“Oh, Jo! I tried to think it wasn’t Marta, but—”
“She says she acted just as though she had taken it. It was old Merlin, nosing around the hall, who tucked it away. But the real reason I had to run you down was for my pal. He wants you.”
“Why?” she asked. “To apologize? You didn’t tell him, Jo—”
“I told him nothing.”
“Then he must want me as an ex-sheriff.”
“Cut that out, Miss Penny Ante. He wants to find you because he loves you.”
“What makes you think so, Jo?”
“He ’fessed up when he found you had gone.”
“He didn’t love me—not as you love Marta,” she reminded him. “It made no difference with you that Marta—”
He made a quick gesture of protest.
“You forget,” he said soberly, “that when I met Marta and fell in love with her, I didn’t know about—her. Bender had told him about you before he met you, and then he thought you belonged to me.”
“Jo, if you had known Marta stole before you met her, wouldn’t you have loved her and asked her to marry you?”
“I don’t know,” he said frankly, “and I don’t care about ‘might have beens.’ I know I love her now and always shall. That is enough.”
“Miss Penny Ante,” he continued, as she did not answer him, “you don’t know Kurt Walters as I do. He is a square man, square as a die.”
“Yes, Jo,” she said softly. “He is a real man—a square man. I know it now, too late.”
“Not too late. Not if you care. Go back with me to the ranch. He has gone to town with the children to meet the Kingdons. Mrs. Kingdon is there, too. They will all be back to-night.”
“No, Jo; it’s too late.”
“Why?”
“Because I gave Francis a letter telling him everything. He might overlook what he did know, but I understand his pride. He’ll never overlook the other. He’ll not forgive the deception.”
“Go to him unexpectedly, Miss Penny Ante. A man off guard, you know. Come back to Top Hill with me.”
“No; I am going to wait here until Larry comes back. I must.”
“Who is he, and what is he to you?” asked Jo resentfully and suspiciously.
“So you see, Jo,” she said, when she had finished a brief account of Larry’s entrance into her life, “I can’t go back with you. Don’t tell anyone but Marta where you found me. Ask her to forgive me for being so stupid about the ring. I’ll walk down to your car with you.”
They walked slowly without speaking until they came to the inn. She looked at the car wistfully.
“I haven’t been in this poor, little old car since that first ride to Top Hill,” she said reminiscently.
He made no reply, but got into the car and put his hand on the wheel.
“Jo!”
“Well,” he answered in the tone of one balked in his intentions.
“He’ll get over it.”
“No; men like Kurt don’t get over anything like that. I know what it is to love without hope. I am sorry for Kurt. You’ll be sorry for him, too, some day.”
She had come close to the car, and he looked into her eyes as he said impressively:
“He loved you from that very first night.”
“That very first night!” she echoed. “Not surely on that ride from town—from jail to Top Hill! Why, he fairly hated me then!”
“You’re not hep to Kurt,” he declared. “He said to me in just these words: ‘I have loved her since that first night I saw her, when we camped on the trail—when she lay asleep in the moonlight.’”
After making this enlightening remark, he motored away, while Pen stood motionless with the shock of amazement in her eyes.
* * *
When Larry returned on the early east-bound, he found Pen on the veranda of the little inn.
“Why, Pen!” he exclaimed. “Is this a stay-up late, or a get-up early?”
“Both, Larry. I couldn’t sleep. I am still thinking of our flight up—where I found myself.”
“I know,” he said comprehendingly. “You have to get away from people and things to do that—to get the right line on yourself; and that is the only place you can do it. But I met a man at the hotel who knows you.”
“Not Hebby!”
“No; I dodged Hebby for fear he’d quiz me or follow me. This other man began a cross exam., so I beat it. He said he was from the ranch where you stopped. I asked the clerk when I paid my bill who he was, and he said he was a sheriff, or had been one. Maybe Hebler got him to track you. I dodged his questions so as not to put him wise.”
