Hard driven, conscious of a compelling force more dominant than the strong will of a man, Sledge Hume rode the one trail open to him. It was as though the deeds of his life were now grown tangible separate squares of rock cemented into sheer walls rising about him, narrowing, forcing him into the one way open.
He rode into El Toyon and signed the deed before a notary. He returned it by a boy to Helga Strawn, and by the same messenger he sent back her horse. From the stable he hired another animal, and with no friendly word to man, woman or child, struck out for the Echo Creek. As he rode by the court house he looked at it curiously. Wayne Shandon was there, was spending his brief time in jail very much as an honoured guest. He would come out in a few days and then—then MacKelvey would be looking for another man—
Hume turned and rode back into town, going this time to the bank. Explaining briefly that he expected to turn a big deal and would need the ready cash, he drew out all but a few dollars of his emergency fund. His lips were tight pressed, his eyes hard, as he rode by the jail again and out into the county road. The sight of MacKelvey at an open window talking with Brisbane and Edward Kinsell, made him frown blackly. Little things had come to be full of significance.
It was nearly fifty miles to Martin Leland's. But Hume had ridden early to Helga Strawn and now had a strong, fresh horse under him. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was not yet half past nine. He could make it by half past four or five, riding hard. And he was in the mood for hard riding.
Very few times did he stop on the long way. Once he paused at a little road house for a pound of cheese and some bread; once at a certain crossing where a broad trail crossed Echo Creek. He sat here a moment, motionless, staring out across the little valley lying warm under the afternoon sun, his eyes running up and down along the course of the stream.
Raking his spurs against his horse's sweat-dripping sides he rode on. In half an hour he threw himself from the saddle at Leland's house.
He heard the sound of singing within, a girl's voice lilting wordlessly, happily, bespeaking a heart that was brimming with the pure joy of life and love. Striding to Leland's office he flung the door open. In a moment, answering his impatient rap, Martin entered.
"I've come to talk business," Hume said, flinging himself into a chair. "What's doing?"
"What do you mean, Mr. Hume?" Leland asked gravely.
"I want to know where you stand. Conway's strong for pulling out, eh?"
"I told you all that he wrote me."
"What have you done about it?"
"Nothing."
"You're going to buy him out?"
"No."
"Damn it!" cried Hume irritably. "Don't make me pump at you like a dry well! You know what I'm driving at. If Shandon goes clear where are you and I coming out?"
"Mr. Hume," returned the old man heavily, "I'm glad you came, for I was coming to you. Shandon is going clear. I've talked with his lawyer, I've talked with Kinsell—"
"What's Kinsell got to do with it?"
"Kinsell is a detective sent up here by Brisbane to work up the case. Also, I have talked with Wayne Shandon." This came slowly, with an evident effort, but it came calmly. "Shandon will go free because he is not the man who killed Arthur Shandon."
"You're swapping horses, eh?" sneered Hume.
"Perhaps not exactly. But I have gone to him and told him that I had allowed myself to think of him as a murderer for the illogical but none the less potent reason that I hated his father. And I apologised to him, having no other amends to make."
"Cut the sentimental drivel short," cut in Hume unpleasantly. "Have you gone over to his side of the deal? Are you throwing me down and tying up with him?"
"No." Leland threw out his hands in a wide gesture. "I am done with the whole thing."
"And what happens to me! Here I am in up to my neck and you go and chuck the thing. Do you think I'll stand for the double cross like that?"
"Hume," cried Leland sharply, "I don't want to quarrel with you. I am quitting because I am ashamed of the things I have already done. I tried to blind myself by thinking that I was usurping the prerogative of God, in telling myself that it was my duty to punish. Now I am ashamed, I tell you. And not a second too soon can you understand and the world know that you and I are in no way interested in each other. I have learned since I saw you that you were going on with a matter which I can have nothing to do with."
"What's that?"
"I refer to the way in which you are seeking to tunnel from the McIntosh property into Shandon's, to take the water whether or no. That may be in your mind a bold stroke of business. I can't countenance that sort of thing."
