tried to tell you to-night on the boat, when you asked me to tell you how much I had enjoyed the day,’ she went on just as though I hadn’t spoken, ‘when you said “Honest.” But I couldn’t. I was afraid to tell you I couldn’t do anything honest.’
“Then she told me she was a thief. She didn’t try to make any excuses for herself, but when I heard her little hard luck story and knew what she’d always been up against, I didn’t wonder that she stole or committed any crime. She had had a regular Cinderella stepmother who had licked her when she was a kid because she took food from the pantry when she was hungry. The old hag called it stealing and warned the school teacher, and the other kids got hold of it and of course you know what it does to any one to get a black eye. She had the name of a thief wished on her until she got to be one. She was expelled from school; put in a reformatory; ran away; stole to keep herself alive. Then they all took a hand at her – ministers, society girls, charitable associations; they gave her a bum steer and made her feel she was a hopeless outcast, so she felt more at home with the vagrant class. The only person who had ever made her feel she wanted to be straight was a Salvation Army woman, but she had gone away and no one was left to care now.
“I didn’t let her go any further. I told her I cared and I cared all the more since I had heard her story; and that she was honest, or she wouldn’t have told me about herself. What did I care what she had been or done? Her life was going to begin right then with me. I couldn’t budge her. I talked and pleaded, and at last she gave in – a little. She said she’d think it over and meet me at the little park in the morning, and then she’d talk some more about it.
“So we parted until morning came. But I made up my mind that if she wouldn’t consent, I’d simply kidnap her and bring her up here to Mrs. Kingdon.
“I was on hand bright and early at the park next morning, and after a while a slovenly slip of a girl came up to me and asked my name. I told her. She gave me a note and then started off like a skyrocket, but I’m some spry myself and I caught her and held her till I’d read the note. It was from her and she said she couldn’t give me the worst of the bargain. That she was going to try hard to see if she could make good and live without stealing, and when she was sure, she’d send word to me through Mr. Reilly, and if I never heard, I could know she had failed and for me to forget her.
“‘Where is she?’ I asked the girl, who was squirming like an eel.
“‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘She’s left town.’
“‘I don’t believe it!’ I said.
“‘Yes, she has,’ said the girl. ‘She pawned all her togs – that new white dress and the swell shoes and her new suit and hat to get money to make a getaway.’
“I might as well have tried to hang on to a fish as to hold that slippery little street Arab. She broke away and ran. I was after her, but it was no use. She knew the ins and outs of the alleys like a rat and I lost her. You see, I didn’t know my girl’s last name. When I asked her, she said: ‘Call me Marta.’ I didn’t care about knowing her last name then, because I was so keen to give her my own name.
“I was just about crazy. I hunted all over the part of the city where I’d left her the first night. Then I went to see Reilly, but he didn’t know who she was. I made him see what it meant to me to find her, and he promised to try his best and to forward at once any letter that came to him. If I don’t hear after a while, when work gets slack so you can spare me, I’m going to Chicago and go through it with a fine tooth comb. Reilly will help me follow every girl by the name of Marta that’s ever lived there.”
Kurt’s eyes, full of infinite pity and regret, turned to Jo as he broke the little pause that followed.
“She is doubtless a poor little stray of a girl and luck has been against her, but, Jo, put all thoughts of marrying her away, just as she has. Wait – ” he hurried on, seeing the anger kindling in the lad’s eyes – “if it were any other offense – But a thief! ‘Once a thief, always a thief,’ is the truest saying I know. Your love couldn’t – ”
“It didn’t make any change in my feelings when she told me,” said Joe staunchly. “She could steal anything I had.”
“It might not change your feelings, but it should change your intentions. Do you mean you’d marry – ” Kurt had an incredulous expression on his face.
“In a second, if she’d have me. I’d buy her everything she wanted so she wouldn’t have to steal.”
“But after you were married and people found out what she was, you’d be ashamed – ”
“Ashamed! I’d put my little thief on a throne, and whoever dared to try to take her off would get it in the neck.”
The car speeded up again. The man at the wheel saw the utter futility of further expostulation.
“I’ll leave it to time and cow-punching,” he thought sagely. “Time and work are the best healers, especially for the young. Preaching is of no avail.”
Night came on. Jo looked up at a little lone star which was trying to make its light shine without a properly darkened background.
“That’s a poor little orphan star – like her. I’ll look for it every night now. I wish I hadn’t blabbed to Kurt. He hasn’t a nose for orange blossoms.”
In the fortnight that followed, Jo worked indefatigably, but his heart and his thoughts were back in Chicago, except when now and then his eyes turned to a fertile little beauty-spot valleyed between the hills. For here he had located an imaginary cottage – his cottage and hers. This mirage, of course, always showed a little slip of a girl standing in the doorway. To the surprise and dismay of his associates Jo the spender became Jo the saver that his dream might come true.
He offered no addendum to the revelation he had made to Kurt. They met often, but in ranch life discourse is not frequent, and Jo instinctively felt that his recital of Love’s Young Dream had fallen upon unsympathetic ears, while the foreman, unversed in the Language of Love, was mystified by the lad’s silence.
Three weeks later the “man without a nose for orange blossoms” was again in town. As acting sheriff of the county lately, Kurt had dropped in to see the jailer.
“How’s business, Bender? Any new boarders?” he asked.
“Yes; a gal run in for stealing. Didn’t find the goods on her; but she’s a sly one with the record of being a lifelong thief. She strayed up here from Chicago.”
“What’s her name?” he asked casually.
“Marta Sills.”
“I wonder if it could be Jo’s Marta,” the acting sheriff thought suddenly. “She may have followed him up here.”
He walked back to the hotel, trying to decide whether he should tell Jo. If she should prove to be his girl, her arrest up here should show him that his love hadn’t worked the miracle he expected. Jo had been a little more quiet since his return, but he gave no signs of pining away, and maybe if nothing revived his interest, it might die a natural death. The story Jo had told him of the little waif had made a deep impression upon him, however.
“Poor little brat!” he thought. “What chance does her kind have? I suppose I ought to give her one. There is one person in the world who might be able to reform her, and I’d put her in that person’s charge if it weren’t for wrecking Jo’s life.”
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