The Short Cut
by Jackson Gregory · English · Gutenberg #18950 · 517,405 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Short Cut
Author: Jackson Gregory
Illustrator: Frank Tenney Johnson
Release date: July 31, 2006 [eBook #18950]
Most recently updated: January 1, 2021
Language: English
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THE SHORT CUT
by
JACKSON GREGORY
Author of "Under Handicap," "The Outlaw"
With Illustrations by Frank Tenney Johnson
[Frontispiece: Surely the rider was just what the owner of the voice,
half laughing, half crooning, tenderly lilting, must be.]
New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1916
Copyright, 1916
by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.
TO
"MOTHER" McGLASHAN
AND
GENERAL C. F. McGLASHAN
CONTENTS
I THE TRAGEDY
II THE SHADOW
III SUSPICION
IV THE WHITE HUNTRESS
V THE HOME COMING OF RED RECKLESS
VI THE PROMISE OF LITTLE SAXON
VII THE GLADNESS THAT SINGS
VIII "BLUFF, AND THE GAMBLER WINS!"
IX THE CONTEMPT OF SLEDGE HUME
X SHANDON'S GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
XI WANDA'S DISCOVERY
XII THE TALES OF MR. WILLIE DART
XIII SLEDGE HUME MAKES A CALL AND LAYS A WAGER
XIV IN WANDA'S CAVE
XV WILLIE DART PICKS A LOCK
XVI AND SOLVES A FASCINATING MYSTERY
XVII "WHERE'S THAT TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND?"
XVIII THE TRUTH
XIX SHANDON TAKES HIS STAND
XX HUME PLAYS A TRUMP
XXI THE SHORT CUT
XXII THE FUGITIVE
XXIII HELGA STRAWN PLAYS THE GAME
XXIV UNDER THE SURFACE
XXV RED RECKLESS ON LITTLE SAXON
XXVI THE LAUGHTER OF HELGA STRAWN
XXVII HUME RIDES THE ONE OPEN TRAIL
XXVIII "IT IS HOME!"
ILLUSTRATIONS
Surely the rider was just what the owner of the voice, half laughing,
half crooning, tenderly lilting, must be.
"I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you talk."
She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew her camera from its
case, and waited a patient quarter of an hour.
"I call upon you to give yourself up!" he shouted. "Stop, Red, or I
shoot this time!"
THE SHORT CUT
CHAPTER I
THE TRAGEDY
Here was a small stream of water, bright, clear and cool, running its
merry way among the tall pines, hurrying to the dense shade of the
lower valley. The grass on its banks stood tall, lush and faintly
odorous, fresh with the newly come springtime, delicately scented with
the thickly strewn field flowers. The sunlight lay bright and warm
over all; the sky was blue with a depth of colour intensified by the
few great white clouds drifting lazily across it.
No moving thing within all the wide rolling landscape save the
sun-flecked water, the softly stirring grass and rustling forests, the
almost motionless white clouds. For two miles the hills billowed away
gently to the northward, where at last they were swept up into the
thickly timbered, crag-crested mountains. For twice two miles toward
the west one might guess the course of the stream before here, too, the
mountains shut in, leaving only Echo Cañon's narrow gap for the cool
water to slip through. To the south and to the east ridges and hollows
and mountains, and beyond a few fast melting patches of last winter's
snow clinging to the lofty summits, looking like fragments broken away
from the big white clouds and resting for a moment on the line where
land and sky met.
The stillness was too perfect to remain long unbroken. From a trail
leading down into the valley from the east a shepherd dog, running
eagerly, broke through the waving grass, paused a second looking back
expectantly, sniffed and ran on. Then a sound from over the ridge
through the trees, the sound of singing, a young voice lilting
wordlessly in enraptured gladness that life was so bright this morning.
And presently a horse, a dark bay saddle pony moving as lazily as the
clouds above, brought its rider down to the stream.
Surely the rider was just what the owner of the voice, half laughing,
half crooning, tenderly lilting, must be. It seemed that only since
the dawn of today had she become a woman having been a child until the
dusk of yesterday. The wide grey eyes, looking out upon a gentle
aspect of life, were inclined to be merry and musing at the same time,
soft with maidenhood's day dreaming, tender with pleasant thoughts. A
child of the outdoors, her skin sun-tinged to a warm golden brown, her
hair sunburnt where it slipped out of the shadow of her big hat, her
lips red with young health, her slender body in its easy, confident
carriage showing how the muscles under the soft skin were strong and
capable.
At her saddle horn, in its case, was a camera; snapped to her belt and
resting against her left hip, a pair of field glasses.
The horse played at drinking, pretending a thirst which it did not
feel, and began to paw the clear water into muddiness. The dog ran on,
turned again, barked an invitation to its mistress to join in the
search for adventures, and plunged into the tall grass.
The girl's song died away, her lips stilled by the hush of the coming
noonday. For a moment she was very silent, so motionless that she
seemed scarcely to breathe.
"Life is good here," she mused, her eyes wandering across the valley to
the wall of the mountains shutting out the world of cities. "It is
like the air, sweet and clean and wholesome! Life!" she whispered, as
though in reality she had been born just this dawn to the awe of it,
the wonder of it, "I love Life!"
She breathed deeply, her breast rising high to the warm, scented air
drawn slowly through parted lips as though she would drink of the rare
wine of the springtime.
The dog had found something in the deep grass which sent it scampering
back across the water and almost under the horse's legs, snarling.
"What is it, Shep?" laughed the girl. "What have you found that is so
dreadful?"
But Shep was not to be laughed out of his growls and whines. Presently
he ran back toward the place where he had made his headlong crossing,
stopped abruptly, broke into a quick series of short, sharp barks, and
again turning fled to the horse and rider as though for protection,
whining his fear.
"Is it really something, Shep?" asked the girl, puzzled a little. She
leaned forward in the saddle, patting her mare's warm neck. "I think
he's just an old humbug as usual, Gypsy," she smiled indulgently. "But
shall we go over and see?"
Gypsy splashed noisily across the stream, the dog still growling and
slinking close to the horse's heels. The girl saw where Shep had
parted the grass with his inquisitive nose, leaving a plain trail. And
not ten steps from the edge of the water she came upon the thing that
Shep had found.
The mare's nostrils suddenly quivered; she trembled a moment, and then
with a snort of fear whirled and plunged back toward the creek. But
the girl had seen. The colour ran out of her face, the musing peace
fled from her eyes and a swift horror leaped out upon her. In one
flash the soft calm of the morning had become a mockery, its promise a
lie. Here, into the wonder of Life, Death had come.
She had had but an uncertain glance at the thing lying huddled in the
tall grass, but her instinct like Shep's and Gypsy's understood. And
for a blind, terror-stricken moment, she felt that she must yield as
they yielded to the fear within her, to the primitive urge to flee from
Death; that she could not draw near the spot where a man had died,
where even now the body lay cold in the sunshine.
Her hands were shaking pitifully when at last she tied Gypsy to the
lower limb of an oak beside the creek. As she went slowly back along
the little trail the dog had made she told herself that the man was not
dead, that he was sick or hurt . . . and though she had never looked
upon Death before this morning when it seemed to her that she had
looked upon Life for the first time, she knew what that grotesque
horror meant, she knew why the man lay, as he did, face down and still.
At last she stood over the body, her swift eyes informing her reluctant
consciousness of a host of details. She saw that the grass around was
beaten down in a rude circle, heard the whining of the dog at her
heels, noticed that the man lay on his right side, his head twisted so
that his cheek touched his shoulder, the face hidden, one arm crumpled
under him, one outflung and grasping a handful of up-rooted grass with
set rigid fingers.
A sickness, a faintness, and with it an almost uncontrollable desire to
run madly from this place, this thing, swept over her. But she drew
closer, kneeling quickly, and put her warm hand upon the hand that
clutched the wisp of grass so rigidly. It was cold, so cold that she
drew back suddenly, shuddering.
Not even now did she know who the man was. It had not yet entered her
mind that she could know him. She rose to her feet, and walking softly
as though her footfall in the grass might waken some one sleeping, she
moved about the still figure, to the other side, so that she might see
the face. Then she cried out softly, piteously, and Shep ceased his
whining and came to her around the body, rubbing against her skirts.
"Arthur!" She came closer, knelt again and put her hands gently upon
the short-cropped, curling hair. "Oh, Arthur! Is it you?" Only now
did she know how this man with the young, frank face had died. Now she
saw blood smeared on the white forehead, a bullet wound torn in the
temple. She sprang to her feet, staring with wide eyes at the little
hole through which the man's soul had fled. She turned hastily toward
her horse, came back, placed her straw hat tenderly over the short
curling hair, and ran to Gypsy.
She was vaguely conscious that her brain was acting as it had never
acted before, that her excited nerves were filling her mind with a mass
of sensations and fragmentary thoughts strangely clearcut and definite.
Like some wonderfully constructed camera her faculties, in an instant
no longer than the time required for the clicking of the shutter,
photographed a hawk circling high up in the sky, a waving branch, with
no less truth and vividness than the body sprawling there in the grass.
Emotions, scents, sounds, objects blended into a strange mental
snap-shot, no one detail less clear than another.
Jerking the mare's tie rope free from the oak, she flung herself into
the saddle, and turned back toward the trail that led across the creek
and over the ridge. But Shep had found something else in the grass
half a dozen steps beyond the dead man, something that he sniffed at
and nosed and that excited him. Making a little detour, she rode back
to the spot where the dog, barking now, was waiting for her.
As she leaned forward looking down upon this second thing the shepherd
dog had found, she clutched suddenly at the horn of her saddle as
though all her strength had dribbled out of her, and she were going to
fall. The keen nostrils of the animal had led him to this object with
its sinister connection with the tragedy and he had pawed at it,
dragging it toward him and free of the green tangle into which it had
fallen or been flung.
It was a revolver, thirty-eight calibre, unlike the weapons one might
expect to find here in the range country or about the sawmills further
back . . . and the girl recognised it. The deadly viciousness of the
firearm was disguised by the pearl grip and silver chasings until it
had seemed a toy. But here was Arthur Shandon dead, with a bullet in
his brain, and here almost at his side was a revolver she knew so well.
. . .
She covered her face with her hands and shook like one of the pine
needles above her head caught in a quick breath of air. Shep looked up
at her with his sharp, eager bark and then the gladness of discovery in
his eyes changed suddenly into wistful wonder. Gypsy, with tossing
head and jingling bridle, turned toward the crossing, quickening her
stride, ready to break into a trot.
At last the girl jerked her hands away from a face that was white and
miserable, and with angry spur and rein brought the mare back to the
spot where the revolver lay. Slipping down, she hesitated a moment,
glancing swiftly about as though afraid some one might see her, even
with a look that was almost suspicious at the quiet body of Arthur
Shandon, and stooping suddenly swept up the thing that had been a toy
yesterday and was so hideously tragic to-day. It was with a great
effort of her will that she compelled her fingers to touch it, forced
them to close upon it and take it up. Then with a little cry into
which loathing and dread merged, she cast it from her, flinging it far
down stream so that it fell into a black pool below a tiny, frothing
waterfall.
"I can't believe it. I won't believe it!" she murmured in a voice that
shook even as her hands were shaking. "It is too terrible!"
No longer could she look at the huddled form in the grass, the young,
frank face that was so still and white and cold in the sunshine.
Throwing herself into the saddle, she swung Gypsy's head about toward
the trail, as though she were fleeing from a fearful pursuing menace.
Shep, who had run, barking, to retrieve his lost discovery from the
black pool under the waterfall, snapped his disappointment from the
bank and then splashed through the creek after his mistress.
Two hundred yards the girl raced along the up-trail, her mare running,
her dog struggling hard to keep up. Then with a new, sudden fear she
jerked her pony to a standstill.
"I . . . I can't leave it there," her white lips were whispering.
"They will find it, and then . . . Oh, my God!"
And now her brain had ceased to act like a strangely magical camera;
now sights and sounds and faint odours about her were all unnoticed.
Her eyes, wide and staring at the winding trail before her, did not see
the broad trees or the flower sprinkled grass or the blossoming
manzanita bushes. They gazed through these things which they did not
see, and instead saw what might lie in the future, what fate the grim
gods of destiny might mete out . . . to one man . . . if the revolver
below the waterfall were found!
Her hesitation was brief; the horror of what might lurk in the future
was greater than the horror of what lay back there behind her. Again
she urged her puzzled horse back to the stream, flinging herself down
just at the edge of the pool. Far down at the bottom upon the white
sand, wedged between two white stones, the revolver lay plainly
visible. The noonday sun rested upon the deep water here and its
secret was no secret at all. She was glad that she had come back.
Snatching up the dead limb of a shrub lying close at hand, with little
difficulty or waste of time, she dragged the weapon toward her until
she could thrust her arm, elbow deep into the water, and secure it.
She shuddered as when she had first forced her hand to touch it. But
with quick, steady fingers she dried it against her skirt and thrust it
into the only place where she could be sure of safety, where its voice
would be silenced to all except her own heart, deep into the bosom of
her waist. And again she was on Gypsy's back, again fleeing along the
up-trail.
As she rode, as the rush of air whipped in her face and the leaping
body of the mare under her gave her muscles something to do, the blood
flamed again into her cheeks; courage rushed back into a heart that was
naturally unafraid.
"I have not been loyal," she whispered over and over to herself
accusingly. "I have not been a true friend. I have suspected and I
know, oh, I know so well, that it can't be! He wouldn't do a thing
like that, he couldn't!"
She topped the ridge, sped on for half a mile upon its crest, racing
straight toward the east, dropped down into another valley ten times
bigger than the one she had just quitted, and still following the trail
headed southward again. Here there were fewer trees, a sprinkling of
pine and fir, and wider open spaces. Another stream, even smaller than
Echo Creek, watered the valley. She rode through a small herd of
saddle horses that flashed away before her swift approach, their manes
and tails flying, and scarcely realised that she had disturbed them.
Off to her left, at the upper end of the valley where were a number of
grazing cattle, she thought she could distinguish the figures of a
couple of her father's cowboys riding herd. But she did not turn to
them.
Gypsy, warming to the race, carried her mistress valiantly the half a
dozen miles from the ridge she had crossed to the knoll crowned with
great boled, sky seeking cedars where her father's ranch house stood.
Half a mile away the girl made out the wide verandahs, the long flight
of steps, the hammock where she had read and dozed last night, yes, and
dreamed the tender, half wistful, yet rose tinted dreams of maidenhood.
She saw, too, the stables at the base of the knoll, to the northward,
where one of the boys, Charlie or Jim, was harnessing the greys,
preparatory to hitching them to the big wagon. The thought flashed
through her mind that he counted upon going out for a load of wood, and
that he would be called upon first to bring in another burden that he
would never forget.
Her eyes went back to the house. There was some one sitting in a
rocker in the shade near the front door. It was her mother. This news
would be a bitter, bitter shock to the tender-hearted woman who had
called Arthur Shandon one of her "boys."
The girl drew nearer, with no tightening of reins upon Gypsy's headlong
speed. Another glimpse through the cedars showed her that there was
some one with her mother, a man, broad and heavy shouldered. He
turned, hearing the pound of the flying hoofs through the still air as
she came on. It was her father. She could see the massive, calm face,
the white hair and white square beard.
She was barely five hundred yards from the foot of the knoll when she
saw that her father and mother were not alone. The third figure had
been concealed from her until now by the great post standing at the top
of the steps. But now the man sitting there rose to his feet and
turned to look in the direction her parents were looking. A sudden
choking came into the girl's throat, a quick rush of tears into her dry
eyes. She drew her reins tight, bringing her pony down into a trot,
then to a walk. She could not rush on like this, carrying a message of
grief and terror; must she hasten so eagerly to speak the word that was
going to make life so different to this man?
"Oh, how can I tell him?" she was moaning. "The gladdest, gayest,
happiest boy of a man that ever lived! Will he ever be glad again?"
Her mother had waved to her, her father was smiling, proud of her as he
always was when he saw how she rode. And the other man who had leaped
to his feet was running down the steps, coming to meet her, coming to
meet the news she brought.
CHAPTER II
THE SHADOW
The girl drooped her head a little, while Gypsy walked very slowly.
Then she looked up again, swiftly, saw that the man was coming on to
meet her, saw the great, tall, gaunt form, marked the free swinging
carriage which she had noted so many times before, noticed the way he
carried his head, well back, saw the sunlight splashing like fire in
the red, red hair that in some fashion seemed to proclaim red blood and
recklessness. A young man he was with mighty hands and iron body, with
life leaping high in his laughing eyes, a man who might have been some
pagan god of youth and joy and heedlessness.
His big boots brought him on swiftly until he came to her horse and she
stopped, her eyes dropping before his. He twined his fingers in
Gypsy's mane and looked up into her face, he laughing softly.
"So you've ridden back to us, at last." His voice was in tune with the
rest of him, suggesting the wildness and recklessness that were part of
the man's nature. He ran on, half bantering, half softly wondering at
the loveliness of her. "Are you pagan nymph or Christian maiden,
Wanda?" he asked a little seriously, as nearly serious, one might have
said, as it was this man's nature to be.
She raised her lowered eyes, looking at him searchingly. Then he saw
the tears that at last were spilling over, the face from which the
colour was going again, the traces of horror of that thing which lay
far back there under the pines.
"Wanda!" he cried sharply. "You . . . There's something the matter!
I've been running on like an inspired idiot and . . . What is it,
Wanda?"
"Oh," she said desperately, "it is terrible! I can't . . ." She
choked over her words. But they were burning the soul within her, and
she ran on hastily. "I found him back there by Echo Creek crossing.
He . . . he is dead."
"Dead?" repeated the man. "Dead? Who, Wanda?"
"Arthur!" she whispered.
"Arthur, dead?" he muttered, his voice oddly low and quiet. "Arthur,
dead? I don't understand."
"He is dead," she said again heavily. "Some one shot him."
She broke off and began to sob. He looked first at her, then along the
trail she had ridden, and finally, taking his hand from her horse's
mane he turned abruptly and strode off toward the house. He mounted
the steps swiftly, passed her father and mother without a word in
answer to the questioning faces they turned toward him, entered the
door and returned almost immediately, carrying his hat in his hand. As
he came down the steps, he put on his hat and bent his head a little so
that she could not see his face. He passed her without a sign and went
down to the stable. Then she rode up to the house and slipped from her
saddle at the foot of the steps. Her father and mother hurried to meet
her.
"It is Arthur. It is Wayne's brother," cried Wanda brokenly from her
mother's arms. "He is dead!"
She told them briefly, hurriedly. Her father, his eyes strangely hard
and inscrutable swore softly and turning without a word to either of
the women went back to the house as Wayne had done, got his hat and
hurried to the stable. His voice, hard and expressionless like his
eyes, floated up to them as he gave his brief orders to Jim to drive
straight back to the spot Wanda had described. The girl saw him enter
the stable and in a little while come out, riding a saddled horse.
Already Wayne Shandon had ridden off along the trail, travelling with a
fury of speed that took no heed of the miles ahead of him.
Mother and daughter turned and went slowly up the steps, their arms
about each other, their cheeks wet.
"Who killed him, mamma?" whispered the girl, her moist eyes lifted.
"Who could have killed him?"
The silent tale that a pearl handled revolver had told her was a lie, a
hideous lie. She did not believe it, she was never going to believe
it. For an instant there had been a horrible suspicion in her breast,
then her loyalty had risen and crushed it and killed it and cast it
out. But now she sought some new explanation to take its place, sought
it with intense eagerness.
"Who killed him?" Mother's and daughter's eyes met furtively for a
quick second. And then the mother's answer was no answer at all, but a
broken, tremulous prayer: "Dear God, may they never know who did this
thing!"
They did not look at each other again as they crossed the length of the
veranda, on the north exposure of the great square house and turned
into the spacious living room.
"I am going to my room, mamma," said the girl faintly. "I want to be
alone just a little."
She knew that her mother was watching her as she passed through the
living room and out through the double doors to the veranda at the
east. But she did not turn. She did not ask what her mother had
meant, she did not wish to know. She wanted just now more than
anything in the world, to be alone in her own room, to take from her
bosom the thing which she felt every one would know she had there, to
hide it where it would be safe.
To the east of the house in a little sheltered hollow her father,
twenty years ago, had planted an orchard. She could see the white and
delicate pink of the blossoms, could catch the hint of perfume that a
little frolicking breeze brought to her.
She heard voices out there and saw two men coming toward the house.
There came to her ears, too, the sound of cool, contemptuous laughter.
She knew who it was insolently jeering at the other, knew before she
saw them that it was the big, splendidly big fellow, as tall as Red
Reckless and heavier, who was known to her only as "Sledge" Hume. She
had heard her father say last night that both Hume and Arthur Shandon
were coming to-day upon some matter of business in which the three men
were interested.
"You're a little fool, anyway, Conway," the deep voice said with that
frank impudence which was a part of Hume.
