Читать книгу The Short Cut - Jackson Gregory - Страница 8

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The girl drooped her head a little, while Gypsy walked very slowly. Then she looked up again, swiftly, saw that the man was coming on to meet her, saw the great, tall, gaunt form, marked the free swinging carriage which she had noted so many times before, noticed the way he carried his head, well back, saw the sunlight splashing like fire in the red, red hair that in some fashion seemed to proclaim red blood and recklessness. A young man he was with mighty hands and iron body, with life leaping high in his laughing eyes, a man who might have been some pagan god of youth and joy and heedlessness.

His big boots brought him on swiftly until he came to her horse and she stopped, her eyes dropping before his. He twined his fingers in Gypsy's mane and looked up into her face, he laughing softly.

"So you've ridden back to us, at last." His voice was in tune with the rest of him, suggesting the wildness and recklessness that were part of the man's nature. He ran on, half bantering, half softly wondering at the loveliness of her. "Are you pagan nymph or Christian maiden, Wanda?" he asked a little seriously, as nearly serious, one might have said, as it was this man's nature to be.

She raised her lowered eyes, looking at him searchingly. Then he saw the tears that at last were spilling over, the face from which the colour was going again, the traces of horror of that thing which lay far back there under the pines.

"Wanda!" he cried sharply. "You … There's something the matter! I've been running on like an inspired idiot and … What is it, Wanda?"

"Oh," she said desperately, "it is terrible! I can't … " She choked over her words. But they were burning the soul within her, and she ran on hastily. "I found him back there by Echo Creek crossing. He … he is dead."

"Dead?" repeated the man. "Dead? Who, Wanda?"

"Arthur!" she whispered.

"Arthur, dead?" he muttered, his voice oddly low and quiet. "Arthur, dead? I don't understand."

"He is dead," she said again heavily. "Some one shot him."

She broke off and began to sob. He looked first at her, then along the trail she had ridden, and finally, taking his hand from her horse's mane he turned abruptly and strode off toward the house. He mounted the steps swiftly, passed her father and mother without a word in answer to the questioning faces they turned toward him, entered the door and returned almost immediately, carrying his hat in his hand. As he came down the steps, he put on his hat and bent his head a little so that she could not see his face. He passed her without a sign and went down to the stable. Then she rode up to the house and slipped from her saddle at the foot of the steps. Her father and mother hurried to meet her.

"It is Arthur. It is Wayne's brother," cried Wanda brokenly from her mother's arms. "He is dead!"

She told them briefly, hurriedly. Her father, his eyes strangely hard and inscrutable swore softly and turning without a word to either of the women went back to the house as Wayne had done, got his hat and hurried to the stable. His voice, hard and expressionless like his eyes, floated up to them as he gave his brief orders to Jim to drive straight back to the spot Wanda had described. The girl saw him enter the stable and in a little while come out, riding a saddled horse. Already Wayne Shandon had ridden off along the trail, travelling with a fury of speed that took no heed of the miles ahead of him.

Mother and daughter turned and went slowly up the steps, their arms about each other, their cheeks wet.

"Who killed him, mamma?" whispered the girl, her moist eyes lifted. "Who could have killed him?"

The silent tale that a pearl handled revolver had told her was a lie, a hideous lie. She did not believe it, she was never going to believe it. For an instant there had been a horrible suspicion in her breast, then her loyalty had risen and crushed it and killed it and cast it out. But now she sought some new explanation to take its place, sought it with intense eagerness.

"Who killed him?" Mother's and daughter's eyes met furtively for a quick second. And then the mother's answer was no answer at all, but a broken, tremulous prayer: "Dear God, may they never know who did this thing!"

They did not look at each other again as they crossed the length of the veranda, on the north exposure of the great square house and turned into the spacious living room.

"I am going to my room, mamma," said the girl faintly. "I want to be alone just a little."

She knew that her mother was watching her as she passed through the living room and out through the double doors to the veranda at the east. But she did not turn. She did not ask what her mother had meant, she did not wish to know. She wanted just now more than anything in the world, to be alone in her own room, to take from her bosom the thing which she felt every one would know she had there, to hide it where it would be safe.

To the east of the house in a little sheltered hollow her father, twenty years ago, had planted an orchard. She could see the white and delicate pink of the blossoms, could catch the hint of perfume that a little frolicking breeze brought to her.

