Penny of Top Hill Trail

She stole a look at his impassive face.

“And you saw the sports?”

“Yes; and rode on after you – ”

“Because you feared your prisoner might be taking French leave? No; this is the end of the rainbow to me. I have no desire to leave – at present.”

They were riding slowly on.

“Where did you learn to ride?”

“I don’t remember; it was so long ago.”

“That was circus riding.”

“It did look like it,” she said deprecatingly.

“If you can ride like that, why did you leave the circus for the life – ”

“Of a crook?” she finished. “Suppose I stole a horse and sold it and had to vamoose. Even circus managers don’t employ thieves.”

“Who gave you permission to ride to-day?” he demanded.

She pulled from the pocket of her blouse a program and handed it to him.

“You see I was featured,” she explained modestly.

He read it with a frown expressive of displeasure.

“Did Mrs. Kingdon know you were going to do this?”

“No one but one of the men knew.”

“How did you come to meet the men?”

“The children introduced me to one of them and I met the others at the dance. I never knew what dancing really meant until then. I’ve learned to play a very gamey game, too. Craps.”

With a jerk Kurt brought his horse to a halt and reaching over caught her bridle as she was about to spur her horse onward.

“Did you tell Mrs. Kingdon everything?” he asked sternly.

“Everything I could remember,” she replied demurely. “Far more than I told you.”

“What did she say?”

“She is going to talk to you and ask you to leave the entire matter in her hands.”

He broke the short silence that followed.

“Dancing, craps and bronco-breaking are not what I brought you here for.”

“But I’ve done lots of other things, too. Sewed three days straight, learned how to make salads, heard the children’s lessons, picked flowers and getting wise to a home atmosphere every minute. You won’t send me away?”

He was scowling at the program again.

“Why are you called Penny Ante?”

“You object to all of my names. But this one was Betty’s fault. She introduced me as ‘Aunt Penny,’ and of course they put it backward.”

“Who do they think you are?”

“Your ‘lady friend’ here for a visit,” she answered with the little giggle that always offended him. Then, appeasingly: “Mrs. Kingdon said it would be better if only you and she knew who I am and why I am here at the ranch.”

“Go back to the house,” he directed. “I’ll be home in a few days.”

Obediently she turned her horse and he rode in the opposite direction.

“Kurt – Mr. Walters!” she called entreatingly.

He turned in his saddle and waited until she rode back to him.

“There is something I want to tell you,” she said, her eyes downcast, a faint note of exultation in her voice. “I haven’t taken a thing – or tried to – or wanted to – since I’ve been here, and I’ve had lots of chances.”

Receiving no reply, she looked up pleadingly, and was startled at the transformation in his eyes, which were usually narrow, cold and of steel-gray shade, but now were dark, shining and full of infinite pity as they looked down into hers.

“I am glad to hear it,” he said gently. “You know that was why I brought you here. Now you must do more for me. You mustn’t mingle with the men, or repeat to-day’s program. I want you to be like her – a house-woman. Good-bye – until I come home.”

He rode swiftly away, and she laughed softly to herself, stopping suddenly.

“It isn’t so funny after all; it’s really pathetic. But – a house-woman! Ye Gods! That is the last thing I want to be – or could be. It’s all well for a novelty, but for steady diet – oh, me! If Hebby could have heard the law laid down to me, he’d be overcome with glee. Poor old Heb! I bet he is still frothing at the mouth because I gave him such a neat slip. I seem, however, to have only succeeded in changing keepers.”

She rode on, her conscience smiting her now and then when she recalled the look in Kurt’s eyes.

“I don’t deserve pity from him or anyone,” she thought a little sadly.

She made no mention at Top Hill of having met the foreman. Notwithstanding his orders, for three days she revelled in the companionship of Jo and the men.

“We must harvest all the hay we can,” she told him, “while Kind Kurt is away.”

On the evening of the third day, she found herself watching the hill road from town.

“I feel like Sister Anne,” she thought. “It’s odd, why I am wanting him to return, for when he does, my fun will be nipped in the bud. It may be the feeling of a dog for its master that I have acquired for my sheriff man. Jo will be going soon to Westcott’s. I think I will play up to Kind Kurt and then tell him what I revealed to Mrs. Kingdon. Wow!”

She turned from the window to hear the message Kingdon had just received from the telegraph office in town. An old-time friend had asked him to join a party of men at a ranch a hundred miles distant. His wife urged him to follow his apparent inclination.

“It’ll do you good, Louis, to see more of your kind again.”

“I wouldn’t consider it if you didn’t have such good company,” he said, with a whimsical smile in Pen’s direction.

