"Well?" laughingly. "Don't you know me?"
Wayne Shandon, riding idly down a lane through the pines, had come close before he saw her sitting with her back to a tree, her camera and empty lunch basket lying beside her. He had left Big Bill and had come on alone, passing around the head of the lake and following the trail which Little Saxon's flying hoofs had made in the fresh sod. Now, as with a quick hand upon Lady Lightfoot's reins he came to a stop, he very promptly forgot all about Little Saxon.
The girl, leaving Gypsy tethered beyond a grove of firs, had found upon the skirt of a densely wooded slope a spot that was like a corner of a woodland fairyland, dim and dusky and sweet scented. The noontide was warm with the rippling sunlight above, a down-filtering ray touched her bare head and dropped flecks of gold in her braided hair.
Shandon, motionless for a little, did not speak nor did his expression change except that it grew more frankly filled with admiration, with sheer wonder at her loveliness.
"Really," she bantered, still laughingly, not to be confused by her old playfellow's look. "I'm neither ghost, goblin nor evil spirit, nor anything worse than just a girl, you know!"
"Are you … just a girl?" He raised his hand slowly, lifting his hat. But not yet did he smile back into her smiling eyes. She had never seen him so grave. "I don't know. You are not the same girl I used to know."
"Why, Wayne," she retorted merrily. "It's only a year. You weren't expecting wrinkles already, were you?"
The steadiness of his gaze made her wonder. His eyes clung to hers for a long moment, left them to travel swiftly up and down the sweet young body that was no longer the body of "just a girl," noted how wonderfully the promise of girlhood had been fulfilled in budding womanhood, came back to her hair and throat and smiling mouth, rested again upon her eyes.
"You are not the same Wanda I used to know," he insisted soberly, shaking his head at her. "Not the Wanda I used to play with at school, to hunt birds' nests with, to steal apples for, to fight other boys for. Who are you, you wonderful thing?"
"The same Wanda," she told him merrily. "And, if you please, not athingat all."
"Do you remember," he went on quietly, still gently serious, "the day when I whipped little Willie Thorp for you?"
"Yes," she answered lightly, yet not remembering all that he remembered. "Of course. You—"
"You came and put both little fat, warm, sun-burned arms round me and kissed me then, Wanda. Would you kiss me now?"
"You should have said that last night," she dimpled up at him. She thought she knew him too well to take him seriously when he dropped into one of his bantering moods, just trying perhaps to see if he could drive a little flush of confusion into her cheeks. "I was so glad to see you, I might have forgotten I had grown up. That we have grown up," she said.
"I wish I had," he said abruptly, flinging his head up with the old gesture she remembered so well. "Wanda, you are the most wonderful girl-woman in the world! What has happened to you? What have you done to yourself? What have you done to your eyes? Do you know, Miss Wanda Leland—are you a little witch and do you do it on purpose?—that those two eyes of yours can make madness in a man's soul?"
"Flatterer!" she countered brightly. "Have you been a whole year making pretty speeches, and must you keep it up now because you've got into the habit and since the pretty ladles of your travels are not here and I am? Aren't you a little bit ashamed of yourself? Aren't you afraid that you will create havoc by putting a lot of foolish ideas into a country girl's head?"
He laughed at last, becoming suddenly the same old Red Reckless that he had always been, and swung down lightly from the saddle. Dropping Lady Lightfoot's reins to the ground he came to where Wanda sat and having stood over her a moment looking down into the clear eyes which were turned frankly up to him he made himself comfortable at her feet, stretching luxuriously in the warm grass.
"It's great to be back, Wanda," he said musingly, with a deep sigh of content. "You are going to squander a little of your precious time on me, aren't you? I've been deucedly energetic all morning; now I'm just brimful of sunshine and laziness. So lazy that I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you talk. You will have a whole lot to tell me about all the things you've been doing while I was away."
"I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you talk."[Illustration: "I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you talk."]
"I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you talk."[Illustration: "I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you talk."]
She gathered her knees into her clasped hands and smiled down upon the flaming red hair. Before he made his cigarette she found herself answering his questions, telling about her life during his absence.
As she talked she saw his face only now and then when he turned a little to laugh up at her over some trifle that amused him. The story of this year of her life as she told it was a simple, homely little tale, a quiet pastoral of happy content. It had to do largely with herself and her work, with her failures and successes. But she mentioned both Garth and Sledge Hume.
"Hume?" said Shandon, looking up quickly, this time with no laughter in his eyes. "Have you seen much of that man, Wanda?"
"A good deal. He and father and Garth seem to have some kind of business together. Why?"
"Because I don't like him," he told her emphatically. "I don't like to have you know a man like that."
She did not mention Hume again. She admitted frankly that she herself disliked the man although she had tried to think well of him because he was a friend of her father. Running on with the account of her winter adventures, and laughing at the memory of an incident that had been serious enough at the time, she told him how she had imperilled her life in heedless pursuit of the snow-shoe rabbit. Her mood, gay for the moment, was the sort to make light of things which had merely cast a shadow and gone; it was as though from the very presence of Wayne she had accepted his theory of life, the ability to live keenly, richly in the present, to be oblivious with sealed eyes to the future, careless with deaf ears to the mutterings of the past. She was talking freely, spontaneously, laughing from the very joy of life and the morning and another joy which she did not analyse, looking down at the sunlight caught flaring in his hair. And he, vastly contented, listened and laughed with her.
Then, in the midst of the recital of her last winter's mishap which she strove to make as unimportant as she now considered it, she looked down at Wayne Shandon and suddenly broke off in the middle of a word. He had dropped his cigarette, the hand that she could see had shut tight into a whitened fist, the colour of a second ago had seeped out of his bronzed cheek. As she stopped, wondering, he sprang to his feet and towered over her.
