“His life hasn’t been exactly conducive to jollity. He was born in New England and brought up on pie and Presbyterianism by a spinstered aunt who didn’t understand boys. He ran away and came to the West. He has been cattle-herder, cowboy and everything else typical of the hill country. We came here, tenderfooted, and were most fortunate in finding a foreman like Kurt Walters. He has a wonderful way of handling men. He is of good habits, forceful, keen; very gentle to old people and most adorable with children. We make him one of our household. There is the fortunate flaw that keeps him from being super-excellent; he is not merciful to wrongdoers and, as you say, he is too serious—almost moody. That is accounted for by the long night vigils of the cattlemen. They get a habit of inhibition that they never lose. I think the men find him very good company at times. There is one splendid thing about him. In spite of his rough life and the many years in which he has had opportunity to meet only the—misguided kind of women, he has never lost faith in his ideals of womanhood.”
“I certainly rubbed him the wrong way,” said Pen comprehendingly. “He looked upon me as if there were no place on his map for my kind, and yet he struggled hard to be good to me when I was suffering from cold and hunger. I never met his sort of a man before. The men I have been thrown with think goodness stupid. No matter what crime a girl commits, providing she is attractive in any way, they applaud and call her a ‘little devil.’”
“He talked of you a great deal to-day, and about your chances for reformation.”
Pen smiled enigmatically.
“He said he would have felt more sympathy for me if I had not been educated and knew the enormity of my sins. If he knew more of the world, he would know that the intelligent criminal has the least chance to reform. When he took me so unexpectedly from Bender, I wanted to see what he was going to do with me. When I found he was bringing me out here, I could have easily given him the slip and escaped, but I was curious to see the ‘best woman in the world.’ I never had faith in a man’s estimate of a woman, but as soon as I saw you, I knew he was right. May I stay? Will you really let me?”
“I quite insist upon your staying. We will go downstairs for a little while now.”
Below, Mrs. Kingdon lingered to give some directions to a servant and Pen went on to the library.
Kurt was standing there alone. She stood small and straight before her warden, looking squarely into his eyes.
“You needn’t,” she said, “put any locks on valuables here—not on my account. The crookedest crook in the world wouldn’t steal from her.”
“I am glad you recognize a true woman,” he said earnestly.
“Thank you for bringing me here. I feel it’s the turning point in my life.”
“Then,” he said earnestly, “I feel I have done something worth while. You shall not leave here until—you see I am speaking plainly—you have overcome all desire to steal.”
“Not a severe penalty, O Sheriff Man!” she thought as she replied meekly: “To-night I feel as if I could never do anything wrong; but you know the strongest of us have our lapses.”
“I know that too well,” he said gravely, “but—you’ll try?”
“I’ll try. Good-night, Mr. Walters.”
In the doorway she paused and looked back. He was gazing meditatively into the flames of the open fire. She shook a little defiant fist at him and made a childish grimace, both of which actions were witnessed by Kingdon as he entered the room.
“Do you know,” he confided later to his wife, with a chuckle of reminiscence, “as fine a fellow as Kurt is, I sometimes feel like shaking a fist at him myself.”
* * *
CHAPTER IV
As on the day previous, Pen awoke at an early hour. She lay quiet for a moment, sensing to the full the deliciousness of being cosily submerged in soft, warm coverings that protected her from the crisp, keen hill-winds that were sweeping into her room.
“The air smells as if it came right off the snow,” she thought, as she drew on some fur-bound slippers and wrapped herself in a Navajo blanket that was on the footrail of her bed. Then she crossed the room, climbed up on the big seat under the casement window and looked out.
It was not the thrilling beauty of the covey of pink-lined dawn-clouds that made her eyes grow round, big and bright; that brought a faint flush to her cheeks; a quick intake of breath. It was something much more mundane that held her attention—the superb spectacle of Kurt Walters, mounted. The lean, brown horseman sat on his saddle as easily as though it were a cushion in a rocking chair. He was talking to three or four cattlemen and apparently paying no attention to his cavorting steed except that occasionally and casually his firm hands brought the plunging animal to earth.
