The Short Cut Part 43

CHAPTER XXVIII

"IT IS HOME!"

To those who loved the sensational in and about El Toyon the trial of Wayne Shandon was a disappointment. Never had the courthouse been more crowded, never had the setting been more stimulating to their highly coloured imaginations. Red Reckless, looking to their eyes picturesquely pale from his confinement and the sheriff's bullet; Brisbane with his poker table face and his reputation; Edward Kinsell, whose smiling manner no longer concealed the glamour which clung about so distinguished a detective; Martin Leland apparently older, less stern, his eyes gentler; Mrs. Leland, confident and happy from her talk with Shandon's attorney; Wanda, her eyes very bright, her cheeks flushed, her heart yearning, hoping, praying and a little afraid; Helga Strawn, now known by her own name, and linked by rumour with the man who had paid the penalty for the crime of which he had accused Wayne Shandon, her manner cool, aloof; even Willie Dart, whom everybody knew and who in some strange way had come to be looked upon as a special detective, imported a year ago by the counsel for the defence.

The district attorney's argument was cool, dispa.s.sionate, perfunctory.

He showed no interest in securing a conviction for the very simple reason that he felt none. Brisbane was a further, deeper disappointment. He failed to live up to the reputation that had preceded him. He constantly studied his watch and a time-table during the argument of the prosecution and when it was done audibly asked the district attorney concerning the best train out of El Toyon. He said what he had to say to the jury in less than half an hour. When charged by the judge the jury filed out with grave faces only to file back in five minutes smilingly.

"Not guilty, your honour!"

Since the princ.i.p.als had seemed to put little fervour into the occasion the good people of El Toyon supplied the deficit. Amid great shouting and cheering Wayne Shandon made his smiling, hand-shaking way down through his friends, coming straight to the girl whose eyes were the happiest eyes that he had ever seen, shining through a mist of tears.

There was no hesitation now as Martin Leland put out his hand.

"I wronged you, Shandon," he said simply. "And I think that I knew it all the time. It hasn't made me happy. I hope that you will accept my congratulations."

"Thank you," answered Shandon. And he locked Leland's hand heartily in his own.

Mrs. Leland had her motherly greeting to make and said it happily. Nor did she use unnecessary words. In a moment she had slipped her arm through her husband's and was moving with him through the surging crowd, leaving Wayne with Wanda.

"Say, Red!" Mr. Dart, struggling valiantly with the crush, red faced and triumphant, was screaming up into Shandon's face. "Some business, ain't it, pal? Shake! Shake, Wanda! Where's old Mart? Good old scout after all, ain't he? I want to go squeeze his flipper; I want to go squeeze everybody's flipper. I want to go get drunk. Honest I do, Red!"

Big Bill shoved a great, hard hand by Dart's shoulder, gripping Shandon's. He didn't say anything, but his tightening hand, his flashing eyes were eloquent.

Only when they had pa.s.sed out into the courthouse yard, Wanda and Wayne side by side, and had been left behind by the hat-tossing, clamorous crowd, hastening out into the street, did Wanda speak.

"I am so happy, Wayne," she whispered. "Doesn't it seem as though life were just beginning all over this morning?"

"Like just beginning!" he answered softly, drawing her arm tight, tight to his side. "With you, Wanda."

There came a bright morning with the sun just blinking genially above the tree tops, with the warm glory of the full summer in the air, and under Wanda's window a voice calling softly. She had been asleep; she was not certain that she had not been dreaming--

But the call came again, still softly, still ringing with a note which sent a flutter into her breast.

"Awake at last?" and Wayne was laughing happily. "Ten minutes to dress, my sleepy miss, and meet me at the stable. I'm going to saddle Gypsy."

She heard him hurry away, and for a little she lay still, smiling.

He caught her up into his arms, as she came down the path, kissed her, told her not to ask questions and helped her into the saddle. He swung up to Little Saxon's back and together they rode out into the forest through the brightening morning.

"Wayne," she said when he had done nothing but look at her and drive the colour higher and higher into her cheeks. "Where are we going?"

