CHAPTER II
"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 anold, rickety automobile and halt in the dust-white road, as he cast asharply scrutinizing glance upon the atom of a girl who sat beside him.She was a dejected, dusty, little figure, drooping under the jolt of thejerking car and the bright rays of hills-land sunshine. She was young--inyears; young, too, in looks, as Kurt saw when she raised her eyes whichwere soft and almond-shaped; but old, he assumed, in much that she shouldnot have been.
She had found it a long, hard ride across the plains, and the end of herendurance had been prefaced by frequent sighs, changes of position andsoftly 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 slightlyforward.
His tenseness relaxed; a startled, remorseful look came into his eyes ashe saw two tears coursing down her cheeks. They were unmistakably realtears,--though, as he was well aware, they came from physical causesalone. Still, they penetrated the armor of unconcern with which he hadgirded himself.
"What for?" he asked curtly.
"What for!" she echoed, her mouth quivering into pathetic droops. "Forrest, of course. You may be used to this kind of locomotion, but I'm notvery well upholstered, and I'm shaken to bits. Fact is, I'm just allpegged 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 isit 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 thanany 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 thosehome-stuff places left except in the movies. I never was much stuck onhome, so you needn't be afraid to call it 'jail' for fear of hurting myfeelings."
"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 towork 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'son 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 deafand dumb for the whole of this awful ride. Let's sidetrack the trail andgo--home--by moonlight."
His eyes remained rigid and relentless, but there was a slight twitchingof 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 animprovised Thermos bottle into a traveling cup.
"Thanks for those first kind words," she exclaimed, taking the cup fromhim 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 lookingat her throughout the journey.
"I'm not used to asking for anything," she answered with a chuckle. "Itake 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 ifI knew it meant this."
"It's your own fault," she retorted. "It wouldn't have been 'this' if youhadn't been so grouchy. We could have had a chummy little gabfest, if youhadn'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 ifyou'd pick out anything like this. Was it 'Made in America?' Funny outfitfor 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 haveall this outdoors for a long time, I suppose. I see there's a tidy littlebit 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 gettired 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 beckonedenticingly to the passer-by.
He followed reluctantly.
"This is Heaven let loose," she said, lolling luxuriously against thetrunk 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. Anyone 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 youtake it for?"
"It was forced on me. I'm only sworn in as acting sheriff for the countyuntil 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 totackle him. I'd never have thought it of you!"
"Why?" he asked curiously, not proof against the masculine enjoyment ofhearing himself analyzed in spite of his reluctance to talk to her. "Do Iseem 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 theysaid--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.' Youhaven't been over-kind to me till just lately. Whirling me over sands inthat 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 maybeyour heart is in the right place or you wouldn't have let me rest andgiven me the drink, even if you did wait till the eleventh hour. Can't youlook pleasant like you were going to sit for a picture to give to yourbest girl instead of posing for 'Just before the battle, Mother'? You lookso sorry you came."
"I am," he said angrily. "I guess 'Kind Kurt' is a blankety blank fool, assome people say. I've been a lot kinder to you than you know. When I heardof your case and Bender pointed you out to me and said he'd got you lockedup, I thought you were one of the many young city girls who go wrongbecause 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 thatyou should have one. Bender wanted you out of town with the surety thatyou would never come back.
"I felt sorry for you. I offered to take you off his hands and bring youout here among the hills, where the best woman in the world would teachyou to _want_ to be honest. Do you suppose I'd have done it if I'd knownthe 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 beenscarcely conscious that he was talking, but was simply voicing what hadbeen in his thoughts for the last half hour.
"How old is this 'best woman in the world'?" asked the girl, seeminglyunconcerned in his summing up of her case. "Is she your sweetheart or yourwife? If she is either one, you'd better take me back to Bender, or spillme out on the plains here. She won't be real glad to try to reform ayoung, good-looking girl like me. I _am_ good-looking, honest, if I wasslicked up a litt
le."
He looked away, an angry frown on his lean, strong face. She gazed at himcuriously 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 aboutme never having had a fair show. Everything, everyone, including myself,seems to have been against me. I was born with 'taking ways.' I couldn'tseem 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 notso 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 areeducated. You could have earned an honest living. You didn't have tosteal."
"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 werehopeless. I--think you are."
"I think so, too," she acknowledged, with a little giggle that broughtback his scowl. "You've got a white elephant on your hands, Kurt. What areyou going to do with me?"
"There's only one thing I can do, now," he said glumly. "Carry out a badbargain. 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 itthe 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? Willthere be dances?"
"Top Hill Tavern," he said coldly, "is the name of a ranch--not mine. Theowners 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 thecar.
"I should think," remarked the girl casually after his fourth ineffectualeffort to start the engine, "that if she owns a ranch, she might buy abetter buzz wagon than this."
He made no reply, but renewed his futile attempts at starting, mutteringwords softly the while.
"Don't be sore, Kurt. I can't help it because your old ark won't budge. Ididn't steal anything off it. Wouldn't it be fierce if you were maroonedon the trail with a thief who has a lifelong record!"
