The Short Cut Part 15

Before she had come within a thousand yards of the place where the carca.s.s of the cow was lying she slipped from the saddle and picketed Gypsy. Her lunch she left tied to the saddle strings; camera and field gla.s.ses went with her.

Already, in the fast advancing summertime, she had donned her hunting costume. The soft green of blouse and short skirt, of cap and stockings, blended with the many tints of green of the copses and groves and meadows through which she went swiftly and silently. She slipped from tree to tree, making no more sound than the chipmunk scampering almost from under her feet. Her eyes brightened, the colour warmed in her cheek, her heart grew eager. For, sure enough, fortune was good to her; there were two little bear cubs, round and fat and playful, rumpling each other where they rolled in the sunlight in a small gra.s.sy open s.p.a.ce.

They were a hundred yards away when she saw them, too far for a picture; but as soon as her eyes fell upon them she vowed that she must have a picture. There was little breeze this morning in the quiet woods, but that little blew from where she stood straight toward the spot where the cubs were frollicking. She must circle, come out down yonder behind a pile of rocks, slip behind the great cedar right at the base of the cliffs, and edge on from there on her hands and knees.

But she paused a moment, fascinated, watching them. They were sitting up, their small brown heads shaking from side to side, their sharp eyes watching each other, their little red tongues lolling. They were such baby things, their awkward bodies so like the little bodies of babies just taking the first faltering step, that she wanted to rush at them and pick them up and hug them.

There was the angry snarl of a rifle, sudden and sharp and evil, and one of the little brown bears made an inarticulate whining moan and its playful spirit ran out in red to dye the gra.s.s. Its brother fell over backwards in its fright; there came a second shot, the whining of a bullet glancing from a rock, and the cub plunged into the brush. She saw it a moment, lost it, saw it once more running as only the frightened wild things can run as it sped down into a little hollow which hid it from the hunter and thus saved its life, and then she discerned it climbing wildly, clawing its terrified way up the great cedar against the cliffs. When no third shot came she knew that the hunter had not seen it and then, with an angry fire in her eyes, she turned to learn who he might be. Approaching her from the edge of the grove, a complacent smile upon his face, his rifle under his arm, was Sledge Hume.

"Oh!" she cried when he had come close, thinking that he must have seen her. "Why did you do that? It was like murder!"

He stopped dead in his tracks, and then swung toward her. He was so close that she saw a quick, startled look leap up in his eyes.

"Murder?" he said sharply. "What do you mean?"

He had not lifted his hat, it was not Sledge Hume's way to trouble himself with the small civilities. He came on again until he stood quite close to her, staring coolly into her flushed face.

"They were playing just like babies!" she cried breathlessly. "Why did you kill it?"

He laughed.

"Hardly for its skin, since I suppose it isn't worth much," he answered carelessly. "Hardly for its meat as I'm not going to trouble with it.

Why, I suppose just for fun then. Because," his tone and eyes touched with a hint of contempt for what to him was a woman's squemishness, "because I wanted to."

Her eyes flashed her growing anger back at him.

"It was so unnecessary," she said bitterly. "They were playing so prettily and happily."

"I watched them for ten minutes before I shot," he said. "Their play was interesting, I'll admit. But they were bears, just the same.

They'd grow up some day and I wonder if they'd take mercy then on a pretty little baby calf if they came upon it playing? Your father'd thank me, my tender hearted Miss."

She bit her lip and turned away from him. He watched her a moment, then called,

"Are you riding back to the house? My horse is right back there and I'll ride with you."

"No," she answered quietly. "I'm not going back just yet."

She walked on to where the dead cub lay--stood looking down on it a moment and then moved on. Hume watched her while he filled his pipe and lighted it, and went in turn to look at his game. He turned the little beast over with his foot, noted with satisfaction the hole which the bullet had torn through the soft body, and then strolled toward his horse. Wanda saw him ride away in the direction of her home, smoking his pipe.

"All men like to hunt, to kill things," she mused. "Are they as cruel about it as he is? Would Wayne have watched the little things playing for ten minutes and then, when he tired of it, shot them in the midst of their play?"

