Penny of Top Hill Trail Part 35

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 cus.h.i.+ons; 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 fl.u.s.tered 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 gra.s.s 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 inst.i.tutions 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 s.e.x 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 s.p.a.ce 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--

"That night as I stood at my window vaguely regretting my deception, Jo came along. I flew down to him and told him that I had heard from Marta, and we had a nice long talk together. I told him she was living 'straight,' but I respected her wish not to let him know where she was.

"I don't know why, as time went on, I didn't tell you who I was.

Maybe it was natural perversity, or the fateful habit of playing a part.

"I ran away to town that day you were all absent and met Larry Lamont, my cousin, the only kinsman I have. He was once a harum-scarum lad and did some flying acts for a company I was with, and one day when he was laid off for 'reasons,' I gave him a calling down and advised him to go to an aviation school and learn to fly scientifically. I hadn't heard from him until I saw him at the hotel, and found he had made good and joined the flying service of France.

"Marta's unexpected arrival upset things. I knew that Mrs. Kingdon was interested in my account of her and in her love for Jo; also that she intended to help them eventually, but I did not know she had communicated with Marta during her own absence. Hebler's sudden appearance was the last straw. He insists I am under contract for another of the wild and woolly pictures I am so tired of playing. I am not posted on the legality of contracts, and it seemed easier to dodge him until he should have to secure some one else. You were very nice about offering to help me evade him. Some way the return of Marta and the sudden arrival of Hebler made me realize I had been playing a part. That night in the library when you told me you loved me and asked me to marry you, I was really myself. I was surprised by the discovery that you loved me; but I wasn't sure of my own feelings. I felt I must think more about it, so pursuing my usual tactics I ran away.

"On pa.s.sing Hebby's door, that gaudy diamond flashed before me. I'll leave the theft an unsolved mystery.

"When I was forced to reveal my presence to Hebler, I felt that I had balled things up hopelessly and that the only avenue of escape lay in flight--my long suit.

"My only solace in all this bungling mess I have made is that I have brought Jo and Marta together.

"With you at the ranch and Hebler in town, I don't know how I could make my getaway but for Larry. I have telephoned him and he is to meet me near here, and by the time my little carrier dove delivers this, I shall be en route--for France. I'm weary of movies, and life is a delusion anyway.

"I admit it was wrong to deceive you--after the necessity for so doing had pa.s.sed. You were kind--in intent; still, you might have been a wee bit nicer, don't you think?

"Regretfully, "PENELOPE."

"P. S. Does it hurt _now_ that I use your mother's name?"

He read this letter as one who dreams and is but half conscious that it is a dream. He read it again and again, each time grasping bit by bit the realization of its contents and what they meant to him.

"She was right," he thought. "I didn't know what love meant. I do now--now that I missed it. I've lost her more surely than if she were a 'hardened, young criminal.' I shall never try to find her."

It was hardly sunrise when he went down to the office.

"I should like to speak to Mr. Lamont when he comes down," he said to the clerk.

"He has gone," was the reply. "He came down before his call and has gone to the train."

"Maybe it is just as well," thought Kurt. "There is really no message I could send to her."

"See the picture last night?" asked the clerk chattily. "The Thief, or Meg O' The Prairies. Great picture!"

"Yes; I saw it," replied Kurt dismally.

"I always go to see Bobbie Burr. She's my favorite. There was a girl here the other day who was a dead ringer for her. She had dinner with Lamont here. I read in a magazine that she gets a big salary. I forget the figures, but it was more per week than some folks earn in a lifetime."

Kurt's heart registered more downward beats.

He hung about the office until the dining-room was open and then went in and perfunctorily consumed some food. Later he called up an acquaintance and asked the loan of his car. It was sent around to the hotel, and he was just about to start for the ranch when a well-known voice behind him said:

"May I ride out to Top Hill with you?"

For a moment the blood left his heart and then returned so rapidly it left him quite pale.

"Larry said you were here. I came back on the train just now. I want to go to the ranch for--my things. Will you take me?"

"Yes," he said abstractedly.

CHAPTER XVII

"Kurt!"

He looked up with a start. As on that first ride, long ago, his eyes had been fixed on the road ahead.

"Let's talk a bit," she said. "What did you think--"