THE TRUTH
"Garth!"
There was a peculiar sternness in Wayne Shandon's voice that made his
cousin start in a way which, to Shandon's taut nerves, seemed instantly
a sign of guilt. Conway finished the work he was doing, snapped the
heavy padlock into the log chain, which fastened the double doors of
the small building where odds and ends were stored during the winter,
and came on through the snow, smiting his hands together to get the
chilled blood running.
"Hello, Wayne," he answered. "What's up?"
"That's what I want to know," briefly. "What do you know about a
mortgage on the Bar L-M?"
It was too dark for Shandon to see the other's face clearly. He
noticed that Garth hesitated just a second before answering.
"What do you mean?" Conway's voice sought to be confident and failed.
Shandon's fist snapped shut involuntarily. It was almost, he thought,
as if Garth had answered him directly.
"I mean just this: Did you know that the Bar L-M was mortgaged to
Martin Leland for twenty-five thousand dollars?"
Garth Conway would not have been himself but some very different man
had there not been a considerable pause before he replied.
"Yes," he said at last, a little doggedly. "I knew it."
"Arthur mortgaged it the day he was killed? Or the day before?"
"Yes."
"And the mortgage was foreclosed three months ago?"
"Yes."
"And you never told me about it! Why?"
"I should have done so, I suppose," Garth said nervously. "But--
Well, the first thing you hit out for the East. You weren't attending
to business then, Wayne. You wrote me to take charge of everything,
not to bother you with ranch affairs. You gave me a power of
attorney--"
"I've been back half a year," said Shandon shortly. "I've been
attending to business. Why haven't you told me?"
Conway drew back a quick step as though he feared from his cousin's
harsh voice that physical violence would follow.
"I didn't think of it," he said weakly, and at the same time with a
pitiful attempt at defiance.
"You lie!"
The words came distinctly enunciated, cold and hard, a little pause
separating the two syllables so that each cut like a stab.
"Look here, Wayne," Garth said stiffly, "if you, who have never done a
single thing seriously in your life want to get sore because I have
neglected a matter of no pressing importance--"
"Good Lord!" cried Wayne. "No pressing importance! You'd handle my
business for me, keep all knowledge of a foreclosure from me, until the
year of redemption had passed? You'd let Martin Leland close me out,
would you? You and Hume and Leland would take the water from the
river. Good God! I never thought this sort of thing of you or Leland!
You'd all get rich by smashing me, and then you, you two-faced little
cur, would buy the Bar L-M back from Leland for nothing, with money
you'd taken from Arthur and me! Why, you petit [Transcriber's note:
petty?] larceny sneak, I don't know why I am talking with you instead
of slapping your dirty face!"
"If you will talk reasonably--"
"Talk reasonably? You're damned right I will! Why did Arthur borrow
twenty-five thousand dollars to begin with? What went with it? Who
got it?"
"I don't know what he wanted it for," snapped Garth. "I don't know
what went with it. I suppose the man who murdered him robbed him, too."
"You don't mean he had a sum like that with him in cash?"
"Yes. He insisted upon it. I was with Leland when the money was
turned over."
"And you--_forgot_--to tell me that!"
Conway, though his lips moved, made no audible reply. Wayne stood
staring at him a moment, his face white with passion. Suddenly he
cried out in a voice shaking with fury as he lifted one hand high above
his head and brought it smashing down into his open palm.
"Get off of the place!" he shouted. "Sneak back to Leland; go whimper
about Sledge Hume's legs. Tell Leland that I said that you are a
damned scoundrel and that he's another! Tell him that I said that I am
going to make the whole thieving pack of you eat out of my hand before
I let up on you. And now, for God's sake, go!"
He whirled and went back to the house with long strides. He flung wide
the door, and as he came swiftly to the fireplace, his face still white
and hard, he thrust out his hand to Helga Strawn, grasping hers as
though it had been a man's.
"I'm with you," he said crisply. "I'll see Ruf Ettinger myself
to-morrow."
Her eyes which had been frowning during Dart's latest attempt to be
entertaining, grew suddenly brilliant, her cheeks flushed happily.
"Dart," Wayne, continued, turning to the little man who had begun
nodding his head approvingly when Wayne's shoulder had struck the door
and who was still nodding, "you've done me a good turn to-night. I'm
not ungrateful. But Miss--"
"Hazleton," prompted Dart.
"--will have to be going right away and I want to talk with her alone."
"Sure," agreed Dart. "I'll get my book and go down to the bunk house.
I'm reading a swell story about a guy named Jupiter and a skirt named--"
For the first and only time on record Willie Dart stopped his flow of
words because of the look he saw on a man's face. He went out
snatching his book from the table as he passed. On his way to the bunk
house he stopped long enough to shake his head and rub his chin.
"I'm giving odds, ten to one," he reflected, "that the Weak Sister
don't loaf around here all night counting snowflakes."
"Something has happened, Mr. Shandon," Helga said sharply.
Shandon laughed shortly and picked up his pipe.
"A great deal has happened," he told her. "I've been a fool and an
overgrown baby long enough. Let's get down to business. You can't
stay here all night."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"For want of a chaperon, I suppose? I'm not worried about what people
say or think, Mr. Shandon. And, besides, there's no place to go."
"You can't stay, any way," he answered a little roughly. "You can get
back to the Leland place. They'll keep you over night. Now, let's get
this thing straight. You hope to get back your property from Hume?"
Swiftly their roles had changed; he was dominant now, he asked his
question in a tone that demanded an answer and she gave the answer.
"Yes."
"How?"
"I can't tell you definitely. If you'll come to me in two weeks or a
month I can tell you. For one thing, Hume is a man, I am a woman."
"You are going to try to make him fall in love with you?"
"Other men have done it," she said indifferently.
"Other men are not Sledge Hume. But that is your end of it. I am
going to tie up Ruf Ettinger and any other stragglers I can get my
hands on. If you can get back the property we'll take you in. We'll
form a company, we'll pool our interests. We'll force these other
fellows to sell to us at our own figure, by the Lord! I've got the
water!"
"If I could force Sledge Hume to sell his inherited interest to me,"
she cried, "if I could make him sell to me as I sold to him, for a
wretched twenty-five thousand dollars--"
"What!" he broke in excitedly. "How much did Hume pay you?"
"Twenty-five thousand. Why?" curiously.
"_When_?"
"I remember the date exactly."
She told him. It was barely two weeks after the death of Arthur
Shandon.
Sudden suspicion in Wayne Shandon's brain had sprung full grown into
positive certainty.
"If you can't get your property back one way," was the last thing he
said, "I can get it for you in another. Helga Strawn, you had better
leave Sledge Hume to me."