The Short Cut Part 31

"Is already working. I'm going to make it so hot for Red Shandon that he'll come to time the first show he gets. MacKelvey is on the jump and not over an hour or two behind me. It's time for trumps now, Leland."

Martin jerked his head up at MacKelvey's name and stared at Hume with keen, hard eyes.

"You're making a bold play, Mr. Hume."

"Well?" challenged Hume. "Isn't it high time for it? We might have bought the water from Shandon before and have been better off. You wouldn't stand for it; you had to gobble everything for nothing. We took the chance. It wasn't a bad gamble either, considering Shandon was away the first year and is a fool to boot. But you've lost on it.

Now when you go to him and ask for the water he's going to laugh at you. But lock him up, charged with murder, make him believe that we can stretch his neck for him and he'll hang, or by G.o.d, he will come to time. Now I want a drink and something to eat. You and Conway can spend the day talking if you like; I've got a day's work cut out ahead of me."

"You're going with MacKelvey?"

Hume laughed and threw back his coat, showing the deputy sheriff's star under it.

"I had Mac swear me in six months ago," he answered. "Yes, I'm going with him."

Martin Leland rose and preceded Hume to the door.

"I shall ask my wife to see that you have something to eat right away,"

he said quietly. "First, Mr. Hume, I want you to know that Garth has not been doing any talking, as you have suspected."

Hume merely lifted his heavy shoulders.

"And," Leland added, a little more sharply, "I want you to know also that there is a woman here, a Miss Hazleton, whom we don't know anything about excepting that she went to Shandon's last night, and after her talk with him he rushed out to Garth demanding to be told about the mortgage. Just where she fits in I don't know. She might be anything from a chorus girl to a Reno widow."

"Oho," cried Hume, his brows suddenly drawn blackly. "He's getting a woman mixed up in his affairs, is he? That shows how much sense he has. Where is she now?"

"Here. She has asked to go out with us tomorrow."

Hume made no answer but shoving his hands into his pockets strode after Leland into the living room. He stopped at the door, a little startled by the vision which confronted him as Helga Strawn turned quickly from the window, where she had been frowning at the blinding glare of the snow without, and faced him.

She wore the clothes in which she had gone through the storm, but a hot iron had taken the wrinkles out and they fitted her superb figure admirably. Hume did not notice the clothes, he saw only the woman.

She inclined her head just a little to her host, with no softening of the cold features. Upon Hume she bestowed a casual glance that came and went indifferently.

"Miss Hazleton," said Martin curtly, "this is Mr. Hume."

The eyes of the two men were keen upon her as the name was spoken. As Martin had said they did not know where this woman fitted in; it was their business to find out.

Again she bowed, very slightly. If she felt any flicker of interest, of surprise, that Hume was here, she did not betray it.

"How do you do, Mr. Hume?" was what she said, as indifferently as though in reality she had no interest in the man or knowledge of him.

Martin left the room and went to the kitchen in search of Mrs. Leland.

Hume came to the window where Helga was standing.

"So you are a friend of Red Shandon's, are you?" he said bluntly.

"Am I?" The lift of her brows asked him very plainly what he meant by that and what business it was of his.

"Yes," he retorted a little warmly, perhaps for the mere reason that her very carriage hinted at a will ready to cross swords with his, and Sledge Hume was not a man to tolerate opposition in a woman. "You told him that the mortgage had been foreclosed."

"Did I?" coolly.

"And, if you care to know," he went on roughly, "you have thereby piled up a lot of trouble for your friend Shandon."

There was rare impudence in the laughter with which she answered him.

"I have a way of judging a man when I first see him," she said, her smile now flashing her amus.e.m.e.nt at him. "I didn't think that you were going to be as stupid as the rest."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," and she turned back to the window, "that what happens to Shandon or any other man in the world is absolutely immaterial so far as I am concerned. Please don't think that I'm a tender hearted little thing who is going to cry if you slap another man's face."

"You mean that you are not a friend of Shandon?" cynically.

"Your way of opening a conversation with a woman you have just met is charmingly unique! If you are trying to get something out of me you are going the wrong way about it, aren't you? You have already let out twice as much as I have!"

"Have I?"

"Yes. You have told me that there was a mortgage of which I knew nothing; that it has been concealed from Shandon; that he has learned about it; that it upsets your kettle of fish in some way; that you are going to make things hot for him because of it. All that is a good deal of information to give a stranger in less than a minute's time, don't you think, Mr. Hume?"

He laughed and yet his eyes hardened and narrowed upon her.

"You are welcome to what I have told you," he retorted. "It will be common talk in twenty-four hours."

She gave no sign of having heard. Her indifference vaguely irritated him.

"Look here, Miss Hazleton," he said significantly. "I'll tell you something else as long as I am pouring out my heart to you," a sneer under the words. "Before I'm done with Shandon he won't have a boot for his foot or a leg to walk on. And anybody who ties up with him is going to get smashed the same way!"

"It is very kind of you to warn me beforehand," she laughed softly.

"The fact that I have no interest whatever in Mr. Shandon certainly should not lessen my grat.i.tude to you, should it?"

"You want me to believe that?"

"Really there is only one thing which I do want you to believe," she said in return. "Just that it would be very strange if I should care one way or the other what you think. Isn't it perfectly glorious the way the sun strikes the snow?"

Helga Strawn's keen womanly perception had in no way misled her concerning her relative's nature. A compelling, masterful disposition like Sledge Hume's grows accustomed to having its way. She was coolly treating him as it was his role to treat others; and he did not like the change of roles. He realised that the conversation had come to an end. At the same time he knew that if he turned and left her, his usual way when all had been said, he would be taking his dismissal like a schoolboy. And he knew that as she looked out over the snow she would be smiling.

"I have heard," he went on stubbornly, "of a woman going to see Ettinger and Norfolk. It was you. Now you come to see Shandon. Do you think that I am fool enough to believe that you are not interested in the same thing I am?"

"Ah!" she said, turning swiftly. "But I did not say that I was not interested in the irrigation of Dry Valley. I am!"

"And," his old weapon, a sneer, coming back, "you are not interested in Shandon?"

"Not that much." She snapped her white fingers and Hume saw the sparkle of rings. "Shandon is a fool. So is Ettinger. I am not interested in fools." She paused a moment, her brilliant eyes meeting his. "Are you a fool like the rest, Sledge Hume?"

She puzzled him, this woman who should have been that weak, inefficient thing which Hume's conceit pictured all of her s.e.x. He began to be a little more upon his guard in talking with her.

"No." He contented himself with the one word, only his eyes demanding an explanation.