The Short Cut

by Jackson Gregory

  CHAPTER XI

  WANDA'S DISCOVERY

  A supreme happiness had filled Wanda Leland's heart for a few goldenhours, so thoroughly permeating every fibre of her emotional being thatwhen sorrow came afterward it could not entirely drive out thewhispering gladness.

  Never had the forest land seemed so big, so vast and still as duringthe slow days which followed. She went to it for the comfort she couldnot bring herself to ask of her mother just yet, and it mothered her,crooned and whispered and sang to her. Through the dew filled morningsshe wandered silently; rarely did she return to the house until the sunwas low in the west. Never had this world she loved seemed so vitallyclose to her, so big in a new sense, so eloquently an expression of thedivine eternal. Her heart swelled and the talk of the pine topsentered it.

  They were sad, glad days. Gladness sang in her heart when in thesun-flooded mornings she rode out alone, and perhaps her devious waybrought her to the spot where Red Reckless had swept her up into hisarms for the first time, when his kiss had brought love into fullblossom in her breast. Sadness brought its shadow and listlessnesswhen day after day passed and she did not see him again, when the eagerhope of the morning that he too would ride to that spot to meet herdied down in the afternoon's invariable disappointment. Gladness whenshe thought of him, just of him; sadness when she thought of herfather's stern face.

  Red Reckless had made no attempt to see her, or to communicate withher. Even while she sought to find excuses for him, that hurt her morethan 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 takingher to the spot where that heart had really become a woman's. He wasthinking of her now as she thought of him. Her heart heard his hearttalking to it across the forests and streams.

  A woman's heart trusted him, but a maiden's pride permitted no questionwhen Garth rode over as he did twice during the following week. WhenGarth remarked casually that his cousin was the same old chap he'dalways been, and that he seemed to have nothing in his rollicking brainmore serious than the breaking of a wild devil of a colt and a horserace which he had set his heart upon, Wanda bent her head a little overher book and gave no other sign of having heard the statement elicitedby 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 himsurged up again, and it was the same sort of sting, only stronger, thatshe had felt as a little girl when she thought of him as happy in hisboyish pursuits with any one but her. It did not matter now whether itwas Little Saxon or Big Bill. She told herself in her own little roomthat 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 camefor the first time a quick fear which was the first ally of that twingeof jealousy. The fifth day came, the day on which he was riding toLaughter Lake with Ruf Ettinger, and she could not know that his everythought was of her. She only felt that, had she been the man, shewould 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 matterfor long debate and reiterated argument: "It may not be that thoushouldst love me even as I love thee!" She found herself blushinghotly as she rode alone through the forest at the thought that she wasagain going to meet him, and that he did not come to meet her. Shefelt suddenly ashamed and angry both with him and with herself. Wasshe, to him, like a ripe apple that had dropped into his hand at thetouch? Did he think other--?

  Her face crimson she reined the startled Gypsy around with a savagejerk, turned her back squarely upon the Bar L-M, and without a lookbehind her rode swiftly in the opposite direction. She rode for anhour, not turning once, although many a time her heart fluttered wildlyand then grew painfully still at some slight noise which to heryearning ears sounded like the thud of a horse's hoofs behind her.

  To-day she crossed the narrow valley toward the cliffs rising like awall upon the far side of Echo Creek. Stubbornly she shut her mindfrom its daily wanderings; her camera, that she had not used for aweek, was going to work for her to-day. The birds that had cometrooping back from wintering in the south--robins and blue birds, bluejays and woodpeckers, larks and yellow hammers--made merry din in themorning air. Shep, running on ahead as usual, disturbed half a dozengrouse from the underbrush in a little canon, and the muffled roll oftheir whirring wings threw Shep into brief consternation and prolongedsubsequent joy. She saw the bob and flash of a rabbit's tail, noticedagain and again the lean, muscular body of a tree squirrel, heard upona wooded slope the snapping and crashing of brush that told of theleaping flight of a deer. The woods were alive with animal folk, her"friends" called to her from every tree and tiny valley, they peepedout at her from burrows and hollow trees.

  "We are going to quit being a little fool," she told Gypsy withtremulous 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 subsequentinterest something which in the old careless, love free days soonerwould 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 seensigns of bear. He had returned to the spot later and had killed theanimal, a she bear, and had seen one of her cubs making its swift,awkward way into the brush. Recollecting the story, and because to-dayshe yearned feverishly for something to do, Wanda turned Gypsy towardthe cliffs, thinking how she should like, if her fortune were verygreat, to be able to show Wayne Shandon when he did come to her, thepicture of a bear cub playing in the woods.

  "I've had so much fun hunting for him!" she would say then. And Waynewould never know how unmaidenly she had been.