"Wanda!" he cried, and his voice was as unfamiliar in her ears as the view of his drawn face in her eyes.
"Wayne!" she said curiously, staring at him, startled and a little afraid of she knew not what. "Wayne! What is it?"
"What is it?" Shandon's voice had dropped lower, was so hoarse that it did not seem Wayne Shandon's voice at all. "It is just this—"
He broke off as sharply as she had done and moving swiftly as though driven by some great compelling force which dominated him he stooped and swept her up into his arms. She felt the tightening muscles as he drew her close, closer to him; felt a little tremor running through his whole body; heard the beating of his heart; was drawn nearer to him than she had ever been drawn to a man in her life; realised for the first time in a flutter of many sweeping emotions how superbly big and powerful the man was, how almost god-like in the beauty of his muscular manhood … and then she knew nothing but the wonderful fact that he had kissed her full upon her quivering red mouth.
"My God, Wanda, how I love you!" he exclaimed with sudden wild, unleashed vehemence. "Do you hear me?" He was holding her a little away from him, his arms still shaking about her shoulders, his voice frightening her with the vibrant fierceness that had leaped into it, the love in his eyes glowing like fire. "I love you so that I'd go through Hell to have you, to have you for mine, all mine! So that I might fight a man for daring to look at you, that I might kill a man for harming you! Wanda, girl, I tell you that I love you! Do you understand? Do you know what that means? What love means? When a man loves a woman as I do?"
Always a man of impulse, a man who through years of habit had grown to act swiftly in little things and big things alike, Wayne Shandon flung into impassioned words the emotions which swept through his soul and brain. The sight of Wanda Leland, grown into the sweet, pure beauty of early womanhood, had stirred him to the depths. Her casual mention of other men, Garth, and Sledge Hume, had displeased him so vaguely that he had not fully understood or cared why. And then the light allusion to the danger of death in which she had stood had been the spark in the powder train of his love, his words exploded from the seething consciousness newly awakened, fires long smouldering unsuspected in his heart burst forth in a mighty conflagration of emotion.
Throughout his whole being there was a strange, new, throbbing buoyancy, the gladness that sings, the joy that sparkles. The elixir of life had been set suddenly before him. He did not taste and put it away as some men do; he did not sip sparingly and temperately; but he drank deeply and swiftly so that the wine of love tingled through his blood, made his brain reel and his heart grow hot. It intoxicated his soul and his senses with a rare, glorious intoxication.
He tossed his head back, holding her still a little further from him, and looked into her eyes. His own had changed now, changed utterly in their eloquent speech. They had been fierce, now they grew wonderfully tender. They had been clear and bright and eager; and now they were misty. The first flame of love had leaped through his blood; now an infinite yearning, as gentle as tears, rose from his heart. Love had clamoured, now love was whispering. Love had been insistent; now it pleaded. It had been masterful; now it knelt.
"You love me—like that?"
The tumult in the man's soul had awakened conflicting emotions under the troubled, tremulous breasts. She looked at him with wide, clear eyes, wondering. A miracle, the old, eternal, primal miracle, had entered her life. She had looked down, laughingly, on a careless boy; she had been gripped mightily in the arms of a being new to her, a man who loved. From the clear blue of her life's sky there had leaped out a flash of lightning that filled the universe with its light and heat. They had been two gay loitering children; now she saw the man shaken in the gust of his passion.
"You love me—like that?"
"God forgive me, yes!"
His voice was steady now but low, scarcely louder than her awed whisper. He dropped his arms, letting them fall lingeringly, and stooping a little, touched her forehead with his lips.
"And," he said with a reverence which stirred her more than his rude embrace had done, "I love you like this, dear."
More often than not the story of one's life is a smooth running tale, the day's page turning gently, going on with the unfinished sentence of yesterday, the end of each little chapter guessed before it has been read. But there are times when the leaves no longer turn slowly but are caught in a sudden gust that sends them fluttering like dead leaves in a September gale; when life no longer loiters, but leaps when the unseen end of the chapter is a mystery, when the letters on the page are shining gold or fiery red.
Such a time had come into Wanda Leland's life. In one swift moment she had risen to a pinnacle, she had looked down upon the level lowlands from the heights. The monotony of the commonplace receded and was lost; the aspect of life upon which she looked was wonderful and new. There had been a change within her. She was no longer the Wanda Leland she had been a moment ago, the Wanda Leland she had been throughout the years of her life. Nor would she ever be exactly that same Wanda Leland again.
Revelation had been lightning, two-tongued. It showed her herself; it explained, it touched with light, it made distinct the shadowy things that had long lain in her breast. And it showed her Wayne Shandon as she had never seen him.
For years they had been playfellows, frank, almost boyish, both of them. Now her heart was beating wildly from the very touch of him. Had she always loved him? Had he always loved her? Was this wonderful, new thing, love, without beginning as it surely was without end?
She looked wonderingly into his eyes. Her own, like his, were clear, bright one moment, starry with a dimness as of unshed tears the next. Tenderness, like a mist, filled them.
"I love you, Wayne," she said, her voice low, trembling just a little, but clear. "I want you all mine as you want me. So that if you went up to Heaven or down to Hell I could go with you."
"Wanda!" he said. "Wanda."
She smiled a little at him and put out her two hands.
The spirit of unrest which Wanda had felt vaguely the night before did not depart with the passing of the darkness. Something was wrong, radically wrong at the Echo Creek ranch house. Since the unexpected home coming of Red Reckless there had been a subtle difference, a ruffling of the waters which usually ran so placidly at the country home, a darkening and disturbation of the surface which hinted at hidden whirlpools and cross currents.
