The Short Cut

by Jackson Gregory

  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 YorkDodd, Mead and Company1916Copyright, 1916by 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 itscase, and waited a patient quarter of an hour.

  "I call upon you to give yourself up!" he shouted. "Stop, Red, or Ishoot this time!"

  THE SHORT CUT

  CHAPTER I

  THE TRAGEDY

  Here was a small stream of water, bright, clear and cool, running itsmerry way among the tall pines, hurrying to the dense shade of thelower valley. The grass on its banks stood tall, lush and faintlyodorous, fresh with the newly come springtime, delicately scented withthe thickly strewn field flowers. The sunlight lay bright and warmover all; the sky was blue with a depth of colour intensified by thefew great white clouds drifting lazily across it.

  No moving thing within all the wide rolling landscape save thesun-flecked water, the softly stirring grass and rustling forests, thealmost motionless white clouds. For two miles the hills billowed awaygently to the northward, where at last they were swept up into thethickly timbered, crag-crested mountains. For twice two miles towardthe west one might guess the course of the stream before here, too, themountains shut in, leaving only Echo Canon's narrow gap for the coolwater to slip through. To the south and to the east ridges and hollowsand mountains, and beyond a few fast melting patches of last winter'ssnow clinging to the lofty summits, looking like fragments broken awayfrom the big white clouds and resting for a moment on the line whereland and sky met.

  The stillness was too perfect to remain long unbroken. From a trailleading down into the valley from the east a shepherd dog, runningeagerly, broke through the waving grass, paused a second looking backexpectantly, sniffed and ran on. Then a sound from over the ridgethrough the trees, the sound of singing, a young voice liltingwordlessly in enraptured gladness that life was so bright this morning.And presently a horse, a dark bay saddle pony moving as lazily as theclouds 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 sincethe dawn of today had she become a woman having been a child until thedusk of yesterday. The wide grey eyes, looking out upon a gentleaspect of life, were inclined to be merry and musing at the same time,soft with maidenhood's day dreaming, tender with pleasant thoughts. Achild of the outdoors, her skin sun-tinged to a warm golden brown, herhair sunburnt where it slipped out of the shadow of her big hat, herlips red with young health, her slender body in its easy, confidentcarriage showing how the muscles under the soft skin were strong andcapable.

  At her saddle horn, in its case, was a camera; snapped to her belt andresting against her left hip, a pair of field glasses.

  The horse played at drinking, pretending a thirst which it did notfeel, and began to paw the clear water into muddiness. The dog ran on,turned again, barked an invitation to its mistress to join in thesearch for adventures, and plunged into the tall grass.

  The girl's song died away, her lips stilled by the hush of the comingnoonday. For a moment she was very silent, so motionless that sheseemed scarcely to breathe.

  "Life is good here," she mused, her eyes wandering across the valley tothe wall of the mountains shutting out the world of cities. "It islike the air, sweet and clean and wholesome! Life!" she whispered, asthough 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 airdrawn slowly through parted lips as though she would drink of the rarewine of the springtime.

  The dog had found something in the deep grass which sent it scamperingback across the water and almost under the horse's legs, snarling.

  "What is it, Shep?" laughed the girl. "What have you found that is sodreadful?"

  But Shep was not to be laughed out of his growls and whines. Presentlyhe ran back toward the place where he had made his headlong crossing,stopped abruptly, broke into a quick series of short, sharp barks, andagain 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. Sheleaned forward in the saddle, patting her mare's warm neck. "I thinkhe's just an old humbug as usual, Gypsy," she smiled indulgently. "Butshall we go over and see?"

  Gypsy splashed noisily across the stream, the dog still growling andslinking close to the horse's heels. The girl saw where Shep hadparted the grass with his inquisitive nose, leaving a plain trail. Andnot ten steps from the edge of the water she came upon the thing thatShep had found.

  The mare's nostrils suddenly quivered; she trembled a moment, and thenwith a snort of fear whirled and plunged back toward the creek. Butthe girl had seen. The colour ran out of her face, the musing peacefled from her eyes and a swift horror leaped out upon her. In oneflash the soft calm of the morning had become a mockery, its promise alie. Here, into the wonder of Life, Death had come.

