THE SHORT CUT
Wanda Leland, her lithe body bending gracefully and easily as she drove
her light skis over the glistening crust of the snow, shot down the
last long slope in a sort of ecstasy inspired by the exhiliration of
silent speed and the crisp brightness of the early afternoon. Stooping
forward a little she took the short leap across the three foot wide
gulch at the base of the knoll upon which the house stood, and laughed
aloud as she landed and with gathered impetus sped a score of feet up
the knoll itself.
She had left Wayne happy in the two things which mattered: He loved her
even as she loved him; he was a strong man and a true. There was still
sadness in her breast but it was but a sunspot in the great glory of
her happiness. But now suddenly, even while her lips curved redly to
her gay laughter, was the gladness to go out of her.
She saw Willie Dart upon the porch, saw him start towards her in an
eagerness little less than frantic. He fairly hurled himself from the
steps into the deep snow, floundered helplessly, and progressing by
hard fought inches came on to meet her. As her skis, running up hill,
came slowly to a stop she watched him with amused eyes. But when she
saw his face, twisted with despair, she grew suddenly afraid.
"They've gone to arrest Red!" he wailed. "The sheriff and Hume and two
other guys. Where is he?"
"He has gone back to the Bar L-M," she answered swiftly. "What do you
mean?"
"I mean them crooks have gone to arrest him for murder," he called to
her. "They left nearly an hour ago. It's a skin game of the worst
kind. They want him tied up so they can work some sneaking gag and rob
him of his land. Hume wants him where he can't ride a race in the
spring so he'll grab Red's five thousand. The money's already up. God
knows what else they've got up their dirty sleeves."
For one dizzy moment the girl grew faint with fear. And when that
moment passed she saw clearly that as matters stood Wayne Shandon had a
man's work ahead of him. Thrown into jail, charged with so serious a
crime as fratricide, with Hume, and perhaps her own father, doing
everything in the world that they could do to hamper him, he would be
carrying a handicap to break the back of a man's hope.
"They mustn't do this thing!" she cried passionately, the eyes that had
been tender a moment ago growing fierce. "Does my father know this?"
"Sure," grunted Dart disgustedly. "He's one of the combine."
"And they left an hour ago?"
"Seems like a million years. It must be awful close to an hour. Say,
Wanda, I tried, honest to God, I did--"
She did not hear. She had turned away from him and was staring at the
long billowing sweep of snow lying between her and those men who had
gone to arrest Wayne Shandon. She saw the broken imprints of the
Canadian snowshoes, the smooth tracks of the skis, and demanded sharply:
"Which men wore the webs?"
"Them tennis racket things? MacKelvey and one of his thieves."
He looked at her wonderingly. What difference did that make? But
Wanda took no time for explanations. She was thinking swiftly that
MacKelvey would be the man to make the arrest, that the others would
accommodate their gait to his, that upon a crust like this the Canadian
shoes could make no such speed as a pair of skis.
"Tell mamma, no one else, where I have gone," she cried.
And, swinging about, she took the side of the knoll in a long sweep,
shot down into a hollow, rose upon the far side, crossed the trail that
the four men had made, seemed to Mr. Dart's staring eyes to be
balancing a moment upon a line where snow and sky met and then was gone
from him, dropping out of sight into the wilderness of snow.
"She's some game little kid," he moaned, shaking his head and making a
slow retreat back to the house. "But with them cutthroats an hour
ahead of her, she ain't got a show. Poor old Red."
But Wanda's heart was beating steadily now, her muscles were obeying
the calm command of her will, and she was telling herself resolutely
that she did have a chance. MacKelvey and Hume and the others would
see no imperative need for a wild burst of speed; they would travel
swiftly but they would not know that she was moving more swiftly behind
them. Up and down hill they would go step by step while she, following
the way she knew so well, the trails she had followed winter after
winter, would find the long slopes down which she would shoot like a
flash of light. It was more than possible that they would take over
two hours in making the trip; she must make it in less than an hour.