Not until Sledge Hume had topped a gentle rise and dropped down and out of sight upon the farther side, did the girl turn quickly to the great cedar up which she had seen the escaping cub scramble. She was certain that he had not come down. When at first she did not see him she circled the tree slowly, expecting from each new angle to catch a glimpse of the roly-poly brown body. And when, after fifteen minutes peering upward through the widely flung, horizontal branches, she saw him, a swift inspiration came to her; her quarry had not escaped her yet.

The tree, one of the giants of her father's ranch that she knew very well, thrust its crest upward so close to the cliffs that many of the branches had been bent this way and that, flattening against the granite. The lowest limb, twenty feet above the girl's head, was as thick as many a tall tree hereabouts, and was like a giant's arm, bent at the elbow, thrusting the rocks back. She could make her way up this far, working along a ragged fissure in the cliff; thence she could edge out upon the broad limb until she came to the trunk itself. And once there, to Wanda in her hunting costume and with her knowledge of tree climbing, the rest of the way, from limb to limb, might be difficult but would certainly not be impossible or fraught with unaccustomed danger.

The cub had climbed until coming to a limb which like the lowest one sc.r.a.ped against the rock not half a dozen feet from the tapering trunk, he had crept out on it and was lying upon a ledge of rock. Wanda hoped that here was the opportunity of a lifetime. She would climb as high as that limb, and find the cub's flight shut off by the sheer wall rising perpendicularly behind him. Then she would make him pose for her, whether he liked it or not.

Flushed and panting the girl made her way upward until finally she caught with both hands the big lower limb. Field gla.s.ses and camera in their cases strapped to her belt in no way interfered with the free play of her muscles. She tested the branch a moment, smiled at herself for hesitating to trust her light weight to a thing which would have carried tons, gripped a firmer hold and swung free of the rocks. Here would have been a picture for her mother had she come with her this morning; the lithe graceful body swinging twenty feet high in air, only hard slab and broken boulder beneath her. Then she drew herself up as a boy does "chinning himself," threw a heel over the limb, and in a flash lay breathing deeply and triumphantly, the most difficult step of her climb achieved.

Slowly, steadily she made her way upward. In the main it was simple enough for Wanda for it was the sort of thing she did over and over week in and week out. Once, already fifty feet from the ground, she did something that would have been simple enough under other circ.u.mstances and yet which put a quick flutter in her heart. It was something which would have made the heart grow still in the breast of Wayne Shandon had he seen, which would have brought a paralysing fear for her to a man who loved life for the gamble in it and who took his chances recklessly.

She was perched fearlessly upon a st.u.r.dy horizontal limb, her body tight pressed against the trunk, her hands gripping at the roughened bark, steadying her as she balanced. A quick glance upward showed her a bare stretch of bole with the nearest limb on her side of the tree just barely beyond her reach. Slowly she straightened, lengthening her pliant body the imperceptible fraction of an inch, gradually thrusting her two arms up high above her head, still with her hands steadying her as they clung to the bark, her moccasined feet curving to the limb on which she stood. And now she could just touch with the tips of her fingers the broad branch above.

Then she did the thing which would have been simple enough had she stood on the ground instead of balancing high in air; she measured the few inches in distance, she drew her fingers lingeringly from the bark, holding them still above her head, she tautened the muscles of her splendid young body to the work they were called upon to do, bent her knees little by little, and then fearless still but agitated, she leaped upward, and grasped the elusive branch.

For a moment she swung there, secure now and confident, and then, as she had gained the first step in her climb so now she made this one. A slow tensing of biceps, a drawing up of the pendulous body, the quick flash of a heel thrown over the limb, and she lay upon it, laughing softly. It was good and glorious to be young, to have a body that obeyed one's will, to have a steady heart.

Presently she began once more to clamber upward, her way comparatively easy now. Thus at last she came to the branch upon which, as on a bridge, the little brown bear had crossed to the ledge of rock. And together there came to her a distinct disappointment and a pleasurable surprise.

Again the cub had slipped away from her; perhaps by now he was half a mile away and tumbling his awkward and terrified way among the crags.