"Ho! How you've taken the robe of righteousness upon your shoulders! And after trying to steal Shandon's ranch from him on a mortgage!"
Martin made no reply. Not once during the conversation did his eyes light with anger; not for a moment was the underlying shadow of sadness gone from them. He was holding a strong rein upon himself. He was judging himself now; he was passing judgment upon no other man.
Hume, glancing at him quickly, curiously, felt that he knew what Leland was thinking. Then his mind came back abruptly to his own interests.
"So you don't know what Conway is going to do?"
"I have advised him to sell to Shandon and to give Shandon the time he wants to make his payments."
"And you will sell to Shandon too?"
"I think not. My holdings are too heavy for him to swing. No, I am going to give them away."
"Not to him!"
"No, not to him. He wouldn't accept them. To my daughter—for her wedding present. And I pray God that they will bring her more happiness than they have brought me."
Hume's big fist came smashing down upon the table.
"By God, you've got to buy me out! I'm ruined, ruined, I tell you, if you and Conway drop me now."
"I'll do it." The calm words surprised Hume who had expected a blunt refusal. "Upon one consideration. Namely that you sell to me at the figure which you paid. I am willing to play fair and I think that that is fair. It leaves you where you started. It leaves me where I started except that I shall have been spending a good many thousands for Wanda's wedding present."
Hume, his brows knitted, rose to his feet and strode back and forth in the room, trying to look his problem squarely in the face. Failure confronted him, and failure was more hideous to him than the shame, dishonour, disgrace, which would accompany it. In a flash that left his face drawn he saw himself as he had never seen himself before.
He went to the window looking out into the fields over which the afternoon sun was dropping low. He wanted to think; and he did not want Martin Leland to see his face. He heard Wanda singing happily. Her voice was not like Helga's, and yet, tinkling through it he seemed to hear Helga's cool laughter.
"I'm tired out," he said abruptly, coming back to Leland. "Let me have a bed. We'll settle it in the morning."
Leland looked at him curiously. This was unlike Sledge Hume's usual way. But, offering no remark he showed Hume his room.
It was far into the night before Hume's tired body found the rest of deep sleep. It was long after sunrise when he awoke. It had been a man's voice that jarred upon his ears even in sleep, that finally brought him to his elbow with a start.
Slipping out of bed he stepped quickly to his window. There were three horses in the yard, saddled, sweaty and dusty. MacKelvey's heavy voice came to him again from Leland's study.
He dressed swiftly, his eyes glittering. Spinning the cylinder of his revolver, he shoved it into his pocket and into another pocket thrust the thick pad of bank notes which had been under his pillow during the night. Then he went back to the window.
He could hear Julia in the kitchen. He could hear Leland's voice now, now MacKelvey's, then another man's. Was it Johnson's?
"That cursed woman," he muttered bitterly. "She double crossed me after all. God! I was a fool!"
He did not hesitate. Kinsell was a detective, who had been in Shandon's hire for six months. A hundred little things that had been trifles at the time came back to him now to whisper that Kinsell had known a long time. And Helga had given them the rest of the evidence they lacked. Helga, a woman, had tricked him, had deceived him, had made him love her in the only way love was possible to this man, and then had laughed at him and doublecrossed him.
Making no sound he slipped out of the window, and stooping low so that from no other window could he be seen, he ran around to the back of the house. A glance at the saddled horses in the yard showed him that their legs were shaking, that they were done up from a hard ride. He moved on, further from the house, dodging behind a tree, stopping to listen, to peer out, hearing the maddening beat, beat, beat of his own heart. He must have a horse and then as Wayne Shandon had done, he could disappear into this wilderness of rocks and trees, hide for weeks or months, and at last get out of the country. Flight lay before him; his quickened senses told him what lay behind unless he fled now and swiftly.
"MacKelvey's a fool at best," he grunted, snatching at a ray of hope. "Once I get on a horse—"
He was taking a chance but he had to take chances. Making a short circuit he ran at last, still stooping as he ran. He came safely to the stable, selected a powerful looking horse, threw on the saddle with hasty hands. The bit was troublesome, the horse, with head lifted high, fought against it with big square teeth clenched. But at last the job was done and Hume rode out at the side door, his spurs in his hand, not taking time to buckle them on.