Garth Conway, not a small man by two inches or fifty pounds, although
he appeared so beside his companion, made a reply which Wanda did not
hear in full, but which reached her sufficiently to tell her that the
two men were talking about some trifling matter of range management and
that his theory had provoked Sledge Hume's blunt comment. The two men
came on, Hume striding a couple of paces in front of Conway, until they
caught sight of her. Conway lifted his hat, his sullen eyes
brightening. Hume, staring at her with the keen eye of appraisal, did
not trouble himself to touch his hat and gave her no greeting beyond
one of his curt nods.
"They have not heard," Wanda thought with a little thrill of pity for
Garth Conway who was so soon to learn of the death of the man who had
been more like a brother than cousin to him. "Mamma will tell them."
She hurried down the veranda to her room which was at the far end, at
the southeast corner of the house. But she paused at the door as she
heard her mother's voice, shaken and tearful, and the reply that one of
the men made.
It was Garth Conway. As though the utterance were drawn from him by
the shock of the surprise, jerked from him involuntarily, he cried:
"Dead? Murdered? My God! And he and Wayne quarrelled. . . ."
"Go on!" It was Sledge Hume's heavy, colourless voice. "Just because
two men quarrel it doesn't mean that one kills the other, does it?"
"Garth!" cried Mrs. Leland. "You mustn't . . ."
"I didn't say that," cried Conway. "I didn't mean . . ."
Wanda waited to hear no more. She hurried into her room, to stand
there trembling behind the closed door, her face as white as that other
face she had looked upon earlier in the day.
"He didn't do it!" she whispered. "He didn't. I know he didn't."
But the thing which she carried in her bosom seemed to be demanding
rudely: "Must you shut your eyes to believe with your heart?" And if
other eyes than her own saw it?
There was her closet, the open door showing the party dresses she had
brought back from school. She shook her head. Her room was so plainly
furnished with just a little dressing table, her bed, a chair, a stand
with some wild flowers on it, a smaller table with half a dozen books
scattered about. Then her eyes rested on the big trunk which had not
yet been carried down into the basement.
Running to it she flung up the lid and jerked out the tray. The bottom
was half filled with odds and ends, stockings, slippers, linen. She
took the revolver from her bosom, dropped it to the bottom of the
trunk, covered it hastily with loose clothing, replaced the tray and
closed the lid. But she could not feel that her secret was safe until
she had found the key on her dressing table. The lock was troublesome,
it was always troublesome. She was down on her knees, had just heard
the little click which told her that the lock was fast, and was trying
to work the key out again when the door opened softly and her mother
came in.
For a moment the two women, motionless, looked at each other fixedly.
Then Wanda rose slowly to her feet, a little red flush colouring her
brow, a fear which she knew absurd and yet which she could not crush
down, rising into her fluttering breast. Then Mrs. Leland closed the
door behind her, and stood with her back to it.
"Will you tell me about it, Wanda, dear?"
Her voice was troubled; her frank eyes, so like her daughter's, were at
once sad and anxious.
"It is too horrible, mamma." Wanda closed her eyes tightly for a
moment, trying to shut out the picture which burned so in her brain.
Every little detail stood out in her memory clear cut and vivid, the
grass trampled into a rude circle, the hand that clung in death to what
it had last grasped in life, the grotesquely crumpled, huddled body.
"Tell me about it, Wanda." Her mother was looking into the frankly
distressed face, curiously. Wanda had again the uneasy idea that her
mother was wondering about the trunk which she had just locked, and
again a quick fear leaped up within her that she might guess the secret
it concealed.
"How did you happen to find him?"
"Shep was with me, running ahead. Shep found him."
"And some one had killed him?"
Wanda nodded, her lips tight pressed together, her hands twisting about
each other in her lap. For a moment there was silence in the little
room.
"Wanda, look at me, dear."
Her eyes turned, wondering, from the window and the orchard beyond, and
went swiftly to her mother. The words were very clearly a command now.
The voice was lowered a little but had grown more insistent. And it
seemed to her that Mrs. Leland's eyes had in them now something more
than sadness and anxiety, that they were suspicious. Again Wanda felt
the hot blood in her temples.
"What is it, mamma?"
"Who killed Arthur? Do you know?"
"Mamma!" she cried, startled. "Why do you ask that? What do you mean?"
"I want to know, dear. Do you know who killed him?"
"No." It was plain that she was troubled, it was equally as plain that
she spoke truthfully. "What makes you think . . . Why do you ask
that?"
"I thought," replied Mrs. Leland, a little uneasily, "that you might
have seen something, found something. . . ."
"No, no!" cried the girl impulsively. "I know what you mean. I have
no vaguest idea who could have done it!"
The older woman came across the room and sat down at her daughter's
side, putting her arm about the slender form.
"Wanda, dear," she said softly. "I am going to tell you something
which you don't know yet. Wayne quarrelled with Arthur last night!"
The girl's body stiffened convulsively. She wanted to spring up and
run out of the house to some hiding place in the old orchard and be
alone. But she answered, her eyes clear and truthful.
"I'm sorry. Oh, so sorry! Poor Wayne. That will make it so much
harder for him."
"Yes. It is going to make it hard for him, Wanda. Harder than you
have imagined." She paused as if considering the advisability of what
she had started to say, and then ended simply, hopelessly, "They are
going to think that Wayne shot him!"
"They mustn't!" cried Wanda hotly. "They haven't the right. It would
be thinking a lie, a wicked, hideous lie!"
Mrs. Leland shook her head sadly.
"Wanda," she went on quietly, "the first thing Garth said when I told
him was that Wayne had quarrelled with Arthur last night. I don't mind
so much what Garth says and does, but . . . I think that Martin is
going to suspect Wayne of this, if he doesn't already suspect him."
"But, surely father isn't so unjust, just because he doesn't like Wayne
. . ."
"If it were nothing more than just not liking him! Your father isn't
capable of a feeling that is merely negative about people, child. He
hated the boys' father; Wayne I think he hates as bitterly."
"But why, mamma? Surely there is no reason . . ."
"Men, strong men like your father, don't always wait for reasons,
Wanda," said Mrs. Leland gently. "He has never forgotten that had
circumstances been a very, very little different I might have married
the other Wayne Shandon. When we were married and the other Wayne
Shandon bought land so close to us your father was the angriest man I
ever saw. That was before your time, dear. He rode across the valley
the next day; he has never told me what happened but his face was still
white when he came home. There are only a few things which can stir
Martin into a passion like that."
"But, surely, mamma . . ."
"When the other Wayne Shandon married and the boys were born it made no
difference with Martin. When the other Wayne Shandon died and his wife
died and the boys were left the hatred in your father's breast did not
die with them. He transferred it to Arthur and the Wayne you know.
Toward Wayne especially it has grown strong and bitter."
"But why to him more than to Arthur?"
"Because, my dear, Wayne is his father over and over again! Because he
has the same red hair and the same eyes with the same way of laughing.
Because his voice is the same, his carriage is the same, his mad,
reckless heart the same. Because everytime that Martin sees the Wayne
Shandon that you know he sees the old Wayne Shandon I knew . . . and he
hated."
"But it can't be that if a man hates another, and he dies, the man will
go on hating his son just for being his son! Father is not so unjust
as that, mamma! He will not suspect Wayne of murder, of murdering his
own brother, just because of his father!"
Mrs. Leland's hands were interlocked tensely. "There are other
reasons, there will be other things remembered about the boy which will
make suspicion so easy."
"I know what you mean," the girl cried, breathing deeply. "He is
reckless, he is wild, I know. He gambles, he has quarrels with many
men. He does things that we would not do, but then we are women! He
does things that father would not do, but then father is not young any
longer! He is wild because his nature is inherited from his father;
it's in his blood, he's young and he has grown up with the far out
places. But he is not bad! He is not the kind of man to do a thing
like this. What do men call him, men who know him and what he is?
They don't call him Coward, they don't call him Cheat, they don't call
him mean or dishonest or ungenerous! They call him Reckless, Red
Reckless, and they love him! Oh, mamma, can't you see that it is
impossible . . ."
Mrs. Leland rose to her feet, her face grown suddenly pinched and white.
"I don't know," she said with a sigh.
"You believe it too!" cried the girl. "You think that Wayne Shandon
killed his own brother!"
A delicate flush stained her mother's cheeks.
"Wanda, child, you mustn't say that," she almost whispered. "I don't
believe it. I won't believe it. And if I did . . . Wanda, I'd
remember the man his father was, the gentleman, the true-hearted
gentleman, and I should say that I did not believe."
Then, turning quickly so that her wondering daughter could not see the
eyes that were blurred with a mist of tears, she left the room.
When she had gone Wanda snatched up the trunk key from her table and
thrust it quickly into her bosom. Then she sat down again on the edge
of her bed and stared out toward the orchard where the sunlight lay
bright and warm upon the apple blossoms . . . and saw only the quiet
body by Echo Creek, that and the face of the man people called Red
Reckless.
CHAPTER III
SUSPICION
Why had her mother come to her in such a way? Why had she been so
quick to see what people would say? Did she believe that Wayne Shandon
had killed Arthur; was she afraid that Wanda might have found something
that would incriminate him; and did she want to warn her of what the
inevitable result of such a disclosure would be?
And she had found something! She had known from the first sight of it,
half hidden by Shep's eager pays, that it was Wayne Shandon's. He had
shown it to her only last week.
"I am going to teach you to shoot as I shoot," he had laughed, bringing
the revolver out of his pocket. "Then I am going to give it to you.
And then you are going to make me a pretty bow and give me a pretty
smile and say, 'Thank you, Red,' as you did when I chastised your first
suitor! Remember, Wanda?"
"Only I don't call you 'Red' any more," she had laughed back at him.
"We're grown up now, you know, and Wayne is much more dignified
and . . . and respectful."
"And you can handle your own suitors now," he had retorted. "More
artistically and with equal finality!"
Only a week ago out there in the orchard where now the sunlight lay in
golden splashes over the fruit trees, she and Red Reckless had bantered
each other as they strolled toward the house where Arthur was sitting
on the veranda with her mother, watching them. It was a sparkling
morning like to-day's, and they had spoken of the old school days
before Mr. Shandon sent his two sons to the East to school, of the time
when she was eight and he was fifteen and he had "licked" a boy whom
she did not like but who was stubborn in vowing that the little girl
should eat a red cheeked apple he had brought her. A week ago, and now
Arthur Shandon was dead and men were ready to believe that Wayne
Shandon had killed him.
She sat very still, while her mind wandered in many directions. The
old days rose up vividly bringing back the young faces of Arthur and
Wayne and Garth Conway,--they had all played Prisoner's Base and
Anti-over at the little white school house down in the valley. She
remembered the day when a letter came from Mr. Shandon summoning Arthur
and Wayne and Garth to the East, and how merry the boys had been over
it. She missed them dreadfully after they went away until vacation
came and her own father had taken her with him on a tour of inspection
to his four other ranches, up and down the State. For three years she
did not see the three boys, their letters had ceased, and she was well
on the way to forget her playfellows. And then, when she was twelve
and Wayne Shandon nineteen, he had come back.
He had run away. He had quarrelled with his father, and Arthur had
tried to show him that he was unreasonable. Then the boy's hot temper
had flashed out at his brother and finally at Garth Conway who had long
been accustomed to thinking as Arthur Shandon thought. So the youth,
in whom love of adventure and hatred of restraint were already marked
characteristics, had sold his books, the saddle pony which his father's
generosity had given him, his guns and fishing tackle, in fact
everything which he might sell even to his spare clothing, had caught a
night train and come West again.
Wanda's mother had tried to reason with the boy when he came to them,
laughing at the trick he had played his father, full of mockery of the
hidebound ways of cities, and had wanted to send him back to Mr.
Shandon. She had cried a little over him and kissed him and talked
gently with him as was her motherly way. But Wanda's father berated
him severely and sternly and Wayne flushed and bit his lip and then
went away from them as he had gone away from the East.
More years, happy years for Wanda Leland, sped by and she did not see
the boy. Both Arthur and Garth came in the long summer vacations to
Mr. Shandon's range and were frequent visitors at the Echo Creek place.
Word came now and then of Wayne Shandon, sometimes by infrequent and
unsatisfactory short letters from him, more often in elaborately
embroidered rumour from men making long trips across the country. He
had gone to work for a cattle outfit, taking a dollar a day and doing
an ordinary cowboy's work. Even before he was twenty-one, men called
him Red Reckless. He had learned to gamble, and to gamble for big
stakes. He played poker; he took his chance with the "bank"; but he
loved the dice. They were quicker; a man could "make or break" at one
throw. It was his way to hazard everything on a throw, to laugh if he
won, to laugh if he lost.
Rumour said that he had been shot by a notorious gambler, Dash Dulac;
and had come near dying; that he had shot another man up at Spanish Dry
Diggings where he had rushed with a frantic flood of men on news of a
golden strike; that he had been sucked away with another flux of gold
seekers to the Yukon country where he had lived lawlessly with his
lawless companions; that he had drifted back to the lumber camps of the
mountains; that at last he had returned to the cattle country.
Wanda had gone away to school in the East, spending only her summers
upon the Echo Creek ranch. She had seen very little of Wayne Shandon.
When Mr. Shandon died, leaving his wide reaching cattle range to his
elder son, Arthur had come promptly to take charge of the Bar L-M
Outfit, and Garth Conway had come with him as foreman and general
manager under him. Arthur, whose affection for his stormy souled
brother had lasted strong through the years, had at last prevailed upon
Wayne to "come home" and to go to work for him. That had been a year
ago.
A light knock at her door brought back her wandering thoughts to
to-day, to Arthur Shandon, to the suspicion which was so quickly
lifting its venomous head. She rose from the bed, pushed back the hair
which had fallen unnoticed into confusion about her cheeks, and said
softly,
"Come in, mamma."
"We were just going to have lunch when you came, Wanda," her mother
said quietly. "You must come and have a cup of tea."
"Mamma! I can't."
"But you can!" Her mother smiled a little at her and patted the
restless hand she took in her own. "You had a very early breakfast and
you must have a cup of tea."
Together they went back to the dining room.
"Where are Garth and Mr. Hume?" asked Wanda.
"They have gone . . . with the others, dear," Mrs. Leland told her.
The two women sat down in silence. Wanda forced herself to drink half
of her tea and pushed the cup away from her. She got swiftly to her
feet and leaving the room, went out upon the north veranda, where she
saw Julia, the cook, standing at the window, her red hands upon her
broad hips, her eyes even redder than her hands. On the window sill
were half a dozen fresh, hot pies which Julia had made for "the
boys" . . .
Wanda bit her lips and her eyes went whither her mother's had gone,
down the trail along which the men had ridden to the creek.
It seemed a very long time before she saw them. The wagon, with Jim
driving slowly and carefully, climbed over a ridge and wound its way
down into the valley. Her father, Garth, and Sledge Hume, were riding
behind it, abreast and close together. Wayne Shandon farther back was
riding alone, his head down, his hat drawn low over his brows.
At last she could see the faces shaded by the wide brimmed hats. They
were strangely alike in their hard, set expression, the gravity which
told little. These were not, any of them, men given to wearing their
deeper emotions on their sleeves. Her eyes ran to Wayne Shandon's face
first. It was white, the mouth was sterner than she had ever thought
Red Reckless' laughing mouth could be, the eyes were hard and
inscrutable.
From him she looked anxiously at her father, then at Sledge Hume, then
at Garth Conway. And these faces, stern like Wayne's, sent a little
shiver of fear through her.
Her mother went out to meet the wagon, crying quietly. Wanda felt the
tears rush with a hotness like fire into her own eyes, and then she
turned and hurrying out of sight of the slow procession ran down to the
orchard. She was lying there, face down, sobbing like a child, when
she felt a shadow over her, heard a man's spurs jingle, and knew who it
was that had come out to her.
She looked up at him, wondering.
"Wanda," he said very quietly, his voice strangely steady, "it was good
of you to give him your hat. If I were dead and you did a thing like
that for me I think I should come back to life to kiss your dear hands."
This was so like him! Oh, just the thing Red Reckless would do! The
little thoughtful act of hers had stirred him more deeply than most men
are moved even by big things; and the impulse had come to him to go
straight to her and thank her. And he was a man who obeyed impulses.
The other men had entered the house for their lunch. It seemed
horrible to her that people should be able to eat at a time like this.
Wayne Shandon spoke to her again.
"Your father is going to let Jim go with me," he said. "We are going
to El Toyon. Then I am going to take him back East."
"East!" she exclaimed,
"Yes. I have a fancy he'd like to be buried close to dad."
"You are coming back soon?"
"Immediately. Within ten days, I think. Good-bye, Wanda."
"Wait a minute," she hesitated. "I want to think."
She had not meant to tell him so soon, in the first shock of the death,
about what she had found. But he was going away, and he ought to know,
it was his right to know.
"Will you wait here for me a moment, Wayne?" she asked looking
pitifully up into the face of the man whose grave eyes were fixed upon
her. "Until I run to the house and get something?"
She was glad then that the other men were able to eat, and that her
mother and Julia were waiting on them. Hastening back to her room, she
took the revolver from its hiding place in her trunk, slipped it into
her blouse and ran back to the orchard.
"Wayne," she whispered coming close to him, suspicious of every little
sound in the orchard, fearful of an approaching footstep. "I found
something near Arthur. I did not tell any one. As you are going away
I had better tell you."
She held out the revolver. The sunlight fell on it, glinting brightly
from the polished silver. Wayne Shandon stared at it frowning, as
though he could not or would not believe his eyes. Slowly a deeper
pallor crept into his white face. Then a terrible look which the girl
could not read came into his eyes.
"Good God!" he whispered hoarsely. "You found that near him?"
Suddenly he put his hand out and took it. His fingers touched hers.
They were as cold as ice.
"Wanda," he said, his voice frightening her, it was so hard and
unfamiliar, "you were good to give it to me."
That was all. She felt vaguely that his mind was groping for other
words which it could not find. He slipped the revolver into his
pocket, turned and left her.
From the orchard she watched him ride away. Jim was driving the two
big greys, while Shandon followed close behind the wagon, sitting very
straight in the saddle, his face telling her nothing. . . . She sank
back upon the grass under the apple tree and lay still, staring up at
the patches of blue seen through the green and white of the branches
and blossoms.
When at last she went back to the house she heard her father's voice
lifted angrily. He was talking to her mother and the name flung
furiously from his lips was the name of Wayne Shandon.
"Hush, Martin," protested Mrs. Leland. "You mustn't . . ."
Martin Leland, his face red, his mouth working wordlessly, swept up his
hat and went away to the corrals by the stable. Wanda saw his eyes as
he brushed by her and she shivered, drawing away from him.
Garth Conway had already gone, riding the half dozen miles to the Bar
L-M to carry word of the death of its owner, and to assume entire
charge there until Wayne should return. Sledge Hume was loitering down
by the stable.
The day passed, strangely silent. No reference was made in the Leland
household to the tragedy which had stirred each member of it so deeply,
so differently. Throughout the long afternoon Martin Leland remained
among his cattle and horses, often flaring into anger at trifles. Mrs.
Leland was in her room, alone, suffering as she might have suffered had
Arthur and Wayne been the sons nature had denied to her. Wanda
wandered restlessly back and forth, from the house to the stable, about
the yard, where the pigeons whirled and circled and cooed.
The days which followed were like this one, silent, tense, expectant.
It was as though each one of these people was waiting for something,
all but breathless. MacKelvey, a heavy set, quick eyed man, the county
sheriff, came one day and talked long with Martin Leland. The two sat
for an hour on the corral fence below the stable. After that MacKelvey
went away and the waiting, the tense expectancy was more marked than
before.
The tenth day came and went its laughing, blue way. Wayne Shandon did
not come with it, but Garth Conway rode over that evening. He had had
no word from Wayne, although he was expecting him hourly. Two weeks
passed, and still no word from Wayne. One by one, slowly, heavily the
days went by.
Then at last Garth Conway rode again to the Leland ranch house and
brought tidings of Wayne. He had tired of New York, but he was not yet
coming West. Instead he was sailing for Europe, and would probably go
down into Africa for some hunting.
"Where does he get the money?" demanded Martin Leland sharply.
Garth's short laugh was rather full answer. But he elaborated it into
words:
"I am to rush a forced sale of cattle," he said, lifting his shoulders.
"He wants two thousand dollars in a hurry. God knows what for. He is
going to fritter his property away just as he fritters away everything!"
Leland sprang up from his chair, his two fists clenched and lifted high
above his head, his eyes blazing.
"Martin! Martin!" cried Mrs. Leland.
He dropped his hands to his sides and turned away, the words on his
tongue checked.
"Dear God," Wanda prayed within her soul. "Let him be a man. Let him
come back soon. Before every one believes he did that thing,
before . . . they send for him!"
