"Aren't we going to stop at all, Mr. Sheriff Man?"
A soft, plaintive note in the voice made Kurt Walters turn the brake of an
old, rickety automobile and halt in the dust-white road, as he cast a
sharply scrutinizing glance upon the atom of a girl who sat beside him.
She was a dejected, dusty, little figure, drooping under the jolt of the
jerking car and the bright rays of hills-land sunshine. She was young--in
years; young, too, in looks, as Kurt saw when she raised her eyes which
were soft and almond-shaped; but old, he assumed, in much that she should
not have been.
She had found it a long, hard ride across the plains, and the end of her
endurance had been prefaced by frequent sighs, changes of position and
softly muffled exclamations, all seemingly unnoted by the man beside her,
whose deep-set eyes had remained fixed on the open space ahead, his slim,
brown hands gripping the wheel, his lean, sinewy body bending slightly
forward.
His tenseness relaxed; a startled, remorseful look came into his eyes as
he saw two tears coursing down her cheeks. They were unmistakably real
tears,--though, as he was well aware, they came from physical causes
alone. Still, they penetrated the armor of unconcern with which he had
girded himself.
"What for?" he asked curtly.
"What for!" she echoed, her mouth quivering into pathetic droops. "For
rest, of course. You may be used to this kind of locomotion, but I'm not
very well upholstered, and I'm shaken to bits. Fact is, I'm just all
pegged out, old man. Have a heart, and stop for repairs. What's your rush,
anyway? I can't get loose hereabouts, and I haven't anywhere to go,
anyhow. Didn't mind getting 'took' at all, at all. How many more miles is
it to the end of your trail? This is a trail, isn't it?"
"A great many miles," he replied, "and it was on your account more than
any other that I was hurrying to get to the--"
"Jail," she answered supinely, as he hesitated.
"No," he said grimly. "I was going to take you home--for to-night,
anyway."
"Home! Oh, how you startle me! I didn't know there was any of those
home-stuff places left except in the movies. I never was much stuck on
home, so you needn't be afraid to call it 'jail' for fear of hurting my
feelings."
"You can't work on my sympathy that way," he said coldly.
"Dear me!" she replied with a silly, little giggle. "I gave up trying to
work the sympathy racket long ago. Everyone's too smart nowadays. Honest,
I've no longings for home. I feel sorry for anyone who's tied down to one.
Why don't you kick over the traces and come off your trail and see what's
on the other side of your hills? I'd hate to take root here. Say, Mr.
Sheriff Man, you look a good sort, even if you have played you were deaf
and dumb for the whole of this awful ride. Let's sidetrack the trail and
go--home--by moonlight."
His eyes remained rigid and relentless, but there was a slight twitching
of his strongest feature, the wide, mobile mouth.
He looked at his watch.
"We can wait for a few minutes," he said in a matter of fact voice.
"Please, may I get out and stretch?" she asked pleadingly.
Taking silence for consent, she climbed out of the car.
"Do you want a drink?" he asked, as he poured some water from an
improvised Thermos bottle into a traveling cup.
"Thanks for those first kind words," she exclaimed, taking the cup from
him and drinking eagerly.
"Why didn't you say you were thirsty?" he asked in a resentful tone,
without looking at her. He had, in fact, studiously refrained from looking
at her throughout the journey.
"I'm not used to asking for anything," she answered with a chuckle. "I
take what comes my way. 'Taking' is your job, too, isn't it?"
"To hell with my job!" he broke out fiercely. "I'd never have taken it if
I knew it meant this."
"It's your own fault," she retorted. "It wouldn't have been 'this' if you
hadn't been so grouchy. We could have had a chummy little gabfest, if you
hadn't been bunging holes in the landscape with your lamps all the way."
He made no response but began to examine the workings of his car.
"Does the county furnish it to you?" she asked. "It doesn't seem as if
you'd pick out anything like this. Was it 'Made in America?' Funny outfit
for a cowboy country, anyway."
"Get in," he commanded curtly. "We must be away."
