against the wall the struggling mob brought up with a crash. Thevelveteen poet caught at "The Weeping Lady" to save himself from goingdown. She descended from her pedestal into his arms and henceforthwaltzed with him as a part of the subsequent proceedings.
The writhing mass caromed from the wall and revolved toward themusicians. A colored gentleman jumped up in alarm and brandished hisinstrument as a weapon.
"Keep away from this heah niggah!" he warned, and simultaneously heaimed the drum of the mandolin at the red head which was the core ofthe tangle. His aim was deflected and the wood crashed down upon thecrown of "The Weeping Lady." For the rest of the two-step it hung likea large ruff around her neck.
Arms threshed wildly to and fro. The focal point of their destinationwas the figure at the center of the disturbance. Most of the blowsfound other marks. Four or five men could have demolished Clay.Fifteen or twenty found it a tough job because they interfered witheach other at every turn. They were packed too close for hard hitting.Clay was not fighting but wrestling. He used his arms to push withrather than to strike blows that counted.
The Arizonan could not afterward remember at exactly what stage of theproceedings the face of Jerry Durand impinged itself on hisconsciousness. Once, when the swirl of the crowd flung him close tothe door, he caught a glimpse of it, tight-lipped and wolf-eyed, turnedto him with relentless malice. The gang leader was taking no part inthe fight.
The crowd parted. Out of the pack a pair of strong arms and lean broadshoulders ploughed a way for a somewhat damaged face that still carrieda debonair smile. With pantherish litheness the Arizonan ducked aswinging blow. The rippling muscles of the plunging shoulders tossedaside a little man in evening dress clawing at him. Yet a moment, andhe was outside taking the three steps that led to the street.
Into his laboring lungs he drew deliciously the soft breath of thenight. It cooled the fever of his hammered face, was like an icy bathto his hot body. A little dizzy from the blows that had been rained onhim, he stood for a moment uncertain which way to go. From his throatthere rippled a low peal of joyous mirth. The youth in him delightedin the free-for-all from which he had just emerged.
Then again he became aware of Durand. The man was not alone. He hadwith him a hulking ruffian whose heavy, hunched shoulders told ofstrength. There was a hint of the gorilla in the way the long armshung straight from the shoulders as he leaned forward. Both of the menwere watching the cowpuncher as steadily as alley cats do a housefinch.
"Hell's going to pop in about three seconds," announced Clay to himself.
Silently, without lifting their eyes from their victim for an instant,the two men moved apart to take him on both sides. He clung to thewall, forcing a frontal attack. The laughter had gone out of his eyesnow. They had hardened to pinpoints. This time it was no amateurhorseplay. He was fighting for his life. No need to tell Clay Lindsaythat the New York gangster meant to leave him as good as dead.
The men rushed him. He fought them back with clean hard blows. Jerrybored in like a wild bull. Clay caught him off his balance, using ashort arm jolt which had back of it all that twenty-three years ofclean outdoors Arizona could give. The gangster hit the pavement hard.
He got up furious and charged again. The Arizonan, busy with the otherman, tried to sidestep. An uppercut jarred him to the heel. In thatinstant of time before his knees began to sag beneath him his brainflashed the news that Durand had struck him on the chin with brassknucks. He crumpled up and went down, still alive to what was goingon, but unable to move in his own defense. Weakly he tried to protecthis face and sides from the kicks of a heavy boot. Then he floatedballoon-like in space and vanished into unconsciousness.