It was from the master of the household that the day took its colour. In his own room last night he had been restless, sleepless until very late. Mrs. Leland had heard him walking up and down, had heard the noise of his pipe against his tobacco jar many times after the hour when Martin was in the habit of having his last smoke. In the morning he was up and dressed before Julia had built her fire. All day he was strangely pre-occupied and silent. He seemed scarcely to notice Wanda when she came into the dining room to give him his good morning kiss. That was unlike him. Both women noticed it.
After breakfast he did not go out. Instead he went immediately to his study, telling Julia sharply that she need not come in to sweep this morning as he was going to be busy. It was one of the few times he had spoken at all that morning, but not the first time he had spoken irritably. Mrs. Leland's eyes, following him were troubled.
In his private room he sat long at his big oaken table, his brows drawn thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed in deep speculation. The tenseness of the man's still figure, the gleam of the darkening eyes, the obvious moody abstraction told that some vital question had come to him for its answer, that he was fighting it out sternly, that the issue was one of those great issues of life which come soon or late and which must be decided, yes or no, upon the battle ground of a man's soul.
Three months ago he had done a thing from which, at first, his finer manhood had drawn back rebelliously. But—he had done it. There had been a struggle then between the two nicely balanced qualities which go to make up a human personality. The nice balance had been disturbed by clever generalship rather than by open battle. Specious reasoning, aided and abetted by the temptation of a rare opportunity, further reinforced by an emotion which was more or less selfish even while it masked itself as a public and private duty, had routed the sterner sense of justice of which the man was, not without reason, proud. He had in the end taken the step; being done it had since then been dismissed to a shadowy corner of his mind by his own strength of character; when he had thought of it had only grown stronger in his belief that he had done rightly. And now a man whom he had never expected to see again had come home; the question closed three months ago was still an open question.
A grave, strong minded man, calm by nature, after sixty years of the life of the mountains and forests, he thought to decide each action upon its own merit or demerit and to see that quality clearly, keeping his vision free of emotional mists. With such a man right and wrong are two distinct entities, sharply separate, with no debateable land. An action may not partake of each; it must stand forth black or white. A motive may not be enshrouded in uncertainty; it must be right or it must be wrong.
He questioned himself sternly to-day, frowningly concentrating his mind upon each point as he struggled with it. The time had come now when the decision he made must be one of absolute finality.
"What I am doing is a grave thing," he told himself over and over. "An unscrupulous man would do it in a flash; a weak man might be afraid of it. I must be neither unscrupulous nor cowardly; I must be just. And is not justice with me? Would I not be punishing the guilty, would I not be in a position to reward Garth Conway for a life of faithful service, would I not be justified in protecting my own interests, the interests of my wife and daughter?"
Already, unconsciously, he was seeking to discover for his groping mind the arguments which would acquit him in his own judgment and justify him.
"I hate him," he muttered, "God knows I hate him. But is that the reason I am striking at him? I should be wrong if for purely personal motives I sought to wreck vengeance upon him. But he is guilty, as guilty as hell! It would not be vengeance, it would be retribution. I should but be taking into my hands the work which God had set at my fingers' ends."
His problem instead of clarifying became complicated with involved motives. He told himself grimly that the thing which he had begun was just, merely just. If the courts of law did what he was doing and stopped with it men's voices would cry out against a retribution gone blind and decrepit, maudlin with mercy.
He went once to his safe in the corner, took out a document and stood looking at it thoughtfully for a long time. Finally he replaced it.
"I can ruin him, I can break him utterly," he said slowly. "I can wrest from him the thing which he took brutally with bloody hands. Because I am to profit where he loses must I hold back? The law may never reach him. Is it right then that he should go unpunished? The fortune which one day I shall leave to Wanda will be either swelled or diminished as I decide. Have I the right to draw back now?"
The day dragged on, the conflict within the man's soul continued. Until noon he was in his study. At the dinner table he was silent, morose, and ate little. He made no comment upon Wanda's absence; perhaps he did not notice it. Mrs. Leland, understanding readily that Wayne Shandon's return had its bearing upon her husband's heavy mood, found little to say. She could only hope wistfully that for a little Wayne would come to the house seldom, that Martin would grow used to having him in the neighbourhood, and that in the end he would content himself with ignoring the man whom she knew he disliked, distrusted and suspected. She thought that she understood fully what she grasped only in part.
In the afternoon again, Leland withdrew to his private room, again the battle between motives and desires raged hotly. It so happened that Wayne Shandon, appearing at a critical moment, brought about a decision.
Leland was standing before his window, his smouldering eyes frowning at the meadow down which Spring had come, scattering buttercups to mark her passing. He had not noticed the glossy chalices brimming with sunlight; the springtime had had no softening effect upon his absorbed and troubled mood. But presently the sight of two figures riding side by side down through the pasture whipped a new look into his eyes.
He watched them sharply as they rode toward the house. Their gay voices came to him lifted into soft laughter; their light merriment, so in tune with the springtime, fell jarringly on Leland's ears.
"The fellow has the insolence of Satan," he muttered angrily.
For a moment he lost sight of them as they passed behind the stable. Then, walking, Wanda's face lifted in rosy happiness, Wayne's like a boy's, eager and glad, they came on to the house. Leland stood stone still at the window; Wanda, catching sight of him, threw him a kiss. Wayne, with a brief word to Wanda left her under the cedars in the yard and came swiftly to the study, the light buoyancy of his step bespeaking the exhilaration that danced through his blood. He swept off his hat, put out his hand eagerly as he came into the room, his eyes filled with the brightness of a supreme happiness.
"I am glad that I found you in," he began impetuously. "I don't know how I could have waited … What's the matter, Mr. Leland?"
For Martin Leland, directing at him a piercing glance whose meaning was unmistakable, did not unclasp the hands behind his back.
"You had something to say to me," Leland reminded him briefly. "What is it?"
Shandon met his stare with silent surprise. Then, forcing himself to speak quietly, as though the insult of Leland's attitude had been unnoticed, he said:
"I wanted to tell you that I love Wanda, that some day I hope to make her my wife."