The following morning, Jo drove Mrs. Kingdon, Pen and the children to town to see Kingdon off. When his train had pulled out, they went to the postoffice and Francis was sent in for the mail.

“A letter for you, mother,” he said, running up to the car. “It’s Aunt Helen’s writing.”

An anxious look came into Margaret Kingdon’s eyes as she read.

“Doris is ill, and my sister wants me to come to her,” she explained to Pen. “She is quite helpless in a sick room and Doris asks for me. There is a train east in an hour and you can send my luggage on to me. I’ll return as soon as Doris is convalescent.”

“I will do all I can to help with the children,” promised Pen.

“I know you will. And Jo can stop at Mrs. Merlin’s and take her to Top Hill. She always presides in my absence. She is a good housekeeper and is never disagreeable or officious.”

“Jo says Mrs. Merlin shinnies on her own side,” added Billy.

“Jo is right,” replied his mother.

At the station Mrs. Kingdon drew Pen aside.

“You must tell Kurt, you know,” she cautioned.

Pen looked plaintive, but the conductor’s “all aboard” call ended the conversation.

“We’ll say our prayers and our lessons like mother told us,” said Francis as they motored home, “but of course we can’t be too good all the time. I am going to ride a horse, a real horse – not a pony.”

“I am going to sit up late nights,” declared Billy.

“And I shall wear your clothes and play I am a boy,” Betty informed him.

“Well,” thought Pen, “after all these Declarations of Independence, I feel I must get in the forbidden fruit game, too. I know what I’ll do. I’ll not tell Kurt – not right away, at least.”

Half way to the ranch they stopped at Mrs. Merlin’s cottage.

“She certainly looks the part of propriety to perfection,” thought Pen, as she surveyed the tall, angular, spectacled woman, who came to the car, and whose grim features relaxed slightly after a keen glance at the young girl.

“I’ll have four children this time instead of three,” she said.

“What would she think,” reflected Pen, “if Kind Kurt should tell her what kind of a child the fourth one is!”

Back at Top Hill, Pen packed the luggage to be expressed to Mrs. Kingdon, and Jo made another trip to town, planning to go from there to Westcott’s.

At dinner time Kurt arrived, and Pen chuckled as she easily read his dismay at the situation.

“He’s foreseeing and dreading all sorts of terrible things I may do or am capable of doing. Just because he is looking for trouble, I have no desire to give it. I’ll play a new role and show him what a tame, good little girl I can be; maybe I’ll like being one and it’ll turn out to be a real reform. It would be awfully odd if he found his pedalled ideal in The Thief!”

She was conscious of his searching eyes upon her. She looked demurely down. In a soft, subdued voice she read little stories to the children, and when their bedtime hour came, she went upstairs with them.

Later she joined him on the library veranda where he was smoking his pipe, for it was one of the few nights when it was warm enough for such indulgence.

She went up to him unfalteringly.

“I have put myself on honor while Mrs. Kingdon is away,” she said gravely. “I will try hard to do as you want me to do, but it will be easier for me if you will trust me.”

Her eyes looked out so very straight, with none of the worldly wisdom he had seen in them the day she had been transferred to his guardianship, that he found himself incapable of harboring any further doubt of her sincerity.

“I will,” he said staunchly; “I will trust you as she does.”

They sat together in the moonlight without further converse and in the reposeful silence a mutual understanding was born.

Presently she went inside and played some old-time airs on the piano with the caressing, lingering touch of those who play by ear.

“Where did you learn to play?” he asked wonderingly.

She looked up, slightly startled. She hadn’t heard him come in and her thoughts had been far away from Top Hill.

“I never did learn,” she said, rising from the piano. “I play by ear. I see it is late. I must go upstairs. Good night, Mr. Walters.”

“Good night, Pen,” he said kindly.

He returned to the porch and pipe and lost himself in a haze of dreams – such dreams as had been wont to come to him in his younger days when he had been a cow-puncher pure and simple. Gathered about a roaring camp fire that lighted up the rough and boisterous faces of his companions, he had seemed as one of them, but later when they had gone to well-earned slumber and it had been his turn to guard the long lines of cattle in the cool of the cottonwoods, he had used to gaze into the mysteries of a desert moon slowly drifting through a cerulean sky and dream a boy’s dream of the woman who was to come to him.

As he grew older and came more into contact with the world, he was brought to an overwhelming realization that the woman of his dreams did not exist. The knowledge made an ache in his heart, but to-night he was again longing with the primary instinct that would not be killed, – longing for the One.

