Chapter XIV. The Trail of the Shirt

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      Within half an hour fifty plain-clothes men and uniformed policemen were quietly searching the stadium for Montana Kid. It was deemed best to keep the search as secret as possible and to suppress all news of the robbery for the present, but never in his life again would Kid be such a sought-after young man.

      The Kid was very busy on his own account just then. He ducked through the gate thirty seconds behind his stolen blue shirt, past a gatekeeper who was afterwards proven color-blind, by the way—and saw his quarry lift a pair of white, hairy chaps into a yellow cab and follow them hurriedly. The car slid from the curb as the Kid waved down the next one. Cabs were swarming on that one-way street to catch the rodeo crowd as it poured out, and the Kid flung himself into the first that stopped and waved the driver on.

      "That guy ahead there has got my shirt on!" he announced heatedly. "Get 'im, Cabby! I'll have it off 'im and his hide with it!"

      "Okay!"

      The Kid sat forward on the seat and stared through the wind shield with squinting eyes that held the light of battle. In the cab ahead he caught glimpses of his blue satin shirt—no mistaking it for any other blue shirt. It was his. The fellow surely had gall, to steal a shirt and put it right on his back and wear it where the owner could see!

      The fugitive must have sensed the need of hurry, for the cab he was in went speeding to the corner, swung north at a reckless clip and shot up past the eastern side of the stadium, weaving in and out among slower cars.

      "Pay my fine if I get pinched for speeding?" the Kid's driver shot over his shoulder. "That guy's doing forty. Still want me to catch him?"

      "Hell, yes!" snapped the Kid, in a tone that would have shocked his mother. "That's my blue shirt he's wearing! Stole it right out of my suitcase to-day—and he's got the nerve to wear it!"

      "I'll git 'im, Cowboy!" And then, to show how little he minded the speed he must keep. "How's the contest comin'? Awful big crowd—biggest since the Army and Navy game. Big as Lindbergh had, almost."

      "He's turning the corner!" barked the Kid, ignoring the flattery. "Hit 'er up, can't you?"

      "He's playin' right into our hand, Cowboy. Don't worry—I'll run 'im down 'fore he makes Michigan Avenue."

      They took that corner with a lurch that reminded the Kid forcibly of Invalid as he grabbed for the robe rail.

      "Making me pull leather," he grinned. "I guess you're doing all right, at that."

      "Crawlin' up on him!" The driver honked blatantly at a shiny new limousine and shaved by with an inch to spare.

      At the next corner they met the full press of southbound traffic, with two policemen stationed there to handle the crowd which would soon come pouring into town from the stadium. The fleeing cab halted perforce, and the Kid's cab pulled up alongside, the driver looking back grinning approval of himself. But the grin froze to a stare of amazement. The Kid was making a dive through the window and into the other cab—the door being locked by a device which cabbies use for reasons of their own.

      The Kid landed headfirst and fighting the astonished thief, his legs writhing briefly upon the fender and running board. He had kicked himself inside, however, before two motor cops with shrieking sirens drew up alongside. (Where they had come from and how they had got there so soon will always be a deep mystery to the Kid.) While the car rocked on its springs and the driver ducked splinters of glass, the officers tried to make themselves heard or heeded. It was only when the Kid smelled a gun barrel directly under his nose that he subsided sufficiently to notice who was blocking the westering sunlight that had streamed in through the window. He jerked back his head, away from the gun, and blinked surprisedly at the policeman.

      "Cut it out, here! What ya think ya're doin', fightin' like that?"

      "He stole my shirt!" cried the Kid. "He can't pull anything like that—ah-h, yuh would, uh?" He lunged again and grappled with the thief, twisting a wrist until a knife dropped silently upon the chaps tumbled on the floor. "That's the kind of a bird he is! Tried to knife me, and you looking on!" The Kid fell once more to beating the fellow's head against the hard window sill.

      "Hey, quit it, now! Want me to lay you out with this gun?"

      "Well, you want him to knife me, and you stand there and watch him do it?" The Kid's eyes blazed. "Two of you—and you don't do a damn thing to him!"

      "I'll do a plenty to the both of you," promised the officer with the gun, winking across at his fellow, who was evidently acting merely as a guard to prevent any attempt at escape from that side. "Drive on to the station," he ordered the cab driver. "And you, in there, cut out that fighting, or I'll slap the irons on the both of you. Don't you know you'll get life, fightin' on the street like that?" The twinkle in his eyes somewhat belied the harshness of his voice, but the Kid was not looking at him just then.

      "I know I'll get my shirt off him," he retorted stubbornly. "And I know he won't pull any knife on me in a hurry, either."

      "Well, hold 'im, then—but don't yuh hit 'im again or I'll come in there to the both of you! Drive on, you; you're jamming the traffic a mile back!"

      Conveyed by two motor cops and the yellow cab that had lost its fare but whose driver might be useful as a witness, the Kid ultimately arrived at the police station intact, furious, but savagely victorious, with his stolen shirt within his grasp; literally, since the thief persisted in trying to wriggle free—until the Kid delivered a punch under which his captive wilted.

      Not until afterward did the Kid understand that he was being treated with much leniency and consideration. He did not know much about jails, but he did wonder a little when he was held in the office instead of being thrown into a cell as he had expected; or that repellent place he had heard spoken of as a tank. His companion sagged limply on a chair in the corner, his stolen hat on the back of his head, his evil mouth half open. The blue shirt had lost its sheen in spots. The Kid had been rather thorough.

      His cab driver conferred with the cops, and the cops leaned over the desk and conversed in undertones with the man behind it. They did not seem to be in any particular hurry, nor did they seem particularly wrought up over the affair. Young fellows, the cops were; the Kid guessed maybe they could sympathize with a fellow in his position. Maybe they'd have done the same as he had, if they weren't cops and had got on the trail of a sneak thief.

      Finally the cab drivers signed their names to something or other—the Kid was too busy keeping an eye on his thief to see all that transpired at the desk—and, buttoning their coats and settling their caps in obvious preparation for departure, came over to where he waited.

      They wanted their fare. The Kid's driver wanted fare from the stadium to the branch police station, though the Kid didn't see how he figured it, and told him so, pointing out that he hadn't ridden in the cab more than half a mile at the most, and he certainly hadn't asked him to come away down town. But the driver repeated the amount that he expected—which was a dollar and a half. It was a poor place to argue, so the Kid paid it and made a