CHAPTER IV
THE WHITE HUNTRESS
Two months, filled with the clean breath of outdoors, had softened the
memory of that stark tragedy upon which Wanda had come at the edge of
Echo Creek. Not forgotten, never to be wiped clean from the memory,
still the keen horror was dulled, the harsh details blurred, the whole
dreadful picture softened under the web which the spider of time weaves
over an old canvas.
Again life was glad and good and golden. Again youth was eager and
hopeful and merry. The death which had come and changed the world had
gone, leaving the world as it has always been.
Wanda and Gypsy and Shep saw much of one another. They were all very
happy, perhaps because they were very busy. Full of enthusiasm that
was at once gay and serious Wanda had thrown herself into her "Work"
immediately upon returning home in the early springtime. Before the
tragic event which for the time had driven her life out of its groove
she had already won for herself the title, bestowed merrily by Wayne
Shandon, of the "White Huntress." Her "work," to which she gave up so
many hours of each day, was purposeful, steadily pursued, and brought
her a vast pleasure. The game she hunted was the squirrel tossing his
grey body through the branches of pine and cedar, the quail calling
from the hillsides, the cottontail scampering through the underbrush,
the yellowhammer, the woodpecker, the wide winged butterflies sailing
through the orchard and across the meadow lands. The weapon with which
she hunted was a camera which she carried in its black case slung over
her shoulder or hanging from the horn of Gypsy's saddle.
Reared since babyhood in a land where men and women were few and where
the wild things of the forests were many and unafraid, she had long ago
come to look upon the little, bright eyed woodland folk as her
playmates. Many of her childhood sorrows and joys were linked with
their fates. Her first great grief had occurred when she was ten years
old and Jule, her brown bear cub,--named after the cook to whom he bore
in the child's eyes a marked resemblance, a slight and necessary
variation in the termination of the name taking care of the matter of a
difference in sex,--came to an untimely end through the instinctive and
merciless conduct of Shep's grandparents. The house was filled with
chipmunks who frightened Julia, to whom they were "jest rats, drat
'em," and who raided the kitchen systematically. A trained grey
squirrel barked from the trees above the house, and pet rabbits were
numerous and unprofitable about the vegetable garden. At the age when
little girls in the cities were dressing and undressing their dolls,
Wanda was taming a palpitating heart in some little fury [Transcriber's
note: furry?] breast or leaning breathlessly, like a small mother bird
herself, over a nest in the grass watching eagerly for the tender bills
to peck and chip their way out into the wonderful world.
It was but natural therefore that after her childhood had gone and she
had outgrown her passion for numberless pets overrunning the house just
as her sisters in the cities had outgrown their pleasure in dressing
and undressing dolls, she should become the "White Huntress." She
loved more than ever the wildness of the forest lands, and the ways of
the woodland things were wonderful and mysterious to her. And now,
from a new angle, they were her study.
There were days when she rode far out from the ranch house, her lunch
at her saddle strings, to be gone until dusk or after the stars came
out. She would leave Gypsy tethered where the grass was deep and rich,
command Shep to lie down and see that nobody ran away with her outfit,
and then tramp off alone, carrying her camera. She knew how to climb
up into the tree and to screen herself behind the foliage, so that she
might watch the mother bird and her ways, and find out when she should
expect the joyous miracle of new life.
When the eggs were hatched Wanda was ready. Days before she had chosen
the exact spot on the particular limb where she would place her camera.
She had clothed herself as the springtime clothed the forests. A soft
blouse of green, short skirt and stockings of green, little cap of
green and green moccasins. She crouched upon the broad limb of a cedar
or clung more hazardously to the branch of a pine, the tone colour of
her costume making no discord with the dusky sheen of the waving
branches, and watched and waited. So, when "hunting" was good she had
a picture of the mother bird perched upon the edge of the nest in which
the eggs lay, a picture of the nest with the little, new birds obeying
the first command of nature, a picture of the parents feeding them the
first worm or berry or rebellious bug, a picture of the trial flight
when soft young bodies essayed independence on unskilful wings.
At first the girl had been merely an amateur in the early, sweet sense
of the word. Then one day she saw a couple of pages in an illustrated
magazine devoted to such photographs as these she was playing with.
They were better than hers, since the man who had taken them was a
trained artist as well as a lover of the wild; and they had been at
once a disappointment and an inspiration to her. Then, upon another
day, her father who made little comment upon her pastime, handed her a
box from the express office in which she found a camera with a lens
that would do its part if she learned to do hers. And that was when
she threw herself so enthusiastically into her "work."
"I am going to have a page of pictures in that same magazine," was her
way of thanking him. "And mine are going to be better!"
She flushed a little at his smile, but when she had gone away and was
alone with her new possession and a world of possibilities, her chin
was very firm.
She had her own studio in the attice above the dining room, developed
plates and films there, and descended the ladder into the hallway
flushed with triumph or vexed with disappointment as her efforts proved
to be good or bad. The mistakes had been many at first; they were few
now.
She became a student of the "Home Life of the Wild Things." They all
interested her, they all posed for her, squirrel and bird and
butterfly. Inevitably she began to specialise, but her specialisation
was not in one species but rather in one process, in the dawning and
budding life of the young in the real "home life" before the new
fledgling or tiny furred body left the nest for an independent life and
a future nest of its own. The wild mates at work upon the house which
instinct prompted was to be of use soon, the construction of a swinging
pocket hung high up by an oriole, this was a part of the home life,
just as essential a part of it as the covering of the eggs, the feeding
of the young.
Before the year had swelled and blossomed into full mid-summer she had
a pupil. It was her mother. Mother and daughter had always been more
to each other than the terms commonly imply, very nearly all that they
should connote. They had been friends. Here where the solitudes were
mighty and vast, where long miles and hard trails lay between homes and
where women were few, they had had but themselves to turn to when need
or desire came for the company of their own sex. Mrs. Leland had
remained young, in part because hers was a happy, sunny nature, in part
because she had had the fires of youth replenished from the
superabundant glow of girlhood in her daughter.
But now that the summer came with monotony and silence, now that Arthur
Shandon came no more, that Wayne seemed to have forgotten the range
country, that Garth Conway was busy every day with the entire
management of a heavily stocked cattle outfit, there were long, quiet
days at the Echo Creek.
"Wanda," Mrs. Leland said one day, a little wistfully. "Can't I come
with you and take a peep first hand into the homes of your wild
friends? I'll be very still, I'll stay with Shep and Gypsy if you want
me to."
Wanda, at once contrite and happy, was filled with apologies and
explanations. She had had no thought that her mother would find an
interest in her "play." But if she would come, if she would like to
come, oh, she would show her the most wonderful discovery. . . .
So mother and daughter rode out together that day with lunch and
camera, and that night worked together in Wanda's attic studio over a
highly satisfactory film. The older woman's interest became as steady,
as enthusiastic in a deeply thoughtful way, as Wanda's. She learned to
love each day's adventure as warmly as did her daughter, she came to
have the same tender joy in the unexpected discovery of some new phase
of the home life of the wild.
"In all of your hunting you are missing something, my White Huntress,"
she said one day. "Something which I have discovered!"
Wanda smiled brightly at her over the top of a new picture, pleased
with her mother's interest no less than with the print in her hands.
"What is it, mamma?"
"I am not going to tell you yet. But to-morrow when we go out for the
oriole's nest, I am going to take your old kodak!"
As they rode the five or six miles to the spot where they were to do
the morning's "hunting" Wanda wondered what it was she had missed that
her mother had noticed. But she promptly forgot about it when she
climbed the great pine which, for her mother's purpose, was so happily
situated close to a cliff. She noted with a bright nod of approval as
she edged far out upon a horizontal limb that her mother had made her
own way up to the cliff top. Long she waited that morning, patient and
happy and still, her camera set in front of her, before she got the
exposure she wanted. And she did not hear the other click of the other
machine, did not know that her mother had been as patient and as
contented waiting to get the picture she wanted of Wanda as Wanda had
been in snapping the bird and the nest and the young, hungry mouths at
the threshold.
That afternoon they developed and printed, each her own pictures. And
when Mrs. Leland had finished she showed Wanda what she had done.
There was the picture of Wanda, far out upon the great limb, eager and
watchful, her camera ready, the oriole's nest swinging before her, the
mother bird just dropping down to it. And below and beyond were the
ground, looking immeasurably distant, the fir and pine branches, the
forest of trees.
"You see, Wanda, what you have overlooked?" Mrs. Leland's eyes were
unusually bright. "You have dozens of pictures that are wonderful,
pictures that you strove for for weeks, months at a time! One looks at
your picture and sees that it is wonderful, but does not understand how
wonderful. You cling to a branch or a tree trunk or the side of a
cliff, fifty or a hundred and fifty feet of space below you, and take
your picture. People look at the picture and do not see that the
wonderful thing, the interesting thing, is how you got it!"
"But . . ." began Wanda.
"But," Mrs. Leland laughed happily, "just listen to me a moment, miss.
You are going on with your pictures and I am going to follow you very
humbly and take other pictures to show how you get them. We'll send
both sets to your magazines and you'll see if mine aren't snapped up
just as quick as yours!"
So the relationship of mother and daughter which had grown into that of
a warm, intimate friendship now developed into closer, more intimate
companionship. Together they found bright, brimming days that
otherwise might have been dull and empty.
Wanda came to realise that a woman who is forty may be, in all
essentials, as young as a girl of twenty, and that the added score of
years while it brings truer insight and perhaps a steadier heart does
not quench ardour or deaden the emotions.
"Mamma," she said one day, looking up brightly from the development of
a film from her mother's kodak, "you are just a girl yourself!"
And Mrs. Leland was just girl enough to flush, and youthful enough to
laugh as musically as her daughter.
Thus, as the days went by and they were frequently alone together,
Martin Leland being often away on the business upon which he and Arthur
Shandon had entered with Sledge Hume, the two women were not lonely.
Mrs. Leland accompanied Wanda everywhere to take pictures showing the
girl climbing for a lofty bird nest, clinging to the cliffs at the
upper end of the valley, crouching hidden among the bushes waiting for
a rabbit to hop into the picture, even on the deer "hunt" they had
already begun.
So the late summer slipped by more swiftly in its smooth channel than
ever, the leaves in the orchard yellowed with the fall, the light green
tips upon the fir branches turned dark green, the cattle were driven
down to the lower valleys along the creeks, and the first snows of
winter dimmed the shortening days.
With the passing of the summer, Garth Conway came again to be a
frequent visitor at the Echo Creek ranch house. Since the letter from
Wayne Shandon in New York he had had but one communication from the man
who now owned the Bar L-M. It had been characteristically short,
written in London.
"I am leaving the destiny of the cows In your competent hands," Wayne
wrote. "I am legally giving you a power of attorney. This authorises
you to run the outfit as you judge best. Make what sales you want to
to pay the boys and yourself. Bank the money or re-invest for
improvements and more cattle. The Lord knows when I'll come back . . .
provided the Devil has told Him."
And then, in a postscript, hastily scribbled he had added,
"I have made my will . . . Imagine me making a will! . . . and if I
don't come back at all the outfit is yours. Love to the Lelands."
And then, as a second afterthought, he had scrawled at the top of the
note.
"A joke on you in case I shouldn't come back, Garth! I want you to
sell some cows and send me another two thousand. But I promise not to
do it again."
Garth told his news in the living room where the family had been
listening to the music of Wanda's lilting young voice with her mother's
piano accompaniment when he came in. Mrs. Leland's smiling face grew
clouded and distressed and her eyes turned involuntarily to her
husband. Martin Leland sprang to his feet in sudden wrath.
"Hell's bells!" he shouted angrily. "Two sacrifice sales in less than
a year! Four thousand dollars! And what has he done with it? Got
drunk, chucked it away across race courses and card tables . . . Would
to God I had done what it was my duty to do, that . . ."
"Martin!" cried Mrs. Leland. "Martin, dear!"
He stopped abruptly and sank back into his chair. For a little while
there was silence, heavy and painful. Wanda's eyes grew misty. Not
once since that day in the spring had she been disloyal to Red
Reckless, whom she had known in his boyhood, who had fought her early
battles for her, who had been the plumed knight of her early girlhood.
She told herself now that he had not come back because he could not
bear to return yet to the place where he and his brother had spent so
many happy days together, that if he was living wildly now, scurrying
up and down the world and flinging away his inheritance, it was because
he had felt his brother's loss far more than he had let them know, that
he was going his pace swiftly to forget what lay behind. And again
there rose in her heart the mute prayer that he might come back and be
a man and show them all that they had not judged him fairly.
Garth glanced swiftly at the faces of these three people who had heard
his news with such varied emotions, and went on to break the silence
none of them had noticed.
"Matters are going rather well on the range," he said quietly. "I sold
a hundred head at an average of ninety-seven dollars last week and was
able to bank the entire nine thousand, seven hundred. Maybe," with a
quick smile, "it will be just as well if he doesn't come back in a
hurry."
"Oh," cried Wanda impulsively. "That is ungenerous of you! After
Wayne says that he is leaving everything to you in his will, too!"
"I don't mean to be ungenerous or yet ungrateful," replied Garth a bit
stiffly, flushing under the girl's reproachful eyes. "I only
meant . . ."
"Wanda," said her father sharply, "you should be ashamed of yourself!
Garth has not been ungenerous and you have. And he is right. It would
be the best thing for Wayne himself as well as for the range if he
doesn't come back for a long time. Garth is working hard for the
interests of both. And if any one should be grateful to the man who is
running his range for him it is that young spendthrift. You are not
thinking, Wanda."
The girl bit her lip and turned away. And she did not make the apology
her father expected. Dimly it seemed to her that they were all over
ready, over eager to condemn the man whose one crime had been mere
heedlessness, who was surely hurting no one but himself, but who
offended their ideas in refusing to take life seriously and bear the
common burden of responsibility.
"After all," said Mrs. Leland a little hurriedly, "Wayne is only a boy.
Oh, he's a man in years, of course, but then some people are fortunate
enough to carry their youth with them a long time before it drops off.
And," with a smile, "he says he won't do it again!"
Martin Leland smoked his two pipefuls of strong tobacco and then
departed to attend to some correspondence. Mrs. Leland soon slipped
away to her book and easy chair and cushions in a corner. Until ten
o'clock Wanda and Garth bent together over a big scrap book containing
the latest additions to the home life of the wild.
Soon afterward even Garth Conway's visits to the Leland home stopped.
November came with many dark days and an occasional flurry of snow.
The ground might at any time now be covered, the passes choked with the
soft drifts, the valleys hidden. The cattle must be moved down the
mountains to the foothills where each year they wintered. The Bar L-M
buildings were closed, the heavy wooden shutters put up, the corrals
deserted until thaw time. Conway with his men and cattle would not
come again until springtime came with them.
And over the Echo Creek ranch the silence of the summer passed into the
deeper silence of winter. Leland's cattle and men had gone already to
his winter range; there was no one at home excepting Mrs. Leland,
Wanda, Julia, and Jim who remained to do what little work there was to
be done during the term of "hibernating." Martin's interests were too
big for him to stay here had he desired to do so; his family would not
see him again for the two months or so during which he remained outside.
It was not the first year that the Echo Creek house was not shuttered
and closed for the winter. Mrs. Leland had sometimes gone with her
husband to spend the storm swept months of the year either at one of
his other ranches or in the city, and sometimes she had stayed here.
This winter she had no particular desire to leave her comfortable home
for the makeshift of a San Francisco hotel and Wanda was eager to stay.
"You'll be cooped up within ten days like shipwrecks on a raft," Martin
Leland said when he managed to make a trip back to the ranch in
December. "We're in for a hard winter. I wouldn't be surprised if I
couldn't get in again or you get out before well on into February or
March."
He had made a flying trip between storms, hastening from El Toyon to
White Rock over the mail route, coming in from White Rock through the
still open pass through the mountains. His one object in coming had
been to try to induce his women folk to leave Echo Creek. And the same
day, seeing the threat of bad weather, he went out again, on skis and
alone.
There were busy days for all four who remained at the ranch house in
making preparations for idle, comfortable days to follow. Jim brought
vast quantities of wood from the basement, piling it high in the corner
of the living room where it would be convenient for feeding the deep
throated fireplace whose rocks would stay warm all night, hot all day,
for many weeks. From the yard he brought more wood, piling it in the
basement until there were only narrow passageways between the slabs and
logs and the finer split stove wood. Julia superintended the placing
of her kitchen supplies, secreted those little delicacies which she
would require at Christmas time, arranged her canned goods and
perpetually fussed and rearranged in her storeroom. Meanwhile Mrs.
Leland and Wanda were everywhere at once, overseeing the moving of
beds, the shifting of furniture, the making cosy of the home against
the siege. And then, howling and shrieking, with deep voice shouting
across the pine forests, the winter came in earnest.
Martin Leland had read the signs aright; it was to be a hard winter.
There came a wind storm that lasted without cessation for three days;
the branches of the cedars about the house tossed like long arms
grappling with an unseen foe; here and there a dead limb was wrenched
from a tree trunk and hurled far out to be buried in the snow which
began to fall in small, hard flakes almost congealed to hail. Then,
the three days gone, the wind died down suddenly, the flakes grew
larger, softer, the snow clung tenaciously to the trees and fences and
eaves of house and stable. Jim in arctic shoes and mittens, his ears
lost under the flaps of his cap, having sighed and bestirred himself
from his snug comfort by Julia's stove, got his shovel and went up on
the housetop.
While the bleak, chill days rushed by Wanda prepared happily for the
fine weather which would come, when the sun reflected back from many
feet of fluffy snow would warm the air, when in the high, dry altitudes
the sparkling, Christmassy world would become a rarely beautiful thing,
when she could leave the house and penetrate deep into a solitude which
was as different from the solitude of the summer forestland as day is
from night. She brought down from the attic her own favourite pair of
skis and saw that they were fit. The long slender bits of pine, light
and graceful with their running grooves glistening, their turned up
ends like Turks' slippers, she stood on end in the living room while
she gave them a new coat of white shellac. Her snowshoe pole she
tested, making sure that it had sustained no injury during its long
banishment to the dark places of the attic, and that it could be
trusted in the work she would call upon it to do. She gathered the
winter out-door things which she had not used for two years, the white
sweater that clung close to her slim, pliant body; the white tasseled
hat, mitts, leggins, white bloomers. And then, when a blue and white,
laughing day came, and the air was clear and warm, the branches of the
trees sagging under their diamond pricked festoons of snow, she left
the house, now in truth the White Huntress.
Camera and field glasses went with her; for lunch a bit of jerked beef
and a piece of hard chocolate. For to-day she began her winter work.
Again she was hunting. The forests as she slipped through them were
very still and seemed void of all the life that had swarmed here until
the snows came. But she would see snow birds, she might find a coyote
or a big snow-shoe rabbit. She would take pictures, too, such wintry
pictures as she had never seen, the world locked in the embrace of
winter, glistening icicles as big as her body, cliffs thrown into
strange, grotesque shapes, fields of untracked white with perhaps the
sweep of a stream seeming ink black against the dazzling white
background.
And she thrilled to the crunch of thin crust underfoot which
yesterday's thaw and last night's freeze had formed, the whip of the
dry air in her face, the exhilaration of the long, swift dash as she
glided from the crest of some ridge, a silent, graceful creature, into
the hollow beyond. Her body bent a little forward, her snow-shoe pole
horizontal as a tight rope walker holds his balancing rod, the white
world slid away beneath her, little sinks or humps in the apparent
smoothness of the snow demanding the sudden leap which shot the blood
tingling through the eager body. For the light skis with their three
coats of shellac carried her down the steeper slopes with the wild
speed of a bird skimming the winter whitened earth.
This first day she took an old favourite way which led her up a gradual
slope straight southward until at last she paused, breathing deeply,
upon the crest. Far behind her she could see the smoke of the ranch
house rising from a clump of cedars; straight ahead the black line of
the river. And now, balancing a moment, gripping her pole firmly,
settling her feet securely in the ski-straps, she shot downward, taking
the steep dip which would lead after a little into a long curve and so
bring her flashing through the trees down to the river three miles away.
Her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks glowing, her body warm with the
sun's heat and the leaping blood within her, when she straightened up
and touching the end of her pole lightly against the snow came to a
stop near the river. It was swollen and black, a mighty, shouting
thing, the only thing about her whose voice had not been stilled by the
snow.
Her eyes turning found close at hand the first tracks she had seen this
morning, fresh tracks of a big rabbit.
"I must have frightened him," she thought. "He's gone on upstream."
She turned upstream as the rabbit had done, noiselessly following his
trail. And, turned eastward by a rabbit's track, she followed
unconsciously, unsuspectingly, the imperious bidding of her fate. Her
own life, the lives of two men would have been widely different had
Wanda Leland turned westward instead of eastward this morning.
