The Short Cut

by Jackson Gregory

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE FUGITIVE

  "You are no longer daughter of mine!" cried Martin Leland sternly inthe first heat of his anger. "You have turned against your own bloodlike a traitress. You have forsaken your father to ally yourself witha drunken brawler, a man so sunken in depravity that he has murderedhis own brother for mere money. You have shamed yourself and yourmother and me. You have bared your heart for the world to look at andlaugh at, that men may link your name and the name of a common fugitivefrom justice. You would be held up to less shame had you merelyuncovered your body and gone out naked for men to jeer at!"

  Wanda, lying white and lax upon the couch near the fireplace, suddenlydropped her mother's hand and sprang to her feet, her body quiveringwith a quick anger that leaped out to meet her father's.

  "Papa!" Her head was thrown up in defiant pride, her vibrant voice,her blazing eyes were as hard as his own. "I won't listen to suchthings, not even from you. They are untrue. You say that Wayne ranaway because he is guilty and a coward. You know better than that! Heis not a fugitive from justice; he is forced by the things you havedone to become a fugitive from injustice and persecution. Oh, how canyou stand there and denounce him after you have set your hand againsthim as you have? Or don't you think that I know how you and the resthave sought to rob him and ruin him!"

  "What!" stormed Leland. "Is the girl mad?"

  "No, I am not mad," she flung back at him hotly, all facts andconsiderations swept away before the rush of her furious indignationexcept the one vital matter that she was fighting for a thing as dearas her lover's life. "You can find no name too bad for him, justbecause you hate him! You have always hated him just because he is hisfather's son. You and his own cousin, two men whom he has trusted,have tricked him and betrayed him. You have hidden from him allknowledge of the mortgage you held upon the Bar L-M. Even now you aretrying to steal his ranch from him. Wayne has never done a thing sovile as that in all his life. Oh! I am ashamed."

  Her voice grew harsh in her throat; her face was no longer white, twospots of anger burned in her cheeks. She broke off panting, her eyesgrowing harder, brighter as they challenged his.

  "Martin," cried Mrs. Leland, coming swiftly to the girl's side. "Becareful."

  "Careful!" shouted Leland, his face red with his fury. "When one of myblood loses her last shred of decency, when she takes up with a low,dissolute unprincipled Shandon? The worst of a bad lot. May God cursehim, may God curse her if she clings to him!"

  "You have never spoken to me like this before," cried Wandapassionately. "You will never do it again."

  "Listen to me," thundered Leland, his heavier voice drowning the girl'swords. "If your father does a thing which your untrained, woman'sbrain cannot rightly understand are you the one to judge and condemnhim? Because a lying Shandon has cast his cursed spell over yourromantic fancies are you to leap to these ridiculous conclusions? Am Ithe man to do a dishonourable thing? Ask other men out in the worldwhere my dealings are an open book. Ask your mother. If, to you, whohave gone hungering for lies to a man amply competent to tell them toyou, it has seemed that I have done a mean thing for selfish purposesis it your place to judge me? Listen, I tell you. I have known for ayear and a half that Wayne Shandon murdered his brother and robbed thedead body. I have seen, although all men know this fact as well as Ido, that he has been trickster enough to cover his bloody tracks; thatit would be hard to convict him in court. I have seen that it laywithin my power, that it has become my duty, to punish him in anotherway. Not a thing have I done that is not just, that the law courtswill not sanction. And yet, when I had wrested from him the thing hisred hands took with his brother's life, I should have punished him alittle as he deserves. Is a man like him deserving of any othertreatment?"

  "How do you know all this?" she demanded, all that dormant fiercenessof the female heart Hashing from the depths to the surface. "Did yousee him kill Arthur?"

  "Don't be a fool," he retorted.

  "Or were you over ready to believe because you hated him, and becausethe tool you would lay your hand to would not only punish him butenrich you? And you call me traitress!"

  For a moment Martin Leland, his face convulsed, his hands clenched, hisgreat body towering over her, looked as though he were going to strikeher down. Then, without a word, he left the room and returned swiftlyto the study where MacKelvey and Hume were waiting for him.

  Wanda stood looking after him, her body stiff and erect, her facelifted, her eyes unchanging. Her mother laid a quick hand upon thegirl's arm. Then, suddenly the tired body relaxed, the flaming spiritsoftened, and Wanda, white and trembling, dropped sobbing upon thecouch.

  "Wanda, Wanda," whispered her mother softly, kneeling and putting herhands gently upon the shaking shoulders. "I am sorry. And yet, Wanda,I am proud of what my daughter has done to-day."

