The Short Cut Part 10

"Flatterer!" she countered brightly. "Have you been a whole year making pretty speeches, and must you keep it up now because you've got into the habit and since the pretty ladles of your travels are not here and I am? Aren't you a little bit ashamed of yourself? Aren't you afraid that you will create havoc by putting a lot of foolish ideas into a country girl's head?"

He laughed at last, becoming suddenly the same old Red Reckless that he had always been, and swung down lightly from the saddle. Dropping Lady Lightfoot's reins to the ground he came to where Wanda sat and having stood over her a moment looking down into the clear eyes which were turned frankly up to him he made himself comfortable at her feet, stretching luxuriously in the warm gra.s.s.

"It's great to be back, Wanda," he said musingly, with a deep sigh of content. "You are going to squander a little of your precious time on me, aren't you? I've been deucedly energetic all morning; now I'm just brimful of sunshine and laziness. So lazy that I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you talk. You will have a whole lot to tell me about all the things you've been doing while I was away."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you talk."]

She gathered her knees into her clasped hands and smiled down upon the flaming red hair. Before he made his cigarette she found herself answering his questions, telling about her life during his absence.

As she talked she saw his face only now and then when he turned a little to laugh up at her over some trifle that amused him. The story of this year of her life as she told it was a simple, homely little tale, a quiet pastoral of happy content. It had to do largely with herself and her work, with her failures and successes. But she mentioned both Garth and Sledge Hume.

"Hume?" said Shandon, looking up quickly, this time with no laughter in his eyes. "Have you seen much of that man, Wanda?"

"A good deal. He and father and Garth seem to have some kind of business together. Why?"

"Because I don't like him," he told her emphatically. "I don't like to have you know a man like that."

She did not mention Hume again. She admitted frankly that she herself disliked the man although she had tried to think well of him because he was a friend of her father. Running on with the account of her winter adventures, and laughing at the memory of an incident that had been serious enough at the time, she told him how she had imperilled her life in heedless pursuit of the snow-shoe rabbit. Her mood, gay for the moment, was the sort to make light of things which had merely cast a shadow and gone; it was as though from the very presence of Wayne she had accepted his theory of life, the ability to live keenly, richly in the present, to be oblivious with sealed eyes to the future, careless with deaf ears to the mutterings of the past. She was talking freely, spontaneously, laughing from the very joy of life and the morning and another joy which she did not a.n.a.lyse, looking down at the sunlight caught flaring in his hair. And he, vastly contented, listened and laughed with her.

Then, in the midst of the recital of her last winter's mishap which she strove to make as unimportant as she now considered it, she looked down at Wayne Shandon and suddenly broke off in the middle of a word. He had dropped his cigarette, the hand that she could see had shut tight into a whitened fist, the colour of a second ago had seeped out of his bronzed cheek. As she stopped, wondering, he sprang to his feet and towered over her.

"Wanda!" he cried, and his voice was as unfamiliar in her ears as the view of his drawn face in her eyes.

"Wayne!" she said curiously, staring at him, startled and a little afraid of she knew not what. "Wayne! What is it?"

"What is it?" Shandon's voice had dropped lower, was so hoa.r.s.e that it did not seem Wayne Shandon's voice at all. "It is just this--"

He broke off as sharply as she had done and moving swiftly as though driven by some great compelling force which dominated him he stooped and swept her up into his arms. She felt the tightening muscles as he drew her close, closer to him; felt a little tremor running through his whole body; heard the beating of his heart; was drawn nearer to him than she had ever been drawn to a man in her life; realised for the first time in a flutter of many sweeping emotions how superbly big and powerful the man was, how almost G.o.d-like in the beauty of his muscular manhood . . . and then she knew nothing but the wonderful fact that he had kissed her full upon her quivering red mouth.

"My G.o.d, Wanda, how I love you!" he exclaimed with sudden wild, unleashed vehemence. "Do you hear me?" He was holding her a little away from him, his arms still shaking about her shoulders, his voice frightening her with the vibrant fierceness that had leaped into it, the love in his eyes glowing like fire. "I love you so that I'd go through h.e.l.l to have you, to have you for mine, all mine! So that I might fight a man for daring to look at you, that I might kill a man for harming you! Wanda, girl, I tell you that I love you! Do you understand? Do you know what that means? What love means? When a man loves a woman as I do?"

Always a man of impulse, a man who through years of habit had grown to act swiftly in little things and big things alike, Wayne Shandon flung into impa.s.sioned words the emotions which swept through his soul and brain. The sight of Wanda Leland, grown into the sweet, pure beauty of early womanhood, had stirred him to the depths. Her casual mention of other men, Garth, and Sledge Hume, had displeased him so vaguely that he had not fully understood or cared why. And then the light allusion to the danger of death in which she had stood had been the spark in the powder train of his love, his words exploded from the seething consciousness newly awakened, fires long smouldering unsuspected in his heart burst forth in a mighty conflagration of emotion.

Throughout his whole being there was a strange, new, throbbing buoyancy, the gladness that sings, the joy that sparkles. The elixir of life had been set suddenly before him. He did not taste and put it away as some men do; he did not sip sparingly and temperately; but he drank deeply and swiftly so that the wine of love tingled through his blood, made his brain reel and his heart grow hot. It intoxicated his soul and his senses with a rare, glorious intoxication.

He tossed his head back, holding her still a little further from him, and looked into her eyes. His own had changed now, changed utterly in their eloquent speech. They had been fierce, now they grew wonderfully tender. They had been clear and bright and eager; and now they were misty. The first flame of love had leaped through his blood; now an infinite yearning, as gentle as tears, rose from his heart. Love had clamoured, now love was whispering. Love had been insistent; now it pleaded. It had been masterful; now it knelt.

"You love me--_like that_?"