"Oh, please, not yet," she implored. "It's so awful hot, and I won't have
all this outdoors for a long time, I suppose. I see there's a tidy little
bit of shade yonder. Let's go there and rest awhile. I'll be good; honest,
I will, and when I get rested, you can hit a faster gait to even up. I get
tired just the same as honest folks do. Come, now, won't you?"
In a flash she had taken advantage of this oasis of shade that beckoned
enticingly to the passer-by.
He followed reluctantly.
"This is Heaven let loose," she said, lolling luxuriously against the
trunk of a tree. "You're the only nice sheriff man that ever run me in."
He sat down near her and looked gloomily ahead.
"Cheer up!" she urged, after a short silence. "It may not be so bad. Any
one would think you were the prisoner instead of poor little me."
"I wish I were," he said shortly.
She looked at him curiously.
"Say, what's eating you, anyway? If you hate your job so, what did you
take it for?"
"It was forced on me. I'm only sworn in as acting sheriff for the county
until the sheriff returns."
"How long you been 'it'?"
"Two weeks. You're my second--arrest."
"Who was the first?"
"So Long Sam."
She sat upright.
"Are you the man who caught So Long Sam? Every one has been afraid to
tackle him. I'd never have thought it of you!"
"Why?" he asked curiously, not proof against the masculine enjoyment of
hearing himself analyzed in spite of his reluctance to talk to her. "Do I
seem such a weakling I couldn't take one man?"
"No; you look like you'd take a red-hot stove if you wanted to; but they
said--Say; is your maiden name 'Kurt?' No! It can't be."
"Why not?"
"Because they called the man who took So Long Sam, 'Kind Kurt.' You
haven't been over-kind to me till just lately. Whirling me over sands in
that awful fore-shortened car."
"It must be better," he said dryly, "than the kind you've been used to."
"You mean the jail jitney. Do you know, they never yet put me in one.
Always conveyed me other ways. Weren't so bad to me either. I guess maybe
your heart is in the right place or you wouldn't have let me rest and
given me the drink, even if you did wait till the eleventh hour. Can't you
look pleasant like you were going to sit for a picture to give to your
best girl instead of posing for 'Just before the battle, Mother'? You look
so sorry you came."
"I am," he said angrily. "I guess 'Kind Kurt' is a blankety blank fool, as
some people say. I've been a lot kinder to you than you know. When I heard
of your case and Bender pointed you out to me and said he'd got you locked
up, I thought you were one of the many young city girls who go wrong
because they have no chance to know better. The kind bred in slums,
ignorant, ill-fed--the kind who never had a fair show. So I resolved that
you should have one. Bender wanted you out of town with the surety that
you would never come back.
"I felt sorry for you. I offered to take you off his hands and bring you
out here among the hills, where the best woman in the world would teach
you to _want_ to be honest. Do you suppose I'd have done it if I'd known
the kind you are--a bright, smart brat who is bad because she wants to be,
and boasts of it? There is no hope for your kind."
It was the longest speech the acting sheriff had ever made. He had been
scarcely conscious that he was talking, but was simply voicing what had
been in his thoughts for the last half hour.
"How old is this 'best woman in the world'?" asked the girl, seemingly
unconcerned in his summing up of her case. "Is she your sweetheart or your
wife? If she is either one, you'd better take me back to Bender, or spill
me out on the plains here. She won't be real glad to try to reform a
young, good-looking girl like me. I _am_ good-looking, honest, if I was
slicked up a little."
He looked away, an angry frown on his lean, strong face. She gazed at him
curiously for a moment and then laid a slim, brown hand on his arm.
"Listen here, Kurt," she said. "You were right in what you thought about
me never having had a fair show. Everything, everyone, including myself,
seems to have been against me. I was born with 'taking ways.' I couldn't
seem to live them down. Lately things have been going wrong awfully fast.
I've been sick and no one acted as if I were human up to a short time ago.
I didn't know that was why you took me from Bender's jail. Honest, I'm not
so bad as I talk."
He looked at her sceptically. Her eyes, now turned from him, were soft,
feminine and without guile. He wouldn't let himself be hoodwinked.
"No; there's no excuse for you," he declared emphatically. "You are
educated. You could have earned an honest living. You didn't have to
steal."
