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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.