“He’s to the saddle born,” thought the girl admiringly. “He ought to stay on a horse. If I’d seen him yesterday on horseback, he wouldn’t have had to take me. I’d have flown to him.”
He gave a last command to one of the men, as he turned to ride away.
“All right, boss,” was the reply, as the men dispersed to their various stations of duty.
Suddenly and psychologically the eyes of the rider were lifted to the casement window. Pen waved her hand airily toward him, the movement loosening the gayly striped blanket which fell from her shoulders. The Indian-brown of his face reddened darkly; a gleam came into his steel-gray eyes. He made a military motion toward his hat brim with his whip and then rode swiftly away, without the backward and upward look which she was expecting.
“The boss is a bashful boss,” she thought, with a lazy little pout, as she shook off the blanket, flung her slippers free and went back to bed.
“He’s good to look at, but oh, you comfortable cot!”
When next she awoke, it was near the breakfast hour.
“I’m glad I’m not the last one down,” she said, as she came into the dining-room and noticed Kurt’s vacant chair.
“Oh, but you are!” Betty hastened to say. “Uncle Kurt’s gone away for a whole week, hasn’t he, father?”
“When did he go, Louis?” asked Mrs. Kingdon in surprise.
“A message came for him late last night,” explained her husband. “The sheriff has unexpectedly returned, and Kurt has to be in town for a week to settle up all the red tape routine for his release; and besides, the trial of So Long Sam has been called, and he’ll have to attend.”
Pen had a sense as of something lifted.
“A reprieve for a week, and I can have a beautiful time with nobody nigh to hinder,” she thought. “I had a narrow escape from a real sheriff. Luck is with me, and no mistake!”
“You will feel lost without Kurt at the helm, won’t you, Louis?” asked Mrs. Kingdon. “And Jo away, too.”
“Westcott returned Jo this morning. Simpson has delayed his trip to Canada for a few days.”
“That is good news. Of course Jo hasn’t Kurt’s efficiency, but he gets on well with the men.”
“They say,” remarked Francis sagely, “that Jo is always ‘right there.’”
“So is Uncle Kurt!” exclaimed Betty indignantly.
“You don’t get me, Betty,” said her brother loftily, “but it’s no use explaining to a girl.”
Pen had been a most attentive and eager listener to this conversation.
“I am sorry I didn’t know Kurt was going to town,” said Mrs. Kingdon to Pen, “for we could have sent him for some things for you.”
“What kind of things?” asked Betty curiously.
“I came without my luggage,” explained Pen glibly, “but I can trim out clothes as easily as I can animals, and if you have any stray pieces of cloth I can very quickly duplicate what I am now wearing.”
“We have quantities of material,” said Mrs. Kingdon. “I seem to have a mania for buying it, and there my interest in new garments ceases. Agatha is a fine seamstress, so we’ll have you outfitted in no time.”
“Wouldn’t you like to motor over the place, Miss Pen?” invited Kingdon as they rose from the
table. Smiling understandingly at her look of alarm, he added: “I don’t mean in the car Kurt brought you up in yesterday.”
“Uncle Kurt made it all himself—out of parts he bought,” boasted Francis.
“Dear me!” said Pen ruefully. “I wish he hadn’t bought so many parts, or else left some of them out.”
“It’s a fine car!” declared Francis in tone of rebuke.
“I like it better than ours,” said Billy. “We helped make it.”
“I throw up my hands,” said Kingdon. “Only the loyalty of a child would have the courage to defend such a car.”
In a long, luxurious limousine the entire family made the rounds of the ranch to show Pen the squadrons of cattle browsing by the creek, thoroughbred horses inclosed in a pasture of many miles, the smaller-spaced farmyard, the buildings, bunk-houses and “Kurt’s Kabin,” as a facetious cowboy had labeled the office where the foreman made out the pay rolls and transacted the business affairs of the ranch.
“I think you have seen it all, now,” said Kingdon, as he turned the car into the driveway that led homeward.
“Oh, no!” cried Billy. “She hasn’t seen Jo yet. There he is at the mess house.”