"If I had only come home half an hour sooner," she cried as she fought
her oblique way up a ridge she must top, "I could have laughed at them.
God be with me and I'll laugh at them yet!"
She was going too fast; she came to the crest of the ridge panting, her
heart beating wildly, her body shaking. She sought to relax her
muscles as she took the long racing ride down upon the far side. She
went more slowly as she climbed the next ridge. She was thinking
coolly now, she saw the need both of speed and of a conservation of
energy. She felt no fatigue from the trip of the forenoon; she had
rested long at the cave with Wayne; and yet she knew that unless she
saved her strength she would be unfit for the last burst of speed at
the end.
She did not follow the track the four men had left. She knew these
woods too well to lose a precious yard now. Where they had turned here
and there to avoid thick clumps of firs the girl, looking far ahead,
economised strength and shortened distances.
"I _must_ get there first," she cried over and over again. "If these
men will do the sort of thing Wayne says that they have done, if they
will stop at nothing to gain their ends, what hope has he if they
arrest him and charge him with Arthur's murder? There will be
evidence, they will make evidence, and he will be in jail where he can
not help himself."
Once she heard a faint cracking sound under her feet and her heart
stopped. If a ski had broken now-- But it was only a dead brush, snow
covered, and one of the lifeless twigs had snapped. She became more
careful of the way, wary of being tricked by the blinding snow that
appeared level when there were mounds and hollows that might have
broken a ski had she been careless and unlucky. The sudden hideous
fancy leaped out upon her that the breaking of a ski now might mean the
death of a man, the only man in the world for her.
At last, from the crest of the highest ridge, the one from which each
year she took her favourite ride down to the river, she caught sight of
the little party that menaced Wayne Shandon's liberty. The men had
been making better time than she had let herself believe they would;
evidently MacKelvey wanted to get the thing over with, to get back to
the Echo Creek that night. Beyond them, straight ahead, was the bridge.
"I can't do it! I can't do it!" she cried aloud, her voice broken with
hopelessness.
Even as she hesitated, poising upon the top of the rise, one of the men
far ahead turned and saw her. It was Sledge Hume. She saw his quick
gesture; she almost fancied that she could hear his laugh. He would
know why she followed them. He would be mocking her. Oh, how she
hated the man then!
"They will leave one of the deputies at the bridge," she thought in
despair. "He won't let me across. Oh, God, if there were only another
crossing!"
_There was another crossing; a snowshoe rabbit had shown it to her_.
He had sought to leap it just to save the little flame of life in the
tiny furred breast. He had gone to his death valiantly, but he had
shown her the place, the short cut, the way that was full of menace and
yet that was possible.
Her face whitened; she hesitated just a fraction of a second,
balancing. Now the men were following the wide crescent of the curve
which would lead them to the bridge. There was another course lying
straight between the two tips of that crescent, and a great gap filled
with the thunder of raging water against crags that were like the
horrible teeth of a monster, broke the short cut in two.
Again Hume had turned; she noted even across the distance the
contemptuous carriage of his big body and she knew that he was
laughing. And again, as though it were already just before her, she
fancied that she saw the chasm of the river.
"It is Wayne's ruin, it maybe Wayne's death, if they take him now!"
It seemed to her that it had not been her voice, that whispered the
words. It seemed that they had come to her from the air, that some one
else had spoken them. And as, hesitating no longer, she stooped
forward and sped down the long slope, she swerved still further from
the track the four men had made, heading straight to the river above
them, opposite the Bar L-M ranch house, straight toward the only way
that was left her.
She had made up her mind. She was resolute now and yet she was
frightened. In a little while the roar of the river smote her ears and
it seemed at once to call to her and jeer at her. She fancied that it
was like Hume's voice, mocking her. She remembered just how the banks
fell straight down to the whirlpools; she remembered again the splash
of the falling snow when she had come so close to her death. The very
feeling that had gripped her then, like ice against the beatings of her
heart, gripped her now. She was as one in a nightmare, drawn on,
rushing on to the peril from which she shrank.
