The Short Cut Part 16

She stood up, drew back and looked across the chasm which lay like a gash upon the rocky floor. She judged it to be fifteen feet wide, maybe wider; upon the far side and perhaps fifty feet further back, there was a splotch of light indicating a way out there into the open day. But the bottomless abyss shut off all pa.s.sage to the other side, its echoes growling threateningly as though they were what they seemed to the girl's quickened fancies, the restless mutterings of giant things imprisoned in the deepest bowels of the earth.

"If I ever wanted to run away from all the world," she mused fantastically, "I'd come here!"

And then, suddenly shuddering, she went back hurriedly to the open.

CHAPTER XII

THE TALES OF MR. WILLIE DART

Being a girl very much in love, her lover had been already as long out of her thoughts as he could ever be, and now he came back into them and became the centre of them.

She sat down just outside the doorway of the cave, hat, gauntlets, gla.s.ses and camera at her side, her knees clasped in her hands and stared away through the cedar's intricate, rustling needles and across the tops of the forest sweeping away from the cliffs across the verdant miles, and day dreamed. This newly found cave was her own, absolutely her own. No other man or woman in the world knew of it. She would come here again, always careful that no chance eye saw her; she would bring little things to make of it a lady's bower set above the leafy world. There would come, in due season, cushions which she would work secretly in her bedroom at home and which she would fill here with fragrant pine needles and sweet scented herbs; there would be a book or two; little, unused things would disappear from Julia's kitchen, a tea pot, a bit of coffee, knives, forks and spoons; and some day when the full summer had brought the sunshine that would dissipate the shadows of these last days Wayne Shandon would come here, would stand under the cliffs looking up wonderingly; would climb her magic ladder and dine with her.

As she sat, leaning back against the rocks, daydreaming as Youth cannot help doing, her eyes wandered far across her father's ranch. She found the view new to her. Yonder nothing but the fresh green of the tops fir and pine had thrust upward in the spring; beneath them, seen only now and then as it frisked out of shadow and glinted in sunlight, Echo Creek; beyond the creek--

She sat up straight, suddenly picking up her field gla.s.ses. Yes, beyond all this she saw the knoll upon which her father's house stood, even the building itself through its clump of cedars. But her gla.s.ses, raised higher sweeping back and forth, had found the river, and travelling on picked up the Bar L-M buildings and corrals!-- Next time she would bring the larger gla.s.ses, and leave them here, hidden in the cave.

For a long time she gazed across the river, her heart beating quickly with the hope that she might see, somewhere in the wide view, the man who was in her heart. Finally, with a sigh, she lowered her gla.s.ses, letting them follow Echo Creek speeding down the long slope of her father's valley. And, doing so, it happened that there came into the disc of her vision a man whom she knew she had never seen before. For a few minutes she watched him riding up the valley, idly amused at the awkward manner of his progress. When his horse walked he clung tenaciously to the saddle horn; when the animal trotted he gave her the impression that at any step he was going to fall off. At last, when she had lost sight of him among the trees, and her interest lagged, she made her way down from the cliff, went back to Gypsy and turned her horse's head toward home.

The man whom she had watched clinging to his horse's back so desperately was not only a new-comer to the Sierra and a stranger, but a poor sort of person to be alone where there is a dearth of paved sidewalks and streets with names and numbers. He had lost himself many times since leaving El Toyon the day before, and now, with the main valley road as plain before him as a man could wish a road to be, he forsook it and came on blindly along a second road that the Echo Creek wagons had travelled last week for wood. And Wanda, riding down to the creek, met him when he had reached a state of perspiring despair.

"Say!" he called shrilly when, barely in earshot, he caught his first view of her. "Say, wait a minute, won't you?"

Wanda, smiling a little at the evident distress which gave her her first impression of the man, came on to meet him. She stopped Gypsy with a swift, gentle touch upon the reins, while he yanked his sweating horse about by pulling manfully at both reins held one in each hand.

"Say," was his next word of greeting, "ain't this the doggondest, peskiest wild man's land you ever shot a glimmer of your eye at? Gee, ain't it fierce, lady?"

Wanda's smile brightened in spite of her. He shook his head and pursed his underlip and mopped his reeking face.

"I'm just in a cold sweat all over," he confided ruefully. "What with the rubbing of this saddle on the outside,--an old pirate with eyes like a young sheep and whiskers like Santa Claus robbed me of twenty bucks for it back yonder in that jay town,--and my bones inside trying to poke through the skin, I'm just peeled like a seal whose skin some flash dame is wearing for a coat. Say," with a groan as he shifted a little in the saddle which he blamed for his woes, "you don't live so awful far from here, do you?"

"No," she smiled. "Just across the valley."

"Nix on that!" he cried sharply, as if in sudden alarm. "They been talking that way to me ever since I got lost the eighty-second time.

'Down to a cross road,' they'd say, lying as would shame a second story man caught with the goods. 'Then turn to your right and go straight ahead and it's just a little piece.' I ain't ever hurt you, lady, and I wouldn't, not for a hundred dollars. But I'm awful sore being told it's just over yonder. How far is it, measured in something civilised, like blocks?"

He was the most anxiously earnest little man Wanda had ever seen, and the most dejectedly miserable. Still vastly amused she began to feel a little sorry for him. He was such a veritable babe in the wood for helplessness.

"Really, it isn't far," she a.s.sured him. "Just a trifle over three miles."