"Can't you guess?" he teased her.

They were riding toward the north, toward the cliffs standing up about Echo Creek Valley, toward the cave.

"Wayne," she said again, a little sadly, "I was going to tell you the other day, but you were in such a hurry-- You are not going to the cave?"

"Why not?" he asked lightly.

"I can't go there any more," she answered quickly. "I had come to love it so, it was so entirely ours, dear. And now, I saw it the last time I rode that way, there's a sign on the cliffs, 'No Hunting Allowed.' I asked papa. He has sold all that side of the valley, the cliffs and the flats beyond to some man in the city."

Shandon laughed.

"What's the odds?" as lightly as before. "Come right down to it, Wanda, the cave has served its purpose, hasn't it? And, if you'd been shut up in it like a prison, I wonder if you'd have any sentiment for it left? Let's make the horses run a bit. I feel like a gallop, don't you?"

She bent forward in the saddle hurriedly, hiding her face from him.

How should a man care for the little things which mean so much to a girl?

But still they rode toward the cliffs. The sign was there, a black and white monstrosity which hurt her but which seemed merely to interest Shandon. He insisted on riding closer. And when, too proud to show him all that she felt, she came with him to the big cedar, he dismounted and put out his hands to her.

"Let's go up," he said lightly. "Just for fun."

She refused, and he insisted. And at last they climbed up.

Wayne was upon the ledge of rock before her, his eyes filled with a love that shone sparklingly, laughingly into her troubled ones. She began to wonder--

She turned swiftly toward the entrance of the cave. There was a door now made of great rough hewn slabs of wood. Wayne slipped his arm about her and drew her close to it.

"Will you open it?" he whispered.

"Wayne!" wonderingly, seeking to understand.

He took her hand in his, laid it for a moment upon his lips, then put her fingers against the great door.

"Open it, dear," he told her.

Slowly the heavy, wide portal swung back to her touch. Her heart beating madly, she scarce knew why, her step at once eager and hesitant, she stepped by him. And he, close behind her, laughed softly at her little cry, the one moment amply repaying the man for six months of labour.

Now she understood everything; now her heart stood still and then throbbed with a wonderful joy. And she turned and threw her arms about his neck, crying softly: "Wayne! It is home!"

For the darkness which she had expected in the cavern's deep interior had fled before the softly brilliant light that bathed it rosily, that came from she did not yet know where. She saw a deep throated fireplace, built of big granite blocks, a monster log blazing and roaring mightily in it, the flames leaping up the rock chimney, drawn upward and back into the sloping pa.s.sage where the draft of air had in the old days carried away the smoke from her rude stove. And she guessed who had made the fireplace, piling stone on stone.

She saw a table, rustic, heavy, with legs of twisted cedar branches, with books upon it, with a vase made of a hollowed out, gnarled limb and choked with its great armful of valley flowers. She saw a chair that patient, loving hands had made from what the winter-locked forest had provided, seat and back covered with deerskin cushions, a chair that opened its arms to her as though, still keeping its ident.i.ty as a part of her woodland, it were welcoming her to a world where love's heart beat close to nature's. She saw that the hard floor had disappeared under freshly strewn pine needles and under the two big bear skin rugs which sprawled mightily before the table and before the fireplace. She saw another chair, Wayne's chair it was going to be, because it was such a monster.

She could only gasp as her dancing eyes tried to see everything at once--flowers everywhere, hiding the walls, breathing perfume from the corners, drooping from the ceiling.

"But the light!" she cried, wonderingly. "It is like day."

Then at last she saw how everywhere in the high ceiling he had chiselled out deep inverted bowls, and in each cup-like cavity nothing in the world other than a glowing electric bulb was shining, flooding the room with a soft glow.

"And you did all of this yourself? While you were alone here in the winter?"

His eyes were like hers, his own face flushed with the happiness of the hour.

"I didn't make the bulbs," he laughed. "It's taken me a week playing electrician to get the wires up, the dynamo running back there under the water fall. Do you like it?"