She lost sight of Hume and the rest as she left the straight, cleared
roadway and the trees came between her and them.
"They're all the same," Sledge Hume was laughing as he turned and
waited a moment for MacKelvey to come up with him. "I never saw a
woman yet who wasn't willing to tackle the impossible in a flash and
then go to pieces with hysterics in the middle of the job."
On, gathering speed with the flinging of each yard behind her, her
polished skis singing as they leaped downward, hardly seeming to touch
the brittle crust of snow underfoot, standing erect that she might see
far ahead and turn in time for a mound that spoke of a boulder, Wanda
was rushing on toward the river. Its shouting voices, like the voices
of many giant things In brutal laughter, swelled and thundered ever
more distinct, ever more jeering. It seemed to her that there were ten
thousand Sledge Humes taunting her, sneering at the blind recklessness
of a mere woman. She knew that the blood had crept out of her face and
that she was afraid. And she knew that there is one thing in the
world, God-created, that is greater, stronger than fear.
"I have leaped distances greater than that before," she told herself
stubbornly.
"With certain death dragging at you if you missed?" the rude laughter
of the river through its rocky way taunted her.
Her skis were running slowly again; she had come to the level land once
more. She must make a little turn to avoid the thick grove through
which she had gone slowly last year after the rabbit. She must turn
upstream a little too. There were ten minutes of driving one ski after
the other, then the steep climb of another ridge, the last ridge lying
between her and the river. She climbed it swiftly, stubbornly and
unhesitatingly.
"If Wayne were coming to me would he hesitate?" she asked herself
angrily. "Because I am not a man am I a coward? Shall I fail him the
first time in our lives that he has need of me? Is a woman like that a
fit thing to be a strong man's wife?"
At the top of this last climb she paused. She was not afraid now. The
colour had come back into her face, her blood was running steadily.
She might be going to her death. Was death then so great a thing? Was
it as great as her love?
"If I were afraid now," she told herself quietly, "I should know that I
do not love Wayne as other women have loved other men. Then I should
not deserve to live to love him weakly."
From here she could not see MacKelvey, Hume and the others. She knew
that by this time they would have crossed the bridge. Then she tried
not to think of them. Briefly she studied the steep sloping sweep of
the snow, trying to mark the way she must go. She found the spot the
rabbit had chosen, the narrowest place with the far bank three or four
feet lower than the near bank. Frowningly seeking the detail of a
sheet of glaring white which seemed without mound or hollow but which
she knew was full of uneven ridges and sinks, she made out at last such
a ridge lying parallel to the river's edge and close to it. A log had
fallen there; she remembered having seen it in the summer. With the
little hollow this side, with the short upward slope that would give
her a natural take-off, she would make it help her.
She would strike this low up-sloping mound in a moment when she swept
down upon it from the crest of the ridge upon which she now stood; she
would take the tiny dip in a fraction of a second too brief to have a
name; she would rise, leaping as she rose--
The supreme moment came.
She loosened the band about her waist, breathing deeply. She bent her
slender body this way and that, straightening up, stooping, twisting
from side to side. She felt that every individual muscle must be made
ready, keyed up to the work that was to be done in a flying moment.
She must be steady, she must be sure. Not a fibre of her being must
weaken or tremble or be uncertain.
"Dear God," she whispered, "make me strong and worthy and unafraid."
Then she lifted her hands a little, holding them out from her sides,
her fingers outstretched, her arms taking the place of the pole she had
tossed away. Her skis clung to the snow. She slipped the right foot
back and forth, making sure that it had gathered none of the feathery
stuff that lay just under the thin crust. When it ran smoothly she
tested the left ski. And then slowly she stooped forward, her hands
still out. She felt a little stir, knew that she was moving, just
barely moving. She stooped further forward now, quickly. The shifting
of her weight had its instantaneous effect. The slow, scarcely
perceptible moving was changed into a smooth glide that grew in a yard
to a swiftly accelerating speed. Then she straightened up, balancing
with taut muscles, rushing downward.
