The Short Cut Part 18

"Leland, of course. Wanda Leland. Got it now? How am I ever going to get anything said if you keep b.u.t.ting in like that, Red? I said, 'Look here--'"

"You look here!" muttered Shandon. "I don't like to hear you talk about her at all. If you've got to do it, call her Miss Leland.

Understand?"

"Aw, rats, Red. What's the use of that kind of talk between friends?

She don't care."

"Well, I do. And I mean it."

"Oh, all right. Well, anyway, we was setting on a log together and we got to talking like fellers and girls do, you know. Good G.o.d, Red, quit your glaring at me like you was an old tomcat s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g yourself up to jump a mouse. I never kissed her even, I swear I didn't. I found out she knew you and I begun right then being a real friend. Say, Red, if you could have heard the fairy tales I dropped into that fair maiden's pearly ear!"

His dimples twinkled and danced and deepened upon his round face.

Shandon, staring at him fearfully, demanded to be told what the fairy tales had consisted of. Willie Dart eagerly complied.

"I set right in watering your stock, old scout. I told her you were a hero and a guy a man could trust a gold watch to that didn't have any marks on it to prove who it belonged to. I begun by informing her how you came to my rescue when a hard fate had me on the embers of despair."

"You told her that?" in amazement.

"Oh, don't get alarmed. I set forth the account in such a way that while your part was not lessened my own was not exactly--"

"In other words you twisted it entirely out of shape," laughed the other. "You forgot to say that a detective nabbed you while you were picking my pocket and that I--"

Willie Dart raised a soft white hand.

"I showed her how you saved my bacon," he said easily. "What's the difference how you done it? Then, when I got through that and I could see she was thinking what a grand man you are and she never noticed it before, I slipped a card off a fresh deck and related your adventures with the Roosian princess."

The dimples that had fled as his host mentioned a certain word which Mr. Willie Dart did not like to hear now came back. Shandon stared at him wonderingly.

"What in the devil are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the Roosian princess," chuckled Dart. "I told Wanda all about her, what a nifty dame she is, you know, and how you saved her life and how she put her arms around your neck and cried and--"

"Good Lord," groaned Shandon. "I could wring your neck, Dart. What in the world made you lie to her like that?"

"This here is a prime cigar, Red. Better send for a fresh box, this one is drying up. Now, I'm going to tell you something: My mother was a fortune teller and maybe that's why it is, but anyway I can dope up what people are thinking lots of times. I hadn't any more than said Red Shandon to her than I got wise to that little girl's trouble. Say, Red, she's just naturally stuck on you! It's a fact! Now, when a woman's stuck on a guy, what's the way to make her go clean nuts over him? What's the answer? Why, just tell her about the other woman like I told Wanda about Princess Helga."

"Helga?" cried Shandon in sheer wonder. "What Helga?"

"The Roosian princess," beamed Willie Dart.

"Dart," very sternly. "You lie to me now and I'll wire the police of New York that you are here. I ought to do it anyway; I would have done it when you came if I hadn't been a fool and you hadn't filled me up with your lies until I was sorry for you. Why did you say Helga?

Where did you learn that name? What Helga do you know?"

Dart hesitated briefly, his childlike eyes smiling frankly, the shrewd side of his strange brain very busy.

"When you took me up to your room that day in New York and threw some grub into me," he replied at last with apparent carelessness, "and left me for a minute, why I just sort of looked things over. There was a letter with Helga signed to it. The name's awful funny, ain't it? She is Roosian, ain't she?"

"What do you know about her?"

"Just that she was much obliged to you for the information you promised to send her about something or other. It ain't anything to send you up the river for, Red."

"What did you tell Miss Leland?"

"Miss Leland? Oh, Wanda, you mean." Mr. Dart repeated the tale he had told Wanda with the many fanciful embellishments which it seemed necessary for him to give to any story that he found it necessary to repeat.

"I sure enough boosted your game, Red. Say, kid, it worked for fair.

You ought to have--"

Even after the threats which Wayne Shandon made to him that night Willie Dart stayed on. Shandon declared he would drive him off the place with a buggy whip, and Willie Dart said that he'd come back if he was chased away. Shandon mentioned the police of New York, and Dart asked him reproachfully if he delighted in wounding him in his most sensitive part; wanted to know if his n.o.ble Benefactor was the sort to drive a man back into the mire he had just emerged from, to thwart all effort to lead a pure, sweet, rural existence. Finally Shandon contented himself by forbidding Dart to meddle in the future with anything not in any way a part of his own business; and nourished the secret hope that a few weeks of the humdrum of mountain life would tire this sparrow of the city gutters. Whereupon, when alone with his big book and a fresh cigar, Willie Dart soliloquised as follows:

"He's up against a good many things, poor old Red is. He's as bad in love with Wanda as she is with him. Her old man is soured on Red and is making the toboggan slide all b.u.mpy. Then there's some sort of trouble with Ettinger. There's a deal on somewhere I ain't wise to, and Red ain't in on it. Wanda's old man is in on it, so's the Weak Sister, meaning Garth, so's a gent name of Sledgehammer Hume. I guess time's ripe for little Willie Dart to mix in and see what's what. He's a square kid, is Red, and I'm going to help him put his affairs in order."

And then making himself comfortable as he pondered in the biggest chair in the well furnished living room, he sighed, twisted his cigar a moment thoughtfully, sighed again, put his feet on the table and turned to the pages of the big book. His fancy was caught by numerous and attractive ill.u.s.trations in a volume dealing with the mythology of the ancients, and he was soon convinced that he was acquiring a scholarly knowledge of the history of the old Greeks and Romans.

Wayne Shandon was distinctly surprised the next morning as he entered the corral to encounter Sledge Hume sitting a sweating horse and evidently in wait for him.

"You were looking for me?" he asked shortly. The last time he had spoken to Hume was to quarrel with him, and to be drawn into hot words with Arthur because of him. He made no pretence at making his tone more than coldly civil.

"Yes," returned the other as bluntly. "I rode over from old man Leland's on business."

Shandon frowned. His quick thought was that Martin, unwilling to communicate personally with him, had sent this envoy. With this idea in mind he said,

"If Mr. Leland has any business with me--"

Hume laughed his short, insolent laugh.

"I didn't say I came on his business," he said.

"I just stayed over there last night and came on this morning, early, to catch you before you left the house. It's my own business, Shandon.

I'm not in the habit of taking other men's worries on my shoulders."

"What is it?"

"Just this!" coolly. "Whenever I hear of any money lying around loose it's as good as mine unless some other fellow beats me to it. You must have done a whole lot of talking; anyway word has gone all over the country, clean down to my place and beyond, that you're putting on a horse race. How about it?"

"I don't see just where you come in?"

"You will in a minute if you care to. I hear the race is to be pulled off the first thing in the spring, as soon as the snow's gone? How about it?"

"Correct."

"You're going to ride, of course?"

"I am."

"Little Saxon?"

"Yes."