The Short Cut Part 2

"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 gra.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.

CHAPTER III

SUSPICION

Why had her mother come to her in such a way? Why had she been so quick to see what people would say? Did she believe that Wayne Shandon had killed Arthur; was she afraid that Wanda might have found something that would incriminate him; and did she want to warn her of what the inevitable result of such a disclosure would be?

And she had found something! She had known from the first sight of it, half hidden by Shep's eager pays, that it was Wayne Shandon's. He had shown it to her only last week.

"I am going to teach you to shoot as I shoot," he had laughed, bringing the revolver out of his pocket. "Then I am going to give it to you.