Now she was flying as a bird flies that skims the snow. Only the
little whine of the ski song over the crust, the flying particles from
before the upturned ends, a dust of diamonds, told that the speeding
body was not in reality defying gravity, scorning the earth beneath.
The pitch steepened before her, the skis rose and dipped over the
little uneven places, the air cut at her face, stung her eyes. Half
way down, when the skis struck a little mound from which she dared not
try to swerve, she in sober truth flew, not touching the crust again
for five or six feet. She landed easily, crouching a little, tensing
her already taut muscles, steadying herself, plunging onward at a speed
that was like an eagle's dip. And then another second, another and she
heard the whine of the air about her ears, saw the black gulf from
which the roar of the river boomed up at her and her skis rose to the
take-off she had chosen.
As never before in all her life did the girl's will call upon the
muscles of her body. Her hands far out now, like the still pinions of
some strange being of a strange white world, her lithe body as tense as
wire, she gathered her strength, felt her body rising as the skis
slipped up the short slope of the mound, knew that in one flying second
there lay both success and death. At the very instant, when, had she
let herself go, she would be slipping down to the water that was
grinding at the rocks, she leaped.
Higher and higher she rose in the air, carried onward, upward by the
impetus of her wild race and by the slight aid of her take-off had
given her. Higher yet and further out although it seemed to her still
heart that her body was hanging motionless, that it was the earth
leaping beneath her, flying backward, rushing away, hurling the chasm
of the river under her. She did not look down; it might have meant
death to look down. She kept her eyes fastened now upon the far bank,
the place where she sought to land, where she must throw herself
forward to avoid slipping back.
And yet she saw the black gulf under her. It was too black, too wide,
too full of shrieking menace for her not to see it even while she did
not look at it. She was hanging still in air, it was rushing at her,
there was an instant filled with eternity. And then, Wayne's name upon
her lips, she had described the great arc, she had struck six feet from
the treacherous margin on the far side, her skis were running smoothly
under her, at first swiftly, then slowly, and a glad cry of
thankfulness broke from her lips.
She had not even fallen, she did not have to hurl herself prone to
clutch at the snow with her fingers. She sped on, came slowly to a
standstill and then her heart leaping, her blood racing, her eyes
bright and wet she was over the ridge and speeding forward again, the
roar of the river lost to her ears, the form of a man bringing a horse
out of a snow surrounded barn in her eyes.
He cried out as he saw her racing across the snow to him, cried out in
wonder. He dropped his horse's rope and turned to meet her. She saw
that he was still on his skis, saw too that not a thousand yards beyond
the house four men were coming on swiftly.
"Wanda!"
"Wayne." She had come close enough to call now and lifted her voice
clearly. "MacKelvey and Hume and two more men are there, right there.
They are going to arrest you for Arthur's murder. They mean to keep
you shut up in jail until they ruin you. They will make evidence to
hang you. You must go, go quick."
He swung about quickly, caught sight of the four men who had seen Wanda
and who were lessening the distance by quick strides. His face
blackened to a great anger. Then he turned back to her and his face
flushed with a great happiness. For in the man as in the woman love
was stronger than fear or hatred.
"You golden hearted, wonderful woman!" he cried softly. He reached out
his arms as she swept by and gathered her into them. He kissed her
softly. And then, swiftly, he turned away.
"After a few days, come to the cave," he said eagerly. "If I let them
take me now it would mean more than my ruin, more than my death, Wanda.
They won't take me. When a man is arrested for Arthur's murder it is
going to be the right man."
And striking out mightily, steadily he left her, driving his straight
way toward the broken country of the upper end of the valley.
When they came to where she lay, Hume first, they found Wanda Leland
very still and white, motionless save for the little sobs shaking her.
Hume's anger broke out into a wordy fury. He shook his fist at her
prostrate body and cursed. But he did not sneer. There was too deep a
wonder in his heart. He knew, they all knew, what it meant to have
done what she had done. And MacKelvey, a hard man robbed by her of his
prey, took off his hat and lifted her gently and said simply, and in
full reverence:
"By God!"