"No;" she said slowly and thoughtfully. "I didn't have to."
"Then why do you? Bender told me you had a lifelong record of pilfering."
"Lifelong! Kind Kurt, I am young--only twenty."
"He said you'd been given a chance over and over again, but that you were
hopeless. I--think you are."
"I think so, too," she acknowledged, with a little giggle that brought
back his scowl. "You've got a white elephant on your hands, Kurt. What are
you going to do with me?"
"There's only one thing I can do, now," he said glumly. "Carry out a bad
bargain. I'll see it through."
"Oh, Mr. Britling!" she murmured _sotto voce_.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. Traveling libraries evidently don't hit this trail. What is it
the trail to, anyway? Your house?"
"To Top Hill Tavern."
"Gee! That sounds good. A tavern! I hope it's tiptop as well as tophill.
How did you come to build a hotel way off here? Summer boarders? Will
there be dances?"
"Top Hill Tavern," he said coldly, "is the name of a ranch--not mine. The
owners live there."
"And does she, 'the best woman in the world,' live there?"
"We must start now," he said, rising abruptly and leading the way to the
car.
"I should think," remarked the girl casually after his fourth ineffectual
effort to start the engine, "that if she owns a ranch, she might buy a
better buzz wagon than this."
He made no reply, but renewed his futile attempts at starting, muttering
words softly the while.
"Don't be sore, Kurt. I can't help it because your old ark won't budge. I
didn't steal anything off it. Wouldn't it be fierce if you were marooned
on the trail with a thief who has a lifelong record!"
He came around the car and stood beside her. His face was flushed. His
eyes, of the deep-set sombre kind that grow larger and come to the surface
only when strongly moved, burned with the light of anger.
"Did anyone ever try whipping you, I wonder?"
"Sure," she said cheerfully. "I was brought up on whippings by
a--stepmother. But do you feel that way toward me? You look like a man who
might strike a woman under certain provocation, perhaps; but not like one
who would hit a little girl like me. If you won't look so cross, I'll tell
you why your 'mobile won't move."
He made no reply, but turned to the brake.
"Say, 'bo," she continued tantalizingly, "whilst you are a lookin', just
cast your lamps into the gasoline tank. That man who filled it didn't put
a widow's mite in."
Unbelievingly he followed this lead.
"Not a drop, damn it!"
"The last straw with you, isn't it? I'm not to blame, though. If you think
I stole your gasoline, just search me. How far are we from your tiptop
tavern?"
"Twenty miles. I suppose you couldn't walk it," he said doubtfully.
"Me? In these?" she exclaimed, thrusting forth a foot illy and most
inadequately shod. "But you can walk on."
"No:" he refused. "You don't put one over on me in that way."
"You know I couldn't walk back to town."
"Some one might come along in a car."
"Wouldn't you trust me, if I gave you my word to wait for you?"
"The word of--"
"A thief," she finished. "All right. I'm in no hurry. What are you going
to do?"
"We'll wait here until some one comes along."
"Then let's go back to the trees while we wait," she proposed, climbing
out of the car and taking a small box from the seat.
"Didn't Bender have one tiny good word for me?" she asked as they sat down
in the welcome shade.
"He said stealing was the only offense you'd been up for, and he guessed
you couldn't help it. What was your little game in making him think you
were stupid?"
"Did he say I was? Horrid thing! I'm glad I put one over on him and lifted
this," and she held up the box.
"What is it?" he demanded sternly.
"His supper. A peroxided wife brought it to him--just before he presented
me to you. It'll come in handy now, or won't you partake of stolen
goods?"
"I'll pay him for it the next time I see him."
"Shucks, Kurt! You got such a bad bargain when you drew me, you ought to
have something thrown in. It's all done up in a nice napkin--looks as if
it would taste good. Oh, what a feast! Pork sandwiches, deviled eggs,
dills, a keep-hot bottle of coffee, layer cake and pie. Bender knew how to
pick a partner. What shall we drink out of?"
He produced a drinking cup, poured some coffee in it and handed it to
her.
"Thank you," she said. "Shall we make it a loving cup, Kurt?"