He began to think that his luck was with him now. He rode slowly at first, afraid of the noise of his horse's hoofs. A quick glance behind showed him the three horses in the yard, no man or woman in sight.
Which way? There was scant time for reflection. It was time for inspiration, for the flash of instinct. He felt the pad of bank notes safe in his pocket. He would ride straight to the Bar L-M, cross the bridge, turn out from the range buildings, reach the upper end of the valley. He would cross over the ridge to where his hirelings were tunnelling. There was a man among them who was not afraid of the law, a man who would help him, who would go to hell for the half of that sheaf of paper.
He buckled on his spurs and drove them into his horse's sides.
In the study MacKelvey was saying:
"I dunno. We may have some trouble. Brisbane has gotten an injunction all right, but that crowd of Hume's looks like a bad one. I have sent two men on ahead to the Bar L-M. Been deputies of mine on more than one hard job. By the way, talking of Hume, seen him lately?"
"Yes," Martin answered. "He's here now. In bed. He stayed last night with me. Do you want to see him?"
"Nothing urgent. I wanted to ask him if he wants to sell Endymion. Shandon wants to buy him back."
Hume, riding furiously, pushed on through the forest, keeping a course parallel to the road, near enough to see any one who might be riding there, far enough to conceal his horse and himself behind a grove or ridge. So at last he came to a knoll from which he could look down upon the bridge, not over a quarter of a mile away. There were two men there, sitting their horses idly and yet seeming to the man's distorted imagination to be watching every shadow flickering through the woods. He jerked his horse to a quivering standstill.
He had recognised one of the horses, a great wire limbed pinto. It was a horse familiar in El Toyon, one of MacKelvey's string.
"Damn him," snarled Hume, his eyes flashing like bright steel.
From behind a fringe of trees he watched the two deputies. They made no move to go on. Ten minutes he waited, ten minutes of precious time. Twice he felt that their eyes had found him out, twice he called himself a fool. Five minutes more and then, from behind him, he heard the pounding of hoofs.
"It's MacKelvey and the rest," he told himself angrily. "They've got me like a trapped rat. Damn them. Damn that traitress!"
He dipped his spurs and shot down a knoll, hoping to be out of sight, to wait until they had passed, then to double on his trail. But his luck had deserted him. He did not know the woods here, he lost ground in going about a rocky pile of earth, and MacKelvey caught sight of him.
"Hume!" came the big voice. "Hold on!"
"Hold on!"
It was as though the world, filled with shouting voices, was calling behind him. Like an undertone through it the cool laughter of a woman.
He drove his spurs deeper, he swung his snorting beast about, he raised his quirt striking mightily with it, and rushed on. Where? It did not matter. Anywhere except toward the men in front, anywhere as long as it was away from the men behind. He heard MacKelvey call again, more loudly, he saw the sheriff wave his arm at him, and he rode on, his head down now, careless of where he went so that the way led him farther, farther from what lay behind.
Suddenly, booming in his ears, came the roar of the river. On, his leaping horse carried him, stumbling, threatening to unseat its rider, plunging on. The roar of the river grew louder; again there were ten thousand voices shouting, clamouring, yelling at him. He topped a last ridge here and looking down saw the black chasm of the river, the steep banks.
"If I only had Endymion! God! If I only had Endymion."
He jerked savagely at his reins, stopping his horse. As he looked back and saw that MacKelvey and Johnson and another man were riding toward him. He glanced again at the deep chasm of the river. A quick shudder swept through him and left him steady, whitefaced, cold.
"Hume!" shouted MacKelvey.
Then Hume's spurs drank blood again, once more his frightened horse was leaping under him, plunging down toward the river. Louder and louder yelled the many voices, mocking, jeering, calling, echoing away into titanic laughter. And through it all, like the fine note of a violin through the pulsing of an orchestra, sounded the cool music of a woman's laughter.
