Penny of Top Hill Trail

“Uncle Kurt, Aunt Penny is going to France. She went by way of Westcott’s. Is that the way to France? Don’t tell Francis I told. She is going to help the French and the Beligum babies.”

“Thank you very much, Betty.”

This was a clue. She had doubtless started toward Westcott’s expecting to get a lift to town. If no one had picked her up en route, he could easily overtake her in the big car, which Gene had now repaired.

“Go and tell the boys to get ready, Betty.”

Betty sped gleefully away.

“Oh, Mr. Walters!” hailed Mrs. Merlin, coming from the house, “when you see Mr. Hebler, tell him I put his diamond ring away. I’m awfully forgetful. I – ”

“You put his diamond ring away? Where?” asked Kurt faintly.

“It was like this. I couldn’t get to sleep last night because a window was rattling in the hall, so I got up and went out to fix it. When I passed by Mr. Hebler’s door, I saw his diamond ring on a table near the door. Ain’t it awful how careless folks are! I opened a drawer in the table and slipped it in, and I clean forgot all about it till a little while ago. Maybe he’s got it on by this time, though.”

“All right, Mrs. Merlin, I’ll tell him,” said Kurt, hastily going in and up to Hebler’s room. The diamond fairly blazed at him in accusation as he opened the drawer.

And yet Hebler had told him that he had the ring! He hadn’t been in the house after he had said the ring was missing. And why had Pen said she took it? Maybe she had taken that method of returning it.

He went downstairs, pondering over the mystery. This time Marta stopped him, excitedly.

“Oh, Mr. Walters, Jo and I have been looking for you! Miss Lamont didn’t take the ring.”

“I know she didn’t. I just learned, Marta, that Mrs. Merlin saw it on the table and put it away.”

“Find Miss Lamont and tell her!” cried Marta in distress. “You see she thought I took it. She had reason to think so – the way I acted. She was protecting me.”

“I see,” he said despairingly. “I made her think you had taken it.”

“Come outside and see Jo.”

“Jo,” he asked desperately, when he had joined him, “do you know where she is? She has gone. I must know.”

“Kurt, you might as well try to catch a piece of quicksilver as Penny Ante, if she don’t want to be caught.”

“Have you the slightest idea as to where she has gone or where she might have gone?”

“Maybe I could venture a guess. I’ll have to know first why you want to know.”

Something more compelling than any emotion he had yet known kept down the anger that otherwise would have risen at being thwarted.

“I love her, Jo,” he said quietly.

“For how long, Kurt, have you loved her?”

“Since the first night I met her,” he said slowly and reminiscently. “When we camped on the trail. She lay asleep in the moonlight.”

“Have you forgotten what you warned me against that day I told you about Marta – about marrying a thief.”

“I was a simp, then, Jo. I had never been in love.”

“Well,” pursued Jo, “why didn’t you tell her you loved her in the first place? Maybe it would have helped. It isn’t much of a compliment to a girl to hang around and not say anything.”

“Think, Jo. I supposed until Marta came, that Pen was your girl. I brought her up here to see if she could be reformed for you. I sent you away to Westcott’s until I could tell if she were worthy of you.”

“Say, Kurt, I am the simp. I never thought of that. She didn’t think you really cared. Leave it to me. I’ll tell her.”

“But where is she? Don’t let the boys know, but Betty leaked the fact that she was going to France. I can’t think she was in earnest.”

Jo whistled.

“I am beginning to get glimpses on a dark subject. I’ll bet that is where he is making for, too.”

“He? Who?” he asked quickly. “Hebler?”

“Hebler! She’d rather dodge him than you. No; I mean that aviator who landed over toward Westcott’s a little while ago. I heard one of those fliers had been in town giving an exhibition. He was down to earth just about long enough to pick some one up. That was what she meant in the note she left for me when she said she was going by the Excelsior route.”

“How would she know him, and how would she get word to him to come out here?”

“She told me she spent the day in town – let me see – day before yesterday, I think it was. Said she met a man there she used to know.”

“She told me, too, she had been to town, but I thought she was only joking. I didn’t believe her.”

“There’s a lot you could hear about her, Kurt, that you wouldn’t believe right off the bat; but it’s not me who’s going to put you wise. Talk to Mrs. Kingdon about her. You’ll not get the chance to interview Penny Ante very soon, I imagine. In the craft she must be traveling in, there’s nothing about this ranch that can overtake her, but I’ll do my level best. Let me see! She won’t go to town. She’ll want to keep out of Hebler’s reach, of course.”

“Why?” asked Kurt. “Do you know?”

“I know more than you do about her. A girl has to have some one to confide in and Little Penny Ante chose me. You scared her out, you know.”

Kurt winced.

“They will naturally go in an opposite direction,” pursued Jo. “They may fly over to the next station and take the east-bound. I’ll take your car.”

“No; you take the children to town, and I’ll go in pursuit – ”

“That’ll never do. She won’t try to dodge me.”

CHAPTER XV

In the little valley by Westcott’s, Pen stood waiting and staring upward. At last she heard the sharp sound of an engine and saw the plane describing a sweeping circle. It came gently down, the little wheels rolling along the grass.

“I’m in debt to Hebler,” said Larry. “It was only your fear of him that overcame your fear of flying.”