  The mother heart comforted. And even before the storm of sobs, shakenfrom the girl by strained and jangling nerves, had ceased, Mrs. Lelandwas trying to make excuses for her husband.

  "He has just been blinded by hate," she said bravely. "Some day hewill see the light."

  "Gee," commented Willie Dart, outside the door, resuming his pacing upand down upon the front porch. "If Red turns that girl down I'll marryher myself!"

  Had Martin Leland's iron nature asked such a thing as sympathy it wouldhave received little satisfaction from the interview that night in hisstudy. MacKelvey's greeting to him was, "Martin, that girl of yours isa wonder! There's not a man in the country would have tackled thething she did to-day."

  "Pshaw," grunted Hume, his sneering manner having come back to him withhis growing displeasure. "It was simple enough for all of itsspectacular staging."

  "Was it?" MacKelvey asked sharply. "I'll bet you five hundred dollars,Mr. Hume, that you're not the man to do it!"

  Hume lifted his shoulders for answer and kicked viciously at theandirons on the hearth.

  "So you let him get clean away?" demanded Martin, flinging himself intohis chair at the table and glowering at MacKelvey. "Why didn't youfollow him up?"

  "Because I wasn't a fool. Wouldn't I cut a pretty picture slippingaround on a pair of sticks trying to catch up with the strongest skiman in the county! He'd double up on me every mile. And with thenight coming on I'd stand a great chance finding him, wouldn't I?"

  "What are you going to do about it then?"

  MacKelvey spat thoughtfully at the fire.

  "I'm going to nab him the first chance I get. And I'm not in the habitof carrying a warrant around in my pocket until I wear it out, either."

  "You are going out after him in the morning?"

  MacKelvey again attacked the fire with more thoughtfulness, truerprecision than before.

  "Nope. I'm going back to El Toyon while I can get out. There's aboutten feet more snow due in the next two weeks, Martin."

  "So," cried Hume. "That's the way you serve a warrant, is it? You aregoing to let the man get away if he wants to, and he has shown usalready how he feels about that! You are going to let him slip down toMexico or work up to the Canadian line."

  "Easy, Mr. Hume," said MacKelvey slowly. "I've been sheriff in thiscounty for seventeen years. Name me the name of any man who's beenwanted and who hasn't been brought in. If I stuck here, running aroundlike a rabbit in the snow, Shandon would have the chance to get out, ifhe wanted it. And I don't believe that he does want it. But if I'mback in El Toyon to-morrow with the wires busy there won't be a hole inthe web for a blue bottle to buzz through. He can't eat snow, youknow. I'll put a man up here to see he don't slip back to the Bar L-M.And I don't say I won't go myself or send Johnson and Crawford out inthe morning to try and pick up his tracks if it don't snow during thenight and cover them up."

  But long before midnight it came on to snow again, so heavily that theyall knew that a fresh ski track would not have lasted an hour. Earlythe next morning Leland, Garth Conway, Sledge Hume and MacKelvey w
ithhis deputies went out of the valley upon skis or snow shoes. HelgaStrawn went with them, shrugging her shoulders at Leland's bluntassurance that it would be a good ten miles of hard work before theycould expect to take to the horses waiting beyond the heavy snow line.

  Mr. Dart did not go with them. He had settled that fact for himselfvery positively before going to bed the night before.

  "In the first place," he decided, "Red might need me to smuggle himsome grub or something and I got to be on hand. In the second place Ihad enough trying to ride two slippery sticks yesterday. Split myselfin two for ten miles on a pair of devil's toboggans? Thanks awfully.I'll stay here and split stovewood for Julia."

  "Where's Dart?" demanded Leland when the men were pushing back theirchairs from the breakfast table.

  Nobody knew. He had not been seen since last evening. Julia, hastilyreturning from quest of him, brought back word that he was in bed andthat she was afraid that he was unwell. She had heard him groaning.

  "The little fool is faking," cried Martin, ready this morning to flyinto a rage over trifles. "Does he think I'm going to have himsticking around the place all winter?"

  He flung himself from the table and went heavily up the stairs toDart's room in the attic.

  "Come out of that," he said roughly, throwing the door open. "We aregoing to start right away. You'd better get some breakfast in a hurryif you want any."

  "Breakfast?" moaned Dart weakly. "Good God, Mart. Don't say breakfastto me or I'll die."

  "What's the matter?" asked Martin roughly and suspiciously. "Youweren't sick last night."

  He came closer to the huddled figure. Dart's hands were shaking, hisface was as white as a sheet.