"What!" shouted Leland incredulously. "You—youwant to marry my daughter!You!"
"Yes," said Wayne steadily. "I."
Martin's scornful laugh, forced and hard, drove the happiness from Shandon's eyes and a quick hot flush into his cheeks.
"I knew that you didn't like me," he said sharply. "But I didn't know—"
"That I have no feeling but utter loathing for you," Leland cut in coldly. "That I'd kill you like a dog before I'd allow you to disgrace my name, to wreck my daughter's life. Are you crazy or drunk?"
"I don't understand you," replied Shandon bluntly.
"Then I'll explain so that you will have no difficulty in understanding." Leland's voice, lifted a little, was hard and bitter. "I don't desire the continuance of your acquaintance. I don't want ever to see you again if it can be helped. I don't want you to come to my home, to speak to my wife or my daughter. I don't want your presence sullying the air they breathe. I don't want to have any dealings whatever with you. Have I explained?" he concluded with cutting sharpness.
"Everything and nothing!" Shandon returned, the flush seeping out of his face, leaving it grey. "What has happened? Why do you say such things to me? Good God, man, what have I done?"
For a moment Martin Leland made no reply; nor did his steady gaze waver from the eyes now as stern as his own which looked straight back at him.
"I don't care to discuss the thing with you, Shandon. You know as well as I do why I say them. When you pretend not to know you are at once a liar and a hypocrite."
"I am not a trouble seeker, Mr. Leland." Shandon's voice had grown husky as he strove with the anger within him. "But I think you know that you are the first man who has talked to me like that and got away with it. If I did not know that you are a fair minded man, and that there has been some hideous mistake somewhere, I'd not listen to those words even from you. Tell me what you mean."
A contemptuous smile broke the rigid line of Leland's set lips.
"Your theatrical ranting won't get you anywhere with me, Shandon. It is the thing to be expected. I am the master of my own house and it is quite enough when I say that your presence is not wanted here. If you want more you can supply it yourself. Idler, spendthrift, gambler, brawler, I have until now tolerated you. But there are some things that no man can tolerate. You have said that I am fair minded; the more reason I should wish to be rid of you."
"But," cried Shandon hotly, "the man accused has a right to know—"
"I am not accusing you," interrupted Martin coldly. "I do nothing but tell you that you are not the kind of man I want my womenfolk to associate with, not the kind I want to associate with, and that I want this to be the last time you set foot on my property. If you are not absolutely without pride of any sort you will not make it necessary for me to have you put off the ranch!"
"And you won't tell me—"
"So far as I am concerned the conversation is closed. And," drily, "the door is open."
The anger in Wayne Shandon's heart, unchecked at last, blazed in his eyes.
"I'll go now," he said shortly. "I have no wish to enter a man's house where I am not welcome. But what I have said I have meant. I shall see Wanda when I can, and when she will come to me as she will some day, I shall marry her."
"You are a fool as well as a scoundrel," shouted Leland as he saw the other turn toward the door. "Wanda, when she marries, will marry a gentleman, and not a cur and a coward!"
"Those are hard names, Mr. Leland!"
"Not so hard as another which belongs to you," came the vibrant rejoinder. "If you dare speak to her again—"
"As I most certainly shall," coolly.
"By God!" cried the old man, his clenched fist raised. "You leave my girl alone or—"
Caught in a sudden gust of rage such as had not half a dozen times in his lifetime touched his blood, he strode to his table, snatched open the drawer and whipped out a revolver.
"Go!" he shouted, his face a fiery red. "Go now, without another word, or I'll shoot you."
Wayne Shandon's head was flung up with the old gesture, his eyes grew steely and steady, and his answer was a cool contemptuous laugh.
"You have called me a coward," he said. "You called me a liar." He came back into the room and sat down upon the edge of the table, not three feet from Martin Leland. "Now, prove me the coward—or yourself the liar!"
It was a challenge of sheer reckless impudence, the tempting of a man whose reason was blind drunk with rage. He looked coolly into Leland's eyes ignoring the deadly weapon in Leland's hand.
"I am going to roll a cigarette," he said quietly. "I'll stay just that long."
The fingers which brought out tobacco and papers were unhurried. He opened the muslin bag, poured the tobacco into the trough of his paper, and his hands were steady. His eyes left Leland's a moment to make sure that he was not spilling any of the brown particles; he lifted them again as he sealed his finished cigarette with the tip of his tongue. He swept a match along his thigh; then he went out, closing the door softly, leaving a thin wisp of smoke trailing behind him.
Leland, alone in the study, put his hand to his forehead. It came away wet with sweat.
"A game of bluff and the gambler wins!" he muttered fiercely. "And now—God curse me if I spare him!"
His buoyant stride carried Red Reckless swiftly down into the yard where he had left Wanda. She looked up eagerly as he came swinging on. Then suddenly her heart stood still, chilled with the quick fear of her premonition. The smile which Shandon summoned was at once a brave attempt and a pitiful failure.
"What is it, Wayne?" asked Wanda quickly.
"Your father has forbidden me the ranch," he told her bitterly. "I don't know exactly why. It came out of a clear sky so far as I am concerned. He does not want me to come here again; he does not want you to see me at all, anywhere."
"Wayne!"
"He called me an idler, a spendthrift, a gambler and a brawler," he went on swiftly. "As I suppose I have been.—There has never been anything to make me care—until to-day! You won't let what he says make any difference, Wanda?"
She came closer to him, her eyes brilliant.
"I don't have to answer that question, Wayne," she whispered.
He took her into his arms and kissed the mouth turned up to him, and so left her. She watched him go down to the stable, watched the tall, upright form until Lady Lightfoot carried him out of sight through the pines. Then, her head as erect as her lover's had been, she went slowly to the house.