Already she was a mile above the bridge across which the road ran to
the Bar L-M. From where she was a stranger might not suppose that man
or horse could find a place to cross in many times that distance; for
here the river banks were steep cliffs, never lower than ten feet,
rising often abruptly to thirty. Between them the water raged,
thundering over falls, leaping into deep pools where the sucking eddies
were never still.
And as she moved on upstream, further yet from the bridge, the rocky
banks grew steeper, drew nearer to each other, until suddenly the
plunging river was lost to her, its thunder muffled. Wanda could see a
thick mat of snow from a great, flat topped rock on the far side
curving downward, inward, as if from the eaves of a house, the long
icicles like sharp teeth set in a monster's gaping jaw.
Close along the edge of the cliffs the course of the fleeing rabbit
led, while Wanda's skis left their parallel smooth tracks in a straight
line a score of feet back from the steep bank. She slipped silently
through a clump of firs, peered around the branches bent down by the
heavy snow, and saw the snow-shoe rabbit where he had stopped for a
moment. He was a big fellow, the biggest she had ever seen, crouching
low, his round eyes bright and suspicious, as he trusted to his colour
to protect him. She brought her camera swiftly out of its case.
"There's a chance to get him, after all," she thought eagerly. "It
won't be much of a picture perhaps . . . just a white blur against a
white background . . ."
The camera clicked just as the rabbit leaped forward; she thought she
had caught him against the dark background of a fir from which much of
the snow had fallen. Then, just in front of the frightened animal a
little branch of a small pine, suddenly released of its weight of snow,
whipped up; a new terror came into the creature's panic stricken
breast; he stopped sharply, swerved, lost his head as one of his rattle
brained species is likely to do, ran directly toward the girl, swerved
again and running straight toward the river, essayed the impossible and
met destruction. He leaped far out across the water, attempting a jump
that none of his kind could have made safely, and fell short. The
furry body described a great valiant arc, shot upward for one flashing
second, dropped out of sight.
"Oh, I am so sorry," cried the girl contritely. "You poor little
thing."
The woodland tragedy moved her strangely, for she felt that, innocently
enough, she had caused it. She moved closer to see if by a happy
chance the rabbit had landed upon a rocky shelf far down, hoping that
after all she might in some way set him free.
Moving slowly, her camera again in its case, her pole touching the
snow, she approached until she could look down. Only the steep wall on
the far side, sinking straight and black into the swollen torrent, only
a little speck of white far down which might have been a struggling
body or a fleck of foam.
"The poor little thing," she said again. "He saw that the far bank is
lower than this one, and he was too frightened to guess the distance."
Musing, she thought that her skis were merely settling a little deeper
through the crust when she felt a slight sinking underneath. Then,
suddenly, she was aware that her skis were dipping downward, that she
was slipping. She tried hastily to draw back, she felt that she was
still slipping, that the polished surfaces of the skis were answering
the call of gravity, that she was being drawn closer, closer in spite
of her efforts . . .
She made a wild, frantic attempt to draw back, a quick terror gripping
her. The shouting river was calling to her, something was pulling at
her body steadily as a magnet pulls at a steel, the world was slipping
away under her, she was going the way the rabbit had gone . . .
Then she threw her body backward, twisting as best she could with the
skis clinging to her feet, clutching with her hands at anything her
fingers might touch. She heard a splash, knew that the overhang of
snow had dropped into the river, knew that one ski was hanging over the
brink. And then the hand that had gripped at the smooth snow sank down
and clutched the top of a small, hidden pine, she drew herself up and
back and in a moment, white, shaking she lay still, not daring to look
down.
CHAPTER V
THE HOME COMING OF RED RECKLESS
Winter went its white way, the spring brought a thawing sun,
innumerable muddy torrents and an occasional visitor, the robins and
blue birds began to troop back to the mountains. Martin Leland was at
home, his sturdier steers were in the valleys, Conway came back to the
Bar L-M and often visited the Lelands. Sledge Hume rode up from the
Dry Lands, fifty miles down the slope of the mountains and was often in
consultation with Martin and with Garth Conway.
Warm weather battled against the rear guard of winter, only patches of
soiled snow remained upon the north side of the ridges, in the narrow
cañons and upon the lofty summits of the peaks standing up about the
valleys. The early flowers dotted the valleys, more cattle were moved
in, and the season developed rapidly. Conway came frequently to talk
with Martin, to remain for supper, to chat with Wanda and her mother.
And then one day, unheralded, unlooked for, Red Reckless came home.
It was the supper hour, just after dark. Father, mother and daughter
were at the table, when there came a quick step upon the veranda, and
the joy which the gay springtime had put into Wanda's heart brimmed up
and spilled over.
"It's Garth," said Martin Leland lightly. "I expected he'd ride over
to-night."
"_It's Wayne_!" cried Wanda, already upon her feet.
"Wayne!" snapped her father, his face suddenly stern. "What are you
talking about?"
"I know his step. It is Wayne!"
Wanda had already run to the door, and flung it wide open. It was very
dark outside. The tall form of a man loomed strangely large, dimly
outlined against the black curtain of the night.
"Welcome home, Wanderer!" Wanda cried gaily.
Wayne Shandon came in, his big boots dusty with his ride, his red hair
catching fire from the light in the room, his eyes laughing, his lips
laughing, his voice laughing when he greeted Wanda with two eager
hands. He was the same Wayne Shandon who had ridden away a year ago,
the same Red Reckless he had ever been.
Mrs. Leland's startled surprise vanished swiftly before her joy in
seeing him. But Martin Leland's face went black, his eyes burned
ominously, it was as though he had been gripped with a choking,
speechless wrath.
"Wayne!" cried Mrs. Leland. "Where in the world have you come from?"
"From a place they call Hell's Annex, seven hundred miles inland from
the South African Coast," he laughed lightly. "My arrival timed just
to the minute for supper!"
He dropped Wanda's hands with a parting squeeze which was frankly
unhidden, strode over to Mrs. Leland whom he kissed resoundingly, and
put out a big, strong hand to Martin Leland.
For just a fraction of a second the two women knew that Leland was
hesitating, for an instant they waited fearfully, for what he might do.
Then he took the hand proffered him, his lips twitched into a hard,
forced smile and he said rather colourlessly,
"Well, Wayne, you've come home at last, have you?"
Wayne's answer was a laugh. He seemed filled with laughter to-night.
Evidently he had noticed nothing strange in Leland's greeting; he was
in the gayest of his gay moods. He had no opportunity to answer
Leland's words, for Julia, who had forgotten her usual slow, ponderous
method of travel bounced into the room like a wonderfully animated ball
at the sound of his voice, and he actually swept the two hundred pounds
of her off of her feet as he gathered the big woman up into his arms
and kissed her. Then Julia dabbed at her eyes and fled to her kitchen,
her emotions finding outlet in an instantaneous desire to make him a
pie, Wanda laid a plate for him and supper went on.
Chiefly because of Wanda's eager questions and Wayne Shandon's laughing
willingness to tell about his adventures, the abstraction on the part
of Martin Leland and the growing anxiety in Mrs. Leland's eyes went
unnoticed. Wayne was immoderately hungry as he first frankly confided
and then demonstrated, but he found opportunity between mouthfuls to
draw, in his sketchy way, the series of pictures which made up the year
of his wanderings. He had travelled from New York to London, he had
whizzed through Paris and dipped into Baden, he had been seasick on a
Mediterranean which wasn't blue, he had barked his shins on a pyramid,
he had been swindled out of a ridiculously large sum of money by a
little scientist in green spectacles who was out on a mummy digging
expedition, and he had gone into the interior after big game. He had
managed to take in a Derby and to pick a winner, he had made Monte
Carlo recognise that he had come,--although he did not go into detail
as to the manner of his departure,--and he had brought home a present
for everybody. The skin he had taken from a lion somewhere in some
remote jungle to sprawl, rug fashion in Wanda's room, where it created
no little havoc in the furniture arrangement and finally caused the
dressing table to be shifted to a corner to make place for the
enormous, gaping head with the fierce eyes; an Indian shawl for Mrs.
Leland, selected evidently for size and brilliance of pattern, very
nearly large enough to carpet the dining room and of an astonishing
combination of dark greens and riotous reds and royal purples; an
ornate scarf pin for Martin Leland who had as much use for a scarf pin
as a Mohammedan for a Bible; an exquisite set of chessmen for Garth
purchased with a quick eye to the subtle art which had gone into their
carving and with a fine disregard for the fact that Garth had existed
for thirty odd years without learning that the curveting progress of a
knight is in any way different from the ecclesiastical slant of a
bishop, completed the assortment of presents.
Garth himself came in as they were pushing back their chairs from the
table, throwing open the door with a merry, "Hello, folks," on his
lips. Then as he caught sight of Wayne who had leaped up and swung
about he stared, suddenly speechless, his mouth dropping open.
"Well, Garth, old boy," cried Wayne heartily. "Aren't you glad to see
me?"
Garth came forward then swiftly, his hand out-stretched. But his eyes
were still startled rather than glad, and they passed his cousin
turning, full of question, to Martin Leland.
"Of course I'm glad," he said, his voice a little uncertain. And then,
laughing, "You just surprised me out of my senses. Why didn't you
write that you were coming?"
"Because I'd rather travel three thousand miles to tell you about it
than write a letter. I'm amazingly glad to see you. How's everything?
How is the range making out?"
"Fine," Garth answered quickly. "You have come to stay? You will be
running the outfit yourself now?"
"Business to-morrow," retorted Wayne lightly. "It is after sundown and
business should be asleep."
"And does it wake at sunup?" Garth returned with an attempt at Wayne's
bantering mood, although a little suspicion of venom lay under the
words.
"I had a Mexican friend once," grinned Wayne by way of answer, "who was
the wisest man I ever saw. He used to say, 'The day is made to rest,
the night to sleep!' We will give our attention to Mañana when Mañana
comes. Wanda!" he cried suddenly in the old impulsive way, "will you
play something for me?"
Wayne and Wanda went to the piano. Mrs. Leland watched them, her face
a little troubled, a little wistful. Garth and Martin Leland, after
one swift exchange of glances, rose and went to the rancher's room
where they remained for a long time. When at last they returned to the
living room Leland glanced curiously at Wayne. He was sitting with
Wanda upon the sofa under the big wall lamp, examining her pictures.
Garth approached the sofa abruptly.
"We'd better be hitting the trail, Wayne, hadn't we?" he asked. "It's
nearly ten o'clock and you remember it's six miles to bed."
Reluctantly Wayne Shandon said his good nights, calling in to Julia
that he was going to expect a pie the next time he came, which would be
to-morrow if Garth would let him, and the two men went out to their
horses. Wanda, bright and happy, waved to the departing horsemen from
the door and came back into the room to drop naturally into the silence
which had fallen over her mother and father.
Long that night Wanda stared out through the darkness which lay about
the orchard with no thought of sleep. She had the feeling that no one
in the house was asleep yet, not even Julia whom she could hear now and
then moving as softly as physical conditions permitted in her room.
That her father and mother were awake, she knew from the drone of their
voices coming to her indistinctly.
The spirit of restless anxiety falling upon a household is a thing to
be felt through stick and stone and mortar. There had been no such
spirit here to-night until Red Reckless had come home. He had not
brought it with him, he had brought only his sheer madness of exuberant
life, and yet he had left this other thing behind him. Wanda wondered
what thoughts, what fears or evil premonitions troubled those other
unsleeping brains.
Her own thoughts fled back a year and clung fearfully about the
revolver with the pearl grip. She knew that the murder of his brother
still remained a mystery and that people do not like mysteries to go
long without solution. MacKelvey was sheriff, it was his duty, and it
was his habit, to bring some man to book for every crime committed in
the county. It was quite possible that the sheriff had been playing a
waiting game throughout the year, and that he was waiting for this man
to come back as he must do soon or late.
Meanwhile the man who was so vividly in Wanda's thoughts rode through
the silent night with his cousin, drinking deep of the peace of the
starlit night, finding an old familiar music in the hammering of his
horse's hoofs on the grassy hills. Silent himself while thinking of
other days and other rides, he did not notice how silent Garth was.
They topped the rocky ridge which stood as boundary line between the
two ranges, and swerved westward taking the long curve to the Crossing,
welcomed back to the home outfit by the great booming voice of the
distant river. Another mile and the river itself, flashing, turbulent
molten silver, swollen with the wet winter in the mountains, swept
shouting past them.
They turned upward along the river and raced wordlessly the greater
part of the remaining half mile to the Bar L-M corrals. When they drew
rein in the wide clearing in which stood range house, bunk house,
stables and corrals, there was no spark of light about. They unsaddled
swiftly, turned their horses loose with a resounding slap to send them
out toward the little enclosed pasture, and went up to the range house.
At the door of the men's quarters Wayne stopped.
"I think I'll drop in and say hello to the boys," he remarked, already
at the door.
"Are you crazy?" cried Garth. "They've been asleep two hours, man.
And they've got a big day's work ahead of them to-morrow."
"Oh, shut up, Garth," laughed Wayne good naturedly. "Don't you ever
think of anything but work? Come ahead, and watch me bring 'em to
life!"
He flung open the door and entered, Garth following in stony silence.
It was dark within the long, narrow room, although the starlight
gleamed feebly through the dirty window panes. Wayne found the lantern
upon the nail where it had hung when he was a boy, lighted it, and
turned the wick low so that there was only a wan light in the bunk
house.
"Where's Big Bill's bunk?" he whispered to Garth.
Chuckling softly he drew near the bunk which Garth indicated against
the wall at the far end of the room. He leaned forward, stooping low,
peering into the shadows. Big Bill was fast asleep, his great, deep
lungs expelling his breath regularly and mightily, his head with its
touseled ink black hair half hidden by the hairy arm flung up over it.
Wayne tiptoed away from the bunk, moved two chairs further back against
the other wall, and still chuckling with vastly amused anticipation,
again approached Big Bill's bedside.
He put out his hands slowly, gently, until they slipped into Big Bill's
arm pits. Then, his laughter suddenly booming out he bunched his
muscles and a black haired giant of a man in shirt and underdrawers was
jerked floundering out of his bunk to the middle of the room.
Big Bill's mighty roar of mingled astonishment and anger brought a
dozen cowboys leaping out of their bunks. In the dimly lighted room
their blinking eyes made out the forms of two men struggling, one in
his night dress, the other in hat and boots. One was Big Bill, for his
roar was an unmistakable as the roar of summer thunder. But the other?
"I've been hungering to get my hands on you for a year!" came the
laughing voice of the man in hat and boots. "You said that you could
roll me, Bill. Now go to it!"
He lifted the mighty body of the struggling, half wakened cowboy clean
off the floor, carried him across the room and slammed him down in a
chair.
"It's Red Reckless!" cried a voice from the group of stupefied men.
"He's come home!"
"You ol' son-of-a-gun!" bellowed Big Bill, half in the surly anger
which is the natural right of a man rudely awakened, half in tremulous
joy. "Wait ontil I git my eyes open good an' I'll roll you like you
was dough an' I'm makin' biscuits out'n you!"
Evidently he had his eyes "open good" before he had done talking. He
was upon his feet, the big, swaying body oddly like a clumsy black
bear's, his big hands lifted in front of him. And then he threw
himself forward, close to two hundred and fifty pounds of brawn and
bone hurled like a boulder from a catapult. Some one had turned up the
lantern wick. The black head and the red head from which the hat had
dropped came together, there was the thud of two strong bodies meeting
with an impact that brought a little coughing grunt from each, and Red
Reckless had done what any man must do before such a thunderbolt. He
was flung backward, went down, and the two big bodies struck hard upon
the bare floor. And above the crash of the falling bodies there were
two other sounds, Big Bill's grunt, and the laughter of Red Reckless.
They were down, and Big Bill was topmost. But by the laws of the game
a man must be forced back until his two shoulders touch the floor
before he is beaten. Wayne Shandon's left shoulder was still two
inches from the floor.
"You would wake a man up," grumbled Big Bill with that fierceness of
tone which spoke a moment of rare delight.
"I'm going to show you something, Bill," gasped Wayne, half choked with
the breath driven out of his lungs by the great bulk on top of him and
by the laughter within his soul which had not been driven out.
"Something I learned from a Jap about three feet high. It cost me a
hundred dollars and a broken collar bone. I'll let you off easier,
Bill."
The light was none too good, perhaps the boys were not yet wide awake.
They didn't know how the trick was done, and it wasn't at all clear to
Big Bill.
Wayne seemed to grow very limp beneath his hard hands and watchful
eyes. Ready for trickery Big Bill, while he bore down hard on the left
shoulder, and wrenched and twisted at the corded neck, expected
anything. He had considerably less respect for a Jap than for a horse,
looking upon the race as mimicking apes and not men at all, and he had
no wish to be bested by a Jap trick. Yet Big Bill didn't understand.
Somehow Wayne Shandon slipping out of Bill's grasp like an eel through
its native mud, had run an arm under his left arm pit, around his neck,
over his right shoulder. Wayne's left hand leaped to Big Bill's right
wrist. Bill felt that his neck was breaking, that his right arm was
broken. And then he knew that Wayne was upon his knees, that his own
two hundred and fifty pounds of big battling body were lifted high from
the floor, that he was jerked sideways and slammed down. And then the
boys were laughing and Wayne stood over him, laughing too, and he knew
that his two big shoulder blades had struck the floor together.
"It's a damn' Jap trick," he muttered, more than half angry now,
flinging himself to his feet. "White man's fightin' I c'n lick every
inch of you from red hair to toe nails."
But Red Reckless was laughing and shaking hands all round and Big Bill
found no one to listen to the explanations he made. One after another
the owner of the outfit greeted warmly the men who were working for
him. Then he swung about, and went back to Big Bill.
"Shake, Bill," he cried. "It was rather a mean trick to do you up
to-night but I couldn't wait until morning. I'll give you another
chance when you like."
Big Bill grinned and his hard brown hand shut tight about Wayne's.
"There'll be lots of chances," he said shortly, his voice fierce, his
black eyes very gentle. "You've come to stay, ain't you, Red?"
A look of vast disgust stole over Garth Conway's face.
"It's Bill and Red as if they're all dogs in one kennel," he muttered.
"It isn't hard to forecast what's going to happen to a range with a
boss like that!"
He waited a little restlessly for Wayne to finish the conversation into
which he had entered with the crowd of cowboys who seemed to have
forgotten that they had a day's work before them. But Wayne Shandon,
too, seemed to have forgotten. He was half sitting on the table, one
leg swinging, his quick hands rolling a cigarette from the "makings"
proffered by Tony Harris, his laughing eyes filled with the joy of home
coming, his tongue already busied with the answering of many rapid fire
questions. No, he hadn't seen all of the world; it was bigger than
they'd think. But he had played "gentleman's poker" with club dudes in
London, he had hunted with niggers and potted many strange things from
an alligator to a cow elephant, he had seen the pyramids--
While Garth lingered at the door, the other men, crowding closer to the
man at the table, grew into a charmed circle about him, a picturesque
congregation in their underclothes of grey and white and washed out
pinks and blues. Within five minutes after the defeat of Big Bill
every man of them was either making or smoking a cigarette with all
thought of their tumbled bunks forgotten. There were many demands for
first hand information concerning wild niggers and pyramids and the
ways of the jungle; there were many exclamations testifying in mild
profanity to startled wonderment. At last Garth, turning away, called
out,
"I say, Wayne, you mustn't forget it's getting late. There's a big
day's work for the boys to-morrow."
"This is my home coming celebration, Garth," Wayne laughed back at him.
"Hang the work, man. We'll have a half holiday to-morrow if the whole
outfit goes to pot."
Anything further Garth had to remark he said angrily to himself as he
strode away to the range house. And Wayne, with no further
interruption, explained how the games ran at Monte Carlo. Finally,
since there was nothing in the world he had learned to love as he loved
horses, he came to speak of the Derby.
"The greatest race in the world," he cried, slapping his thigh
enthusiastically. "Just because it's the straightest and the stakes
are right and the horses are as beautiful as women and as swift as
lightning!"
One o'clock came and they were talking horses and racing, the men now
upon common ground, their eyes bright with the tale retold of the
Kings' race. And before it was two Red Reckless was standing erect
upon his two feet, his eyes brighter than the rest, his voice leaping
out eagerly as he cried:
CHAPTER VI
THE PROMISE OF LITTLE SAXON
Rose-bud, the unlovely Chinese cook, made the dawn hideous in the range
house with his pots and pans and rattling stove lids. To him appeared
Red Reckless, touseled and sleepy eyed looking to the astonished
oriental's vision like an avenging demon, threatening to choke him to
death with his own pigtail and to roast him crisp and brown him in his
own oven if he didn't conduct himself with less noise in his pastime of
breakfast getting.
"Gollee!" Rose-bud found his tongue as Wayne disappeared into his
bedroom. "Led, him come back some more. Led, him boss now!" He stood
grinning in slant eyed cunning at the closed door. "Garth him all same
go bye-bye now, maybeso?" He pondered the question, with his evil
featured head cocked to one side. Then his grin became more profoundly
Chinese, more radiantly joyful. "All same hell pop all time now."