  Before she had come within a thousand yards of the place where thecarcass of the cow was lying she slipped from the saddle and picketedGypsy. Her lunch she left tied to the saddle strings; camera and fieldglasses went with her.

  Already, in the fast advancing summertime, she had donned her huntingcostume. The soft green of blouse and short skirt, of cap andstockings, blended with the many tints of green of the copses andgroves and meadows through which she went swiftly and silently. Sheslipped from tree to tree, making no more sound than the chipmunkscampering almost from under her feet. Her eyes brightened, the colourwarmed in her cheek, her heart grew eager. For, sure enough, fortunewas good to her; there were two little bear cubs, round and fat andplayful, rumpling each other where they rolled in the sunlight in asmall grassy open space.

  They were a hundred yards away when she saw them, too far for apicture; but as soon as her eyes fell upon them she vowed that she musthave a picture. There was little breeze this morning in the quietwoods, but that little blew from where she stood straight toward thespot where the cubs were frollicking. She must circle, come out downyonder behind a pile of rocks, slip behind the great cedar right at thebase of the cliffs, and edge on from there on her hands and knees.

  But she paused a moment, fascinated, watching them. They were sittingup, their small brown heads shaking from side to side, their sharp eyeswatching each other, their little red tongues lolling. They were suchbaby things, their awkward bodies so like the little bodies of babiesjust taking the first faltering step, that she wanted to rush at themand pick them up and hug them.

  There was the angry snarl of a rifle, sudden and sharp and evil, andone of the little brown bears made an inarticulate whining moan and itsplayful spirit ran out in red to dye the grass. Its brother fell overbackwards in its fright; there came a second shot, the whining of abullet glancing from a rock, and the cub plunged into the brush. Shesaw it a moment, lost it, saw it once more running as only thefrightened wild things can run as it sped down into a little hollowwhich hid it from the hunter and thus saved its life, and then shediscerned it climbing wildly, clawing its terrified way up the greatcedar against the cliffs. When no third shot came she knew that thehunter
had not seen it and then, with an angry fire in her eyes, sheturned to learn who he might be. Approaching her from the edge of thegrove, a complacent smile upon his face, his rifle under his arm, wasSledge Hume.

  "Oh!" she cried when he had come close, thinking that he must have seenher. "Why did you do that? It was like murder!"

  He stopped dead in his tracks, and then swung toward her. He was soclose 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 troublehimself with the small civilities. He came on again until he stoodquite close to her, staring coolly into her flushed face.

  "They were playing just like babies!" she cried breathlessly. "Why didyou kill it?"

  He laughed.

  "Hardly for its skin, since I suppose it isn't worth much," he answeredcarelessly. "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 touchedwith 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 soprettily and happily."

  "I watched them for ten minutes before I shot," he said. "Their playwas 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 apretty little baby calf if they came upon it playing? Your father'dthank 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 andI'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 amoment and then moved on. Hume watched her while he filled his pipeand lighted it, and went in turn to look at his game. He turned thelittle beast over with his foot, noted with satisfaction the hole whichthe bullet had torn through the soft body, and then strolled toward hishorse. Wanda saw him ride away in the direction of her home, smokinghis pipe.

  "All men like to hunt, to kill things," she mused. "Are they as cruelabout it as he is? Would Wayne have watched the little things playingfor ten minutes and then, when he tired of it, shot them in the midstof their play?"

  Not until Sledge Hume had topped a gentle rise and dropped down and outof sight upon the farther side, did the girl turn quickly to the greatcedar up which she had seen the escaping cub scramble. She was certainthat he had not come down. When at first she did not see him shecircled the tree slowly, expecting from each new angle to catch aglimpse of the roly-poly brown body. And when, after fifteen minutespeering upward through the widely flung, horizontal branches, she sawhim, a swift inspiration came to her; her quarry had not escaped heryet.

  The tree, one of the giants of her father's ranch that she knew verywell, thrust its crest upward so close to the cliffs that many of thebranches had been bent this way and that, flattening against thegranite. The lowest limb, twenty feet above the girl's head, was asthick as many a tall tree hereabouts, and was like a giant's arm, bentat the elbow, thrusting the rocks back. She could make her way up thisfar, working along a ragged fissure in the cliff; thence she could edgeout upon the broad limb until she came to the trunk itself. And oncethere, to Wanda in her hunting costume and with her knowledge of treeclimbing, the rest of the way, from limb to limb, might be difficultbut would certainly not be impossible or fraught with unaccustomeddanger.

  The cub had climbed until coming to a limb which like the lowest onescraped 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 hopedthat here was the opportunity of a lifetime. She would climb as highas that limb, and find the cub's flight shut off by the sheer wallrising perpendicularly behind him. Then she would make him pose forher, whether he liked it or not.