  "It came on sudden," he said faintly. "I--I've had it before. I--Ithink I'm dying this time. Has Mamma Leland got a Bible?"

  Suddenly, before Leland's astonished eyes, the little man began aviolent retching and vomiting. Leland went back down the stairs,swearing, and sent Julia with word to Mrs. Leland that Dart was reallysick.

  Dart got out of bed, his legs trembling under him, and crept to thewindow, peering out cautiously. Only when he had seen the party leavethe house upon skis and webs did he go back to his bed, snatch a bit ofplug cut chewing tobacco out from under his pillow and hurl itvenemously into the snow.

  "A man that will chew that stuff for fun," he groaned creeping backinto bed, "ain't safe to have around. Good God, I wonder if I amdying? I might have took too much!"

  * * * * * *

  Thus it happened that almost at the very beginning of the hard winterWayne Shandon was a hunted man, forewarned that his hunters would spareneither unsleeping vigilance nor expense to secure his arrest andconviction. During the first night and the first day he never went farfrom the Bar L-M range house. From behind a screen of timber less thana quarter of a mile from his pursuers he had watched them turn backtowards the Echo Creek. The darkness was already dimming the landscapebut he could count the figures, five of them, with the horse Wanda hadinsisted that MacKelvey bring out with them. As they went toward thebridge he came down toward them, moving swiftly among the trees,keeping well out of sight.

  He knew he would be doing the thing upon which MacKelvey would notcount. Besides it was sheer madness to think of spending the nightwithout shelter of any kind and he did not dare go immediately toWanda's cave. Already he had come to think of that place, high abovethe treetops and as safely hidden as if it were below the earth'ssurface, as a place of refuge. If he went there now they would trackhim to-morrow--unless it snowed. He must wait somewhere until the snowcame to wipe out the track he would leave behind him.

  He entered the house by the back door, got his rifle and a belt ofcartridges, made into a compact pack such blankets, tobacco, coffee,sugar, salt and condensed foods as he could carry. The cave wasalready well stocked but he could not guess now how long he must liehidden there. He had no time to decide upon the course ahead of himbeyond the immediate future. He knew only that he must not let themtake him until he had done the work he would be unable to do from theinside of a jail. He was preparing carefully for such needs as hecould foresee.

  He slept that night in his own bed, waking at each little noise, readyto spring up fully dressed and armed, prepared equally for defence or ahasty retreat. Going to the window shortly after midnight he saw thatthe snow was falling heavily. He made a hasty cold meal, then strappedon his pack, took up his rifle and left the house. Now was the time togo to the cave; the snow might cease by morning.

  In the darkness he deemed it wiser to go down by the bridge than toattempt the steeper passage beyond the head of the lake. They wouldnot be out in this sort of night watching for him; they would not knowwhere to expect him. And even if he came within twenty paces of a manhis swift, silent passage in the dark would be unnoticed.

  To a man knowing the broken range country a whit less intimately thanShandon knew it, the trip that night down to the bridge, across it,across the Leland ranch and to the cliffs where the cave was would havebeen a sheer impossibility. The storm, howling and snatching at him,would have taken the heart out of a man less grimly determined than hehad grown to be. The snow, while it befriended him, covering his trailin the rear, drove its shifting wall of opposition across his way infront. The darkness tricked him and baffled him again and again. Butstill, head down and dogged, he pushed on, certain always of hisgeneral direction, confident of being under the cliffs in the firstfaint glow of the new day.

  It was an endless night, torturous with cold and uncertainty. But atlast, before the day broke, he made his heavy way up the great cedar,climbing perilously with numbed hands. He knew that if his pursuerscame here now they would see where he had knocked the thick pads ofsnow from the wide horizontal branches. But he knew, too, that beforethey could arrive the steadily falling snow would have hidden the signshe had left behind him. And at last, wearily, he threw himself downbefore a crackling fire, and went to sleep.

  For upwards of two weeks his life was like that of a rat in a cellar.Silence, monotony, darkness, loneliness. Already the snowfall was asgreat as that of most winters. He could guess that by this time thefences about Wanda's home were hidden under a smooth covering thatthickened day by day, night after night. When he looked out from thescreen across his doorway he saw that the smaller trees were blottedout and reckoned that upon the level floor of the valley the snow layten feet deep. Now and again, when he went out in the early dawn orthe last glimmering light of dusk for wood or for a break in themonotony that was horrible in itself to a man of his type, he saw howthe winter was piling higher and higher its white heaps along thecliffs above. He spent hours on the cliffs, working his way slowlyupward along the seam in the rocks which he discovered led out above,digging with his hands for dead branches to replenish his dwindlingstock of firewood. He must choose days for this when the snow sothickened the air that a man within shouting distance could not haveseen him.