And he went about his preparations for breakfast in strange, complacent
silence, making his coffee twice as strong as he had made it for a
year, the way Red Reckless liked it.
Garth Conway breakfasted alone. A glance out toward the bunk house
against the fringe of trees at the far side of the clearing showed him
that there was no smoke there, that the men were not about. A little
angry spot glowing on each cheek he stepped out upon the porch as
though to bring these slumbering men to a swift awakening. But he
turned instead and came back into the dining room.
"You Chink fool," he flung at Rose-bud when his cup of coffee was set
in front of him. "I don't drink ink for breakfast. What's the matter
with you?"
Rose-bud wrapped his body in his long arms and his face in its childish
smile, lifted his vague hints of eyebrows archly and nodded toward
Wayne's room.
"Led, him come back," he said with unutterable sweetness. "Him like
coffee all same black as hell. Him boss now? Too bad. You damn fine
boss, Mis' Garth."
And he shuffled back to the stove leaving Garth scowling angrily after
him.
Garth breakfasted in morose silence, disregarding the many joyful
glances which Rose-bud directed upon him. Afterward he took out his
pipe and stuffed it full with an impatient finger. The hesitation
which had marked him last night seemed to grow with the slow hours of
the idle morning. He had long been absolute, unquestioned dictator of
the destiny of the Bar L-M, and he had grown naturally into the way of
regarding it half with the eye of its permanent master. It had not
only been his entirely so far as management was concerned for more than
twelve months, but there had been always the possibility that it would
be his to have and to hold, to do with as he thought best, if Wayne
should not come back. But Wayne had come back. The coffee was
eloquent of the fact; the slothfulness of the bunk house shouted it in
his ears. He felt a sense of irritation, of injustice.
"The men will sleep until noon," he growled savagely. "Good heavens,
is he crazy? Must he come back and chuck the whole thing to the dogs?"
There was nothing to do but smoke and wait for the next absurdity of a
man who had played ducks and drakes with everything he had ever had,
who was too big a fool to see--or care, which was it?--what was going
to happen when he had run to the end of his rope.
Wayne, rosy from head to foot from his rough bath towel, tingling with
the leaping life within him, showing no signs of the all but sleepless
night, came out to breakfast before Garth had finished his pipe. He
caught Rose-bud by the two shoulders, drove him back against the wall
and held him there while he spoke to him.
"I've a notion to jam you through into the other room, you yellow
heathen," he informed the cook whose smile was just a trifle uncertain.
"If the coffee is good I'll let you off."
Rose-bud's smile became radiant immediately. He poured out the black
beverage with the air of a magician conjuring a stream of gold from the
old coffee pot, and evinced as great a pleasure in watching Wayne
dispose of his breakfast as Wayne himself manifested in the act. Garth
came back into the room while his cousin was eating.
"Well, Wayne," he said. "What's the bill of fare for the day?"
Shandon nodded, swallowed and bade Garth a cheery "Good morning."
"To-day?" he repeated after his cousin. "I'm just going to get a live
horse between my legs and ride! Big Bill tells me that no man has
thrown a leg over Lightfoot's back since I left, and that she's just
full of hell and mustard and aching for a scamper. Bill knows where
she is; he's going with me to help round her up and then . . ."
"Well?" questioned Garth drily. "You're going to work on her to-day?"
Shandon laughed.
"Who said anything about work? You're growing to be an awful
sobersides, old fellow. Here I haven't been back twenty-four hours and
you're already suggesting that I shove my neck into the yoke. Now, you
ought to know better than that."
Garth drew deeply at his pipe, his lips tight about the stem.
"You haven't changed much, Wayne," he said presently.
"Who wants to change?" Shandon retorted lightly. "One would think I'd
been away ten years and it was time for grey hairs and long hours of
sitting still in the sun." He favoured his cousin with a merry,
searching glance and added, "You haven't changed much yourself that I
can see."
For no apparent reason Conway flushed slightly and then frowned.
"I had a good hard day's work cut out for the boys," he said casually.
"You're finding plenty to keep them busy, I'll bet," grinned Shandon.
"Yes," carelessly. "We're a bit short handed just now and there is
always a lot to do. I've let a man go here and there when he was just
eating his head off for us. A half day lost means that much more hard
work to be made up."
"Get them busy then, will you, Garth? It's decent of you to save all
you could for me, but hang it, don't mind putting on a new man when we
need him. The boys have had enough sleep by now and I've sort of
slipped out of the routine of the work. Will you go ahead and run the
outfit for me until I get back into it? It would be a big favour to
me."
Conway swung about toward the door eagerly, and so swiftly that Shandon
did not see the light that sprang up in his eyes.
"Glad to," he called back as he went out. "Take your time about
getting back into the traces, Wayne."
"Good old Garth," Shandon muttered with deep satisfaction. And then he
turned his attention again to the biscuits and bacon.
Garth went immediately to the bunk house. He found the men all asleep;
he left them all wide awake.
"Tony," he cried sharply, "come alive there and get the boys some
breakfast. You men know that Mr. Shandon is back, don't you? Do you
want him to think that this is the way we've been attending to his
business for him while he was gone? Bill, get a couple of horses
saddled while Harris is getting breakfast for you, and as soon as you
eat report at the house with them. You are to help find Lightfoot."
The boys scrambled out of their bunks, and Tony Harris in picturesque
night raiment was thrusting paper and kindling into his stove before
Garth had gone ten steps from the door he had slammed behind him. Did
they want Wayne Shandon to think that they had neglected his interests
in his absence? Not by a jug full, growled Big Bill. And he wasn't
the kind to think it in the first place or to care in the second, he
grunted as he jerked on his overalls and shoved his big feet into his
shoes. Mister Shandon! Huh!
But they took their cue from Conway's sharp words and did not wait for
breakfast to get ready for the day's work. Big Bill was the first in
the corral but the others came trooping after him, roping their horses,
saddling and bringing them to the bunk house door to be mounted swiftly
as soon as the morning meal could be finished. And, as usual little
Andy Jennings saddled an extra horse, a graceful, cat-footed mare,
cream coloured, with white mane and tail, for Garth Conway.
There were few words spoken in the bunk house as the men made their
hurried meal. Steve Dunham demanded to be told if Red was going to let
Conway "run things" for him, or if he was going to be his own foreman
as his brother had been before him. More than one man lifted his
shoulders at the question. And since there was no answer to be given
yet, since that was the one thing they were all thinking about, it was
almost a wordless meal.
In a little while Garth Conway was back at the bunk house and swung up
into the saddle, his perfect animal, his own graceful form, his
somewhat picturesque costume, riding breeches, puttees, wide soft hat
and gauntlets making a bit of pleasant colour against the
commonplaceness of the ranch yard. He waited impatiently a few minutes
until the men came out and then rode away toward the lower end of the
valley ordering them curtly to follow him. It was Garth's way; they
didn't know what the day's work was to be, although they might come
close to guessing, until he chose to tell them. Big Bill alone
remained behind, making his way with two horses to the house, where
Wayne came down the steps to meet him.
"Hello, Bill," Wayne greeted him lightly. "Feeling sore this morning?"
"Hello, Red," Big Bill retorted with what was meant to be a scowl but
which twisted itself in spite of him into a widening grin. "Not sore
outside, seein' as I fell easy. Jus' kinda sore inside thinkin' you'd
go an' play a low down Jap trick on a man. But nex' time . . ."
He shook his head in mock sorrow thinking of the thing that was going
to happen to the merry eyed man from whom he took his pay.
Red laughed, strapped on the spurs clinking at the saddle horn, vaulted
from the steps to his horse's back and bending suddenly forward shot
ahead of Big Bill, and sped toward the upper end of the valley where
the unused horses were grazing. The cowboy, racing behind him, watched
him with shrewd eyes and a grunted comment that he hadn't forgotten how
to ride.
When the horses had "run off" their early morning restlessness the two
men drew them down to a swinging walk and riding side by side found
much to talk about. Shandon asked about this, that and the other
horse, giving each its name as if they were men he spoke of, and Big
Bill reported promptly and in full detail. Brown Babe had been sick
during the winter; a cold running on until it was touch and go if she'd
go down with the pneumonia. Doc Trip had taken a hand though, Bill
himself having ridden thirty miles to fetch the cowboy who had a rude
skill as a veterinary and no little reputation with it, and Brown Babe
had pulled through as good as a two year old. Her colt out of Saxon?
Say there was a bit of horse flesh for you! Close to three year old
now and never a rope on him. Little Saxon they called him. Little?
Big Bill laughed softly. The name had stuck since he had been a colt.
He was bigger than his dad already, although not so heavy, of course,
and he had more speed right now than his mother ever thought of having.
If they ever did put on a race--Endymion, Little Saxon's full brother?
Big Bill shook his head and spat thoughtfully. Sold six months ago.
"Sold?" cried Shandon sharply. "Who sold him?"
"Conway, of course. He's the only man as has sold any Bar L-M stock."
Shandon started to speak, then closed his lips tightly. Big Bill
looked at him quickly, then drew his eyes away and let them rest upon
his horse's bobbing ears.
"Of course Garth couldn't know that I didn't want any of the horses,
the best horses, sold," Shandon said quietly after a moment. "I wrote
to him to use his own judgment in all things, to sell and buy as he
thought best. It isn't his fault but-- Hang it, I'm just a little
sorry I didn't think to tell him. Who bought Endymion, Bill?"
"Sledge Hume," answered Big Bill. "He was crazy stuck on the colt the
firs' time he ever laid eyes on him. I guess Conway held him up for a
pretty stiff price too. He sure had the chance."
"So Hume bought Endymion," said Shandon thoughtfully. And he seemed
less pleased than before. "Oh, well, we'll see what we can do with
Little Saxon."
"Little Saxon's a better horse any day in the week," cried Big Bill
loyally. "He ain't got the stren'th yet, of course, an' he ain't got
the savvy as comes with trainin'. But he's got the speed an' he's got
the spirit. Lord, Red, you've got a horse there! Wait ontil you see
him runnin' with the herd. He don't eat dust off nobody's heels."
Shandon's eyes brightened. He had seen possibilities in the two year
old before he went away, when the colt belonged to Arthur, and it was
good to know that Little Saxon had fulfilled the promise of youth. And
he saw too, a morning's work ahead of him, such work as the leaping
spirit of Red Reckless loved. A wild scamper across the upper end of
the narrow valley, skirting the lake perhaps; a headlong race after a
horse born of Brown Babe and the high spirited stallion Saxon; the
swinging of a rope in a hand that had not known the feel of one for a
year; and the final conquest that would come when at last that rope
settled about the defiant neck.
"For we'll get Lightfoot first, Bill," he said eagerly. "Little
Saxon'll have to go some when I've got Lady Lightfoot under me. And
then we'll take the three year old in and begin breaking him."
Big Bill chuckled joyously. And as Garth had said before him he
muttered that Wayne Shandon hadn't changed much.
As they rode the valley widened for a little before them, the steep
wall of cliffs and crags drawing back upon the right, lifting their
crests ever higher, topped by few scattering pines, firs and tamaracks.
Here and there a giant cedar flourished in isolated majesty, lifting
its delicately formed cones a hundred and fifty feet above its ancient,
gnarled roots. The valley itself was for the most part clear of timber
and scrub. The herds had not yet come up here this year, and would not
come until the lower end had been thoroughly fed off. For here there
would be grazing land in abundance until the winter came and all herds
must be moved to the pastures far down the mountains where the snow
fall was never more than a few thawing inches.
Conversation between the two men died down as they pushed deeper into
the solitudes. When they had ridden a couple of miles, the valley
narrowed again, the timber line crept in closer at every yard, the
mountains drew in abruptly and rose more precipitously in sheer,
frowning, dominant majesty, the river shot hissing down its rocky
course, a wild thing plunging madly toward freedom and an open world.
So with few words, each man's thoughts wandering as chance and the
river and mountains directed them, Shandon and Big Bill rode slowly.
That trail brought them at last down close to the edge of the stream as
the banks on either hand drew closer together until finally the water
choked and fumed and thundered through a narrow pass. Here they must
turn away from its course, climbing a steep shoulder of the mountain,
making a difficult way along a seldom used trail, until they came to
the crest of the ridge which shot down from the right. Another fifty
yards, almost level going, a steep descent and suddenly the fury of the
river was but a faint rumbling in their ears, the stillness of the
mountains crept down on them and they were at the margin of Laughter
Lake.
With a sigh long, deep, lung filling, Wayne Shandon curbed his horse to
a standstill. Big Bill turned his head away and a little hurriedly
sought for his "makings." For Big Bill had a memory, as so many sons
of the frontier places have, a memory that filed and kept record of
little things as well as of what the world calls big things. He
remembered the day when Wayne Shandon had last ridden here, just the
day before Arthur was killed. Wayne and Arthur had come here together;
Arthur with some business reason, of course; equally of course Wayne in
a mere spirit of idling. The younger brother had ridden along to try
out a new rifle he had bought--
"Come on, Bill. Let's find the horses."
Wayne leaned forward suddenly in the saddle, loosened his reins and
touched his horse's sides with his spurred heels. And so they raced
along the side of the lake as they had raced from the range house, Red
Reckless sitting straight in the saddle, his head lifted, his broad hat
pushed far back, his tall, powerful body swaying gracefully, easily
with his horse's stride.
They found Lady Lightfoot with a herd of half wild animals in a little
hollow beyond the head of the lake. A great snorting and stamping, a
flinging aloft of proud heads upon arching necks, the flurry of manes
and tails, black, red, white, all confused in a rush of colour, the
hammering thud of unshod hoofs on soft grassy soil and the herd had
followed Lady Lightfoot's lead in wild flight toward the far end of the
tiny valley. A wonderful creature was Lady Lightfoot, trim and slender
and graceful as a maiden, her coat a little rough from her year in the
woods, her silken mane snarled, but her spirit showing in the toss of
her head, the cock of her ears, the flare of her nostrils, the fire of
her eyes.
"Watch!" yelled Big Bill as he and Shandon thundered along after them,
their ropes already in their hands, nooses widening. "See who takes
her lead away from her!"
It was half a mile to the far end of the little valley where the almost
sheer pitch of the mountains would bring the fleeing animals to a stop.
And before they had gone a hundred yards Wayne Shandon's eyes had
discovered Little Saxon.
The colt had been almost the last of the two score horses when their
startled flight began; already he was seeking the place that was
rightfully his, already he had passed half of the herd and running like
some great greyhound, was eating up the distance which lay between his
outstretched nose and Lady Lightfoot's flickering hoofs. A horse to be
seen in a flash by a knowing eye even in a herd many times bigger than
this one. A king of a horse, standing a hand taller than the tallest
of his companions, with great flowing muscles moving liquidly, with
iron lungs under a vast iron chest, with a neck every fine line of
which revealed the racing thoroughbred, with tireless strength in the
tensing shoulders and hips, with speed in the delicately formed,
slender legs; running easily, every leaping stride hurling his great
body in advance of some one of the other horses, his floating mane and
tail spun silk that flashed in the sun like shimmering gold, his
flashing hoofs like a deer's for dainty grace, his coat a deep, rich,
red bay.
"Watch him run!" shouted Big Bill. "Watch him run!"
Two lengths behind Lady Lightfoot, a length . . . and then Little Saxon
had slipped by, flashed by, passed like a gleam of summer sunlight, and
the mare snapped viciously at the lean, clean body that brushed against
her own, robbing her of her place. Big Bill laughed joyously.
"Jealous as a cat, huh, Red? See that?"
"And no man has ever ridden him," muttered Shandon. "Only one man is
ever going to ride you, Little Saxon."
But that day they did not take Little Saxon with them back to the home
corrals; it would be many a day yet before Little Saxon's training
began, before his proud spirit compromised with steel and leather and a
master's hand.
With half the distance to the far end of the little valley passed,
Little Saxon was a length ahead of Lady Lightfoot, his quivering
nostrils scenting danger behind, free range and freedom ahead. Thus
Little Saxon first, Lady Lightfoot jealously guarding and keeping her
place as second in the headlong flight, a slim barrelled sorrel close
at the Lady's heels, the rest of the horses following in a close packed
body, the fleeing animals came to the natural bulwark which the
mountains lifted before them. Their ropes swinging in ever widening
loops, hissing swifter and swifter until in broadening circles they
sang shrilly, Wayne Shandon and Big Bill swept on after them.
"Lightfoot first!" cried Shandon sharply. "It's too rocky, Bill--"
The ground was too broken to chance putting a rope over the defiant
neck of the three year old who had never known what it was to have hemp
touch his lithe body. With Lady Lightfoot it was different. She would
leap aside, she would throw her head one way or the other as she saw
the lasso leave the hand of her would-be captor; but once it touched
her she would stop stone still, too wise, too experienced to struggle
against the inevitable.
At last the fleeing horses stopped, whirled and with up-pricked ears
and flashing eyes waited and watched. Lady Lightfoot's angry snort
trumpeted her fear and defiance; she moved not so much as a muscle
except of her eyes which swept swiftly back and forth from Big Bill to
Shandon, from Shandon to Big Bill. Then, as almost at the same instant
two ropes sped their hissing way toward her she leaped forward, swerved
aside, dropped her head a little--and then, instead of breaking into a
wild flight, she bunched her four feet and slid to a trembling
standstill before either rope had tightened about a steel saddle horn.
"Wise ol' lady," chuckled Big Bill as he and Shandon rode closer to the
mare coiling their ropes. "Ain't forgot who's who, have you, Lady?"
The other horses saw their chance and took it. Little Saxon in the
lead from the first terrified leap, they shot by Lady Lightfoot,
swerved widely about Shandon, and were off and away down the valley.
"Let 'em go," cried Shandon. "We'll follow in a minute and drive them
on down to the corrals."
He swung down from his saddle and went up to Lady Lightfoot's high
lifted head, a head that rose higher in the air as he drew near.
Laying a gentle hand on the quivering nose, he rubbed it softly,
speaking to the animal in a tone that coaxed and soothed and assured.
He talked to her as a man talks who loves a horse, understands it--as
he might talk to a human being. And Big Bill, watching, nodded and
grunted approval as he saw Shandon slip the hard bit between the strong
teeth, and at last swing up into the saddle and turn a high spirited
but well trained and obedient mare down the valley after the runaways.
Fifteen minutes later they caught up with the stragglers of Little
Saxon's followers. And it was then that Little Saxon snorted his last
defiance at pursuit and achieved his freedom.
The animals had been driven again into a woodland _cul de sac_. Here
there was a wide reaching plot of grassy, unbroken soil, and here the
two men counted upon teaching the three year old his first lesson of
the supremacy of man. As they drew nearer their ropes were again
ready, trailing at their sides. Again the horses drew close together,
bunched in a mass of watchful distrust. Little Saxon alone held
slightly apart, his great head lifted high, scenting mischief. He saw
the ropes before they were lifted, and at the first whirl of hemp into
the hated loop he knew instinctively that it was he whom they
threatened.
"We've got him," grunted Big Bill, confident too soon of easy victory.
Behind the herd rose the cliffs, in front the men came on and at the
side was a deep gorge, so steep sided that a horse would not think of
going down into it, washed wide by the spring torrents. It never
entered Big Bill's head nor Wayne Shandon's nor the heads of the
terrified companions of Little Saxon that there was a way in that
direction open for flight. But Little Saxon saw his enemies coming
threateningly nearer and he took his chance. He drew back until his
golden tail swept the granite cliffs; he paused there a brief second,
with flashing eyes, measuring chance and distance; he gathered his
great muscles as he had never gathered them before; his vast chest
swelled to a mighty sigh; and then, before Wayne Shandon or Big Bill
had guessed the plan that had risen in his brain he had wagered his
life against his liberty.
"Back, Bill!" shouted Shandon warningly, throwing Lady Lightfoot back
on her haunches, swinging her away from the plunging three year old.
"He's going to jump!"
"God!" yelled Big Bill, as he too jerked his horse back. "He'll break
his neck!"
They saw the big horse running, already as a blur of speed before he
had done the thirty yards to the rock walled gorge, saw the glinting
light from floating mane and tail, heard the thunder of his pounding
hoofs, and then--
Then Little Saxon put into his gliding muscles all of the thoroughbred
spirit that was in his blood, and taking recklessly his one chance he
hurled his great body forward, leaping splendidly. For an instant as
that rebellious, beautiful body was suspended in mid air, high above
certain death, neither man breathed. Then, with the sharp sound of
hard hoofs striking hard rock, Little Saxon landed easily and safely
upon the far side, and his silken mane, flowing tail and red bay hide
shining with a metallic gleam in the sunlight, he had passed on,
through the trees, into an open trail, around a bend and out of sight.
Big Bill rode close up to the gorge.
"I wouldn't jump a horse acrost that for a million dollars!" he said,
wondering at what he had seen.