She heard voices out there and saw two men coming toward the house. There came to her ears, too, the sound of cool, contemptuous laughter. She knew who it was insolently jeering at the other, knew before she saw them that it was the big, splendidly big fellow, as tall as Red Reckless and heavier, who was known to her only as "Sledge" Hume. She had heard her father say last night that both Hume and Arthur Shandon were coming to-day upon some matter of business in which the three men were interested.

"You're a little fool, anyway, Conway," the deep voice said with that frank impudence which was a part of Hume.

Garth Conway, not a small man by two inches or fifty pounds, although he appeared so beside his companion, made a reply which Wanda did not hear in full, but which reached her sufficiently to tell her that the two men were talking about some trifling matter of range management and that his theory had provoked Sledge Hume's blunt comment. The two men came on, Hume striding a couple of paces in front of Conway, until they caught sight of her. Conway lifted his hat, his sullen eyes brightening. Hume, staring at her with the keen eye of appraisal, did not trouble himself to touch his hat and gave her no greeting beyond one of his curt nods.

"They have not heard," Wanda thought with a little thrill of pity for Garth Conway who was so soon to learn of the death of the man who had been more like a brother than cousin to him. "Mamma will tell them."

She hurried down the veranda to her room which was at the far end, at the southeast corner of the house. But she paused at the door as she heard her mother's voice, shaken and tearful, and the reply that one of the men made.

It was Garth Conway. As though the utterance were drawn from him by the shock of the surprise, jerked from him involuntarily, he cried:

"Dead? Murdered? My God! And he and Wayne quarrelled. … "

"Go on!" It was Sledge Hume's heavy, colourless voice. "Just because two men quarrel it doesn't mean that one kills the other, does it?"

"Garth!" cried Mrs. Leland. "You mustn't … "

"I didn't say that," cried Conway. "I didn't mean … "

Wanda waited to hear no more. She hurried into her room, to stand there trembling behind the closed door, her face as white as that other face she had looked upon earlier in the day.

"He didn't do it!" she whispered. "He didn't. I know he didn't."

But the thing which she carried in her bosom seemed to be demanding rudely: "Must you shut your eyes to believe with your heart?" And if other eyes than her own saw it?

There was her closet, the open door showing the party dresses she had brought back from school. She shook her head. Her room was so plainly furnished with just a little dressing table, her bed, a chair, a stand with some wild flowers on it, a smaller table with half a dozen books scattered about. Then her eyes rested on the big trunk which had not yet been carried down into the basement.

Running to it she flung up the lid and jerked out the tray. The bottom was half filled with odds and ends, stockings, slippers, linen. She took the revolver from her bosom, dropped it to the bottom of the trunk, covered it hastily with loose clothing, replaced the tray and closed the lid. But she could not feel that her secret was safe until she had found the key on her dressing table. The lock was troublesome, it was always troublesome. She was down on her knees, had just heard the little click which told her that the lock was fast, and was trying to work the key out again when the door opened softly and her mother came in.

For a moment the two women, motionless, looked at each other fixedly. Then Wanda rose slowly to her feet, a little red flush colouring her brow, a fear which she knew absurd and yet which she could not crush down, rising into her fluttering breast. Then Mrs. Leland closed the door behind her, and stood with her back to it.

"Will you tell me about it, Wanda, dear?"

Her voice was troubled; her frank eyes, so like her daughter's, were at once sad and anxious.

"It is too horrible, mamma." Wanda closed her eyes tightly for a moment, trying to shut out the picture which burned so in her brain. Every little detail stood out in her memory clear cut and vivid, the grass trampled into a rude circle, the hand that clung in death to what it had last grasped in life, the grotesquely crumpled, huddled body.

"Tell me about it, Wanda." Her mother was looking into the frankly distressed face, curiously. Wanda had again the uneasy idea that her mother was wondering about the trunk which she had just locked, and again a quick fear leaped up within her that she might guess the secret it concealed.

"How did you happen to find him?"

"Shep was with me, running ahead. Shep found him."

"And some one had killed him?"

Wanda nodded, her lips tight pressed together, her hands twisting about each other in her lap. For a moment there was silence in the little room.

"Wanda, look at me, dear."

Her eyes turned, wondering, from the window and the orchard beyond, and went swiftly to her mother. The words were very clearly a command now. The voice was lowered a little but had grown more insistent. And it seemed to her that Mrs. Leland's eyes had in them now something more than sadness and anxiety, that they were suspicious. Again Wanda felt the hot blood in her temples.

"What is it, mamma?"

"Who killed Arthur? Do you know?"

"Mamma!" she cried, startled. "Why do you ask that? What do you mean?"

"I want to know, dear. Do you know who killed him?"

