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