  Two weeks, and Wanda did not come to him. Two weeks of inactivity, ofwaiting, the hardest trial in the world for a man tingling with energy,with his work calling to him through every moment of his waking hours.He had planned that work, going over and over his plans, every step.He knew just what he should do--when Wanda came.

  He could not know why she did not come. He began to fear that she hadleft the valley. Then, when he assured himself that she would not havegone without a word he began to fear that she was ill; that the daywhen she took the short cut had been too much for any woman's endurance.

  But she was not ill, he was certain of that. During the two weeksthere were only two days when the air cleared enough for him to see theLeland house. The first came when he had been in hiding three days;the other two days later. Both times Wanda had come out upon the porchwhere with the spy-glass in the cave he could see her plainly. She hadsignalled him, using the first few signals of that code they had madetogether so merrily. She lifted both hands up to her fac
e and he knewthat her heart was repeating his words, "I love you, dear, with mywhole heart." She loitered on the porch in apparent carelessness, butas eager as the man watching her, yearning for her, she had lifted herhood lightly from her head, flashing the message across the miles: "Becareful. We are being watched." She turned her back and stood for along time looking in at the open living room door: "Something hashappened to prevent our meeting to-day."

  Several times during the two clear days she repeated her signals. Butfor more than a week afterward he had no sight of her. He did notknow, he could only guess vaguely at the truth. One of MacKelvey's menhad come back to the Echo Creek, unexpected by Wanda and Mrs. Leland,and while he was apparently concerned only in making frequent tripstoward the Bar L-M, Wanda had the uneasy feeling that she was neverlong out of his sight.

  But at length Wanda risked coming to him, choosing a time when thedanger was least. Johnson, the deputy sheriff, had said in the morningthat he was going to take a run over to the Bar L-M, to look thingsover. It was by no means the first time he had said this, and the girlfelt that he had no particular reason to suspect her to-day. It wasstill snowing, not too heavily for one to venture out, but steadilyenough to obliterate ski tracks entirely in less than an hour. Johnsonleft the house, and a little later Wanda set forth, her preparationsswiftly made. Johnson was out of sight. She drove on swiftly to ahilltop due east of the house from which she would be able to see himbefore he came to the bridge.

  She waited anxiously there until she saw him, pushing steadily onward.One sharp glance at the way she had come showed her that unless Johnsonreturned very much faster than he had gone out there would be no signto tell him where she had gone. And then, her eyes suddenly brighterthan they had been for many a day, she hastened on, still eastward, notdaring even now to turn directly toward the cliffs until she had passedinto the deeper forest.

  It was like bringing new life to Wayne Shandon. He swept the girl uphungrily into his arms, crying out softly as she came through the snowblocked entrance to the cave. And she, when he brought a candle andher eyes caught sight of his face, bearded and worn, must shut her lipstight and fight hard to keep back the tears.

  It was only a brief half hour allowed them, leaving them both happierand sadder at the parting. But she had brought the few little thingsshe could smuggle out to him, had assured herself from a closeexamination of his store that he was in no danger of freezing orstarving; and he had entrusted to her the carrying out of the work hehad hit upon.

  "I have scribbled a letter in your little note book, dear. It is toBrisbane, a lawyer in San Francisco. He is a friend of mine and I cantrust him. It tells him everything, about the mortgage and theforeclosure, about the trouble I am in. He's the man to advise us now.There's not a keener criminal lawyer in the State. I'm going to givehim my power of attorney. I'll take chances on slipping down to thecity, somehow, if it's necessary. Or I can get down into White Rock atnight, meet him there, and get back here before morning. The lettertells him, too, that I am dead certain that Sledge Hume is the man thelaw wants; it explains why, and authorises him to hire a detectiveagency to run Hume down. Dear heart of mine, you are too brave to beafraid for me now. You will get this letter out somehow? You will getit to Brisbane for me? Once he is at work things are going to rightthemselves. A man can't kill another and rob him of twenty-fivethousand dollars and not leave some sort of a trail behind him. Thenthere is another message. I have not written it. Can you get word toBig Bill to keep a close watch on Little Saxon? I'll ride him in thespring."

  "And you, Wayne? You can't stay here all winter!"

  "I can, if there is anything to be gained by it. But we'll wait untilwe hear from Brisbane. He'll find the evidence we want, dear. Anduntil then hadn't you rather think of me waiting here than lying injail?"

  When she left him to take a devious way home the tears lay glisteningupon her cheek until the snow, beating in her face, washed them away.