The Tenderfoots by Francis Lynde

IT was in the forenoon following the Englishman's staging of an imitative attempt to "shoot up the town" that Reddick spent an earnest hour trying to find Bromley, and finally ran across him as he was coming out of the Colorado National Bank.

"Been hunting high and low for you," said the redheaded one. "There is the devil to pay and no pitch hot. Have you seen Phil this morning?"

"No," said the play-boy.

"Well, I have. One of our county officials is sending his family east, and I went up to the court house this morning to take him the tickets. While I was there, Phil came in and went through some sort of business at the counter. He didn't see me; and after he was gone, I was curious enough to go and pry. He is taking the big jump, Harry -- the one that will smother him for life! His business at the court house was to take out a marriage license for himself and ‘Little Irish' Connaghey!"

"And who is the Connaghey?"

"She is a girl in Madam Blanche's. Phil was asking me about her the other day. I told him the truth; that she was one of the straightest of the lot -- for whatever that was worth. I thought he might be wanting to help her in some way, but I hadn't the remotest idea he was thinking of making a complete fool of himself."

"Where did Phil go after he left the court house?"

"I don't know; I haven't seen him since. It's up to you to hustle, Harry. If this thing goes through, it is the end of Phil Trask. You know that as well as I do."

"I do, indeed. Thank you for putting me on. I'll find Phil, if I have to take out a search warrant for him."

Losing no time, Bromley went first to the Alamo Building, and in the upper corridor he met a Jew second-hand furniture dealer coming out of Philip's rooms and his heart sank. This meant that Philip was already disposing of his effects and preparing for flight. In the sitting-room he found Philip packing a trunk.

"Quit that, Phil, for a minute or so and talk to me," he began abruptly. Then: "We'll skip the preliminaries; I know all about it -- what you've done, and what you are intending to do. Don't you know that it is preposterously impossible?"

"No, I don't," was the firm denial. "It isn't impossible. Jim Garth did it, and nothing but good came of it. He would be a different man to-day if the woman he rescued and married hadn't died. But that is beside the mark, Harry. You know what I have done: I have spoiled my life, and I am no better than the woman I am going to marry; not half as good in some respects."

"She isn't too good to let you ruin yourself, world without end, by marrying her! " retorted the play-boy.

"You are mistaken again," was the mild dissent. "She proved to me, no longer ago than last night, that she was capable of sacrificing herself utterly to break my determination. I have come around to your point of view, Harry. There is no poor wretch on earth too low down to answer the appeal if one only knows how to make it. It has cost me pretty much everything I value, or used to value, to learn this, but I have learned it, at last."

"But, good heavens -- you can't love this woman!"

"Who said anything about love? Don't make another mistake, Harry; it isn't an infatuation. I am merely giving this girl a chance to become what God intended her to be -- a one-man woman; and the obligation this will impose will keep me from sinking any deeper in the mud -- or I hope it may."

For a fervid half-hour the play-boy argued and pleaded, all to no purpose. It was quite in vain that, argument and persuasion failing, he plied the whip, refusing to credit the altruistic motive, and accusing Philip of making the final and fatal sacrifice to his own swollen ego; not, indeed, that he believed this to be wholly true, but only that he hoped there might be enough of the steel of truth in it to strike fire upon the hard flint of Philip's desperate resolution.

"If that is your motive -- a monkish idea that by punishing yourself you can wipe the slate of whatever things you've been writing on it since you let yourself go -- it's a gross fallacy, Phil, and you know it. You may fool yourself, but you can't fool the God you still believe in."

"You've got me all wrong, Harry," was the placatory answer to this. "I am still enough of a Christian to believe that there is only one sacrifice for sin. That isn't it at all. I'm not trying to atone; I am merely trying to give another human being, to whose plane I have sunk myself, a chance for the only redemption that can ever come to her -- in this life. I wish I could make you understand that I am not playing to my own gallery -- not consciously, at least. The ego you speak of is very dead, these days. God knows, it needed to die. It wasn't fit to live."

It was in sheer desperation that Bromley fired his final shot.