“Of course, you must see Jo, Miss Pen,” said Kingdon. “I’ll drop you and the kiddies here and you can call on him. I have an idea he will be more Jo-like if my wife and I are not present.”
The car stopped near a long low building, and Pen with the children got out of the car.
“Jo-o-o!” chorused the trio.
From the house came Jo, whom the men had nicknamed the “human spider,” for his arms and legs were the thinnest of his species. He was saved from being grotesque, however, by a certain care-free grace, a litheness of movement. He had greenish-blue eyes that were set far apart and crinkled when they laughed—as ever and oft they did. His features were irregular, his hair unruly, but there was a lovable appeal in the roguish eyes and the charm of humor in a mouth that lifted upward at the corners.
“Halloa, kindergarten!” he called in a jovial tenor. “Who’s your little old sister?”
“She isn’t our sister,” denied Francis with dignified mien. “She’s a young lady.”
“Honest?” he asked in amused tone, looking down at the girl whose eyes were hidden by long-lashed, down-turned lids. “How young now?”
Then his dancing eyes grew suddenly quiet and amazed, as her lashes lifted. He read a warning in her glance.
“Jo,” she said gravely and meaningly, “I am Penelope Lamont, and I am a young lady—out of my teens.”
“’Scuse,” he answered seriously, “but you don’t dress it.”
“She’s got on Doris’s clothes,” explained Betty, “’cause she didn’t bring any of her own, and she’s our Aunty Penny.”
“No,” he said solemnly. “No, she ain’t! You’ve got it wrong side to. Her name is Penny Ante.”
“It isn’t either!” cried Betty angrily, with a stamp of her little foot.
“Uncle Kurt brought her here. She’s his company, so you’d better look out, Jo Gary!” warned Billy.
Jo made a mock gesture of alarm and shielded his face with his arm as if from an imaginary blow.
“Now, why didn’t you say so in the first place! My, ain’t it the luck for me that he won’t be sheriff when he comes back! He might have had me put in the lock-up.”
“I am not Mr. Walters’ company—not now,” explained Pen. “I came up here with him, to be sure, but Mrs. Kingdon has asked me to be her company until I am well. I have been ill.”
“Double ’scuse. And this is the best place in the world to get well. Some little old ranch, and Kurt Walters is some foreman.”
“Aren’t you foreman now?”
“When Kurt is here, I’m nothing but a cow-hand; when he is away, I’m only acting foreman. I’ll never be anything but just acting-something, I guess.”
“Kurt Walters was only acting sheriff.”
“That’s so. We seem to be mostly actingers or actorines,” he allowed. “Say!” turning ferociously to Francis, “what business has a boy looking like an owl? Loosen up, and have some pep!”
The boy’s fair face flushed.
“It’s none of your business how I look, Jo Gary!”
“Wow! Now you’re talking. We can’t fight before a lady, though.”
“Cook says you look like a wishbone, Jo,” taunted Billy, coming to his brother’s defense.
“She did, did she? Well, the cook can hang me over her door, and then—I’ll kiss her.”
“I’ll tell her, and she won’t dance with you to-night.”
“If you do,” threatened Jo, “I won’t tell you where there are four little, new kittens what haven’t got their peepers opened yet.”
“Oh, where, Jo? We’ll not tell her. Please, Jo!” pleaded Betty.
“I choose to name them,” said Francis. “Tell, Jo.”
“I’ll not tell, unless you get your little new playmate here to promise me a dance to-night.”
“Are you really going to have a dance to-night?” asked the girl eagerly.
“Sure thing we are. Right here in this mess hall, and—” looking at her fixedly, he added slowly, “you can dance, too,—with me.”
“Oh!” she cried, her eyes shining. “It will seem so beautiful—to dance again. What do they dance up here—fox trot?”
“We dance any old thing the music tells us to.”
“Same as they do in—Chicago?” she asked demurely.
“Now tell us where the kittens are,” demanded Betty.
“Follow me, little Black and Tan.”
In her excitement Betty forgot to resent Jo’s pet appellation for her.
He led the way to a corner of the tool-house.
Reposing in a nest made of pieces of carpet lined with soft flannel, were four puffballs of maltese which were quickly gathered and garnered by Pen and the children, while the mother-cat looked on with proud but apprehensive eyes.