The window shades in the study were half drawn so that in the late afternoon the room was shadowy. From the fireplace crackling flames cast wavering gleams across the polished oaken table top and the heavy mission furniture. Leland had not stirred from the chair into which he had sunk after Wayne Shandon's going. Shandon had been gone an hour; he had met Garth Conway at the bridge and now Garth was with Leland.
There was no longer in the old man's eye or bearing a hint of the battle which he had fought all day. He had gone through the hours of his inner struggle and as it had ended three months ago so had it ended to-day. He knew that he would not open his mind to consider the question again. His full piercing eyes were stern and determined. Purposefully he had set his feet into the path he meant to follow without swerving. In a moment of hesitation and uncertainty the supreme argument had come to him; if for no other reason, he must ruin Shandon to save his own daughter from her folly.
"Garth," he said quietly, his deep voice retaining no trace of the emotion which had wracked him only an hour ago, "I am very glad that you have come. I have been expecting you all day."
"I met Wayne," Garth said hastily, watching Leland anxiously. "He was riding like the very devil. I never saw his face look as it did as he shot by me. He had been over here?"
"Yes. I had a plain talk with him. I made it clear to him that he was not again to set foot on my land."
"You didn't tell him—"
"I told him nothing! The man deserves no consideration at my hands. It is not my affair to tell him." He paused a moment, bending his gaze thoughtfully upon Conway's troubled face. "You have had time to think. What are you going to do?"
Garth opened his lips to speak, hesitated and closed them without a word. The air of uneasiness which he had brought with him into the room grew more marked. He shifted a little in his chair. Leland, watching him steadily, waited for him to speak.
"I don't know what to do," Conway blurted out finally. "You were so sure all the time he'd never come back.—Now if I don't tell him all about the mortgage and foreclosure there's chance on top of chance he'll find it out himself before the nine months drag by. And then—" He flashed a startled glance up at Leland's calm face. "He'd kill me! What can I do?"
"You can keep your mouth shut," answered Martin tersely. "You still have his power of attorney, haven't you?"
Garth nodded, his head down again, his fingers nervously busy with his lip.
"Conway," Leland continued with quiet emphasis, his keen glance watching for the effect of his words, "in sheer justice you have ten times more right to be owner of the Bar L-M than that mad fool has. You have slaved for over a year to make it what it is while he has been squandering money you had to scrape to send him. Even while Arthur was alive you were the actual manager. And now all that you have to do is keep still and you can have the place for a very small fragment of what it is worth. God knows I wouldn't put foot on it. There is nothing that the law can touch you for; we have seen to that. Nor will you be doing a dishonourable thing. It is sheer justice, Garth, that you and I will be meting out to him."
Conway's cheeks flushed a little, his eyes brightened at the thought of being some day the owner of the Bar L-M.
"But there's the chance—" he began.
"You are playing for big stakes," Leland reminded him crisply. "Of course there is a chance. But you exaggerate it. Play the game through and you will be a rich man before the year is out."
Before Conway could speak there came the clamorous barking of dogs in the yard and the noise of a horse's shod hoofs. In a moment there was a heavy booted stride up the steps and along the porch, followed by a loud rap at the study door. At Leland's nod Garth sprang to his feet and went quickly to the door, flinging it open.
For a second Sledge Hume's great frame filled the doorway as he paused, looking in sharply, drawing at his gauntlets. Then, brushing by Conway, he entered and stood with his back to the fireplace, still drawing off his gauntlets, his hat still low over his brows.
"Well?" he asked bluntly.
Just the short word, uttered as a command. There would be no wasting of words before they came straight to business. There was about the man, emanating apparently from his physical body something oddly like a materialised aura, bespeaking an aggressive character, a strong, dominant personality. Conway, alone with Leland, was a school boy in the presence of his master. Hume, ignoring Garth, challenged that superiority which Conway's weaker nature acknowledged unconsciously. The look of his eye, the very carriage of his handsome head, invited opposition, questioned an authority other than his own. A big, strong man physically his manner gave the impression that he was a big, strong man intellectually.
Old Martin did not at once speak but sat very still save for the restless fingers upon the table top. It was Conway who, after a brief hesitation, answered.
"We're going to stand pat—"
"I wasn't talking to you, Conway," said Hume coolly. "As far as I am concerned you aren't even a fifth wheel in this thing and you ought to know it. I want to know what Leland has got to say."
Garth coloured angrily but made no reply as he turned questioning eyes to the older man.
"Very well, Mr. Hume," said Leland quietly. "Do you care to sit down while we thresh things out?"
"No, I'll stand. Go ahead."
"To begin with, Wayne Shandon is back."
"I know he is back," spat out Hume. "That's why I'm here. What are you going to do now?"
"We are going ahead just as though he weren't here."
"You think that you can put the thing across?"
"Why not?"
"Just because," Hume shot back at him, "it doesn't seem likely that with the whole country knowing about the foreclosure of the mortgage somebody isn't going to do some talking."
Leland shook his head.
"Let me sum up the case for you," he said. "Arthur Shandon, the day before his death, mortgaged the Bar L-M to me for twenty-five thousand. When time for foreclosure came three months ago Wayne Shandon would have been notified if he had been here. As it was the notice went to his legal representative, Garth Conway. Conway allowed the Bar L-M to go under the hammer and at the sheriff's sale Conway himself bought it in—"
"For you," interjected Hume.
"Yes, for me. But who knows that? People who paid any attention to the transaction came to understand that it had been because of Wayne Shandon's known shiftlessness that the property was allowed to be sold, they knew that Conway was his agent, and that Conway bought it in. There is not a man living who knows anything about the matter who does not believe that Conway bought at Shandon's orders and with Shandon's money; and that the Bar L-M is Shandon's now and was never in any real danger from me. Is it likely then, that any man who believes this is, after this length of time, even going to think to mention the matter to Shandon?"