"No." It was plain that she was troubled, it was equally as plain that she spoke truthfully. "What makes you think … Why do you ask that?"

"I thought," replied Mrs. Leland, a little uneasily, "that you might have seen something, found something. … "

"No, no!" cried the girl impulsively. "I know what you mean. I have no vaguest idea who could have done it!"

The older woman came across the room and sat down at her daughter's side, putting her arm about the slender form.

"Wanda, dear," she said softly. "I am going to tell you something which you don't know yet. Wayne quarrelled with Arthur last night!"

The girl's body stiffened convulsively. She wanted to spring up and run out of the house to some hiding place in the old orchard and be alone. But she answered, her eyes clear and truthful.

"I'm sorry. Oh, so sorry! Poor Wayne. That will make it so much harder for him."

"Yes. It is going to make it hard for him, Wanda. Harder than you have imagined." She paused as if considering the advisability of what she had started to say, and then ended simply, hopelessly, "They are going to think that Wayne shot him!"

"They mustn't!" cried Wanda hotly. "They haven't the right. It would be thinking a lie, a wicked, hideous lie!"

Mrs. Leland shook her head sadly.

"Wanda," she went on quietly, "the first thing Garth said when I told him was that Wayne had quarrelled with Arthur last night. I don't mind so much what Garth says and does, but … I think that Martin is going to suspect Wayne of this, if he doesn't already suspect him."

"But, surely father isn't so unjust, just because he doesn't like Wayne … "

"If it were nothing more than just not liking him! Your father isn't capable of a feeling that is merely negative about people, child. He hated the boys' father; Wayne I think he hates as bitterly."

"But why, mamma? Surely there is no reason … "

"Men, strong men like your father, don't always wait for reasons, Wanda," said Mrs. Leland gently. "He has never forgotten that had circumstances been a very, very little different I might have married the other Wayne Shandon. When we were married and the other Wayne Shandon bought land so close to us your father was the angriest man I ever saw. That was before your time, dear. He rode across the valley the next day; he has never told me what happened but his face was still white when he came home. There are only a few things which can stir Martin into a passion like that."

"But, surely, mamma … "

"When the other Wayne Shandon married and the boys were born it made no difference with Martin. When the other Wayne Shandon died and his wife died and the boys were left the hatred in your father's breast did not die with them. He transferred it to Arthur and the Wayne you know. Toward Wayne especially it has grown strong and bitter."

"But why to him more than to Arthur?"

"Because, my dear, Wayne is his father over and over again! Because he has the same red hair and the same eyes with the same way of laughing. Because his voice is the same, his carriage is the same, his mad, reckless heart the same. Because everytime that Martin sees the Wayne Shandon that you know he sees the old Wayne Shandon I knew … and he hated."

"But it can't be that if a man hates another, and he dies, the man will go on hating his son just for being his son! Father is not so unjust as that, mamma! He will not suspect Wayne of murder, of murdering his own brother, just because of his father!"

Mrs. Leland's hands were interlocked tensely. "There are other reasons, there will be other things remembered about the boy which will make suspicion so easy."

"I know what you mean," the girl cried, breathing deeply. "He is reckless, he is wild, I know. He gambles, he has quarrels with many men. He does things that we would not do, but then we are women! He does things that father would not do, but then father is not young any longer! He is wild because his nature is inherited from his father; it's in his blood, he's young and he has grown up with the far out places. But he is not bad! He is not the kind of man to do a thing like this. What do men call him, men who know him and what he is? They don't call him Coward, they don't call him Cheat, they don't call him mean or dishonest or ungenerous! They call him Reckless, Red Reckless, and they love him! Oh, mamma, can't you see that it is impossible … "

Mrs. Leland rose to her feet, her face grown suddenly pinched and white.

"I don't know," she said with a sigh.

"You believe it too!" cried the girl. "You think that Wayne Shandon killed his own brother!"

A delicate flush stained her mother's cheeks.

"Wanda, child, you mustn't say that," she almost whispered. "I don't believe it. I won't believe it. And if I did … Wanda, I'd remember the man his father was, the gentleman, the true-hearted gentleman, and I should say that I did not believe."

Then, turning quickly so that her wondering daughter could not see the eyes that were blurred with a mist of tears, she left the room.

When she had gone Wanda snatched up the trunk key from her table and thrust it quickly into her bosom. Then she sat down again on the edge of her bed and stared out toward the orchard where the sunlight lay bright and warm upon the apple blossoms … and saw only the quiet body by Echo Creek, that and the face of the man people called Red Reckless.