Pen went to bed and to sleep. The next day she was a perfect model of a young housewife. She helped the children with their little lessons, filled all the vases, trained some vines, and then with some needlework went out on the veranda. At the table she listened and responded interestedly to Mrs. Merlin’s bromidic remarks, was gentle with the children and most flatteringly deferential to Kurt. Of her former banter and coquetry toward him there was no trace. After the children had gone to bed, she played cribbage with Mrs. Merlin while Kurt read the papers.

When she was undressing that night she examined her shoulders in the mirror very closely.

“There should be little wings sprouting. I was never even make-believe good before. The relapse will be a winner when it comes. If I could only steady down to something like a normal life. But I never shall.”

She was standing pensively by a rosebush the next morning feeling appallingly weary of well-doing when Kurt in his riding clothes suddenly appeared before her.

“Would you like to ride this morning?” he asked. “Work is slack just now.”

With a rush of joy she got into her boyish looking outfit and mounted the horse he had chosen for her, a thoroughbred animal but one far different from those she had tried out on field day. She was very careful not to try to outride the foreman, or to perform any of her marvels of horsemanship. They had a long exhilarating ride over the foothills, and she felt the blood leaping again in her arteries at the turning from the comfortable channels of house life into the lure of the open.

“I was never meant for indoors,” she thought. “I think I can stand it up here a while longer if he’ll give me more of this exercise.”

That night as they sat in the library alone, he lost his habitual reticence and talked – through her guidance – of himself and his life.

“Does it satisfy you always,” she asked. “Wouldn’t you like the power of ruling fates and fortunes in a city way?”

“No;” he replied, almost fiercely. “When a man has circled the herd and risen in his stirrups to throw a lariat and watched through the night by the light of camp fires, nothing else calls to him quite the same way. I couldn’t endure to live a bottled up life – the life of cities. Men of my kind are branded; they may wander, but they always come back. After you once get on intimate terms with the mountain and the blue overhead, other things don’t satisfy.”

She drew him into further conversation regarding his former life, responding briefly but with an undercurrent of interest that put him on good terms with himself.

In the days that followed, these rides became frequent, and despite the fact that they seldom spoke, they unconsciously grew into a closeness of companionship which saved her from the ennui of unwonted domestic environment. The intense vitality of the young foreman attracted her, and she began to have a friendly sympathy for him, and even to feel a tranquil satisfaction in his reposeful silence. At times she was sorely tempted to show him the same little impish self she had portrayed on their first ride up the trail, and sometimes her conscience would sting her that she had failed to confide in him as Mrs. Kingdon had advised, but his gray eyes looked out so very straight and with such calm kindliness – the gaze of a man who has lived the simple life in the open – and with so little affinity to the eyes of the world-wise, that she found herself incapable of carrying out her intentions.

One night when the men had arranged to have another dance, Pen paid unusual attention to her dress. She came downstairs, a slight little figure in a soft, flower-sprigged, old-fashioned muslin (designed originally for bedroom windows and donated by Mrs. Kingdon), her hair softly brought to the crown of her head, with little curling rings about her brow. A freshness like the first faint fragrance of young spring seemed to hover about her. Kurt surveyed her with a look akin to adoration. Then his eyes dropped.

“Don’t dance with the boys to-night,” he said abruptly.

“I must play the ingénue part for which I am costumed,” she thought.

“Mrs. Kingdon told me,” she said gently, “that the boys had so few opportunities for partners, I must divide my dances equally.”

“There’s a party of tourists – teachers – at Westcott’s. I’ve asked them over. The boys can dance with them.”

“Well,” she assented graciously, “I’ll just dance with Betty and Francis and Billy – ”

“And me,” he finished.

“Thank you. I didn’t know that you danced.”

In the dance hall she looked eagerly about, hoping that Jo might have been invited, but she was disappointed.

“I am not dancing,” she thought, when Kurt was guiding her over the floor. “I am just being deliciously carried about. It’s very restful, but not exhilarating. Oh, Jo, where art thou? It was like drinking champagne to dance with you, but I suppose continuous champagne is bad for one.”

Later that night when she was taking off her dancing slippers her thoughts were still of the man with whom she had danced so many times.

“He’s kind and good and strong – a suppressed strength. He looks passion-proof; but if he ever falls in love! And what a triumph for a thief to capture an adamantine heart! But I don’t want that kind – nor any kind.”

Down in the bunkhouse, Kurt was recalling the feel of her little hand that had left a trail like fire upon his arm and had filled him with a sensation of ecstasy. A new divine sweetness seemed born into the air. He looked out of his window up into a star-flecked sky and renewed his old vow of allegiance to The Woman.