"Lord," he groaned, staring at her reproachfully. "The way you folks talk about distance out here makes my flesh creep. But, say, is that the nearest place?"

"Yes."

"Then can I go home with you, Miss? And will you scare up something for me to eat? I'm so starved I'd eat egg sh.e.l.ls."

He was such a harmless looking, innocent, pitiable creature with his plaintive voice and childish eyes that her amus.e.m.e.nt turned to pity.

"If you are very hungry and tired," she suggested gently, "you can lunch with me now. I always bring something along to eat."

His eyes brightened and a smile set quick dimples in the round face.

He released his bridle reins promptly, put his two hands on the horn of the saddle--Wanda noticed that they were hands like a girl's, soft and white with beautiful, tapering fingers and rosy nails--got a stiff leg over the cantle, wriggled over on his stomach and as his horse moved a little he fell off. For a moment he remained sitting.

"Birds was made to fly and fishes to swim," he remarked impersonally and philosophically. "Me, I'm going to walk after this. I ain't ever going to split myself in two over a horse again."

"You'll have to ride to the house."

"You don't know me, Miss. I'm Mr. Willie Dart, and when I make up my mind like I done just now it's final. I'll walk those three miles on foot, and when I can't walk no further I'll crawl, and when I can't crawl I'll lay down and die. But I'm through being a cowboy."

Thereupon he arose rheumatically, carefully dusted his gay checkered suit, gave much attention to the crease in his jaunty little hat, adjusted his bright blue tie, daintily tapped his cuffs back into his coat sleeves and bestowed a beaming, cherubic smile upon Wanda.

"Let's eat," he suggested.

She dismounted and spread out her luncheon upon the paper in which it had been wrapped, kneeling down on a gra.s.sy plot near the creek. Mr.

Dart hovered over her in frank eagerness, giving vent to various chuckling sounds bespeaking deep satisfaction as he saw that there was cold chicken and ham, cheese and b.u.t.tered bread. Then they ate, Wanda sparingly, pretending to have little appet.i.te, Mr. Dart swiftly and joyously and noisily. And, with his mouth crammed full and his cheeks puffed out gopher-wise, he talked. He demanded her name and her father's business; he wanted to know what she was doing so far from home and if she wasn't afraid; he ascertained that buffaloes were extinct in this part of the West if they had ever been here which was to be doubted; he thrilled and drew closer to the girl upon learning that a bear had been shot near this spot; and, abruptly, he asked if she knew a guy named Shandon?

"Wayne Shandon?" she asked curiously.

"That's him. Red Head for sure, ain't he?"

She admitted that he was, hesitated a moment at his next question, and then answered it by saying that Mr. Shandon was a friend of her family.

"Good kid, ain't he?" he went on, a little flushed from his eating.

"Friend of mine, too. We're great chums, me and Red. Ain't he ever told you about me, Willie Dart?"

"I don't think so. You have known him long?"

He poked into his mouth the last quarter of the sandwich in his left hand, secured a bit of cheese with his right, and answered:

"Long? Say, Wanda, I've known that boy since he was a kid! Me and him worked together and slept together and et together up in the Klondike all year back in ninety-six."

"Ninety-six?" she frowned. "Mr. Shandon wasn't in the Klondike in ninety-six! He was right here."

"Oh," admitted Mr. Dart easily, "I ain't sure it was ninety-six. Might have been ninety-seven. Funny he ain't ever told you about me. Never mentioned, did he, how we got into a snow drift one time and had to eat our dogs and I got him out final?"

"No," she said, wondering a little what sort of being he would prove to be if one came to know him. He did not look as though he had ever lived the rough life he mentioned so glibly; certainly his hands were not the hands of a frontiersman.

"Maybe it's because I made him promise not to talk about it," he went on carelessly. "The papers was full of it up there and I got kinda sore being made so much of. He's grateful though. But he hadn't ought to be. He more than squared the deal six months ago when we run up against one another in New York. It was this way:"

And asking no encouragement he plunged eagerly into his tale. It devolved from the first word that Red was sure a corker, a guy you could tie to until s...o...b..a.l.l.s foregathered in a clime in which, according to popular fancy, they are an extreme rarity. He was on the dead level, he was at once a game kid and a red hot sport. Red had seen the name of his friend in a society sheet and had looked him up at the Astoria. Mr. Dart had been naturally overjoyed to renew acquaintance with an old pal. And as it happened Red was to step in between him and certain death.

Mr. Dart had been going it a bit and had got into a foreign set. He mentioned casually a couple of French dukes and a German prince with fat, puffy eyes. There were others of them. They had played cards together at one time and another and it seemed a general truth that foreigners were bad losers. Besides, one of the French dukes, a shiny man like a waiter in a cheap cafe, had a very lovely wife. Mr. Dart esteemed her with a snow white friendship. But the French Duke was jealous.

Mr. Dart's fine, white fingers gracefully annexed a piece of b.u.t.tered bread and the tale went on. They had decoyed him to a dreary downtown haunt. They were all there, all armed with revolvers. In a moment it would be all night with Mr. Willie Dart. Enter Red, the game kid. A scene of thrilling unreality in which the game kid temporarily disabled or permanently crippled every man of the would-be a.s.sa.s.sins. Mr. Dart finished the tale and his bit of bread together, offering the thoughtful, concluding remark, that so much powder smoke in the close room had made him cough.

"You seem to be on very intimate terms with the foreign n.o.bility,"