He ignored her question and plunged greedily into a pork sandwich. He had
had so much business in town that day, he had taken no time to eat.
The girl partook of Bender's pilfered luncheon sparingly and without
zest.
"Aren't you hungry?" he asked her presently, his temper disappearing as
his appetite was appeased.
"No; it's a long time since I've been hungry."
"What did you steal this food for then?"
"I don't know. Yes, I do. It was because that Bender woman gave me such a
once-over, and decided I was the scum of the earth. Is that the way your
topside tavern woman will look at me?"
"No;" he replied earnestly. "She's made a woman out of worse than you."
"Thanks!" she said, folding the napkin neatly. "I thought you had my
number for the worst ever. It's wonderful what food will do for a man.
Hope she will let me stay at the top of the hill while I get an appetite.
The doctor said I didn't need medicine--just the right kind of food, rest
and good air. I wouldn't have got them, maybe, but for you, and I suppose
I haven't been very grateful."
Her tone was low and wistful. A look she hadn't seen before--a kindly,
sympathetic look--leapt to his eyes and softened the harshness of his
features.
"Have you been sick, real sick?" he asked.
"Yes; clean played out, the doctor said."
"Then I am glad I brought you. We will make you well physically, anyway."
"And maybe the other will follow?"
"It will, if you will try to do right. Will you?"
"Sure. I've always tried--most always. I can't be very bad up at the top
of a hill, unless I get lonesome. You'd better tell that 'best woman' to
double-lock things. It's with stealing the same as with drinking--if
anything you crave is lying around handy, good-bye to good resolutions."
"I'll see to that. I'm a sheriff, remember."
"Look, sheriff!"
With a mocking smile, she held up a watch.
"I took that off you slick as anything when you passed the coffee. It was
like taking candy from a baby."
Anger at her nerve and chagrin that he had been so neatly tricked kept him
silent.
"It's not altogether a habit," she continued in mock apology; "it's a
gift."
"Jo got her number wrong," he thought. "She was just playing him with her
sad, nice, little-girl manner. For his sake, I'll see that they don't
meet. I wonder just why she is playing this role with me?"
"You might give me credit for returning your ticker," she said in abused
tone.
"I never knew but one other person," he said coolly, "that affected me as
unpleasantly as you do."
"Who was that?" she asked interestedly.
"A cow-puncher--Centipede Pete."
"Some name! Why don't you ask me my name, Kurt? Don't look so
contemptuous. I am going to tell you, because it doesn't sound like me.
It's Penelope."
"Oh!" he exclaimed, with something like a groan in his voice.
"Nobody can help her name," she complained. "Don't you like it? I kind of
thought it would suit you, because it doesn't sound like me. Sort of
suggests respectability, don't you think?"
"It was my mother's name," he replied tensely, as he walked a few paces
away.
Night that comes so fleetly in this country dropped like a veil.
The girl followed him.
"I didn't steal that--your mother's name, you know, Kurt," she said in an
odd, confiding voice. "They gave it to me, you see, and maybe it will help
that I've never been called by it. They used to call me Pen or Penny--a
bad penny, I suppose you think."
"Your name," he said frigidly, "or at least the one Bender knows you
by--the one you went by in Chicago, is Marta Sills."
She made an articulate sound suggestive of dismay.
"That is one of my names," she admitted. "I had forgotten I gave that one
to Bender."
He made no comment.
"You said," she continued pleadingly, "that there was no excuse for me and
girls like me. Maybe you would find one if you knew what we are up
against. Every one knocks instead of boosts, and tells us how low-down we
are. Just as if a mirror were held up to an ugly-looking girl, and she
were asked how anyone who looked like that could expect to be different.
Suppose I should tell you I'd been to reformatories and places where I had
learned that I must play the stupid act as I did with Bender so as to be
kept from being sent up. There is no mercy for those who exhibit any
glimpses of intelligence, you see. This time I thought I was a goner for
life until you pried me loose. All doors seemed closed, but you opened the
window. No one was ever really kind to me before, except a Salvation Army
woman and--some one else."
"What was the name of that some one else?" he interrupted.