And Wayne Shandon, his eyes very bright, his face a little flushed,
cried eagerly,
"A mere horse, no. But Little Saxon isn't that! He's more clean
spirit than horse flesh!"
Big Bill did not answer. Perhaps he had not heard. He was thinking:
"When he does break Little Saxon--that wild devil of a man on that wild
devil of a horse-- What a pair of them!"
CHAPTER VII
THE GLADNESS THAT SINGS
"Well?" laughingly. "Don't you know me?"
Wayne Shandon, riding idly down a lane through the pines, had come
close before he saw her sitting with her back to a tree, her camera and
empty lunch basket lying beside her. He had left Big Bill and had come
on alone, passing around the head of the lake and following the trail
which Little Saxon's flying hoofs had made in the fresh sod. Now, as
with a quick hand upon Lady Lightfoot's reins he came to a stop, he
very promptly forgot all about Little Saxon.
The girl, leaving Gypsy tethered beyond a grove of firs, had found upon
the skirt of a densely wooded slope a spot that was like a corner of a
woodland fairyland, dim and dusky and sweet scented. The noontide was
warm with the rippling sunlight above, a down-filtering ray touched her
bare head and dropped flecks of gold in her braided hair.
Shandon, motionless for a little, did not speak nor did his expression
change except that it grew more frankly filled with admiration, with
sheer wonder at her loveliness.
"Really," she bantered, still laughingly, not to be confused by her old
playfellow's look. "I'm neither ghost, goblin nor evil spirit, nor
anything worse than just a girl, you know!"
"Are you . . . just a girl?" He raised his hand slowly, lifting his
hat. But not yet did he smile back into her smiling eyes. She had
never seen him so grave. "I don't know. You are not the same girl I
used to know."
"Why, Wayne," she retorted merrily. "It's only a year. You weren't
expecting wrinkles already, were you?"
The steadiness of his gaze made her wonder. His eyes clung to hers for
a long moment, left them to travel swiftly up and down the sweet young
body that was no longer the body of "just a girl," noted how
wonderfully the promise of girlhood had been fulfilled in budding
womanhood, came back to her hair and throat and smiling mouth, rested
again upon her eyes.
"You are not the same Wanda I used to know," he insisted soberly,
shaking his head at her. "Not the Wanda I used to play with at school,
to hunt birds' nests with, to steal apples for, to fight other boys
for. Who are you, you wonderful thing?"
"The same Wanda," she told him merrily. "And, if you please, not a
_thing_ at all."
"Do you remember," he went on quietly, still gently serious, "the day
when I whipped little Willie Thorp for you?"
"Yes," she answered lightly, yet not remembering all that he
remembered. "Of course. You--"
"You came and put both little fat, warm, sun-burned arms round me and
kissed me then, Wanda. Would you kiss me now?"
"You should have said that last night," she dimpled up at him. She
thought she knew him too well to take him seriously when he dropped
into one of his bantering moods, just trying perhaps to see if he could
drive a little flush of confusion into her cheeks. "I was so glad to
see you, I might have forgotten I had grown up. That we have grown
up," she said.
"I wish I had," he said abruptly, flinging his head up with the old
gesture she remembered so well. "Wanda, you are the most wonderful
girl-woman in the world! What has happened to you? What have you done
to yourself? What have you done to your eyes? Do you know, Miss Wanda
Leland--are you a little witch and do you do it on purpose?--that those
two eyes of yours can make madness in a man's soul?"
"Flatterer!" she countered brightly. "Have you been a whole year
making pretty speeches, and must you keep it up now because you've got
into the habit and since the pretty ladles of your travels are not here
and I am? Aren't you a little bit ashamed of yourself? Aren't you
afraid that you will create havoc by putting a lot of foolish ideas
into a country girl's head?"
He laughed at last, becoming suddenly the same old Red Reckless that he
had always been, and swung down lightly from the saddle. Dropping Lady
Lightfoot's reins to the ground he came to where Wanda sat and having
stood over her a moment looking down into the clear eyes which were
turned frankly up to him he made himself comfortable at her feet,
stretching luxuriously in the warm grass.
"It's great to be back, Wanda," he said musingly, with a deep sigh of
content. "You are going to squander a little of your precious time on
me, aren't you? I've been deucedly energetic all morning; now I'm just
brimful of sunshine and laziness. So lazy that I want just to smoke
and watch you and listen while you talk. You will have a whole lot to
tell me about all the things you've been doing while I was away."
[Illustration: "I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you
talk."]
She gathered her knees into her clasped hands and smiled down upon the
flaming red hair. Before he made his cigarette she found herself
answering his questions, telling about her life during his absence.
As she talked she saw his face only now and then when he turned a
little to laugh up at her over some trifle that amused him. The story
of this year of her life as she told it was a simple, homely little
tale, a quiet pastoral of happy content. It had to do largely with
herself and her work, with her failures and successes. But she
mentioned both Garth and Sledge Hume.
"Hume?" said Shandon, looking up quickly, this time with no laughter in
his eyes. "Have you seen much of that man, Wanda?"
"A good deal. He and father and Garth seem to have some kind of
business together. Why?"
"Because I don't like him," he told her emphatically. "I don't like to
have you know a man like that."
She did not mention Hume again. She admitted frankly that she herself
disliked the man although she had tried to think well of him because he
was a friend of her father. Running on with the account of her winter
adventures, and laughing at the memory of an incident that had been
serious enough at the time, she told him how she had imperilled her
life in heedless pursuit of the snow-shoe rabbit. Her mood, gay for
the moment, was the sort to make light of things which had merely cast
a shadow and gone; it was as though from the very presence of Wayne she
had accepted his theory of life, the ability to live keenly, richly in
the present, to be oblivious with sealed eyes to the future, careless
with deaf ears to the mutterings of the past. She was talking freely,
spontaneously, laughing from the very joy of life and the morning and
another joy which she did not analyse, looking down at the sunlight
caught flaring in his hair. And he, vastly contented, listened and
laughed with her.
Then, in the midst of the recital of her last winter's mishap which she
strove to make as unimportant as she now considered it, she looked down
at Wayne Shandon and suddenly broke off in the middle of a word. He
had dropped his cigarette, the hand that she could see had shut tight
into a whitened fist, the colour of a second ago had seeped out of his
bronzed cheek. As she stopped, wondering, he sprang to his feet and
towered over her.
"Wanda!" he cried, and his voice was as unfamiliar in her ears as the
view of his drawn face in her eyes.
"Wayne!" she said curiously, staring at him, startled and a little
afraid of she knew not what. "Wayne! What is it?"
"What is it?" Shandon's voice had dropped lower, was so hoarse that it
did not seem Wayne Shandon's voice at all. "It is just this--"
He broke off as sharply as she had done and moving swiftly as though
driven by some great compelling force which dominated him he stooped
and swept her up into his arms. She felt the tightening muscles as he
drew her close, closer to him; felt a little tremor running through his
whole body; heard the beating of his heart; was drawn nearer to him
than she had ever been drawn to a man in her life; realised for the
first time in a flutter of many sweeping emotions how superbly big and
powerful the man was, how almost god-like in the beauty of his muscular
manhood . . . and then she knew nothing but the wonderful fact that he
had kissed her full upon her quivering red mouth.
"My God, Wanda, how I love you!" he exclaimed with sudden wild,
unleashed vehemence. "Do you hear me?" He was holding her a little
away from him, his arms still shaking about her shoulders, his voice
frightening her with the vibrant fierceness that had leaped into it,
the love in his eyes glowing like fire. "I love you so that I'd go
through Hell to have you, to have you for mine, all mine! So that I
might fight a man for daring to look at you, that I might kill a man
for harming you! Wanda, girl, I tell you that I love you! Do you
understand? Do you know what that means? What love means? When a man
loves a woman as I do?"
Always a man of impulse, a man who through years of habit had grown to
act swiftly in little things and big things alike, Wayne Shandon flung
into impassioned words the emotions which swept through his soul and
brain. The sight of Wanda Leland, grown into the sweet, pure beauty of
early womanhood, had stirred him to the depths. Her casual mention of
other men, Garth, and Sledge Hume, had displeased him so vaguely that
he had not fully understood or cared why. And then the light allusion
to the danger of death in which she had stood had been the spark in the
powder train of his love, his words exploded from the seething
consciousness newly awakened, fires long smouldering unsuspected in his
heart burst forth in a mighty conflagration of emotion.
Throughout his whole being there was a strange, new, throbbing
buoyancy, the gladness that sings, the joy that sparkles. The elixir
of life had been set suddenly before him. He did not taste and put it
away as some men do; he did not sip sparingly and temperately; but he
drank deeply and swiftly so that the wine of love tingled through his
blood, made his brain reel and his heart grow hot. It intoxicated his
soul and his senses with a rare, glorious intoxication.
He tossed his head back, holding her still a little further from him,
and looked into her eyes. His own had changed now, changed utterly in
their eloquent speech. They had been fierce, now they grew wonderfully
tender. They had been clear and bright and eager; and now they were
misty. The first flame of love had leaped through his blood; now an
infinite yearning, as gentle as tears, rose from his heart. Love had
clamoured, now love was whispering. Love had been insistent; now it
pleaded. It had been masterful; now it knelt.
"You love me--_like that_?"
The tumult in the man's soul had awakened conflicting emotions under
the troubled, tremulous breasts. She looked at him with wide, clear
eyes, wondering. A miracle, the old, eternal, primal miracle, had
entered her life. She had looked down, laughingly, on a careless boy;
she had been gripped mightily in the arms of a being new to her, a man
who loved. From the clear blue of her life's sky there had leaped out
a flash of lightning that filled the universe with its light and heat.
They had been two gay loitering children; now she saw the man shaken in
the gust of his passion.
"You love me--_like that_?"
"God forgive me, yes!"
His voice was steady now but low, scarcely louder than her awed
whisper. He dropped his arms, letting them fall lingeringly, and
stooping a little, touched her forehead with his lips.
"And," he said with a reverence which stirred her more than his rude
embrace had done, "I love you like this, dear."
More often than not the story of one's life is a smooth running tale,
the day's page turning gently, going on with the unfinished sentence of
yesterday, the end of each little chapter guessed before it has been
read. But there are times when the leaves no longer turn slowly but
are caught in a sudden gust that sends them fluttering like dead leaves
in a September gale; when life no longer loiters, but leaps when the
unseen end of the chapter is a mystery, when the letters on the page
are shining gold or fiery red.
Such a time had come into Wanda Leland's life. In one swift moment she
had risen to a pinnacle, she had looked down upon the level lowlands
from the heights. The monotony of the commonplace receded and was
lost; the aspect of life upon which she looked was wonderful and new.
There had been a change within her. She was no longer the Wanda Leland
she had been a moment ago, the Wanda Leland she had been throughout the
years of her life. Nor would she ever be exactly that same Wanda
Leland again.
Revelation had been lightning, two-tongued. It showed her herself; it
explained, it touched with light, it made distinct the shadowy things
that had long lain in her breast. And it showed her Wayne Shandon as
she had never seen him.
For years they had been playfellows, frank, almost boyish, both of
them. Now her heart was beating wildly from the very touch of him.
Had she always loved him? Had he always loved her? Was this
wonderful, new thing, love, without beginning as it surely was without
end?
She looked wonderingly into his eyes. Her own, like his, were clear,
bright one moment, starry with a dimness as of unshed tears the next.
Tenderness, like a mist, filled them.
"I love you, Wayne," she said, her voice low, trembling just a little,
but clear. "I want you all mine as you want me. So that if you went
up to Heaven or down to Hell I could go with you."
"Wanda!" he said. "_Wanda_."
She smiled a little at him and put out her two hands.
CHAPTER VIII
"A GAME OF BLUFF AND THE GAMBLER WINS!"
The spirit of unrest which Wanda had felt vaguely the night before did
not depart with the passing of the darkness. Something was wrong,
radically wrong at the Echo Creek ranch house. Since the unexpected
home coming of Red Reckless there had been a subtle difference, a
ruffling of the waters which usually ran so placidly at the country
home, a darkening and disturbation of the surface which hinted at
hidden whirlpools and cross currents.
It was from the master of the household that the day took its colour.
In his own room last night he had been restless, sleepless until very
late. Mrs. Leland had heard him walking up and down, had heard the
noise of his pipe against his tobacco jar many times after the hour
when Martin was in the habit of having his last smoke. In the morning
he was up and dressed before Julia had built her fire. All day he was
strangely pre-occupied and silent. He seemed scarcely to notice Wanda
when she came into the dining room to give him his good morning kiss.
That was unlike him. Both women noticed it.
After breakfast he did not go out. Instead he went immediately to his
study, telling Julia sharply that she need not come in to sweep this
morning as he was going to be busy. It was one of the few times he had
spoken at all that morning, but not the first time he had spoken
irritably. Mrs. Leland's eyes, following him were troubled.
In his private room he sat long at his big oaken table, his brows drawn
thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed in deep speculation. The tenseness of
the man's still figure, the gleam of the darkening eyes, the obvious
moody abstraction told that some vital question had come to him for its
answer, that he was fighting it out sternly, that the issue was one of
those great issues of life which come soon or late and which must be
decided, yes or no, upon the battle ground of a man's soul.
Three months ago he had done a thing from which, at first, his finer
manhood had drawn back rebelliously. But--he had done it. There had
been a struggle then between the two nicely balanced qualities which go
to make up a human personality. The nice balance had been disturbed by
clever generalship rather than by open battle. Specious reasoning,
aided and abetted by the temptation of a rare opportunity, further
reinforced by an emotion which was more or less selfish even while it
masked itself as a public and private duty, had routed the sterner
sense of justice of which the man was, not without reason, proud. He
had in the end taken the step; being done it had since then been
dismissed to a shadowy corner of his mind by his own strength of
character; when he had thought of it had only grown stronger in his
belief that he had done rightly. And now a man whom he had never
expected to see again had come home; the question closed three months
ago was still an open question.
A grave, strong minded man, calm by nature, after sixty years of the
life of the mountains and forests, he thought to decide each action
upon its own merit or demerit and to see that quality clearly, keeping
his vision free of emotional mists. With such a man right and wrong
are two distinct entities, sharply separate, with no debateable land.
An action may not partake of each; it must stand forth black or white.
A motive may not be enshrouded in uncertainty; it must be right or it
must be wrong.
He questioned himself sternly to-day, frowningly concentrating his mind
upon each point as he struggled with it. The time had come now when
the decision he made must be one of absolute finality.
"What I am doing is a grave thing," he told himself over and over. "An
unscrupulous man would do it in a flash; a weak man might be afraid of
it. I must be neither unscrupulous nor cowardly; I must be just. And
is not justice with me? Would I not be punishing the guilty, would I
not be in a position to reward Garth Conway for a life of faithful
service, would I not be justified in protecting my own interests, the
interests of my wife and daughter?"
Already, unconsciously, he was seeking to discover for his groping mind
the arguments which would acquit him in his own judgment and justify
him.
"I hate him," he muttered, "God knows I hate him. But is that the
reason I am striking at him? I should be wrong if for purely personal
motives I sought to wreck vengeance upon him. But he is guilty, as
guilty as hell! It would not be vengeance, it would be retribution. I
should but be taking into my hands the work which God had set at my
fingers' ends."
His problem instead of clarifying became complicated with involved
motives. He told himself grimly that the thing which he had begun was
just, merely just. If the courts of law did what he was doing and
stopped with it men's voices would cry out against a retribution gone
blind and decrepit, maudlin with mercy.
He went once to his safe in the corner, took out a document and stood
looking at it thoughtfully for a long time. Finally he replaced it.
"I can ruin him, I can break him utterly," he said slowly. "I can
wrest from him the thing which he took brutally with bloody hands.
Because I am to profit where he loses must I hold back? The law may
never reach him. Is it right then that he should go unpunished? The
fortune which one day I shall leave to Wanda will be either swelled or
diminished as I decide. Have I the right to draw back now?"
The day dragged on, the conflict within the man's soul continued.
Until noon he was in his study. At the dinner table he was silent,
morose, and ate little. He made no comment upon Wanda's absence;
perhaps he did not notice it. Mrs. Leland, understanding readily that
Wayne Shandon's return had its bearing upon her husband's heavy mood,
found little to say. She could only hope wistfully that for a little
Wayne would come to the house seldom, that Martin would grow used to
having him in the neighbourhood, and that in the end he would content
himself with ignoring the man whom she knew he disliked, distrusted and
suspected. She thought that she understood fully what she grasped only
in part.
In the afternoon again, Leland withdrew to his private room, again the
battle between motives and desires raged hotly. It so happened that
Wayne Shandon, appearing at a critical moment, brought about a decision.
Leland was standing before his window, his smouldering eyes frowning at
the meadow down which Spring had come, scattering buttercups to mark
her passing. He had not noticed the glossy chalices brimming with
sunlight; the springtime had had no softening effect upon his absorbed
and troubled mood. But presently the sight of two figures riding side
by side down through the pasture whipped a new look into his eyes.
He watched them sharply as they rode toward the house. Their gay
voices came to him lifted into soft laughter; their light merriment, so
in tune with the springtime, fell jarringly on Leland's ears.
"The fellow has the insolence of Satan," he muttered angrily.
For a moment he lost sight of them as they passed behind the stable.
Then, walking, Wanda's face lifted in rosy happiness, Wayne's like a
boy's, eager and glad, they came on to the house. Leland stood stone
still at the window; Wanda, catching sight of him, threw him a kiss.
Wayne, with a brief word to Wanda left her under the cedars in the yard
and came swiftly to the study, the light buoyancy of his step
bespeaking the exhilaration that danced through his blood. He swept
off his hat, put out his hand eagerly as he came into the room, his
eyes filled with the brightness of a supreme happiness.
"I am glad that I found you in," he began impetuously. "I don't know
how I could have waited . . . What's the matter, Mr. Leland?"
For Martin Leland, directing at him a piercing glance whose meaning was
unmistakable, did not unclasp the hands behind his back.
"You had something to say to me," Leland reminded him briefly. "What
is it?"
Shandon met his stare with silent surprise. Then, forcing himself to
speak quietly, as though the insult of Leland's attitude had been
unnoticed, he said:
"I wanted to tell you that I love Wanda, that some day I hope to make
her my wife."
"What!" shouted Leland incredulously. "You--_you_ want to marry my
daughter! _You_!"
"Yes," said Wayne steadily. "I."
Martin's scornful laugh, forced and hard, drove the happiness from
Shandon's eyes and a quick hot flush into his cheeks.
"I knew that you didn't like me," he said sharply. "But I didn't
know--"
"That I have no feeling but utter loathing for you," Leland cut in
coldly. "That I'd kill you like a dog before I'd allow you to disgrace
my name, to wreck my daughter's life. Are you crazy or drunk?"
"I don't understand you," replied Shandon bluntly.
"Then I'll explain so that you will have no difficulty in
understanding." Leland's voice, lifted a little, was hard and bitter.
"I don't desire the continuance of your acquaintance. I don't want
ever to see you again if it can be helped. I don't want you to come to
my home, to speak to my wife or my daughter. I don't want your
presence sullying the air they breathe. I don't want to have any
dealings whatever with you. Have I explained?" he concluded with
cutting sharpness.
"Everything and nothing!" Shandon returned, the flush seeping out of
his face, leaving it grey. "What has happened? Why do you say such
things to me? Good God, man, what have I done?"
For a moment Martin Leland made no reply; nor did his steady gaze waver
from the eyes now as stern as his own which looked straight back at him.
"I don't care to discuss the thing with you, Shandon. You know as well
as I do why I say them. When you pretend not to know you are at once a
liar and a hypocrite."
"I am not a trouble seeker, Mr. Leland." Shandon's voice had grown
husky as he strove with the anger within him. "But I think you know
that you are the first man who has talked to me like that and got away
with it. If I did not know that you are a fair minded man, and that
there has been some hideous mistake somewhere, I'd not listen to those
words even from you. Tell me what you mean."
A contemptuous smile broke the rigid line of Leland's set lips.
"Your theatrical ranting won't get you anywhere with me, Shandon. It
is the thing to be expected. I am the master of my own house and it is
quite enough when I say that your presence is not wanted here. If you
want more you can supply it yourself. Idler, spendthrift, gambler,
brawler, I have until now tolerated you. But there are some things
that no man can tolerate. You have said that I am fair minded; the
more reason I should wish to be rid of you."
"But," cried Shandon hotly, "the man accused has a right to know--"
"I am not accusing you," interrupted Martin coldly. "I do nothing but
tell you that you are not the kind of man I want my womenfolk to
associate with, not the kind I want to associate with, and that I want
this to be the last time you set foot on my property. If you are not
absolutely without pride of any sort you will not make it necessary for
me to have you put off the ranch!"
"And you won't tell me--"
"So far as I am concerned the conversation is closed. And," drily,
"the door is open."
