“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 ca
lled 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.”
* * *
CHAPTER III
When the first faint edges of light outlined the coming day, she sat bolt upright and stared about her. As far as eye could see was the tortuous trail leading up sculptured hills that were the preface to the mother mountains of the West.
The wonder-stare in her eyes gradually disappeared as memory awakened. Down beyond the trees in a little valley the sheriff was attending to a fire he had built.
She arose, cramped and unrefreshed, and hastened toward the welcome blaze.
“Good morning. Any gasoline yet?”
“No; not an automobile passed during the night.”
“How do you know? Didn’t you sleep?”
“No.”
“Guarding your car and me? No!” she added quickly. “That wasn’t the reason. I had all the robes and your coat. You had to stay awake to keep warm.”
He smiled slightly and spoke in the hushed voice that seems in keeping with the dawn.
“I’ve been used to night watches—tending sheep and cattle on the plains. What’s the difference whether it’s night or day so long as you sleep somewhere in the twenty-four hour zone?”
“I never was up ahead of the sun before,” she said with a little shiver, as she came close to the fire.
“I am heating over the coffee that was left. That will make you feel better.”
“I suppose there isn’t any water hereabouts to wash in. You know they teach us to be sanitary in the reformatories.”
He pointed to a jar.
“I always carry some in the car. Help yourself.”
“Arctic ablutions never appeal to me,” she said when she had used the cold water freely and returned to the fire. “I found another left-over in the shape of a sandwich minus the pork, so we can each have a slice of toast with our coffee.”
She put a piece of bread on a forked stick and held it out to the blaze. He did the same with the other half of the sandwich. Then they partook of a meagre but welcome breakfast.
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“Look!” he said presently in an awed voice.
The sun was sending a glorious searchlight of gold over the highest hill-line.
“Swell, isn’t it?” she commented cheerily.
Her choice of adjectives repelled any further comments on Nature by him.
“I’m not used to sleeping out,” she said, as he carefully raked over the remains of the fire, “and it didn’t seem to rest me. Thank you for making me so comfortable, Mr. Walters.”
She spoke gently; altogether her manner was so much more subdued this morning that he felt the same wave of pity he had felt when Bender had first mentioned her case to him.
“I am sorry,” he said, “that you had to stay out here all night. It was my fault; but you will have a more comfortable resting place to-night.”
A sound was heard: a modern, welcome sound, breaking in distractingly on the primeval silence. Kurt hastened to the road and saw the encouraging prelude of dust. The passing tourist gave him the requisite supply of gasoline and continued on his way.
“Come on, Pen!” called the sheriff.
She suppressed a smile as she followed.
“You called me by my first name,” she couldn’t resist reminding him.
“I didn’t know your last one,” he responded quickly and resentfully as he helped her into the car.
“Let me think. I’ve had so many aliases—suppose I make out a list and let you take your choice. Most of my pals call me ‘The Thief.’”
The look of yesterday came back to his eyes at her flippant tone and words.
“Don’t!” he said harshly. “This morning I had forgotten what you were.”
“I wish I could,” she said forlornly. “We won’t talk about it any more. Play I am pink perfect until we get to this ‘first lady of the land’ up at Top Hill. Oh, but motoring in the dawn is shivery! I loathe early morning when you get up to it. If you stay up for it, it’s different.”
He looked down at her quickly.
In the crisp morning air, her little figure was shaking as if with a chill. Her face was very white, and there was a bluish look about her mouth.
He stopped the car suddenly.
Penny of Top Hill Trail Page 3