She hesitated, and for the first time seemed confused.
"Was it," he demanded, "_Jo Gary_?"
"Oh!" she gasped. Then quickly recovering, she continued: "You're quite a
detective for an acting one. If you were the real thing, you'd be a
regular Sherlock Holmes and make a clean sweep of crooks."
"Answer my question."
"It doesn't seem necessary to tell you anything; you know so much. I seem
to know that name. Was he at a dance in Chicago--let me see, Hurricane
Hall?" she asked serenely. "Is this his part of the country, and shall I
see him?"
"It _was_ his part of the country. You can _not_ see him."
A wistful note crept into her voice as she said:
"I should like to see him just once, but I suppose you won't tell me where
he is. I don't dare let on to you how grateful I really feel to you,
because I might lose my nerve and I've just got to hang on to that. It's
my only asset in trade. We have to use lots of bluff. Besides, someway you
make me feel contrary. Maybe I am the lightning and you the thunder."
"Why did you leave Chicago?" he asked abruptly. "Bender said that was
where you drifted from. I want the real reason--the absolute truth."
It was very dark now, but she could feel his eyes, as piercing as search
lights, demanding the truth.
"The gate was open and I just walked out, or maybe I stole out. I didn't
follow Jo, because he didn't say where he lived--just the hill country.
I'll tell you the real reason--thieves don't always lie--I had been sick
and the doctor said air like this for mine, and so I followed this trail.
I picked it up here and I'd have been all right if I hadn't run up against
that lightning-chaser of a Bender. I guess folks are keener out this way
than they are in the cities. More time to hunt crooks, maybe."
"No;" he denied. "It isn't that. It's because we have a beautiful, clean
country and we are going to--"
"Have no blots on the landscape," she interrupted. "I suppose Bender
catches them and you reform them. Is that the system? Well, no one can be
good till they are comfortable. I'm not very strong yet, and I'm not used
to being out untethered like this. I'm cold and sleepy. If you don't
object, I'll crawl into your old wagon if I can find it in the dark."
She caught a note of contrition in a muffled exclamation.
"Wait!"
She heard him walk on to the car and come back. Then she felt a coat
wrapped snugly about her.
He guided her to the clumps of trees and spread a robe on the ground.
"Sit down here," he said peremptorily.
She gave a little smile of victory which, if he had seen it, would have
strangled all his new-born compassion.
"Why didn't you tell me your story in the first place?" he demanded.
"When you are out in the world alone, you know," she said sagely, "and
everyone is taking a shot at you, you have to put out a bluff of bravado,
same as a porcupine shoots out his quills."
He gave another murmur of sympathy.
"Don't feel too bad about it, Kind Kurt, because being knocked about
sharpens your wits and makes you an expert dodger when you aren't equal to
fighting in the open."
Suddenly into the black-purple sky shot forth a moon and stars.
"Makes the white lights of a city look like thirty cents, eh, Kurt?" she
commented.
He made no response, and she was serenely aware of his silent
disapproval.
"What's matter, Kurt?"
"My name," he replied frigidly, "is Walters."
"Is it, then? And what might your middle name be?"
"You can call me 'Mr. Walters,'" he replied, striving for dignity and
realizing instantly how lame was the attempt.
"Oh, can I now? Well, I'll do nothing of the kind to the first real friend
I've ever had. As I said, I am all in, and I'm going to snooze while you
watch for a gasoliner to come along."
She stretched herself out and closed her eyes. In a semi-slumber she was
dreamily conscious of a firm roll slipped deftly under her head. She made
a faint murmur of content and acknowledgment and knew no more. Her
sleeping sense didn't tell her that a tall sheriff came and looked down
upon her small, pale, moonlit face from which sleep, the great eliminator,
had robbed of everything earthy and left it the face of an innocent,
sleeping child. She didn't dream that as he gazed he remitted sentence and
told himself that she was but a stray little kitten lost in the wide
plains of life, and solely in need of patient guidance to a home hearth.
"She was right," he confessed. "I did make her feel contrary. It seems to
be a characteristic of mine. Maybe her true little self is the one Jo saw
and she can be made worthy of him yet."