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 as he gazed he remitted sentence and told himself that she was but a stray little kitten lost in the wide plains 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 to be a characteristic of mine. Maybe her true little self is the one Jo saw and she can be made worthy of him yet.”
CHAPTER III
When the first faint edges of light outlined the coming day, she sat bolt upright and stared about her. As far as eye could see was the tortuous trail leading up sculptured hills that were the preface to the mother mountains of the West.
The wonder-stare in her eyes gradually disappeared as memory awakened. Down beyond the trees in a little valley the sheriff was attending to a fire he had built.
She arose, cramped and unrefreshed, and hastened toward the welcome blaze.
“Good morning. Any gasoline yet?”
“No; not an automobile passed during the night.”
“How do you know? Didn’t you sleep?”
“No.”
“Guarding your car and me? No!” she added quickly. “That wasn’t the reason. I had all the robes and your coat. You had to stay awake to keep warm.”
He smiled slightly and spoke in the hushed voice that seems in keeping with the dawn.
“I’ve been used to night watches – tending sheep and cattle on the plains. What’s the difference whether it’s night or day so long as you sleep somewhere in the twenty-four hour zone?”
“I never was up ahead of the sun before,” she said with a little shiver, as she came close to the fire.
“I am heating over the coffee that was left. That will make you feel better.”
“I suppose there isn’t any water hereabouts to wash in. You know they teach us to be sanitary in the reformatories.”
He pointed to a jar.
“I
