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 going to do?”
“We’ll wait here until some one comes along.”
“Then let’s go back to the trees while we wait,” she proposed, climbing out 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 down in the welcome shade.
“He said stealing was the only offense you’d been up for, and he guessed you couldn’t help it. What was your little game in making him think you were stupid?”
“Did he say I was? Horrid thing! I’m glad I put one over on him and lifted this,” and she held up the box.
“What is it?” he demanded sternly.
“His supper. A peroxided wife brought it to him – just before he presented me to you. It’ll come in handy now, or won’t you partake of stolen goods?”
“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 to have something thrown in. It’s all done up in a nice napkin – looks as if it 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 to pick a partner. What shall we drink out of?”
He produced a drinking cup, poured some coffee in it and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said. “Shall we make it a loving cup, Kurt?”
He ignored her question and plunged greedily into a pork sandwich. He had had so much business in town that day, he had taken no time to eat.
The girl partook of Bender’s pilfered luncheon sparingly and without zest.
“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked her presently, his temper disappearing as his 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 a once-over, and decided I was the scum of the earth. Is that the way your topside 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 my number 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, rest and good air. I wouldn’t have got them, maybe, but for you, and I suppose I 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 his features.
“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 top of a hill, unless I get lonesome. You’d better tell that ‘best woman’ to double-lock things. It’s with stealing the same as with drinking – if anything 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 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
