Part 5 (1/2)
”Have you been sick, real sick?” he asked.
”Yes; clean played out, the doctor said.”
”Then I am glad I brought you. We will make you well physically, anyway.”
”And maybe the other will follow?”
”It will, if you will try to do right. Will you?”
”Sure. I've always tried--most always. I can't be very bad up at the top of a hill, unless I get lonesome. You'd better tell that 'best woman' to double-lock things. It's with stealing the same as with drinking--if anything you crave is lying around handy, good-bye to good resolutions.”
”I'll see to that. I'm a sheriff, remember.”
”Look, sheriff!”
With a mocking smile, she held up a watch.
”I took that off you slick as anything when you pa.s.sed the coffee. It was like taking candy from a baby.”
Anger at her nerve and chagrin that he had been so neatly tricked kept him silent.
”It's not altogether a habit,” she continued in mock apology; ”it's a gift.”
”Jo got her number wrong,” he thought. ”She was just playing him with her sad, nice, little-girl manner. For his sake, I'll see that they don't meet. I wonder just why she is playing this role with me?”
”You might give me credit for returning your ticker,” she said in abused tone.
”I never knew but one other person,” he said coolly, ”that affected me as unpleasantly as you do.”
”Who was that?” she asked interestedly.
”A cow-puncher--Centipede Pete.”
”Some name! Why don't you ask me my name, Kurt? Don't look so contemptuous. I am going to tell you, because it doesn't sound like me.
It's Penelope.”
”Oh!” he exclaimed, with something like a groan in his voice.
”n.o.body can help her name,” she complained. ”Don't you like it? I kind of thought it would suit you, because it doesn't sound like me. Sort of suggests respectability, don't you think?”
”It was my mother's name,” he replied tensely, as he walked a few paces away.
Night that comes so fleetly in this country dropped like a veil.
The girl followed him.
”I didn't steal that--your mother's name, you know, Kurt,” she said in an odd, confiding voice. ”They gave it to me, you see, and maybe it will help that I've never been called by it. They used to call me Pen or Penny--a bad penny, I suppose you think.”
”Your name,” he said frigidly, ”or at least the one Bender knows you by--the one you went by in Chicago, is Marta Sills.”
She made an articulate sound suggestive of dismay.