“He isn’t a colleague of Hebby’s,” denied Pen. “He is the foreman of the ranch where I stayed. I think he was there in town to meet the Kingdons.”
“He met some people who went out to the ranch, but this man stayed on at the hotel. The night clerk said he would be there until noon to-day. We had better get ready for the next train.”
“I am ready,” said Pen quietly.
* * *
CHAPTER XVI
To the delight of his young passengers Kurt drove at a speed never before attempted when they were with him. At the hotel there was a rallying reunion of the Top Hill family.
“Where is Pen?” Mrs. Kingdon was finally permitted to ask.
“She didn’t come with us,” said Kurt, grimly enjoying Hebler’s quick attention. The children had been previously and carefully coached to make no mention of Pen’s departure.
He made an excuse to leave the hotel parlor and went down to the office.
“Is there an aviator registered here?” he asked the clerk.
“Sure there is,” replied the clerk proudly. “Larry Lamont. Some flier, too. He’s going over to France soon—into the French service.”
Lamont! Kurt turned a little pale. “Is he here now?”
“His things are here, but he’s out with his aeroplane somewhere.”
Kurt breathed a little easier and resolved to remain at the hotel until the aviator should return.
When the rest of the party came through the office on their way to the dining-room, Francis lagged behind and handed Kurt a letter which the latter abstractedly slipped into his pocket.
At dinner he was seated at the end of the table farthest removed from Mrs. Kingdon, so he had no opportunity for a word with her in regard to Pen. As they were going out from dinner she called to him:
“The children are clamoring for a movie. They don’t get many opportunities to see one, and I haven’t the heart to refuse them their first request after my long absence. So we are all going. Will you come, too?”
“I can’t, I fear. I have a little matter of business to attend to, but I will be here after the picture show.”
“I imagine we will not be back very soon. Billy always insists on seeing a picture twice at least.”
Kurt remained in the office when the others had gone. Presently the clerk said to him: “Here comes Lamont now!”
A slim, graceful-looking young man smoking a cigarette was just swinging in from the street.
Instantly Kurt went forward to meet him.
“Mr. Lamont?” he asked.
“Yes,” admitted the aviator warily.
“My name is Walters. I’m from the ranch where Miss Lamont has been visiting. Are you her brother?”
Lamont shook the ashes from his cigarette.
“I beg your pardon,” he replied coldly. “I have no sister.”
He passed on, leaving Kurt still at sea as to the relationship of the aviator and Pen.
Then he heard Lamont addressing the clerk.
“I want to leave an early call for the first east-bound.”
Kurt went out on the street. He could always think more clearly in the open, and he felt that he had much need for thought. Added to his other disturbing emotions was the most stinging one of jealousy. The truth that struck home was the knowledge that the supposed theft of the ring hadn’t made him so wretched as the a
ssurance that she loved another—was another’s. He hadn’t been jealous before—not of Jo nor even of Hebler, but he instinctively felt that this Romeo-like youth whom she had sought was the one who had the first claim.
“He shall not have her!” he muttered when he had walked the streets for some time. “I’ll take her from him—from everyone.”
He went to the little theatre to tell the Kingdons that he should remain in town all night. Kingdon could drive the car home and Hebler could run the racer.
He walked into the little lobby. The bill boards showed him it was a wild and wholly western scenario, and he felt certain that no less than two performances would satisfy Billy’s cravings. He went inside and stood scanning the well-filled house until he located his little party well up in front—children’s choice of seats. He started down the aisle. The preliminary pictures of the cast were being shown. On the screen flashed the lines:
THE THIEF
or
Meg O’ The Prairies
By Bobbie Burr
A picture of “Meg O’ the Prairies” followed. Kurt turned and walked back to the last row of seats, the only ones vacant.
The theatre was dark. An improvised orchestra was essaying something that sounded like strains of Dixie, Columbia, America and the Star-Spangled Banner combined, and the audience were continually standing up and sitting down, in a state of bewilderment and doubt as to which was the national air.
