Within its comparatively cramped quarters more love--as that emotion is known to park-habitués--than he had seen in the whole vast West was on display. The turfed stretches were safety-razored, rather than allowed to grow nature's full beards. The only furred creatures in evidence--except chipmunks and squirrels--were worn about the shoulders of fair bipeds instead of prowling on four feet, uncured, through the underbrush. From the steel framework of a new sky-scraper that rose like a fire-stripped forest on the east to the turreted peaks of a range of apartment houses on the west, the scene invited comparison in detail.
But Pape had no time for detail except the one of a live dash of sorrel. The vital greens of grass and trees were rife, the deep blues of lakes, the silver of sunlight on the distances and the more mysterious regal purple of shadows. So far as concerned any splash of tabasco red, however, he might better have been seeking a maverick on the outreaches of Hellroaring.
Twice had he shifted his point of survey when he was rewarded by sudden sight of the steer upon a rhododendron covered mound, not more than a city block away. Unconcernedly the long-horn trotted onto the scene, glanced about, then slowed to a walk and began to browse. The hope of recapturing the fine creature uninjured before he injured others re-awoke in Pape. A cautious approach, a forward swish of rope, a forceful reaction-- Unless luck all lay with his too rampant escutcheon, the chapter might be closed.
But luck this afternoon seemed to favor quadrupeds. Just as Polkadot slithered toward the green mound--just as, almost, he had borne his man-mate within roping distance, he chanced to misplace a topply bowlder and sent it crashing down the side of a rock-ribbed gorge, on its way sounding an alarm above the plash of a rainbowed waterfall. Again the steer was off. Again the bone-risking pursuit for man and beast was on.
Around hillocks, hurdling bowlders, dodging cones and knobs that were too slippery for climbing, ran the race. Once the brute leader miscalculated the space between a striped maple and a pignut hickory; for a moment was caught and held in a vise-like grip. But before his pursuer could close in, he had managed to wriggle free, shy only some few tufts of short hair, with no loss of determination to retain the freedom so energetically won.