He came around the car and stood beside her. His face was flushed. Hiseyes, of the deep-set sombre kind that grow larger and come to the surfaceonly 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 bya--stepmother. But do you feel that way toward me? You look like a man whomight strike a woman under certain provocation, perhaps; but not like onewho would hit a little girl like me. If you won't look so cross, I'll tellyou 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', justcast your lamps into the gasoline tank. That man who filled it didn't puta 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 thinkI stole your gasoline, just search me. How far are we from your tiptoptavern?"
"Twenty miles. I suppose you couldn't walk it," he said doubtfully.
"Me? In these?" she exclaimed, thrusting forth a foot illy and mostinadequately 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 goingto do?"
"We'll wait here until some one comes along."
"Then let's go back to the trees while we wait," she proposed, climbingout 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 downin the welcome shade.
"He said stealing was the only offense you'd been up for, and he guessedyou couldn't help it. What was your little game in making him think youwere stupid?"
"Did he say I was? Horrid thing! I'm glad I put one over on him and liftedthis," and she held up the box.
"What is it?" he demanded sternly.
"His supper. A peroxided wife brought it to him--just before he presentedme to you. It'll come in handy now, or won't you partake of stolengoods?"
"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 tohave something thrown in. It's all done up in a nice napkin--looks as ifit 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 topick a partner. What shall we drink out of?"
He produced a drinking cup, poured some coffee in it and handed it toher.
"Thank you," she said. "Shall we make it a loving cup, Kurt?"
He ignored her question and plunged greedily into a pork sandwich. He hadhad so much business in town that day, he had taken no time to eat.
The girl partook of Bender's pilfered luncheon sparingly and withoutzest.
"Aren't you hungry?" he asked her presently, his temper disappearing ashis 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 aonce-over, and decided I was the scum of the earth. Is that the way yourtopside 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 mynumber 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, restand good air. I wouldn't have got them, maybe, but for you, and I supposeI 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 hisfeatures.
"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 topof a hill, unless I get lonesome. You'd better tell that 'best woman' todouble-lock things. It's with stealing the same as with drinking--ifanything 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 waslike taking candy from a baby."
Anger at her nerve and chagrin that he had been so neatly tricked kept himsilent.
"It's not altogether a habit," she continued in mock apology; "it's agift."
"Jo got her number wrong," he thought. "She was just playing him with hersad, nice, little-girl manner. For his sake, I'll see that they don'tmeet. I wonder just why she is playing this role with me?"
"You might give me credit for returning your ticker," she said in abusedtone.
"I never knew but one other person," he said coolly, "that affected me asunpleas
antly 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 socontemptuous. 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 ofthought it would suit you, because it doesn't sound like me. Sort ofsuggests respectability, don't you think?"
"It was my mother's name," he replied tensely, as he walked a few pacesaway.
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 anodd, confiding voice. "They gave it to me, you see, and maybe it will helpthat I've never been called by it. They used to call me Pen or Penny--abad penny, I suppose you think."
"Your name," he said frigidly, "or at least the one Bender knows youby--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 oneto Bender."
He made no comment.
"You said," she continued pleadingly, "that there was no excuse for me andgirls like me. Maybe you would find one if you knew what we are upagainst. Every one knocks instead of boosts, and tells us how low-down weare. Just as if a mirror were held up to an ugly-looking girl, and shewere 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 hadlearned that I must play the stupid act as I did with Bender so as to bekept from being sent up. There is no mercy for those who exhibit anyglimpses of intelligence, you see. This time I thought I was a goner forlife until you pried me loose. All doors seemed closed, but you opened thewindow. No one was ever really kind to me before, except a Salvation Armywoman 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 adetective for an acting one. If you were the real thing, you'd be aregular 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 seemto know that name. Was he at a dance in Chicago--let me see, HurricaneHall?" she asked serenely. "Is this his part of the country, and shall Isee 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 wherehe 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'smy only asset in trade. We have to use lots of bluff. Besides, someway youmake me feel contrary. Maybe I am the lightning and you the thunder."
"Why did you leave Chicago?" he asked abruptly. "Bender said that waswhere 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 searchlights, demanding the truth.
"The gate was open and I just walked out, or maybe I stole out. I didn'tfollow 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 sickand 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 againstthat lightning-chaser of a Bender. I guess folks are keener out this waythan 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, cleancountry and we are going to--"
"Have no blots on the landscape," she interrupted. "I suppose Bendercatches them and you reform them. Is that the system? Well, no one can begood till they are comfortable. I'm not very strong yet, and I'm not usedto being out untethered like this. I'm cold and sleepy. If you don'tobject, 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 coatwrapped 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 havestrangled 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, "andeveryone 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 aboutsharpens your wits and makes you an expert dodger when you aren't equal tofighting 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?" shecommented.
He made no response, and she was serenely aware of his silentdisapproval.
"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 andrealizing instantly how lame was the attempt.
"Oh, can I now? Well, I'll do nothing of the kind to the first real friendI've ever had. As I said, I am all in, and I'm going to snooze while youwatch for a gasoliner to come along."
She stretched herself out and closed her eyes. In a semi-slumber she wasdreamily conscious of a firm roll slipped deftly under her head. She madea faint murmur of content and acknowledgment and knew no more. Hersleeping sense didn't tell her that a tall sheriff came and looked downupon 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 andtold himself that she was but a stray little kitten lost in the wideplains 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 tobe a characteristic of mine. Maybe her true little self is the one Jo sawand she can be made worthy of him yet."