"You've got the chance to get by with it," said Hume slowly. "And it's a damned good chance."
"We all know the sort Shandon is," continued Leland. "I shall be surprised if he doesn't tire of the life here in six weeks, put through a sale of cattle, take the money and go again. With him away our chance becomes a certainty. In any case, I am going ahead with our work. I have had Garth look into the title of the Dry Lands and he finds that it is perfect."
"Yes. The land is mine and is clear."
"All we need now is the water and we are going to have that in another nine months when I shall have a clear deed to the Bar L-M. Garth and myself have gone ahead as I told you that we would, taking options on every acre we could get in Dry Valley. Before many days we shall virtually control the whole of the valley, just the three of us. Between us Garth and I have expended upwards of fifty thousand dollars in the last five weeks in options and out-right purchases."
"Let me see the papers," said Hume shortly.
Leland went to the safe and taking out a number of papers, handed them to Hume.
"All right as far as it goes," Hume said when at length he had finished his careful examination of the documents and had tossed them to the table. "You haven't got the Norfolk place nor the Ettinger place. What's the matter? They are more important to us than all the rest put together. Did they smell a rat?"
"I don't know. I am confident of closing with Norfolk in a few days, although I may have to pay him five dollars an acre more than I offered any one else. Ettinger is holding out for seventy-five thousand dollars, cash."
"Then he does smell a rat!" Hume's fist came crashing down upon the mantelpiece. "By God, somebody's been talking too much!"
"Mr. Hume," Leland reminded him sternly, "may I call to your attention the fact that nobody knows a thing about this matter excepting yourself, Garth and me? I haven't so much as told my wife—"
"You?" cried Hume hotly. "Who said that you had? You've got brains enough to hold your tongue. That's why I came to you in the first place. But Conway here—"
He swung suddenly upon Garth, his eyes flaming, his face distorted with wrath. Before either of the two men had guessed his purpose he strode swiftly across the room, and gripping Conway's shoulders with his two big hands jerked him to his feet.
"Conway," he snarled, his face close to the others, his eyes burning, his breath hot in Garth's blanched face, "you queer this deal with your infernal gab and I'll—"
He broke off sharply, flinging Conway backward from him so that the smaller man's body crashed against the wall.
"Hume!" cried Leland angrily. "I'll have no quarrelling in my house. If you can't act—"
"I haven't come here to-day for a love feast," sneered Hume, already forgetting Conway as he whirled upon Martin. "What I've got to say I'll say my way whether you and your cursed white rat like it or not. I say that somebody has been talking too damned much! That place of Ettinger's as it is, without the water, isn't worth twenty-five thousand. He'd have sold it for that a month ago and glad of the chance to unload. Now he holds out for seventy-five thousand! What's the answer? You've dragged Conway into this thing; I haven't. I wanted no man in it but you and Arthur Shandon and myself. You because you had the money, Arthur Shandon because he had the lake and the river. I didn't want Conway. He's your pet, not mine. Now, muzzle him if you can."
Garth's angry retort, the first word he had said since Hume sprang unexpectedly upon him, was lost in the low rumble of Martin Leland's heavy voice.
"You've said what you wanted to say, Mr. Hume. We've heard it. We understand each other. I can vouch for Conway's discretion. If you are as careful yourself we are all right. I'll attend to both Ettinger and Norfolk. I shall also see that at the end of the nine months the Bar L-M is mine and that we have the water for Dry Valley."
Hume laughed. Without again looking toward Conway he stooped, picked up the gauntlets he had let fall, and turned to the door.
"You are nobody's fool, Leland," he said patronisingly. "You are taking a chance in freezing Red Shandon out but the law can't go after you. And you stand to win a wad of money."
"Mr. Hume," interposed Leland sternly. "I am not taking over the Bar L-M because there happens to be money in it. I am simply using the weapon of retribution which God has seen fit to put into my hands—"
"Oh, rot!" grunted Hume sneeringly. "Don't come trying to square your conscience with me. I say, go to it, if you can get across with it."
He jerked the door open and then stopped suddenly his hand still on the knob.
"If you do slip up," he said bluntly, "if Red Shandon does hear about it and gets busy, let me know. If he starts making trouble I can put him where he'll be out of the way!"
The door closed loudly behind him.
Wayne Shandon had grown more silent, more thoughtful than men had ever known him. The two things which had come to him, one as unheralded as the other, the gladness of a deep love, the bitterness which grew out of Martin Leland's words, he kept to himself. He rode far and alone, seeing very little of the men of the Bar L-M or of Garth, to whom he still left the routine of the range, and who made the most of small pretexts to keep up of Wayne's way. Shandon wanted time to think coolly and deliberately for the first time in his life; he wanted time to look inward as well as at what lay without, to cast up the balance of what sums of good and bad were in his soul.
Until now he had been quite content with life as he found it. It had afforded him infinite pleasure, it bubbled up sparklingly from the fountain of contented youth, there had been no need for him to seek to change its flashing current. Moreover, he had never had an incentive to bestir himself. But that incentive had come now, a two-pronged goad; he was compelled to look to himself, to his own positive effort, for what came next.
Vaguely, at first, he realised that a man if he be a man, has certain responsibilities. He saw clearly, now that he considered life seriously, that a man might err in dalliance and idleness just as he had erred; and he saw too that a man might, like Sledge Hume, go to the other extreme. A man might grow soft muscled literally and figuratively in slothful carelessness, or he might grow hard until he became a machine. He felt dimly that he ought to be doing something like other men. He wanted his life to live freely as he knew how, largely as he sought to learn how. And he wanted Wanda.