  Flushed and panting the girl made her way upward until finally shecaught with both hands the big lower limb. Field glasses and camera intheir cases strapped to her belt in no way interfered with the freeplay of her muscles. She tested the branch a moment, smiled at herselffor hesitating to trust her light weight to a thing which would havecarried tons, gripped a firmer hold and swung free of the rocks. Herewould have been a picture for her mother had she come with her thismorning; the lithe graceful body swinging twenty feet high in air, onlyhard slab and broken boulder beneath her. Then she drew herself up asa boy does "chinning himself," threw a heel over the limb, and in aflash lay breathing deeply and triumphantly, the most difficult step ofher climb achieved.

  Slowly, steadily she made her way upward. In the main it was simpleenough for Wanda for it was the sort of thing she did over and overweek in and week out. Once, already fifty feet from the ground, shedid something that would have been simple enough under othercircumstances and yet which put a quick flutter in her heart. It wassomething which would have made the heart grow still in the breast ofWayne Shandon had he seen, which would have brought a paralysing fearfor her to a man who loved life for the gamble in it and who took hischances recklessly.

  She was perched fearlessly upon a sturdy horizontal limb, her bodytight pressed against the trunk, her hands gripping at the roughenedbark, steadying her as she balanced. A quick glance upward showed hera bare stretch of bole with the nearest limb on her side of the treejust barely beyond her reach. Slowly she straightened, lengthening herpliant body the imperceptible fraction of an inch, gradually thrustingher two arms up high above her head, still with her hands steadying heras they clung to the bark, her moccasined feet curving to the limb onwhich she stood. And now she could just touch with the tips of herfingers the broad branch above.

  Then she did the thing which would have been simple enough had shestood on the ground instead of balancing high in air; she measured thefew inches in distance, she drew her fingers lingeringly from the bark,holding them still above her head, she tautened the muscles of hersplendid young body to the work they were called upon to do, bent herknees little by little, and then fearless still but agitated, sheleaped upward, and grasped the elusive branch.

  For a moment she swung there, secure now and confident, and then, asshe had gained the first step in her climb so now she made this one. Aslow tensing of biceps, a drawing up of the pendulous body, the quickflash of a heel thrown over the limb, and she lay upon it, laughingsoftly. It was good and glorious to be young, to have a body thatobeyed one's will, to have a steady heart.

  Presently she began once more to clamber upward, her way comparativelyeasy now. Thus at last she came to the branch upon which, as on abridge, the little brown bear had crossed to the ledge of rock. Andtogether there came to her a distinct disappointment and a pleasurablesurprise.

  Again the cub had slipped away from her; perhaps by now he was half amile 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 shesaw that it was nearer ten. The conformation of the rocks, beetlingabove it, had led her to imagine that a straight wall of cliff roseabruptly just at the back of the ledge. In reality they overhung therudely level space like out-jutting eaves over the sun-deck that mighthave been carved to his taste by some old cliff dweller in front of hissolitary retreat. For there was a cavern here under the frowning browof granite, different from the many caves of which the girl knew in therugged mountains only in that it was so roomy and at the same time sosecret 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, therewas a deep seam or crevice in the granite, almost filled and chokedwith fallen rocky debris from above, but affording a trail that even aman 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 narrowcut
and on the edge of the ledge, and her trained eyes had slightdifficulty in seeing the signs of little bruin's headlong flight. Ashe scurried upward he had left the marks of his toes in longunmistakable scratches.

  "I wonder," thought the girl with a little thrill at what her fancypictured 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 fledto 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 wonderwho'd be scared most?"

  She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew her camera from itscase, focused it upon the yawning, black mouth of the cavern and waiteda patient quarter of an hour, noiseless and listening and ready. Forshe was familiar enough with the California brown bear to know that hewill not attack when the way of retreat is clear; that while, after hegets into a fight he extracts a great deal of delight from it, still ifgiven his choice he would rather run and keep on moving until he hadcovered anywhere from ten to sixty miles.

  She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew hercamera from its case, and waited a patient quarter of an hour.]

  When nothing but silence answered her, she leaned out on the limb andtossed her hat into the mouth of the cave. After it she threw some bigpieces of bark, making them land well inside with no little noise. Asthere was still no sound she waited no longer.

  The branch out upon which she edged her slow way was both sturdy initself and made doubly safe by the fact that it lay across the ledge,reaching with its tips to the rock wall at the side of the naturaldoor. In a moment she had scrambled across, had leaped to her feet andwas peering into the vast, shadowy interior.