  She had had but an uncertain glance at the thing lying huddled in thetall grass, but her instinct like Shep's and Gypsy's understood. Andfor a blind, terror-stricken moment, she felt that she must yield asthey yielded to the fear within her, to the primitive urge to flee fromDeath; 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 thelower limb of an oak beside the creek. As she went slowly back alongthe little trail the dog had made she told herself that the man was notdead, that he was sick or hurt . . . and though she had never lookedupon Death before this morning when it seemed to her that she hadlooked upon Life for the first time, she knew what that grotesquehorror 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 reluctantconsciousness of a host of details. She saw that the grass around wasbeaten down in a rude circle, heard the whining of the dog at herheels, noticed that the man lay on his right side, his head twisted sothat his cheek touched his shoulder, the face hidden, one arm crumpledunder him, one outflung and grasping a handful of up-rooted grass withset rigid fingers.

  A sickness, a faintness, and with it an almost uncontrollable desire torun madly from this place, this thing, swept over her.
But she drewcloser, kneeling quickly, and put her warm hand upon the hand thatclutched the wisp of grass so rigidly. It was cold, so cold that shedrew back suddenly, shuddering.

  Not even now did she know who the man was. It had not yet entered hermind that she could know him. She rose to her feet, and walking softlyas though her footfall in the grass might waken some one sleeping, shemoved about the still figure, to the other side, so that she might seethe face. Then she cried out softly, piteously, and Shep ceased hiswhining and came to her around the body, rubbing against her skirts.

  "Arthur!" She came closer, knelt again and put her hands gently uponthe short-cropped, curling hair. "Oh, Arthur! Is it you?" Only nowdid she know how this man with the young, frank face had died. Now shesaw blood smeared on the white forehead, a bullet wound torn in thetemple. She sprang to her feet, staring with wide eyes at the littlehole through which the man's soul had fled. She turned hastily towardher horse, came back, placed her straw hat tenderly over the shortcurling hair, and ran to Gypsy.

  She was vaguely conscious that her brain was acting as it had neveracted before, that her excited nerves were filling her mind with a massof sensations and fragmentary thoughts strangely clearcut and definite.Like some wonderfully constructed camera her faculties, in an instantno longer than the time required for the clicking of the shutter,photographed a hawk circling high up in the sky, a waving branch, withno less truth and vividness than the body sprawling there in the grass.Emotions, scents, sounds, objects blended into a strange mentalsnap-shot, no one detail less clear than another.

  Jerking the mare's tie rope free from the oak, she flung herself intothe saddle, and turned back toward the trail that led across the creekand over the ridge. But Shep had found something else in the grasshalf a dozen steps beyond the dead man, something that he sniffed atand nosed and that excited him. Making a little detour, she rode backto the spot where the dog, barking now, was waiting for her.

  As she leaned forward looking down upon this second thing the shepherddog had found, she clutched suddenly at the horn of her saddle asthough all her strength had dribbled out of her, and she were going tofall. The keen nostrils of the animal had led him to this object withits sinister connection with the tragedy and he had pawed at it,dragging it toward him and free of the green tangle into which it hadfallen or been flung.

  It was a revolver, thirty-eight calibre, unlike the weapons one mightexpect to find here in the range country or about the sawmills furtherback . . . and the girl recognised it. The deadly viciousness of thefirearm was disguised by the pearl grip and silver chasings until ithad seemed a toy. But here was Arthur Shandon dead, with a bullet inhis 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 pineneedles above her head caught in a quick breath of air. Shep looked upat her with his sharp, eager bark and then the gladness of discovery inhis eyes changed suddenly into wistful wonder. Gypsy, with tossinghead and jingling bridle, turned toward the crossing, quickening herstride, ready to break into a trot.