At first he was like a sea-worthy ship, in a calm with no definite port in sight. But, in due course, from the one vital fact of his love for Wanda other facts materialised. To begin with he thought with diminishing bitterness of old Martin Leland. The man was old, and he loved his daughter. Rumours of a wild life fly incredibly high and far and fast. Such rumours of Red Reckless's doings had come to Leland's ears, and perhaps it was natural enough that Leland believed them. Shandon had always known his neighbour as a hard man but a just. He made up his mind not to quarrel with him, but instead to so change the tenor of his life that Martin Leland would notice and would approve. If in taking Wanda to her new home he closed her old one to her he would be hurting her.
He saw clearly, there being little foolish conceit in the man's makeup, that he was not worthy. And he understood, though vaguely at first, that it must be his one object now to become as worthy as any man could be of her. And when the fifth day came and Ruf Ettinger rode to the Bar L-M with excitement dancing in his eyes and his tongue clacking, Shandon thought that he saw a beginning.
Ruf Ettinger, a little dried up man of forty-five, was crabbed, cranky, sour and mean. He had the eyes, nose and brain of a fox, while perhaps the rest of him, heart and soul, came close to being just plain hog. He was stingy and suspicious, and people were no more in the habit of speaking well of him than they were of riding out of their way to stop at his place. He was the kind of man that makes his wife and children live in a miserable, two roomed shanty, while he builds a big, warm, expensive barn for his hay and horses. The only time he was ever credited with a human emotion was when his favourite dog died; he cried over it and then got drunk, careless of cost.
Shandon was surprised when he saw Ettinger ride up. He was more surprised at Ettinger's manner when he insisted on Shandon saddling and riding with him where there "wouldn't be no chance of bein' overheard."
Once clear of the house and outbuildings and in the valley where his shrewd little eyes made sure that no other ears than Shandon's would overhear, Ettinger plunged eagerly into his errand.
In brief it was this: Ettinger owned five hundred acres of valley land, down in Dry Valley, some thirty miles from the Bar L-M bunk house. Shandon knew the place well. Ettinger had, also, some money in the bank. How much it was not his cautious way to say until he was obliged to. How much would Shandon say his ranch was worth? Shandon did not know, but hazarded the guess that it might bring twenty-five dollars an acre. He did not consider it worth more because it was good grazing land only for part of the year, and like the rest of the valley there was scant water on it through the summer. Twelve thousand five hundred dollars?
Ettinger cackled; he could sell it to-morrow for seventy-five thousand!
Shandon began to feel the first dim stirrings of interest. Ettinger's excitement was too genuine not to awaken certain glimmerings of interest. Water, that was the thing! Now, if there were water, plenty of water, in Dry Valley; if a man could flood his land from brimming ditches then what would happen? The soil was deep and rich; it had been slipping down from the mountains for centuries; it had never been worn out by farming. Twenty-five dollars an acre? What were the other California valley lands worth where there was the same soil, no better climate and water galore? Napa Valley, Santa Clara Valley, Sacramento Valley? A hundred dollars an acre was dirt cheap; a man thought nothing of paying for a small ranch five hundred dollars an acre!
That was true enough, and Shandon knew it. But there was that tremendous IF.
"It's all right, Ettinger. All but the water! And since the water is the whole thing, and I don't see where you're going to get it—"
"Wait a minute!" cried Ettinger, his eager hand clutching at Shandon's arm. "I tell you I'd a sold that ranch for twenty-five dollars an acre six months ago an' been damn' glad to git out at that. An' right now I could sell for a hundred an' fifty the acre! An' I'm damned if I do it! My nose smells somethin' when a man wants that place that bad, an' I git busy follerin' the smell. If I ever sell at less than two hundred dollars I'm gone crazy."
His excitement growing as the vision of much gold became clearer, he ran on with hasty explanations. He had five hundred acres; Norfolk had close to a thousand and he had made Norfolk begin to think for the first time in his life. He himself had a little money in the bank and Norfolk had some. There were other men, little ranchers, whom they could whip into line.And Wayne Shandon had the water!
Shandon looked at him in amazement, thinking at first that the man was a little mad. But Ettinger's shrewd eyes were sane enough.
"We go right up to your lake," he cried shrilly. "We git busy with some engineers an' pick an' shovel men. We blow the side of a hill all to hell an' what happens? The water just comes a bulgin' down into Dry Creek, an' all we got to do down in the valley, twenty, thirty miles away, is dig ditches an' watch our land turn into a gold mine!"
In a flash Shandon saw the utter simplicity of the whole scheme. Whereas now the river from Laughter Lake shot down the mountains through its rocky gorge, watering his own land and running through little narrow, rocky valleys to the lower slopes, it might here near the head be deflected so that it sped at first through the cañon of the upper Dry Creek, and following a natural course be brought with little expense to Dry Valley. Ettinger's proposition was no fanciful dream; it was hard, unvarnished fact. And, as so often happens when a man sees a radiant possibility, he wondered that he had not seen it for himself long ago.
Here was the golden opportunity his soul, in a mist, had yearned for! He shot out his hand gripping Ruf Ettinger's until the little man squirmed. But even the pain of nearly crushed fingers did not drive the grin from Ettinger's face.
"You're on," he cried exultantly. "Shandon, we'll frame a deal that'll make millionaires out of us."
"And man's work!" was the thought stirring Shandon's heart and brightening his eyes.
They rode on, as Ettinger had planned from the beginning, and covered the two miles to Laughter Lake in a few minutes. They rode up the shoulder of the ridge to the level of the lake; and there Ruf Ettinger's eager finger pointed out where the work was to be done.
It was work which Nature might have planned when the mountains were carved, the lake set in its deep bowl. Fifteen feet from this end of the lake the water swept into a narrow channel, a ridge running down from each side. Here was the spot to deflect the waters before they sped on down over the steep fall. Upon the south side there was a jagged cut in the saw-toothed cliff line. Even now the lowest part of that cut, when once the free soil was scooped out, was not ten feet above the level of the water.
