Belle Kanaris Maniates

“ Oh, Jo, where art thou? It was like drinking champagne to dance with you, but I suppose continuous champagne is bad for one.” 140
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! ”

“ She stayed there awhile, her hands clenched, thinking intensely 215 and rapidly—of Larry soaring like an eagle, proud and secure in his conquering of the air—of Marta’s sudden severance from the habit of a lifetime—of Jo’s faith in her—of Kurt wrestling with his conflict between love and conventions. “Does he care, really, as much as he thinks he does,” she wondered, “or is it just the lure of—propinquity? How shall I find out? Oh, there is too much on my mind! How careless and how like Hebby to leave his priceless ring about. What would he think if he knew the thief was next door to it?” ”

“ The sweater and the sunshine had brought a faint tinge of wild-rose color to the transparency of her skin. The flippancy and boldness so prominent in her eyes the day 68 before had disappeared. She looked more as she had when she was asleep in the moonlight. A wave of kindness and brotherliness swept over him.
“I am going to tell her,” he said gently, “that you are a poor little girl who needs a friend.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ If you could let me borrow a white muslin curtain, I could easily rig it up into an impromptu dance frock.”
“Jo said he knew a man who turned an automobile into a lamp post,” said Betty.
“Oh, Betty!” laughed Pen, “maybe there is hope for a sinner to be turned into a saint.”
“We won’t have to resort to curtains,” said Mrs. Kingdon. “I have a white satin skirt that is too short for me, and you can fashion a waist from a piece of white muslin.”
“And Doris left her white slippers that were too short for her,” reminded Betty. ”

“ Reilly will help me follow every girl by the name of Marta that’s ever lived there.”
Kurt’s eyes, full of infinite pity and regret, turned to Jo as he broke the little pause that followed.
“She is doubtless a poor little stray of a girl and luck has been against her, but, Jo, put all thoughts of marrying her away, just as she has. Wait—” he hurried on, seeing the anger kindling in the lad’s eyes—“if it were any other offense—But a thief! ‘Once a thief, always a thief,’ is the truest saying I know. ”

“ I am a good spender, and I will soon make way with all I have. I am looking for a good investment. Mr. Kingdon or Jo or some one told me Westcott’s was for sale. You see, we might run it fifty-fifty. I could buy it and you run it.”
“I can’t, Pen,” he said desperately.
She made no reply.
The car whipped round the curves. She was watching the long efficient hands gripping the wheel. Then she stole a glance at his grim, thrust-forward profile. She felt that something must be done and she was a believer in the power of action over words. ”

“ 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 136 out on field day. She was very careful not to try to outride the foreman, or to perform any of her marvels of horsemanship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She had the name of a thief wished on her until she got to be one. She was expelled from school; put in a reformatory; ran away; stole to keep herself alive. Then they all took a hand at her—ministers, society girls, charitable associations; they gave her a bum steer and made her feel she was a hopeless outcast, so she felt more at home with the vagrant class. The only person who had ever made her feel she wanted to be straight was a Salvation Army woman, but she had gone away and no one was left to care now. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A man was instrumental in gaining a reprieve for her, however, and she was sent away to new environment where she found friends, health and, best of all, a job.
“So the desire was born in her to turn the proverbial new leaf, not for the sake of winning her ‘man,’ but from the simple wish to be ‘good.’ I interested Mrs. Kingdon in her and told her where she was, but did not dream of such good luck for—Bobbie as to be sent up here. I know she will find happiness up here in these hills. You’ll be kind to the little girl, won’t you?” ”

“ 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 276 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. ”

“ He has been cattle-herder, cowboy and everything else typical of the hill country. We came here, tenderfooted, and were most fortunate in finding a foreman like Kurt Walters. He has a wonderful way of handling men. He is of good habits, forceful, keen; very gentle to old people and most adorable with children. We make him one of our household. There is the fortunate flaw that keeps him from being super-excellent; he is not merciful to wrongdoers and, as you say, he is too serious—almost moody. That is accounted for by the long night vigils of the cattlemen. ”

“ Every one knocks instead of boosts, and tells us how low-down we are. Just as if a mirror were held up to an ugly-looking girl, and she were asked how anyone who looked like that could expect to be different. Suppose I should tell you I’d been to reformatories and places where I had learned that I must play the stupid act as I did with Bender so as to be kept from being sent up. There is no mercy for those who exhibit any glimpses of intelligence, you see. ”

“ She kissed us good-bye and she gave me a letter to give to you at dinner time.”
“Give it to me now, Francis.”
“No; she said she trusted me, and I told her I wouldn’t give it to you till she said.”
“Come with me, Francis,” said Kurt, drawing him away from the other children. “I want to talk to you as man to man. We must always protect women, you know. Your Aunt Pen went away because she thought it best for her. It isn’t best. Your mother is her best friend, and if she had been here, she wouldn’t have let her go. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I’ll look for it every night now. I wish I hadn’t blabbed to Kurt. He hasn’t a nose for orange blossoms.”
In the fortnight that followed, Jo worked indefatigably, but his heart and his thoughts were back in Chicago, except when now and then his eyes turned to a fertile little beauty-spot valleyed between the hills. For here he had located an imaginary cottage—his cottage and hers. This mirage, of course, always showed a little slip of a girl standing in the doorway. To the surprise and dismay of his associates Jo the spender became Jo the saver that his dream might come true. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Say! I was feeling as fit and stepping as lively as if I had had a million drinks, but I hadn’t had one. There was no getting around it. That little girl in her white dress had landed me one right over 15 the heart. She slipped into my arms as quick as she had into my heart, too. I danced the way I felt, and she—well, she was right with me every time: the slickest little stepper I ever saw. Not dance-mad, like those professional kind; she let me set the pace and she followed any lead.
“Reilly came up to us on the floor and offered to introduce us to folks. ”

“ Can’t you look pleasant like you were going to sit for a picture to give to your best girl instead of posing for ‘Just before the battle, Mother’? You look so sorry you came.”
“I am,” he said angrily. “I guess ‘Kind 41 Kurt’ is a blankety blank fool, as some people say. I’ve been a lot kinder to you than you know. When I heard of your case and Bender pointed you out to me and said he’d got you locked up, I thought you were one of the many young city girls who go wrong because they have no chance to know better. The kind bred in slums, ignorant, ill-fed—the kind who never had a fair show. ”

“ They met often, but in ranch life discourse is not frequent, and Jo instinctively felt that his recital of Love’s Young Dream had fallen upon unsympathetic ears, while the foreman, unversed in the Language of Love, was mystified by the lad’s silence.
Three weeks later the “man without a nose 30 for orange blossoms” was again in town. As acting sheriff of the county lately, Kurt had dropped in to see the jailer.
“How’s business, Bender? Any new boarders?” he asked.
“Yes; a gal run in for stealing. Didn’t find the goods on her; but she’s a sly one with the record of being a lifelong thief. ”