Then looking at her, he continued, confidingly, “I wouldn’t take up the average girl, Pen, and especially one who owned up to being afraid. But I know you. You’ll forget fear in the thrills. All you’ve got to do is to sit still, hold on and look out on the level. We won’t do any swivels; just straight stuff, and you’ll be as safe as you would any place.”

She put on the hood and goggles and was adjusted to the seat.

“Now where do you want to go?” he asked.

“Anywhere to lose myself. Hebby is in town and so – are others. Let us take the opposite direction and you can land me at some place where the east-bound stops and I can get some more luggage. Then we’ll make plans.”

“Suits me. First thing we’ll do is to have a grand flight. Then I’ll leave you at a nice, little, sky-high inn I know up in the clouds. I’ll fly back to town, pay my bill, pack my traps and join you by train.”

He started the engine. The plane skipped along for a few paces, then arose, it seemed to Pen, to great and dizzy heights. In spite of her instructions she ventured to look down. Everything earthly was disappearing. They dodged the clouds, went above them and then slid down to the splendors of the sunlight. Over the hills at full speed they swept along, Larry’s air-wise, lightning-swift sensibilities making naught of change of currents and drafts. Then came the joy and thrill of a sixty-mile straightaway spurt.

It was wonderful, but the most wonderful part of it to Pen was that she had not even a second of fear, although always this thought of being shot up suddenly straight into an unknown realm had been most terrifying.

Up there above the hills and in the clouds, she felt entranced, spiritualized. It was with a feeling of depression that she saw they were spinning down until they hovered over a field, scudding smoothly and slowly along.

“You weren’t afraid!” exclaimed Larry triumphantly, as they walked along toward a little inn resting at the base of one of the undulating hills.

“No;” she answered, “only awed.”

“Was it anything like you expected?”

“No,” she replied.

A man came out of the inn to meet them.

“Halloa, Larry! Too bad I couldn’t have had a full house to see. The last tourist left on the train to-day.”

“Then you’ll have more room for us. This is Miss Lamont, Nat. Mr. Yates, the proprietor,” he explained to Pen. “Can you give us supper and put Miss Lamont up for the night? I have to fly back to my hotel. I’ll return by train in the morning.”

“Sure thing! House is yours.”

He showed Pen to a neat little room and told her “supper’d be on in a jiffy.”

She sat down dazedly. Presently she was roused to her surroundings by Larry’s “Oh, Pen!” from below.

When she came down to the dining-room, Larry’s clear young eyes looked at her keenly.

“Not down to earth yet, Pen? I know how you feel. First time I made the sky route, I went off by myself for a day.”

“Larry, I can’t talk about it yet. I will tell you now why I joined you. I thought I would like to go to France – with you. I thought I might be useful some way, but now – ”

“We won’t think of plans now. We’ll talk it all over in the morning when I am back. You’ll be safe here. Nat would as lief shoot Hebby or anyone else who trailed you. Supper’s on the table, so come on.”

Throughout the meal Larry did most of the talking, Pen scarcely responding. Then he was off, steering in great circles toward town, Pen watching with the quickening of pulse and a renewal of the elation she had felt when taking the air. When he was but a mere speck in the sky, she went up to her little room.

“You’ll never look quite so high or so wonderful to me again,” she thought, as she looked out on the hills. “It’s because I’ve looked down on you, I suppose – the law of contrast. I learned a great deal up there – in the vapors. I put out my feelers, something I never did before. I see I’ve always faked my sensations. But my wings are pin feathers as yet. I have to look at everything from a new angle of vision. All my life I’ve been longing for thrills – real thrills, my own thrills; not other peoples. I had a few little shivers when I was riding to Top Hill that morning; a few more last night – but my first true thrill of rapture came when I was challenging the sky, an argonaut.”

It was a hard struggle for Pen to adjust her new self that she had found up in the high altitudes where all the tepid, petty things of life had dropped from her – where she had found the famous fleece, the truth. In the vastness of that uncharted land, like a flash in the dark something had leaped at her. Her dream of a dream had come true. She had learned the great human miracle, the meaning of a love that had the strength to renounce. A god-made love, sweet and strong, conceived on earth, but brought forth on high where the call of destiny had sounded with clarion clearness. She knew now what she had missed; that he was not of the world of miniature men who exact and never return.

She was roused from her visions of the new and radiant world which had been opened unto her by a knock at her door.

“Yes,” she answered vaguely.

“There’s a man downstairs to see you,” said the proprietor.

She was at once alert and on the defensive, thinking of an encounter with Hebler.

“Do you know who he is?” she asked apprehensively.

“He said to tell you ’twas Jo.”

Joyfully she hastened down to the deserted office of the little inn.

“Jo, I am so glad it’s you!”

“So am I. Come outside and take a walk with me.”

“How did you ever track me up here, Jo?” she asked as they walked up a hillside.

“Not hard to track the first skycraft that ever came up to these parts. I saw one land near Westcott’s, and I had a hunch it was lighting for you. Then I thought no more about it until things happened that made it up to me to find you. I inquired around and about and found a big balloon had come this way, so I figured this was about your goal for a train.”

“Why was it up to you to find me, Jo?”

“Well, Miss Penny Ante, I am a little interested in you, seeing as it was you who brought Marta to me. And I knew you would be interested in knowing Marta didn’t take the ring.”

“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 assurance 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 THIEForMeg O’ The PrairiesBy 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.