Then suddenly on the white screen was enacted the regulation, popular style of Western play. Ranch settings, tough bar-room, inevitable cowboys, bandits, Indians, and lovers twain, held the audience enthralled. There were the many hair-breadth escapes, pursuits, timely rescues featuring the one girl, daughter of a ranchman, attired in semi-cowboy regalia, who rode like mad and performed all kinds of wonderful feats, and for whose hand the hero, villain and cowboys hazarded their lives and fortunes. The old, old picture that came with the first film and will last while there are boys and men with the hearts of boys. Look upon it tenderly, promoters of educational pictures and uplifting reels, for it carries a romance never attained in reality and irresistibly appeals to the idealism of young blood and young hearts.
For an instant, when the first picture of “The Thief” was thrown on the screen, Kurt felt a queer sensation as one who intuitively perceives something of danger in the dark. A swift, warning note like a sharp pain struck him.
With tense nerves, he waited for the scenes in which she would appear. All the little well-remembered gestures, the graceful movements, the tender graces which he had been wont to steel himself against were there. They brought him a feeling that was exquisite in its pain. With no outward show of emotion his whole being quivered and throbbed at each appearance of the boyish figure ever recurring on the screen.
Once her eyes, wistful and entreating, seemed to meet his in mute reproach. Then the little theater was lighted, the improvised orchestra renewed its efforts. He went quickly out and stopped at the hotel to leave a note for Kingdon. Again he walked and lost himself in memories, seeing as in a mirror all the incidents that had so intrigued his interest, but which now in the light of his new understanding seemed so very patent.
Suddenly he recalled her letter still unread. That might show some motive for her incognito and explain her arrest by Bender.
He returned to the hotel. The hour was very late. He learned that the ranch party had long since departed and that Larry Lamont had gone to his room.
With a queer little catch of expectancy in his throat, he held the letter for a moment pressed tight in his hand. Then he opened it.
“TO KURT WALTERS, EX-ACTING SHERIFF.
“In taking French leave, I feel that it is due you to inform you who your prisoner really is.
“I was to the stage born. In fact, nearly stage-born, as my mother played her part almost up to the night I made my debut in the great game of Life. My childhood was spent mostly in the flies, and my earliest memories are of being propped up on an impromptu, triangular divan formed by a piece of wood stuck between two joists and covered with cushions; of watching my mother use lip stick and other make-up things; of hearing the warning knock and admonition: ‘Thirty minutes, Miss Lamont;’ (No ‘Mrs.’ in stage lore, you know) and later, ‘Fifteen minutes Miss Lamont;’ of her cheery response, ‘Yes, Parks,’ and of her never hurrying or being flustered by the flight of time; of her giving me a sticky kiss as the final peremptory call came. Everyone in the company mothered me, so I was not neglected—doubtless received too much attention. I was a very nimble kidlet, and at an early age the stage carpenter, who had once been in a circus, taught me to walk a taut rope and to perform acrobatic feats.
“In due course I played juvenile leads. When I attained the young and tender grass age, I was sent away to school, my mother having been a shrewd manager and investor. The school was equipped with a fine gymnasium; riding and dancing academies were attached. In all of these institutions I excelled.
“When I was sixteen, my mother died, and I went on the stage. I didn’t inherit her talent as an actress, having only mediocre ability, but I had a carrying voice, personality, and could dance, so I soon left the legitimate stage for vaudeville where I made something like a hit.
“Bruce Hebler, who is a motion picture man, persuaded me to come into film land, and if you didn’t live at the end of the trail and forego all things that make good cheer, you might have recognized me from billboard pictures and magazine pages as the star of certain woolly West productions. Jo recognized me at once as Bobbie Burr.
