go up and take a look at her,” he suddenly decided. “Maybe I can tell from Jo’s description whether she is his Marta or not.”
On his way to the jail he was accosted by a big, jovial man.
“Don’t know where I can get an extra helper, do you, Kurt? Simpson, my right-hand, has gone back to Canada to enlist.”
“How providential!” thought Kurt.
“Why, yes; Mr. Westcott,” he replied: “We’re well up with our work, and I could spare Jo Gary for a few weeks.”
“Jo Gary! May Heaven bless you! When can I get him?”
“Going out home now?”
“Yes; on my way.”
“Stop at the ranch and take him along with you. Tell him I said to go. It’ll be all right with Kingdon.”
Westcott renewed his blessings upon Kurt and drove on.
At the jail Kurt looked in on the latest arrival. She was sitting at a table in Bender’s back office, her head bowed in her hands. There was something appealing in the drooping of her shoulders and in her shabby attire.
“Now Jo is disposed of, she shall have her chance, anyway,” he decided.
Without speaking to the girl, he sought Bender and they held a brief consultation.
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 an old, rickety automobile and halt in the dust-white road, as he cast a sharply scrutinizing glance upon the atom of a girl who sat beside him. She was a dejected, dusty, little figure, drooping under the jolt of the jerking car and the bright rays of hills-land sunshine. She was young – in years; young, too, in looks, as Kurt saw when she raised her eyes which were soft and almond-shaped; but old, he assumed, in much that she should not have been.
She had found it a long, hard ride across the plains, and the end of her endurance had been prefaced by frequent sighs, changes of position and softly 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 slightly forward.
His tenseness relaxed; a startled, remorseful look came into his eyes as he saw two tears coursing down her cheeks. They were unmistakably real tears, – though, as he was well aware, they came from physical causes alone. Still, they penetrated the armor of unconcern with which he had girded himself.
“What for?” he asked curtly.
“What for!” she echoed, her mouth quivering into pathetic droops. “For rest, of course. You may be used to this kind of locomotion, but I’m not very well upholstered, and I’m shaken to bits. Fact is, I’m just all pegged 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 is it 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 than any 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 those home-stuff places left except in the movies. I never was much stuck on home, so you needn’t be afraid to call it ‘jail’ for fear of hurting my feelings.”
“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 to work 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’s on 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 deaf and dumb for the whole of this awful ride. Let’s sidetrack the trail and go – home – by moonlight.”
His eyes remained rigid and relentless, but there was a slight twitching of 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 an improvised Thermos bottle into a traveling cup.
“Thanks for those first kind words,” she exclaimed, taking the cup from him 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 looking at her throughout the journey.
“I’m not used to asking for anything,” she answered with a chuckle. “I take 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 if I knew it meant this.”
“It’s your own fault,” she retorted. “It wouldn’t have been ‘this’ if you hadn’t been so grouchy. We could have had a chummy little gabfest, if you hadn’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 if you’d pick out anything like this. Was it ‘Made in America?’ Funny outfit for 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 have all this outdoors for a long time, I suppose. I see there’s a tidy little bit 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 get tired 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 beckoned enticingly to the passer-by.
He followed reluctantly.
“This is Heaven let loose,” she said, lolling luxuriously against the trunk 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. Any one would think you were the prisoner instead of poor little me.”
“I wish I were,” he said shortly.
She