"I rode up here purt' near a week ago," said Ettinger. "I looked this over an' rode back all the way down Dry Creek. It's dead easy, Shandon."
Already Ettinger visualised the cut deepened and widened here with flood gates to control the current. He spurred his horse up the bank as far as he could force the animal, then got down and scrambled on, gesticulating and talking swiftly. Shandon followed him. In a little they came to a point from which they could look back upon the lake, and forward to the windings of the cañon through which Dry Creek ran in winter and spring.
"It can be done," muttered Shandon slowly. "It can be done, Ettinger. I don't know what it will cost, five thousand or ten or twenty; but I do know that those lands down in Dry Valley are going to jump over the moon."
Ettinger made little clucking sounds with his mouth, his way of expressing joy unbounded.
"An' you don't see it all yet," he chuckled. "Lord, I've been layin' awake nights figgerin' on it. We'll bond everything that's loose in the valley. I've got Norfolk settin' tight and we'll round up a lot of the little fellers. It's sort of late, maybe, but them other fellers ain't got everything sewed up by a jugful."
"What other fellows?" asked Shandon, mystified.
Then Ettinger, in his rare good humour loosened his tongue until it poured out everything there was in his seething brain. He told of the scheme of Martin Leland and Sledge Hume, for Garth Conway had dropped an incautious word and the shrewd brain of Ettinger had worked out the puzzle. He told how the three men were trying to do this very thing, how they had planned on getting the water themselves, how Martin Leland had tied up thousands in options and purchases, how Ettinger had been one too many for them and had beat them to Shandon. He chuckled over everything, but most of all over the fact that Martin Leland had tried to buy him out. Old Leland was the keenest business man in the county, was he? Well, Ettinger had fooled him! Ettinger had blinded him with a promise to sell next week for seventy-five thousand. By that time, when Leland came to him—
"What's all this?" frowned Shandon. "You say that Leland, Conway and Hume are already at work, planning to put water from the Bar L-M into Dry Valley?"
"Already?" cried Ettinger. "They been clawin' at the job over a year now. The Lord knows what makes 'em so slow; think nobody else in the world can see straight, or shy on the money end, maybe. Anyhow they've gone to it tooth and toe nail; they've sunk thousands into it, thousands I tell you! An' now, you an' me, Shandon, can make the bunch of 'em eat out of our hands! They can't do nothin' without your water; that's where we got 'em."
Wayne Shandon's eyes grew bright with a vision, the muscles of his jaw hardened. In sober truth his opportunity had come to him. Hume, a man he hated, Leland, a man who had called him laggard, spendthrift, scoundrel, had put many thousands of dollars into a project which he could smash into pieces. Ettinger had said it: the two of them could make Leland and Hume eat out of their hands! They could get Norfolk and the little fellows; they could tear out the side of the ridge, release what waters they chose, make their ditches, and by improving only their own property make Leland's and Hume's holdings worth nothing. Leland had started it; Leland's unreasonable censure had been a challenge. Here was his answer!
It was business, straight business. Had Leland and Hume been his friends it would have been different. But they deserved no consideration from him. It was his water; he had the right to dispose of it as he saw fit. He would be treating Leland as fairly as he had been treated. Why had they not come to him in the first place? Why had they not offered him the opportunity to get in on the ground floor with them? He would have given them the water then, glad to see Wanda's father prospering. But they were holding out, they were waiting for something, they had made sure of his consent to let them have what they wanted. Why? When they had everything cornered they would offer him a small sum, they would believe him fool enough to leap at it, mouth open, like a fish. Even Garth Conway, his own cousin, had not told him! What consideration did Conway deserve?
"By Heaven!" cried Shandon.
And then he fell suddenly silent.
"We got to git busy in a hurry, Shandon," Ettinger ran on swiftly. "When old Sure-Thing Leland comes to me to close the deal I want to laugh at him."
Slowly the light died out of Shandon's eyes. Was this, after all, the opportunity for which he had yearned? He grew uncertain, a little troubled. An opportunity for what? For becoming worthy of Wanda, for being a man, square and just, a man who must make a new name for himself, a name which would never bring discredit to her when she became Wanda Shandon? In trying to ruin Sledge Hume for the sordid motives of hatred and gain, in trying to strike back at Wanda's father in vengeful bitterness, would he be doing a thing of which later he would be proud to have her know? Was he proving his manhood by accepting for his first business partner a man like Ettinger, who laughed over his feat of tricking another man by a lie? Was he not seeking to blind himself to the right and the wrong of it? This was the sort of thing that Sledge Hume would do; should Wayne Shandon do it? Was his first venture after the priceless gift of Wanda's love to him, to be a thing like this? Had this been the opportunity he had yearned for, to grasp gold full handed, to wreak vengeance, to retaliate against unfair treatment by striking back treacherously? Martin Leland had been unjust, yes. But had there not been strong human reasons for that injustice? Had not his own wild living been cause enough? Was he, from the sharp words of an old man who was jealous in his love for his daughter, to draw an excuse to strike at his own cousin and Wanda's father?
"Ettinger," he said quietly. "I can't do it. You had better keep your promise to Leland."
Ettinger's jaw dropped, his brows puckered in astonishment.
"What's the matter with you?" he demanded sharply. "Can't you see the play? We got the chance to git the water on the land and make them fellers pay for it or sell to us at our own figger, ain't we? Why, it's as good as gold, man! If you don't see enough in it as it stands you are in a place where you can hold 'em up for a bonus to boot."
Shandon turned away, Ettinger's point of view suddenly disgusting him. His golden opportunity had crumbled into dust and ashes. And although the little man by his side waxed voluble in alternating rage and supplication, Wayne Shandon's final word was a positive,
"No!"