The anger in Wayne Shandon's heart, unchecked at last, blazed in his
eyes.
"I'll go now," he said shortly. "I have no wish to enter a man's house
where I am not welcome. But what I have said I have meant. I shall
see Wanda when I can, and when she will come to me as she will some
day, I shall marry her."
"You are a fool as well as a scoundrel," shouted Leland as he saw the
other turn toward the door. "Wanda, when she marries, will marry a
gentleman, and not a cur and a coward!"
"Those are hard names, Mr. Leland!"
"Not so hard as another which belongs to you," came the vibrant
rejoinder. "If you dare speak to her again--"
"As I most certainly shall," coolly.
"By God!" cried the old man, his clenched fist raised. "You leave my
girl alone or--"
Caught in a sudden gust of rage such as had not half a dozen times in
his lifetime touched his blood, he strode to his table, snatched open
the drawer and whipped out a revolver.
"Go!" he shouted, his face a fiery red. "Go now, without another word,
or I'll shoot you."
Wayne Shandon's head was flung up with the old gesture, his eyes grew
steely and steady, and his answer was a cool contemptuous laugh.
"You have called me a coward," he said. "You called me a liar." He
came back into the room and sat down upon the edge of the table, not
three feet from Martin Leland. "Now, prove me the coward--or yourself
the liar!"
It was a challenge of sheer reckless impudence, the tempting of a man
whose reason was blind drunk with rage. He looked coolly into Leland's
eyes ignoring the deadly weapon in Leland's hand.
"I am going to roll a cigarette," he said quietly. "I'll stay just
that long."
The fingers which brought out tobacco and papers were unhurried. He
opened the muslin bag, poured the tobacco into the trough of his paper,
and his hands were steady. His eyes left Leland's a moment to make
sure that he was not spilling any of the brown particles; he lifted
them again as he sealed his finished cigarette with the tip of his
tongue. He swept a match along his thigh; then he went out, closing
the door softly, leaving a thin wisp of smoke trailing behind him.
Leland, alone in the study, put his hand to his forehead. It came away
wet with sweat.
"A game of bluff and the gambler wins!" he muttered fiercely. "And
now--God curse me if I spare him!"
His buoyant stride carried Red Reckless swiftly down into the yard
where he had left Wanda. She looked up eagerly as he came swinging on.
Then suddenly her heart stood still, chilled with the quick fear of her
premonition. The smile which Shandon summoned was at once a brave
attempt and a pitiful failure.
"What is it, Wayne?" asked Wanda quickly.
"Your father has forbidden me the ranch," he told her bitterly. "I
don't know exactly why. It came out of a clear sky so far as I am
concerned. He does not want me to come here again; he does not want
you to see me at all, anywhere."
"Wayne!"
"He called me an idler, a spendthrift, a gambler and a brawler," he
went on swiftly. "As I suppose I have been.--There has never been
anything to make me care--until to-day! You won't let what he says
make any difference, Wanda?"
She came closer to him, her eyes brilliant.
"I don't have to answer that question, Wayne," she whispered.
He took her into his arms and kissed the mouth turned up to him, and so
left her. She watched him go down to the stable, watched the tall,
upright form until Lady Lightfoot carried him out of sight through the
pines. Then, her head as erect as her lover's had been, she went
slowly to the house.
CHAPTER IX
THE CONTEMPT OF SLEDGE HUME
The window shades in the study were half drawn so that in the late
afternoon the room was shadowy. From the fireplace crackling flames
cast wavering gleams across the polished oaken table top and the heavy
mission furniture. Leland had not stirred from the chair into which he
had sunk after Wayne Shandon's going. Shandon had been gone an hour;
he had met Garth Conway at the bridge and now Garth was with Leland.
There was no longer in the old man's eye or bearing a hint of the
battle which he had fought all day. He had gone through the hours of
his inner struggle and as it had ended three months ago so had it ended
to-day. He knew that he would not open his mind to consider the
question again. His full piercing eyes were stern and determined.
Purposefully he had set his feet into the path he meant to follow
without swerving. In a moment of hesitation and uncertainty the
supreme argument had come to him; if for no other reason, he must ruin
Shandon to save his own daughter from her folly.
"Garth," he said quietly, his deep voice retaining no trace of the
emotion which had wracked him only an hour ago, "I am very glad that
you have come. I have been expecting you all day."
"I met Wayne," Garth said hastily, watching Leland anxiously. "He was
riding like the very devil. I never saw his face look as it did as he
shot by me. He had been over here?"
"Yes. I had a plain talk with him. I made it clear to him that he was
not again to set foot on my land."
"You didn't tell him--"
"I told him nothing! The man deserves no consideration at my hands.
It is not my affair to tell him." He paused a moment, bending his gaze
thoughtfully upon Conway's troubled face. "You have had time to think.
What are you going to do?"
Garth opened his lips to speak, hesitated and closed them without a
word. The air of uneasiness which he had brought with him into the
room grew more marked. He shifted a little in his chair. Leland,
watching him steadily, waited for him to speak.
"I don't know what to do," Conway blurted out finally. "You were so
sure all the time he'd never come back.--Now if I don't tell him all
about the mortgage and foreclosure there's chance on top of chance
he'll find it out himself before the nine months drag by. And then--"
He flashed a startled glance up at Leland's calm face. "He'd kill me!
What can I do?"
"You can keep your mouth shut," answered Martin tersely. "You still
have his power of attorney, haven't you?"
Garth nodded, his head down again, his fingers nervously busy with his
lip.
"Conway," Leland continued with quiet emphasis, his keen glance
watching for the effect of his words, "in sheer justice you have ten
times more right to be owner of the Bar L-M than that mad fool has.
You have slaved for over a year to make it what it is while he has been
squandering money you had to scrape to send him. Even while Arthur was
alive you were the actual manager. And now all that you have to do is
keep still and you can have the place for a very small fragment of what
it is worth. God knows I wouldn't put foot on it. There is nothing
that the law can touch you for; we have seen to that. Nor will you be
doing a dishonourable thing. It is sheer justice, Garth, that you and
I will be meting out to him."
Conway's cheeks flushed a little, his eyes brightened at the thought of
being some day the owner of the Bar L-M.
"But there's the chance--" he began.
"You are playing for big stakes," Leland reminded him crisply. "Of
course there is a chance. But you exaggerate it. Play the game
through and you will be a rich man before the year is out."
Before Conway could speak there came the clamorous barking of dogs in
the yard and the noise of a horse's shod hoofs. In a moment there was
a heavy booted stride up the steps and along the porch, followed by a
loud rap at the study door. At Leland's nod Garth sprang to his feet
and went quickly to the door, flinging it open.
For a second Sledge Hume's great frame filled the doorway as he paused,
looking in sharply, drawing at his gauntlets. Then, brushing by
Conway, he entered and stood with his back to the fireplace, still
drawing off his gauntlets, his hat still low over his brows.
"Well?" he asked bluntly.
Just the short word, uttered as a command. There would be no wasting
of words before they came straight to business. There was about the
man, emanating apparently from his physical body something oddly like a
materialised aura, bespeaking an aggressive character, a strong,
dominant personality. Conway, alone with Leland, was a school boy in
the presence of his master. Hume, ignoring Garth, challenged that
superiority which Conway's weaker nature acknowledged unconsciously.
The look of his eye, the very carriage of his handsome head, invited
opposition, questioned an authority other than his own. A big, strong
man physically his manner gave the impression that he was a big, strong
man intellectually.
Old Martin did not at once speak but sat very still save for the
restless fingers upon the table top. It was Conway who, after a brief
hesitation, answered.
"We're going to stand pat--"
"I wasn't talking to you, Conway," said Hume coolly. "As far as I am
concerned you aren't even a fifth wheel in this thing and you ought to
know it. I want to know what Leland has got to say."
Garth coloured angrily but made no reply as he turned questioning eyes
to the older man.
"Very well, Mr. Hume," said Leland quietly. "Do you care to sit down
while we thresh things out?"
"No, I'll stand. Go ahead."
"To begin with, Wayne Shandon is back."
"I know he is back," spat out Hume. "That's why I'm here. What are
you going to do now?"
"We are going ahead just as though he weren't here."
"You think that you can put the thing across?"
"Why not?"
"Just because," Hume shot back at him, "it doesn't seem likely that
with the whole country knowing about the foreclosure of the mortgage
somebody isn't going to do some talking."
Leland shook his head.
"Let me sum up the case for you," he said. "Arthur Shandon, the day
before his death, mortgaged the Bar L-M to me for twenty-five thousand.
When time for foreclosure came three months ago Wayne Shandon would
have been notified if he had been here. As it was the notice went to
his legal representative, Garth Conway. Conway allowed the Bar L-M to
go under the hammer and at the sheriff's sale Conway himself bought it
in--"
"For you," interjected Hume.
"Yes, for me. But who knows that? People who paid any attention to
the transaction came to understand that it had been because of Wayne
Shandon's known shiftlessness that the property was allowed to be sold,
they knew that Conway was his agent, and that Conway bought it in.
There is not a man living who knows anything about the matter who does
not believe that Conway bought at Shandon's orders and with Shandon's
money; and that the Bar L-M is Shandon's now and was never in any real
danger from me. Is it likely then, that any man who believes this is,
after this length of time, even going to think to mention the matter to
Shandon?"
"You've got the chance to get by with it," said Hume slowly. "And it's
a damned good chance."
"We all know the sort Shandon is," continued Leland. "I shall be
surprised if he doesn't tire of the life here in six weeks, put through
a sale of cattle, take the money and go again. With him away our
chance becomes a certainty. In any case, I am going ahead with our
work. I have had Garth look into the title of the Dry Lands and he
finds that it is perfect."
"Yes. The land is mine and is clear."
"All we need now is the water and we are going to have that in another
nine months when I shall have a clear deed to the Bar L-M. Garth and
myself have gone ahead as I told you that we would, taking options on
every acre we could get in Dry Valley. Before many days we shall
virtually control the whole of the valley, just the three of us.
Between us Garth and I have expended upwards of fifty thousand dollars
in the last five weeks in options and out-right purchases."
"Let me see the papers," said Hume shortly.
Leland went to the safe and taking out a number of papers, handed them
to Hume.
"All right as far as it goes," Hume said when at length he had finished
his careful examination of the documents and had tossed them to the
table. "You haven't got the Norfolk place nor the Ettinger place.
What's the matter? They are more important to us than all the rest put
together. Did they smell a rat?"
"I don't know. I am confident of closing with Norfolk in a few days,
although I may have to pay him five dollars an acre more than I offered
any one else. Ettinger is holding out for seventy-five thousand
dollars, cash."
"Then he does smell a rat!" Hume's fist came crashing down upon the
mantelpiece. "By God, somebody's been talking too much!"
"Mr. Hume," Leland reminded him sternly, "may I call to your attention
the fact that nobody knows a thing about this matter excepting
yourself, Garth and me? I haven't so much as told my wife--"
"You?" cried Hume hotly. "Who said that you had? You've got brains
enough to hold your tongue. That's why I came to you in the first
place. But Conway here--"
He swung suddenly upon Garth, his eyes flaming, his face distorted with
wrath. Before either of the two men had guessed his purpose he strode
swiftly across the room, and gripping Conway's shoulders with his two
big hands jerked him to his feet.
"Conway," he snarled, his face close to the others, his eyes burning,
his breath hot in Garth's blanched face, "you queer this deal with your
infernal gab and I'll--"
He broke off sharply, flinging Conway backward from him so that the
smaller man's body crashed against the wall.
"Hume!" cried Leland angrily. "I'll have no quarrelling in my house.
If you can't act--"
"I haven't come here to-day for a love feast," sneered Hume, already
forgetting Conway as he whirled upon Martin. "What I've got to say
I'll say my way whether you and your cursed white rat like it or not.
I say that somebody has been talking too damned much! That place of
Ettinger's as it is, without the water, isn't worth twenty-five
thousand. He'd have sold it for that a month ago and glad of the
chance to unload. Now he holds out for seventy-five thousand! What's
the answer? You've dragged Conway into this thing; I haven't. I
wanted no man in it but you and Arthur Shandon and myself. You because
you had the money, Arthur Shandon because he had the lake and the
river. I didn't want Conway. He's your pet, not mine. Now, muzzle
him if you can."
Garth's angry retort, the first word he had said since Hume sprang
unexpectedly upon him, was lost in the low rumble of Martin Leland's
heavy voice.
"You've said what you wanted to say, Mr. Hume. We've heard it. We
understand each other. I can vouch for Conway's discretion. If you
are as careful yourself we are all right. I'll attend to both Ettinger
and Norfolk. I shall also see that at the end of the nine months the
Bar L-M is mine and that we have the water for Dry Valley."
Hume laughed. Without again looking toward Conway he stooped, picked
up the gauntlets he had let fall, and turned to the door.
"You are nobody's fool, Leland," he said patronisingly. "You are
taking a chance in freezing Red Shandon out but the law can't go after
you. And you stand to win a wad of money."
"Mr. Hume," interposed Leland sternly. "I am not taking over the Bar
L-M because there happens to be money in it. I am simply using the
weapon of retribution which God has seen fit to put into my hands--"
"Oh, rot!" grunted Hume sneeringly. "Don't come trying to square your
conscience with me. I say, go to it, if you can get across with it."
He jerked the door open and then stopped suddenly his hand still on the
knob.
"If you do slip up," he said bluntly, "if Red Shandon does hear about
it and gets busy, let me know. If he starts making trouble I can put
him where he'll be out of the way!"
The door closed loudly behind him.
CHAPTER X
SHANDON'S GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
Wayne Shandon had grown more silent, more thoughtful than men had ever
known him. The two things which had come to him, one as unheralded as
the other, the gladness of a deep love, the bitterness which grew out
of Martin Leland's words, he kept to himself. He rode far and alone,
seeing very little of the men of the Bar L-M or of Garth, to whom he
still left the routine of the range, and who made the most of small
pretexts to keep up of Wayne's way. Shandon wanted time to think
coolly and deliberately for the first time in his life; he wanted time
to look inward as well as at what lay without, to cast up the balance
of what sums of good and bad were in his soul.
Until now he had been quite content with life as he found it. It had
afforded him infinite pleasure, it bubbled up sparklingly from the
fountain of contented youth, there had been no need for him to seek to
change its flashing current. Moreover, he had never had an incentive
to bestir himself. But that incentive had come now, a two-pronged
goad; he was compelled to look to himself, to his own positive effort,
for what came next.
Vaguely, at first, he realised that a man if he be a man, has certain
responsibilities. He saw clearly, now that he considered life
seriously, that a man might err in dalliance and idleness just as he
had erred; and he saw too that a man might, like Sledge Hume, go to the
other extreme. A man might grow soft muscled literally and
figuratively in slothful carelessness, or he might grow hard until he
became a machine. He felt dimly that he ought to be doing something
like other men. He wanted his life to live freely as he knew how,
largely as he sought to learn how. And he wanted Wanda.
At first he was like a sea-worthy ship, in a calm with no definite port
in sight. But, in due course, from the one vital fact of his love for
Wanda other facts materialised. To begin with he thought with
diminishing bitterness of old Martin Leland. The man was old, and he
loved his daughter. Rumours of a wild life fly incredibly high and far
and fast. Such rumours of Red Reckless's doings had come to Leland's
ears, and perhaps it was natural enough that Leland believed them.
Shandon had always known his neighbour as a hard man but a just. He
made up his mind not to quarrel with him, but instead to so change the
tenor of his life that Martin Leland would notice and would approve.
If in taking Wanda to her new home he closed her old one to her he
would be hurting her.
He saw clearly, there being little foolish conceit in the man's makeup,
that he was not worthy. And he understood, though vaguely at first,
that it must be his one object now to become as worthy as any man could
be of her. And when the fifth day came and Ruf Ettinger rode to the
Bar L-M with excitement dancing in his eyes and his tongue clacking,
Shandon thought that he saw a beginning.
Ruf Ettinger, a little dried up man of forty-five, was crabbed, cranky,
sour and mean. He had the eyes, nose and brain of a fox, while perhaps
the rest of him, heart and soul, came close to being just plain hog.
He was stingy and suspicious, and people were no more in the habit of
speaking well of him than they were of riding out of their way to stop
at his place. He was the kind of man that makes his wife and children
live in a miserable, two roomed shanty, while he builds a big, warm,
expensive barn for his hay and horses. The only time he was ever
credited with a human emotion was when his favourite dog died; he cried
over it and then got drunk, careless of cost.
Shandon was surprised when he saw Ettinger ride up. He was more
surprised at Ettinger's manner when he insisted on Shandon saddling and
riding with him where there "wouldn't be no chance of bein' overheard."
Once clear of the house and outbuildings and in the valley where his
shrewd little eyes made sure that no other ears than Shandon's would
overhear, Ettinger plunged eagerly into his errand.
In brief it was this: Ettinger owned five hundred acres of valley land,
down in Dry Valley, some thirty miles from the Bar L-M bunk house.
Shandon knew the place well. Ettinger had, also, some money in the
bank. How much it was not his cautious way to say until he was obliged
to. How much would Shandon say his ranch was worth? Shandon did not
know, but hazarded the guess that it might bring twenty-five dollars an
acre. He did not consider it worth more because it was good grazing
land only for part of the year, and like the rest of the valley there
was scant water on it through the summer. Twelve thousand five hundred
dollars?
Ettinger cackled; he could sell it to-morrow for seventy-five thousand!
Shandon began to feel the first dim stirrings of interest. Ettinger's
excitement was too genuine not to awaken certain glimmerings of
interest. Water, that was the thing! Now, if there were water, plenty
of water, in Dry Valley; if a man could flood his land from brimming
ditches then what would happen? The soil was deep and rich; it had
been slipping down from the mountains for centuries; it had never been
worn out by farming. Twenty-five dollars an acre? What were the other
California valley lands worth where there was the same soil, no better
climate and water galore? Napa Valley, Santa Clara Valley, Sacramento
Valley? A hundred dollars an acre was dirt cheap; a man thought
nothing of paying for a small ranch five hundred dollars an acre!
That was true enough, and Shandon knew it. But there was that
tremendous IF.
"It's all right, Ettinger. All but the water! And since the water is
the whole thing, and I don't see where you're going to get it--"
"Wait a minute!" cried Ettinger, his eager hand clutching at Shandon's
arm. "I tell you I'd a sold that ranch for twenty-five dollars an acre
six months ago an' been damn' glad to git out at that. An' right now I
could sell for a hundred an' fifty the acre! An' I'm damned if I do
it! My nose smells somethin' when a man wants that place that bad, an'
I git busy follerin' the smell. If I ever sell at less than two
hundred dollars I'm gone crazy."
His excitement growing as the vision of much gold became clearer, he
ran on with hasty explanations. He had five hundred acres; Norfolk had
close to a thousand and he had made Norfolk begin to think for the
first time in his life. He himself had a little money in the bank and
Norfolk had some. There were other men, little ranchers, whom they
could whip into line. _And Wayne Shandon had the water!_
Shandon looked at him in amazement, thinking at first that the man was
a little mad. But Ettinger's shrewd eyes were sane enough.
"We go right up to your lake," he cried shrilly. "We git busy with
some engineers an' pick an' shovel men. We blow the side of a hill all
to hell an' what happens? The water just comes a bulgin' down into Dry
Creek, an' all we got to do down in the valley, twenty, thirty miles
away, is dig ditches an' watch our land turn into a gold mine!"
In a flash Shandon saw the utter simplicity of the whole scheme.
Whereas now the river from Laughter Lake shot down the mountains
through its rocky gorge, watering his own land and running through
little narrow, rocky valleys to the lower slopes, it might here near
the head be deflected so that it sped at first through the cañon of the
upper Dry Creek, and following a natural course be brought with little
expense to Dry Valley. Ettinger's proposition was no fanciful dream;
it was hard, unvarnished fact. And, as so often happens when a man
sees a radiant possibility, he wondered that he had not seen it for
himself long ago.
Here was the golden opportunity his soul, in a mist, had yearned for!
He shot out his hand gripping Ruf Ettinger's until the little man
squirmed. But even the pain of nearly crushed fingers did not drive
the grin from Ettinger's face.
"You're on," he cried exultantly. "Shandon, we'll frame a deal that'll
make millionaires out of us."
"And man's work!" was the thought stirring Shandon's heart and
brightening his eyes.
They rode on, as Ettinger had planned from the beginning, and covered
the two miles to Laughter Lake in a few minutes. They rode up the
shoulder of the ridge to the level of the lake; and there Ruf
Ettinger's eager finger pointed out where the work was to be done.
It was work which Nature might have planned when the mountains were
carved, the lake set in its deep bowl. Fifteen feet from this end of
the lake the water swept into a narrow channel, a ridge running down
from each side. Here was the spot to deflect the waters before they
sped on down over the steep fall. Upon the south side there was a
jagged cut in the saw-toothed cliff line. Even now the lowest part of
that cut, when once the free soil was scooped out, was not ten feet
above the level of the water.