"Curse her!" shrieked Hume. "Curse them all. A fool girl did this, a fool Shandon did it—"
Like a missile from a giant's catapult he rushed down the steep slope; MacKelvey, from the ridge watched him and wondered. He saw that the man had shaken his reins loose, that his horse had almost reached the verge of the chasm, that as the animal was ready to gather his great muscles for the leap the reins had tightened a little, spasmodically, as though the rider's nerve had failed him. And then that they loosened again as though he had seen it was too late or had regained his nerve.
The horse leaped far out, struck the opposite bank, seemed to hang there a brief second, straining, balancing, and then with its rider dropped backward.
The roar of the water boomed on like the clamouring of a world of voices; through it ran a finer note like the cool laughter of a woman; and upon Sledge Hume's white face, as he lay still upon a jagged stone before the current swept him away, the little drops of spray were like a woman's tears.
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, dispassionate, 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 principals 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 passed 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 passage 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 identity 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?"
She did not answer. She had no time to answer, she was so busy trying the two chairs, inhaling the fragrance of the flowers, admiring the fireplace, examining the reading lamp which hung over the table and which he had constructed of wood, chosen for beauty of natural colour and grain, the opaque sides shutting out the light which fell straight down upon an open book.
Only now did she realise that the cave seemed smaller. There was a partition running across it, a wide door standing ajar. He followed her as she ran to it.
"My bedroom," he warned her. "I won't swear to its tidiness."
Here again was the soft glow of electric lights cunningly concealed with nowhere a hint of the wires that ran in deeply chiseled grooves; here was a wide couch, a bit of the woodland, as were the chairs and table, the rough bark still upon the woodwork, cushions and coverlet of bearskin; here a smaller table, a smaller chair.
"It's wonderful, you wonderful Wayne!" she cried delightedly.
But he had his arm about her again and was leading her toward the fireplace, to it, through another door which opened to the passage leading to the chasm where the water leaped down toward the bowels of the earth. The door flung open, the passage filled with light and a fresh surprise.
Across the chasm were logs as large as one man could handle, hewn so that they lay close together, so that their upper surface made a level floor. Wanda and Shandon crossed, hearing the water shouting under them. And here, where Wanda had never been before, they came upon—
"The kitchen!" she cried. "A real kitchen!"
With a real stove, only that it was made of slabs and squares of granite, a real kitchen table only that it was made from rough pine and cedar, with the bark still on it; and very real dishes. Most of all the real fragrance of coffee just boiling over. Wanda ran to retrieve it and Wayne went on ahead of her. In a moment he called.
All new to her, the short climb upward along a flight of steps cut in the rock, the little winding way up which she ran eagerly, the narrow rock platform, the door against which he stood.
"First," he commanded gaily, "turn and look back."
She turned. Looking down she saw the kitchen; looking outward she saw a great cut through the cliffs where they seemed to fall apart in a steep sided ravine, and through this she looked out and down over her forests.
"The view from My Lady's bedroom," he laughed. "And now My Lady's bedroom, itself."
He threw open the door, standing aside to watch her pass.
A tiny rudely squared chamber, all in white. Countless warm, furry pelts of the snowshoe rabbits he had trapped during the winter, made a white carpet underfoot; a couch unlike the other in that this was fashioned entirely of white pine, the smooth surfaces polished and glistening under their many coats of shellac, a coverlet of countless other white rabbit skins stitched together; a little dressing table of glistening white pine, with a real mirror reflecting two flushed happy faces, and on the floor a big white bearskin.
"And you did it all, every bit, yourself!"
That was the thought that flooded the caves for her with a light more softly radiant than the glow of innumerable electric bulbs; the thought which hid the little flaws in stone and woodwork and gave a gleam to them that no mere shellac and white wood could have done.
They went back to the living room to stand, silent for a little, before the fireplace. They watched the flames shoot upward through little sprays and clusters of fiery sparks. Their hands crept together, clinging close. Slowly their eyes came away from the fire and sought each the other's. And she saw what he saw, a love that is eternal and that understands.