The tumult in the man's soul had awakened conflicting emotions under the troubled, tremulous b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She looked at him with wide, clear eyes, wondering. A miracle, the old, eternal, primal miracle, had entered her life. She had looked down, laughingly, on a careless boy; she had been gripped mightily in the arms of a being new to her, a man who loved. From the clear blue of her life's sky there had leaped out a flash of lightning that filled the universe with its light and heat.

They had been two gay loitering children; now she saw the man shaken in the gust of his pa.s.sion.

"You love me--_like that_?"

"G.o.d forgive me, yes!"

His voice was steady now but low, scarcely louder than her awed whisper. He dropped his arms, letting them fall lingeringly, and stooping a little, touched her forehead with his lips.

"And," he said with a reverence which stirred her more than his rude embrace had done, "I love you like this, dear."

More often than not the story of one's life is a smooth running tale, the day's page turning gently, going on with the unfinished sentence of yesterday, the end of each little chapter guessed before it has been read. But there are times when the leaves no longer turn slowly but are caught in a sudden gust that sends them fluttering like dead leaves in a September gale; when life no longer loiters, but leaps when the unseen end of the chapter is a mystery, when the letters on the page are shining gold or fiery red.

Such a time had come into Wanda Leland's life. In one swift moment she had risen to a pinnacle, she had looked down upon the level lowlands from the heights. The monotony of the commonplace receded and was lost; the aspect of life upon which she looked was wonderful and new.

There had been a change within her. She was no longer the Wanda Leland she had been a moment ago, the Wanda Leland she had been throughout the years of her life. Nor would she ever be exactly that same Wanda Leland again.

Revelation had been lightning, two-tongued. It showed her herself; it explained, it touched with light, it made distinct the shadowy things that had long lain in her breast. And it showed her Wayne Shandon as she had never seen him.

For years they had been playfellows, frank, almost boyish, both of them. Now her heart was beating wildly from the very touch of him.

Had she always loved him? Had he always loved her? Was this wonderful, new thing, love, without beginning as it surely was without end?

She looked wonderingly into his eyes. Her own, like his, were clear, bright one moment, starry with a dimness as of unshed tears the next.

Tenderness, like a mist, filled them.

"I love you, Wayne," she said, her voice low, trembling just a little, but clear. "I want you all mine as you want me. So that if you went up to Heaven or down to h.e.l.l I could go with you."

"Wanda!" he said. "_Wanda_."

She smiled a little at him and put out her two hands.

CHAPTER VIII

"A GAME OF BLUFF AND THE GAMBLER WINS!"

The spirit of unrest which Wanda had felt vaguely the night before did not depart with the pa.s.sing of the darkness. Something was wrong, radically wrong at the Echo Creek ranch house. Since the unexpected home coming of Red Reckless there had been a subtle difference, a ruffling of the waters which usually ran so placidly at the country home, a darkening and disturbation of the surface which hinted at hidden whirlpools and cross currents.

It was from the master of the household that the day took its colour.

In his own room last night he had been restless, sleepless until very late. Mrs. Leland had heard him walking up and down, had heard the noise of his pipe against his tobacco jar many times after the hour when Martin was in the habit of having his last smoke. In the morning he was up and dressed before Julia had built her fire. All day he was strangely pre-occupied and silent. He seemed scarcely to notice Wanda when she came into the dining room to give him his good morning kiss.

That was unlike him. Both women noticed it.

After breakfast he did not go out. Instead he went immediately to his study, telling Julia sharply that she need not come in to sweep this morning as he was going to be busy. It was one of the few times he had spoken at all that morning, but not the first time he had spoken irritably. Mrs. Leland's eyes, following him were troubled.

In his private room he sat long at his big oaken table, his brows drawn thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed in deep speculation. The tenseness of the man's still figure, the gleam of the darkening eyes, the obvious moody abstraction told that some vital question had come to him for its answer, that he was fighting it out sternly, that the issue was one of those great issues of life which come soon or late and which must be decided, yes or no, upon the battle ground of a man's soul.

Three months ago he had done a thing from which, at first, his finer manhood had drawn back rebelliously. But--he had done it. There had been a struggle then between the two nicely balanced qualities which go to make up a human personality. The nice balance had been disturbed by clever generalship rather than by open battle. Specious reasoning, aided and abetted by the temptation of a rare opportunity, further reinforced by an emotion which was more or less selfish even while it masked itself as a public and private duty, had routed the sterner sense of justice of which the man was, not without reason, proud. He had in the end taken the step; being done it had since then been dismissed to a shadowy corner of his mind by his own strength of character; when he had thought of it had only grown stronger in his belief that he had done rightly. And now a man whom he had never expected to see again had come home; the question closed three months ago was still an open question.

A grave, strong minded man, calm by nature, after sixty years of the life of the mountains and forests, he thought to decide each action upon its own merit or demerit and to see that quality clearly, keeping his vision free of emotional mists. With such a man right and wrong are two distinct ent.i.ties, sharply separate, with no debateable land.

An action may not partake of each; it must stand forth black or white.

A motive may not be enshrouded in uncertainty; it must be right or it must be wrong.

He questioned himself sternly to-day, frowningly concentrating his mind upon each point as he struggled with it. The time had come now when the decision he made must be one of absolute finality.

"What I am doing is a grave thing," he told himself over and over. "An unscrupulous man would do it in a flash; a weak man might be afraid of it. I must be neither unscrupulous nor cowardly; I must be just. And is not justice with me? Would I not be punishing the guilty, would I not be in a position to reward Garth Conway for a life of faithful service, would I not be justified in protecting my own interests, the interests of my wife and daughter?"

Already, unconsciously, he was seeking to discover for his groping mind the arguments which would acquit him in his own judgment and justify him.