  There are few of us for whom a cave does not have a rare attraction, anappeal little short of fascinating, that has in it something of romanceperhaps, certainly something of mystery and a dim, vague stirring ofprimitive and vital feelings, a shadowy harking back to the early lifehistory of mankind. To Wanda Leland, in so many essentials a child ofthe wild, such a cavern as this was a bit of wonderland. Her swiftrunning, pioneer blood tingled; her heart gladdened with a glow ofdiscovery and exploration. Perhaps cave men had dwelt here, secure andwatchful, in the forgotten ages; the idea thrilled. Certainly no manof her own time or her father's knew of the place: that thought madethe spot her own, and intensified her eager delight in finding it. Ithad, to her sensitive, imaginative nature, an aura that she felt hadclung to it always. It was a bit of the wild, the retreat of the wildthings, sternly expressive of a savage grandeur.

  Her sensations a strange composite of many dim, intangible,inexpressible emotions, Wanda tiptoed to the opening, paused listening,took two or three quick steps and was inside the cave. For a momentshe fully expected to see the sight she dreaded, a pair of gleamingpoints of light blazing at her menacingly. And for a little she sawnothing but shadowy, unreal shapes. Her heart leaped wildly as thestartling fancy came to her that these were the phantoms of the longdead time when men had lived here, ghosts of the older race.

  Then she laughed softly again, once more accused herself of being"stupid," and began her explorations. Little by little as she grewaccustomed to the scant light here she made out dim bits of detail.First she realised that her first conjecture had been quite right, andthat this was the biggest cave by far that she had ever seen. Shemoved forward half a dozen steps, walking warily for fear of a fall andfound that the light from the entrance died into deep darkness beforeit could search out the sides of the great cliff room. Then she wentback out upon the ledge and gathered from the debris choked fissure anarmful of broken bits of dry wood, twigs and needles from the cedar.In the pocket of her blouse were the matches which she always carriedwith her on her trips and in a moment a crackling flame near the cavedoor shot its wavering light deep into the dark interior. Then againshe hurried in, eager to see what lay before her.

  Nowhere was the rock roof lower than ten feet save where far back itslanted toward the floor. The floor itself sloped so gently toward theback that it seemed quite level. She judged at first glimpse, as thefirelight drew from the gloom a glinting granite surface here andthere, that the chamber was twenty feet wide, that it reached back intothe cliffs some fifty feet. She moved back toward what seemed the rearwall, found the floor pitching steeply ahead of her, noticed a rush offresh air stirring her hair and paused suddenly, listening. A lowsound that at first she could neither locate nor analyse, came faintlyto her as from a great distance.

  With her hand on the rock wall she moved forward again slowly andcautiously. Still the floor pitched steeply as she went on, still therush of air was in her face and with it the low rumble, growing moredistinct. It was like nothing so much as rolling thunder, very faroff, or the half heard beat of the ocean on a distant, rock boundcoast. Again abruptly the way under foot grew almost level, she was ona plane some six feet lower than the ledge outside, and as she tookanother step forward, passing round a great slab of granite that juttedout in her way, she came upon an unexpected glint of light and a sight,seen dimly, that made her cry out in startled surprise.

  From far above, from some indefinite, hidden opening; the light fromthe big outdoors filtered down upon her. There was a brooding duskhere made vibrant with the clamouring voice that was no longer likedistant thunder but resolved itself into the echoing fall of water.Water that came from the darkness above, that flashed a few feetthrough the dim light, that leaped out and plunged into the darknessagain, shouting and thundering as it dropped into a yawning ink blackvoid rimmed with granite boulders. She crept closer, her ears filledwith the din, her eyes bright with the strange, weird, almost unearthlybeauty of the place. She crept so close, gripping one of the boulderswith tightening fingers, that she could peer downward into the chasmthat swallowed the water. It was only a small stream, such as is bornin the High Sierra of melting snows, but its dizzy fall, its madleaping, the echoes that were never still, caused a murmurous soundthat swelled and lessened fitfully but was never still.

  She found a loose stone and pushed it over the edge, leaning forwardswiftly to listen, seeking to trust to her ears since her eyes couldtell her nothing of the depth that lay below. She heard the stonestrike, clatter against the rocky sides, strike again and again, thesound growing fainter until at last it was lost altogether in the noiseof the water.

  She stood up, drew back and looked across the chasm which lay like agash upon the rocky floor. She judged it to be fifteen feet wide,maybe wider; upon the far side and perhaps fifty feet further back,there was a splotch of light indicating a way out there into the openday. But the bottomless abyss shut off all passage to the other side,its echoes growling threateningly as though they were what they seemedto the girl's quickened fancies, the restless mutterings of giantthings imprisoned in the deepest bowels of the earth.

  "If I ever wanted to run away from all the world," she musedfantastically, "I'd come here!"

  And then, suddenly shuddering, she went back hurriedly to the open.