“Who fixed them such a nice bed?” asked Francis.
“Your Uncle Kurt. But they tell me he rode away at first crack of daybreak, so he didn’t see them.”
“And they’ll have their eyes open before he gets back, maybe!” lamented Francis.
“Perhaps,” put in Jo, “he’ll get his eyes opened wide while he’s gone. Then he and the kits can meet on equal terms.”
“He’ll miss the dance, too,” said Betty sorrowfully.
“Whom do you men dance with?” asked Pen.
“Well, there’s Betty here stays up for three dances anyway, and there’s Mrs. Kingdon, and Ag, and the cook, and the other girl—and everything else failing, we make Gene Dossey play gal.”
“What music do you have?”
“We’ve got two of the finest fiddlers that ever drew a bow. Sleepy Sandy and Jakey Fourr. Say, Billy Kingdon, if you squeeze that kitten so hard, its eyes’ll bust open before the nine-day limit. Put them all down now, or their ma’ll have a kitnip fit.”
“I choose to name them,” said Francis. “Uncle Sam is this biggest one; the one with white on is General Joffre, and the little one is King George and—”
“Hold on there!” cried Jo. “Uncle Sam and General J. goes all right, all right; but there ain’t room for another gent’s name. You’ll have to change King George to Georgette.”
“I won’t have her named Georgette!” said Betty. “Her name is Fairy Queen, and that other one is—”
“It’s my turn!” said Billy. “Mine’s going to be named Mewtral.”
“You mean Neutral,” corrected Francis scathingly.
“No; he’s said it,” declared Jo. “She’s mewtralled all the morning. She don’t seem to like her boarding house. Now, all you kidlets run to the kitchen and ask cook for a cup of milk and a clean rag. I’ll force-feed Mewtral, ’cause she’s a little suffragette. Don’t hurry back too fast.”
The children went with alacrity and returned in the same way; but Pen and Jo improved the opportun
ity for conversation without the three interested listeners.
“Here, Jo,” said Billy, handing over the milk when they had returned. “Let’s see you feed Mewtral. She must be hungry.”
“If she were me,” said Jo, whose eyes were shining, “she’d be too happy to eat.”
He fed the kitten and then tried in vain to obtain further converse with Pen alone, but the children out-maneuvered all his efforts and finally Pen took them back to the house.
“When?” half whispered Jo, as they were leaving.
“When Mrs. Kingdon says,” she murmured in reply.
She turned back for another glance. He was standing, cap in hand, with the air of a conqueror.
“What’s the verdict on Jo?” asked Kingdon.
“Jo’s inimitable,” she replied lightly.
“Wait until you dance with him,” he said. “Jo dances his way into every girl’s heart.”
“I can believe that.”
“He’s one of those sunny-hearted fellows that people take to be shallow, but under the surface brightness there’s a tolerably deep current. And he never nurses a grudge. If anyone should stick a knife in Jo, he’d only make a question mark of his eyebrow and give a wondering smile.”
“What I can’t understand,” said Pen, “is why the children don’t like him.”
“He plagues us all the time,” complained Betty.
“It’s very odd, though,” commented Kingdon, meditatively, and with a twinkle in his eye, “how you do like to be plagued. You are always tagging at his heels. I think you must be coquetting with Jo.”
“He’s so different with them from Kurt,” said Mrs. Kingdon. “Kurt is so patient and so sweet with children. He understands them.”
“Kurt,” said Pen, “seems to be like some things that are too good for everyday use. He should be laid away on a shelf for Sundays.” Then, meeting Mrs. Kingdon’s wondering eyes, she added with a little flush: “That isn’t true—and it’s unkind! I don’t really mean it.”
“We are all ready for our sewing bee,” observed Mrs. Kingdon, smiling. “What shall we begin on?”
“I’m wondering,” said Pen meditatively, “if I hadn’t better rig up something evening-like for the dance to-night. If you could let me borrow a white muslin curtain, I could easily rig it up into an impromptu dance frock.”
Penny of Top Hill Trail Page 5