  At last the girl jerked her hands away from a face that was white andmiserable, and with angry spur and rein brought the mare back to thespot where the revolver lay. Slipping down, she hesitated a moment,glancing swiftly about as though afraid some one might see her, evenwith a look that was almost suspicious at the quiet body of ArthurShandon, and stooping suddenly swept up the thing that had been a toyyesterday and was so hideously tragic to-day. It was with a greateffort of her will that she compelled her fingers to touch it, forcedthem to close upon it and take it up. Then with a little cry intowhich loathing and dread merged, she cast it from her, flinging it fardown stream so that it fell into a black pool below a tiny, frothingwaterfall.

  "I can't believe it. I won't believe it!" she murmured in a voice thatshook 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 towardthe trail, as though she were fleeing from a fearful pursuing menace.Shep, who had run, barking, to retrieve his lost discovery from theblack pool under the waterfall, snapped his disappointment from thebank 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 shejerked 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 seethe broad trees or the flower sprinkled grass or the blossomingmanzanita bushes. They gazed through these things which they did notsee, and instead saw what might lie in the future, what fate the grimgods of destiny might mete out . . . to one man . . . if the revolverbelow the waterfall were found!

  Her hesitation was brief; the horror of what might lurk in the futurewas greater than the horror of what lay back there behind her. Againshe urged her puzzled horse back to the stream, flinging herself downjust at the edge of the pool. Far down at the bottom upon the whitesand, wedged between two white stones, the revolver lay plainlyvisible. The noonday sun rested upon the deep water here and itssecret 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 littledifficulty or waste of time, she dragged the weapon toward her untilshe 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. Butwith quick, steady fingers she dried it against her skirt and thrust itinto the only place where she could be sure of safety, where its voicewould be silenced to all except her own heart, deep into the bosom ofher waist. And again she was on Gypsy's back, again fleeing along theup-trail.

  As she rode, as the rush of air whipped in her face and the leapingbody of the mare under her gave her muscles something to do, the bloodflamed again into her cheeks; courage rushed back into a heart that wasnaturally unafraid.

  "I have not been loyal," she whispered over and over to herselfaccusingly. "I have not been a true friend. I have suspected and Iknow, oh, I know so well, that it can't be! He wouldn't do a thinglike that, he couldn't!"

  She topped the ridge, sped on for half a mile upon its crest, racingstraight toward the east, dropped down into another valley ten timesbigger than the one she had just quitted, and still following the trailheaded southward again. Here there were fewer trees, a sprinkling ofpine and fir, and wider open spaces. Another stream, even smaller thanEcho Creek, watered the valley. She rode through a small herd ofsaddle horses that flashed away before her swift approach, their manesand 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 ofgrazing cattle, she thought she could distinguish the figures of acouple of her father's cowboys riding herd. But she did not turn tothem.

  Gypsy, warming to the race, carried her mistress valiantly the half adozen miles from the ridge she had crossed to the knoll crowned withgreat boled, sky seeking cedars where her father's ranch house stood.Half a mile away the girl made out the wide verandahs, the long flightof steps, the hammock where she had read and dozed last night, yes, anddreamed 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 flashedthrough her mind that he counted upon going out for a load of wood, andthat he would be called upon first to bring in another burden that hewould never forget.

  Her eyes went back to the house. There was some one sitting in arocker in the sh
ade near the front door. It was her mother. This newswould be a bitter, bitter shock to the tender-hearted woman who hadcalled Arthur Shandon one of her "boys."

  The girl drew nearer, with no tightening of reins upon Gypsy's headlongspeed. Another glimpse through the cedars showed her that there wassome one with her mother, a man, broad and heavy shouldered. Heturned, hearing the pound of the flying hoofs through the still air asshe 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 shesaw that her father and mother were not alone. The third figure hadbeen concealed from her until now by the great post standing at the topof the steps. But now the man sitting there rose to his feet andturned to look in the direction her parents were looking. A suddenchoking came into the girl's throat, a quick rush of tears into her dryeyes. 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 ofgrief and terror; must she hasten so eagerly to speak the word that wasgoing 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 healways was when he saw how she rode. And the other man who had leapedto his feet was running down the steps, coming to meet her, coming tomeet the news she brought.