“This spring I was a bit under the weather, because we really have to work like dogs and some of our daring stunts—which are not always faked—do get on our nerves, you see. I had to have a vacation, after which I needed another, and was advised to seek recuperation in your hills. My objective point was one hundred or more miles from here at a sort of little isolated inn. En route I missed connections, and having no enthusiasm about my destination, I stayed over in the town nearest Top Hill. In a local paper I read of the arrest of a ‘hardened young criminal.’ I was curious to see what species of my sex that might be, and followed my impulse to visit her at the jail. Your friend, Bender, gave me permission to visit the ‘hardened young criminal.’ She was a girl of my own age, size, and altogether what I or any girl could easily have been had it not been for the accident of birth, conditions and environment.
“Fortunately she was an admirer of Bobbie Burr, and I won her confidence and story—Marta’s story, which you already know. Things and people had made her put up a bluff of being hardened, but there had come, as you know, the newly awakened desire to ‘live straight—like folks who didn’t get caught.’ To use her own words, ‘she wasn’t going to let a grand man like him wish himself on such as me.’ I felt, then, that thief or no thief, she was the real thing. I only knew one way to get her release and I was rather keen for adventure. We exchanged dress skirts, shoes, hats and coats. I gave her some money, the key to my hotel room, trunk and suitcase and told her to take the next train out while the going was good, and not to show up at the hotel until the night clerk, who had not seen me, came on. I also gave her a letter to some good friends of mine in a town farther west, I knew they would be kind to her, ask no questions and let her stay until she was squared about.
“It was done on an impulse—in a flash—one of those kaleidoscopic impulses we have, but back of it was the wish to help some one, and the curiosity to see if her love, aided by the opportunity, would suffice to reform the kind of girl she was supposed to be.
“She left the jail in my outer clothes, and I stayed in her shabby garments. Old Bender never suspected the transfer. It would have been very easy for me with my agility gained in screen stunts to have swung out from any part of that old jail, and still easier to have given you the slip en route to Top Hill, but I wanted Marta to have plenty of time to get to a far cover before the mistake was discovered.
“Playing a part was second nature to me. I really felt
that for the time being I was Marta, but a different Marta from the real one. I always enter into my roles with all my being, so I set the role of a real thief for myself and played up to it so intently that I all but lost my own personality. It was the kind of Marta that Bender supposed her to be who talked to you on that memorable ride to Top Hill. Your wish to be helpful to an unfortunate girl touched me and might have won me to confiding in you, but you were so stern and sometimes so repellant in your manner, I was afraid to trust you. I wasn’t sure you would be equal to rising above your chagrin at finding you had been taken in by a ‘movie actress’ and that you might apprehend poor little Marta.
“By morning I was curious to know your idea of ‘the best woman in the world.’ Then, too, I thought I could find my needed tonic in your hills and better accommodations than I could obtain at a hotel. So I continued to play my part. When I saw Mrs. Kingdon, I realized she was the best woman in the world. She, like Jo, recognized me at once, having seen me rehearsing in San Francisco. I had the whim to stay incognito and she humored me, insisting, however, that you should be told the next day. But the next day you had gone. In the week that followed I learned the beauty of a home life, hitherto unknown to me.
“Of course those stunts you saw me doing on field day were mere ‘horse play’ compared with what I have to do in making the pictures. When I met you for a brief space of time that afternoon, I had no opportunity to make my disclosure. When you returned, Mrs. Kingdon was away and I couldn’t resist the temptation to play on in my new part. Any one’s personality seems more pleasing to me than my own, and I still felt as if I were really Marta.
“My early ideals of manly suitors were patterned slightly on your model; it piqued me, I admit, that you didn’t seem to fall for a little romance with me, as many suitors had done.
“When I saved Francis from being thrown (I’ve turned that trick many a time in pictures) I felt that I had in a way repaid Mrs. Kingdon for her hospitality. You were so homey and nice that night, I almost ’fessed up. I did my best to make you care more—and I thought I had succeeded; but you still made reservations and I thought your reluctance came from my past—Marta’s past—
Penny of Top Hill Trail Page 13