"I rode up here purt' near a week ago," said Ettinger. "I looked this
over an' rode back all the way down Dry Creek. It's dead easy,
Shandon."
Already Ettinger visualised the cut deepened and widened here with
flood gates to control the current. He spurred his horse up the bank
as far as he could force the animal, then got down and scrambled on,
gesticulating and talking swiftly. Shandon followed him. In a little
they came to a point from which they could look back upon the lake, and
forward to the windings of the cañon through which Dry Creek ran in
winter and spring.
"It can be done," muttered Shandon slowly. "It can be done, Ettinger.
I don't know what it will cost, five thousand or ten or twenty; but I
do know that those lands down in Dry Valley are going to jump over the
moon."
Ettinger made little clucking sounds with his mouth, his way of
expressing joy unbounded.
"An' you don't see it all yet," he chuckled. "Lord, I've been layin'
awake nights figgerin' on it. We'll bond everything that's loose in
the valley. I've got Norfolk settin' tight and we'll round up a lot of
the little fellers. It's sort of late, maybe, but them other fellers
ain't got everything sewed up by a jugful."
"What other fellows?" asked Shandon, mystified.
Then Ettinger, in his rare good humour loosened his tongue until it
poured out everything there was in his seething brain. He told of the
scheme of Martin Leland and Sledge Hume, for Garth Conway had dropped
an incautious word and the shrewd brain of Ettinger had worked out the
puzzle. He told how the three men were trying to do this very thing,
how they had planned on getting the water themselves, how Martin Leland
had tied up thousands in options and purchases, how Ettinger had been
one too many for them and had beat them to Shandon. He chuckled over
everything, but most of all over the fact that Martin Leland had tried
to buy him out. Old Leland was the keenest business man in the county,
was he? Well, Ettinger had fooled him! Ettinger had blinded him with
a promise to sell next week for seventy-five thousand. By that time,
when Leland came to him--
"What's all this?" frowned Shandon. "You say that Leland, Conway and
Hume are already at work, planning to put water from the Bar L-M into
Dry Valley?"
"Already?" cried Ettinger. "They been clawin' at the job over a year
now. The Lord knows what makes 'em so slow; think nobody else in the
world can see straight, or shy on the money end, maybe. Anyhow they've
gone to it tooth and toe nail; they've sunk thousands into it,
thousands I tell you! An' now, you an' me, Shandon, can make the bunch
of 'em eat out of our hands! They can't do nothin' without your water;
that's where we got 'em."
Wayne Shandon's eyes grew bright with a vision, the muscles of his jaw
hardened. In sober truth his opportunity had come to him. Hume, a man
he hated, Leland, a man who had called him laggard, spendthrift,
scoundrel, had put many thousands of dollars into a project which he
could smash into pieces. Ettinger had said it: the two of them could
make Leland and Hume eat out of their hands! They could get Norfolk
and the little fellows; they could tear out the side of the ridge,
release what waters they chose, make their ditches, and by improving
only their own property make Leland's and Hume's holdings worth
nothing. Leland had started it; Leland's unreasonable censure had been
a challenge. Here was his answer!
It was business, straight business. Had Leland and Hume been his
friends it would have been different. But they deserved no
consideration from him. It was his water; he had the right to dispose
of it as he saw fit. He would be treating Leland as fairly as he had
been treated. Why had they not come to him in the first place? Why
had they not offered him the opportunity to get in on the ground floor
with them? He would have given them the water then, glad to see
Wanda's father prospering. But they were holding out, they were
waiting for something, they had made sure of his consent to let them
have what they wanted. Why? When they had everything cornered they
would offer him a small sum, they would believe him fool enough to leap
at it, mouth open, like a fish. Even Garth Conway, his own cousin, had
not told him! What consideration did Conway deserve?
"By Heaven!" cried Shandon.
And then he fell suddenly silent.
"We got to git busy in a hurry, Shandon," Ettinger ran on swiftly.
"When old Sure-Thing Leland comes to me to close the deal I want to
laugh at him."
Slowly the light died out of Shandon's eyes. Was this, after all, the
opportunity for which he had yearned? He grew uncertain, a little
troubled. An opportunity for what? For becoming worthy of Wanda, for
being a man, square and just, a man who must make a new name for
himself, a name which would never bring discredit to her when she
became Wanda Shandon? In trying to ruin Sledge Hume for the sordid
motives of hatred and gain, in trying to strike back at Wanda's father
in vengeful bitterness, would he be doing a thing of which later he
would be proud to have her know? Was he proving his manhood by
accepting for his first business partner a man like Ettinger, who
laughed over his feat of tricking another man by a lie? Was he not
seeking to blind himself to the right and the wrong of it? This was
the sort of thing that Sledge Hume would do; should Wayne Shandon do
it? Was his first venture after the priceless gift of Wanda's love to
him, to be a thing like this? Had this been the opportunity he had
yearned for, to grasp gold full handed, to wreak vengeance, to
retaliate against unfair treatment by striking back treacherously?
Martin Leland had been unjust, yes. But had there not been strong
human reasons for that injustice? Had not his own wild living been
cause enough? Was he, from the sharp words of an old man who was
jealous in his love for his daughter, to draw an excuse to strike at
his own cousin and Wanda's father?
"Ettinger," he said quietly. "I can't do it. You had better keep your
promise to Leland."
Ettinger's jaw dropped, his brows puckered in astonishment.
"What's the matter with you?" he demanded sharply. "Can't you see the
play? We got the chance to git the water on the land and make them
fellers pay for it or sell to us at our own figger, ain't we? Why,
it's as good as gold, man! If you don't see enough in it as it stands
you are in a place where you can hold 'em up for a bonus to boot."
Shandon turned away, Ettinger's point of view suddenly disgusting him.
His golden opportunity had crumbled into dust and ashes. And although
the little man by his side waxed voluble in alternating rage and
supplication, Wayne Shandon's final word was a positive,
"No!"
CHAPTER XI
WANDA'S DISCOVERY
A supreme happiness had filled Wanda Leland's heart for a few golden
hours, so thoroughly permeating every fibre of her emotional being that
when sorrow came afterward it could not entirely drive out the
whispering gladness.
Never had the forest land seemed so big, so vast and still as during
the slow days which followed. She went to it for the comfort she could
not bring herself to ask of her mother just yet, and it mothered her,
crooned and whispered and sang to her. Through the dew filled mornings
she wandered silently; rarely did she return to the house until the sun
was low in the west. Never had this world she loved seemed so vitally
close to her, so big in a new sense, so eloquently an expression of the
divine eternal. Her heart swelled and the talk of the pine tops
entered it.
They were sad, glad days. Gladness sang in her heart when in the
sun-flooded mornings she rode out alone, and perhaps her devious way
brought her to the spot where Red Reckless had swept her up into his
arms for the first time, when his kiss had brought love into full
blossom in her breast. Sadness brought its shadow and listlessness
when day after day passed and she did not see him again, when the eager
hope of the morning that he too would ride to that spot to meet her
died down in the afternoon's invariable disappointment. Gladness when
she thought of him, just of him; sadness when she thought of her
father's stern face.
Red Reckless had made no attempt to see her, or to communicate with
her. Even while she sought to find excuses for him, that hurt her more
than her loyalty would let her whisper to herself. He would come soon.
He would know where to find her, know that her woman's heart was taking
her to the spot where that heart had really become a woman's. He was
thinking of her now as she thought of him. Her heart heard his heart
talking to it across the forests and streams.
A woman's heart trusted him, but a maiden's pride permitted no question
when Garth rode over as he did twice during the following week. When
Garth remarked casually that his cousin was the same old chap he'd
always been, and that he seemed to have nothing in his rollicking brain
more serious than the breaking of a wild devil of a colt and a horse
race which he had set his heart upon, Wanda bent her head a little over
her book and gave no other sign of having heard the statement elicited
by her mother's question. But the news hurt, too, just a little.
There was a quick sting that came and was gone as her love for him
surged up again, and it was the same sort of sting, only stronger, that
she had felt as a little girl when she thought of him as happy in his
boyish pursuits with any one but her. It did not matter now whether it
was Little Saxon or Big Bill. She told herself in her own little room
that she was a jealous cat. But--
"Oh, dear God, how I love you, Wayne!"
Then, when the days passed and she did not hear from him, there came
for the first time a quick fear which was the first ally of that twinge
of jealousy. The fifth day came, the day on which he was riding to
Laughter Lake with Ruf Ettinger, and she could not know that his every
thought was of her. She only felt that, had she been the man, she
would not have stayed away. And there came the question and the fear,
"Does he love me as I love him?"
The old, lovers' question ever since Aucassin and Nicolette; the matter
for long debate and reiterated argument: "It may not be that thou
shouldst love me even as I love thee!" She found herself blushing
hotly as she rode alone through the forest at the thought that she was
again going to meet him, and that he did not come to meet her. She
felt suddenly ashamed and angry both with him and with herself. Was
she, to him, like a ripe apple that had dropped into his hand at the
touch? Did he think other--?
Her face crimson she reined the startled Gypsy around with a savage
jerk, turned her back squarely upon the Bar L-M, and without a look
behind her rode swiftly in the opposite direction. She rode for an
hour, not turning once, although many a time her heart fluttered wildly
and then grew painfully still at some slight noise which to her
yearning ears sounded like the thud of a horse's hoofs behind her.
To-day she crossed the narrow valley toward the cliffs rising like a
wall upon the far side of Echo Creek. Stubbornly she shut her mind
from its daily wanderings; her camera, that she had not used for a
week, was going to work for her to-day. The birds that had come
trooping back from wintering in the south--robins and blue birds, blue
jays and woodpeckers, larks and yellow hammers--made merry din in the
morning air. Shep, running on ahead as usual, disturbed half a dozen
grouse from the underbrush in a little cañon, and the muffled roll of
their whirring wings threw Shep into brief consternation and prolonged
subsequent joy. She saw the bob and flash of a rabbit's tail, noticed
again and again the lean, muscular body of a tree squirrel, heard upon
a wooded slope the snapping and crashing of brush that told of the
leaping flight of a deer. The woods were alive with animal folk, her
"friends" called to her from every tree and tiny valley, they peeped
out at her from burrows and hollow trees.
"We are going to quit being a little fool," she told Gypsy with
tremulous emphasis. "And we are going to get a real picture to-day."
A day or so before she had heard with scant attention and no subsequent
interest something which in the old careless, love free days sooner
would have sent her riding this way in haste. One of her father's men,
Charley or Jim, had found a dead cow under the cliffs and had seen
signs of bear. He had returned to the spot later and had killed the
animal, a she bear, and had seen one of her cubs making its swift,
awkward way into the brush. Recollecting the story, and because to-day
she yearned feverishly for something to do, Wanda turned Gypsy toward
the cliffs, thinking how she should like, if her fortune were very
great, to be able to show Wayne Shandon when he did come to her, the
picture of a bear cub playing in the woods.
"I've had so much fun hunting for him!" she would say then. And Wayne
would never know how unmaidenly she had been.
Before she had come within a thousand yards of the place where the
carcass of the cow was lying she slipped from the saddle and picketed
Gypsy. Her lunch she left tied to the saddle strings; camera and field
glasses went with her.
Already, in the fast advancing summertime, she had donned her hunting
costume. The soft green of blouse and short skirt, of cap and
stockings, blended with the many tints of green of the copses and
groves and meadows through which she went swiftly and silently. She
slipped from tree to tree, making no more sound than the chipmunk
scampering almost from under her feet. Her eyes brightened, the colour
warmed in her cheek, her heart grew eager. For, sure enough, fortune
was good to her; there were two little bear cubs, round and fat and
playful, rumpling each other where they rolled in the sunlight in a
small grassy open space.
They were a hundred yards away when she saw them, too far for a
picture; but as soon as her eyes fell upon them she vowed that she must
have a picture. There was little breeze this morning in the quiet
woods, but that little blew from where she stood straight toward the
spot where the cubs were frollicking. She must circle, come out down
yonder behind a pile of rocks, slip behind the great cedar right at the
base of the cliffs, and edge on from there on her hands and knees.
But she paused a moment, fascinated, watching them. They were sitting
up, their small brown heads shaking from side to side, their sharp eyes
watching each other, their little red tongues lolling. They were such
baby things, their awkward bodies so like the little bodies of babies
just taking the first faltering step, that she wanted to rush at them
and pick them up and hug them.
There was the angry snarl of a rifle, sudden and sharp and evil, and
one of the little brown bears made an inarticulate whining moan and its
playful spirit ran out in red to dye the grass. Its brother fell over
backwards in its fright; there came a second shot, the whining of a
bullet glancing from a rock, and the cub plunged into the brush. She
saw it a moment, lost it, saw it once more running as only the
frightened wild things can run as it sped down into a little hollow
which hid it from the hunter and thus saved its life, and then she
discerned it climbing wildly, clawing its terrified way up the great
cedar against the cliffs. When no third shot came she knew that the
hunter had not seen it and then, with an angry fire in her eyes, she
turned to learn who he might be. Approaching her from the edge of the
grove, a complacent smile upon his face, his rifle under his arm, was
Sledge Hume.
"Oh!" she cried when he had come close, thinking that he must have seen
her. "Why did you do that? It was like murder!"
He stopped dead in his tracks, and then swung toward her. He was so
close that she saw a quick, startled look leap up in his eyes.
"Murder?" he said sharply. "What do you mean?"
He had not lifted his hat, it was not Sledge Hume's way to trouble
himself with the small civilities. He came on again until he stood
quite close to her, staring coolly into her flushed face.
"They were playing just like babies!" she cried breathlessly. "Why did
you kill it?"
He laughed.
"Hardly for its skin, since I suppose it isn't worth much," he answered
carelessly. "Hardly for its meat as I'm not going to trouble with it.
Why, I suppose just for fun then. Because," his tone and eyes touched
with a hint of contempt for what to him was a woman's squemishness,
"because I wanted to."
Her eyes flashed her growing anger back at him.
"It was so unnecessary," she said bitterly. "They were playing so
prettily and happily."
"I watched them for ten minutes before I shot," he said. "Their play
was interesting, I'll admit. But they were bears, just the same.
They'd grow up some day and I wonder if they'd take mercy then on a
pretty little baby calf if they came upon it playing? Your father'd
thank me, my tender hearted Miss."
She bit her lip and turned away from him. He watched her a moment,
then called,
"Are you riding back to the house? My horse is right back there and
I'll ride with you."
"No," she answered quietly. "I'm not going back just yet."
She walked on to where the dead cub lay--stood looking down on it a
moment and then moved on. Hume watched her while he filled his pipe
and lighted it, and went in turn to look at his game. He turned the
little beast over with his foot, noted with satisfaction the hole which
the bullet had torn through the soft body, and then strolled toward his
horse. Wanda saw him ride away in the direction of her home, smoking
his pipe.
"All men like to hunt, to kill things," she mused. "Are they as cruel
about it as he is? Would Wayne have watched the little things playing
for ten minutes and then, when he tired of it, shot them in the midst
of their play?"
Not until Sledge Hume had topped a gentle rise and dropped down and out
of sight upon the farther side, did the girl turn quickly to the great
cedar up which she had seen the escaping cub scramble. She was certain
that he had not come down. When at first she did not see him she
circled the tree slowly, expecting from each new angle to catch a
glimpse of the roly-poly brown body. And when, after fifteen minutes
peering upward through the widely flung, horizontal branches, she saw
him, a swift inspiration came to her; her quarry had not escaped her
yet.
The tree, one of the giants of her father's ranch that she knew very
well, thrust its crest upward so close to the cliffs that many of the
branches had been bent this way and that, flattening against the
granite. The lowest limb, twenty feet above the girl's head, was as
thick as many a tall tree hereabouts, and was like a giant's arm, bent
at the elbow, thrusting the rocks back. She could make her way up this
far, working along a ragged fissure in the cliff; thence she could edge
out upon the broad limb until she came to the trunk itself. And once
there, to Wanda in her hunting costume and with her knowledge of tree
climbing, the rest of the way, from limb to limb, might be difficult
but would certainly not be impossible or fraught with unaccustomed
danger.
The cub had climbed until coming to a limb which like the lowest one
scraped against the rock not half a dozen feet from the tapering trunk,
he had crept out on it and was lying upon a ledge of rock. Wanda hoped
that here was the opportunity of a lifetime. She would climb as high
as that limb, and find the cub's flight shut off by the sheer wall
rising perpendicularly behind him. Then she would make him pose for
her, whether he liked it or not.
Flushed and panting the girl made her way upward until finally she
caught with both hands the big lower limb. Field glasses and camera in
their cases strapped to her belt in no way interfered with the free
play of her muscles. She tested the branch a moment, smiled at herself
for hesitating to trust her light weight to a thing which would have
carried tons, gripped a firmer hold and swung free of the rocks. Here
would have been a picture for her mother had she come with her this
morning; the lithe graceful body swinging twenty feet high in air, only
hard slab and broken boulder beneath her. Then she drew herself up as
a boy does "chinning himself," threw a heel over the limb, and in a
flash lay breathing deeply and triumphantly, the most difficult step of
her climb achieved.
Slowly, steadily she made her way upward. In the main it was simple
enough for Wanda for it was the sort of thing she did over and over
week in and week out. Once, already fifty feet from the ground, she
did something that would have been simple enough under other
circumstances and yet which put a quick flutter in her heart. It was
something which would have made the heart grow still in the breast of
Wayne Shandon had he seen, which would have brought a paralysing fear
for her to a man who loved life for the gamble in it and who took his
chances recklessly.
She was perched fearlessly upon a sturdy horizontal limb, her body
tight pressed against the trunk, her hands gripping at the roughened
bark, steadying her as she balanced. A quick glance upward showed her
a bare stretch of bole with the nearest limb on her side of the tree
just barely beyond her reach. Slowly she straightened, lengthening her
pliant body the imperceptible fraction of an inch, gradually thrusting
her two arms up high above her head, still with her hands steadying her
as they clung to the bark, her moccasined feet curving to the limb on
which she stood. And now she could just touch with the tips of her
fingers the broad branch above.
Then she did the thing which would have been simple enough had she
stood on the ground instead of balancing high in air; she measured the
few inches in distance, she drew her fingers lingeringly from the bark,
holding them still above her head, she tautened the muscles of her
splendid young body to the work they were called upon to do, bent her
knees little by little, and then fearless still but agitated, she
leaped upward, and grasped the elusive branch.
For a moment she swung there, secure now and confident, and then, as
she had gained the first step in her climb so now she made this one. A
slow tensing of biceps, a drawing up of the pendulous body, the quick
flash of a heel thrown over the limb, and she lay upon it, laughing
softly. It was good and glorious to be young, to have a body that
obeyed one's will, to have a steady heart.
Presently she began once more to clamber upward, her way comparatively
easy now. Thus at last she came to the branch upon which, as on a
bridge, the little brown bear had crossed to the ledge of rock. And
together there came to her a distinct disappointment and a pleasurable
surprise.
Again the cub had slipped away from her; perhaps by now he was half a
mile away and tumbling his awkward and terrified way among the crags.
From below the ledge had seemed to be four or five feet wide; now she
saw that it was nearer ten. The conformation of the rocks, beetling
above it, had led her to imagine that a straight wall of cliff rose
abruptly just at the back of the ledge. In reality they overhung the
rudely level space like out-jutting eaves over the sun-deck that might
have been carved to his taste by some old cliff dweller in front of his
solitary retreat. For there was a cavern here under the frowning brow
of granite, different from the many caves of which the girl knew in the
rugged mountains only in that it was so roomy and at the same time so
secret a place.
Before she left her resting place, she saw the way the cub had gone.
Leading upward from the extreme end of the ledge, at the right, there
was a deep seam or crevice in the granite, almost filled and choked
with fallen rocky debris from above, but affording a trail that even a
man might travel to the top of the cliffs another fifty feet above.
There was a quantity of fine sandy soil at the lower end of the narrow
cut and on the edge of the ledge, and her trained eyes had slight
difficulty in seeing the signs of little bruin's headlong flight. As
he scurried upward he had left the marks of his toes in long
unmistakable scratches.
"I wonder," thought the girl with a little thrill at what her fancy
pictured for her, "if any of the rest of the family are at home?"
The mother bear had been killed; one cub was dead; the second had fled
to the cliff tops. Here, where bears were growing scarcer every year,
there was little danger of her meeting the _pater familias_. And yet--
"If I should meet a bear in there," she laughed to herself, "I wonder
who'd be scared most?"
She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew her camera from its
case, focused it upon the yawning, black mouth of the cavern and waited
a patient quarter of an hour, noiseless and listening and ready. For
she was familiar enough with the California brown bear to know that he
will not attack when the way of retreat is clear; that while, after he
gets into a fight he extracts a great deal of delight from it, still if
given his choice he wou
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