From below the ledge had seemed to be four or five feet wide; now she saw that it was nearer ten. The conformation of the rocks, beetling above it, had led her to imagine that a straight wall of cliff rose abruptly just at the back of the ledge. In reality they overhung the rudely level s.p.a.ce like out-jutting eaves over the sun-deck that might have been carved to his taste by some old cliff dweller in front of his solitary retreat. For there was a cavern here under the frowning brow of granite, different from the many caves of which the girl knew in the rugged mountains only in that it was so roomy and at the same time so secret a place.

Before she left her resting place, she saw the way the cub had gone.

Leading upward from the extreme end of the ledge, at the right, there was a deep seam or crevice in the granite, almost filled and choked with fallen rocky debris from above, but affording a trail that even a man might travel to the top of the cliffs another fifty feet above.

There was a quant.i.ty of fine sandy soil at the lower end of the narrow cut and on the edge of the ledge, and her trained eyes had slight difficulty in seeing the signs of little bruin's headlong flight. As he scurried upward he had left the marks of his toes in long unmistakable scratches.

"I wonder," thought the girl with a little thrill at what her fancy pictured for her, "if any of the rest of the family are at home?"

The mother bear had been killed; one cub was dead; the second had fled to the cliff tops. Here, where bears were growing scarcer every year, there was little danger of her meeting the _pater familias_. And yet--

"If I should meet a bear in there," she laughed to herself, "I wonder who'd be scared most?"

She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew her camera from its case, focused it upon the yawning, black mouth of the cavern and waited a patient quarter of an hour, noiseless and listening and ready. For she was familiar enough with the California brown bear to know that he will not attack when the way of retreat is clear; that while, after he gets into a fight he extracts a great deal of delight from it, still if given his choice he would rather run and keep on moving until he had covered anywhere from ten to sixty miles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew her camera from its case, and waited a patient quarter of an hour.]

When nothing but silence answered her, she leaned out on the limb and tossed her hat into the mouth of the cave. After it she threw some big pieces of bark, making them land well inside with no little noise. As there was still no sound she waited no longer.

The branch out upon which she edged her slow way was both st.u.r.dy in itself and made doubly safe by the fact that it lay across the ledge, reaching with its tips to the rock wall at the side of the natural door. In a moment she had scrambled across, had leaped to her feet and was peering into the vast, shadowy interior.

There are few of us for whom a cave does not have a rare attraction, an appeal little short of fascinating, that has in it something of romance perhaps, certainly something of mystery and a dim, vague stirring of primitive and vital feelings, a shadowy harking back to the early life history of mankind. To Wanda Leland, in so many essentials a child of the wild, such a cavern as this was a bit of wonderland. Her swift running, pioneer blood tingled; her heart gladdened with a glow of discovery and exploration. Perhaps cave men had dwelt here, secure and watchful, in the forgotten ages; the idea thrilled. Certainly no man of her own time or her father's knew of the place: that thought made the spot her own, and intensified her eager delight in finding it. It had, to her sensitive, imaginative nature, an aura that she felt had clung to it always. It was a bit of the wild, the retreat of the wild things, sternly expressive of a savage grandeur.

Her sensations a strange composite of many dim, intangible, inexpressible emotions, Wanda tiptoed to the opening, paused listening, took two or three quick steps and was inside the cave. For a moment she fully expected to see the sight she dreaded, a pair of gleaming points of light blazing at her menacingly. And for a little she saw nothing but shadowy, unreal shapes. Her heart leaped wildly as the startling fancy came to her that these were the phantoms of the long dead time when men had lived here, ghosts of the older race.

Then she laughed softly again, once more accused herself of being "stupid," and began her explorations. Little by little as she grew accustomed to the scant light here she made out dim bits of detail.

First she realised that her first conjecture had been quite right, and that this was the biggest cave by far that she had ever seen. She moved forward half a dozen steps, walking warily for fear of a fall and found that the light from the entrance died into deep darkness before it could search out the sides of the great cliff room. Then she went back out upon the ledge and gathered from the debris choked fissure an armful of broken bits of dry wood, twigs and needles from the cedar.

In the pocket of her blouse were the matches which she always carried with her on her trips and in a moment a crackling flame near the cave door shot its wavering light deep into the dark interior. Then again she hurried in, eager to see what lay before her.

Nowhere was the rock roof lower than ten feet save where far back it slanted toward the floor. The floor itself sloped so gently toward the back that it seemed quite level. She judged at first glimpse, as the firelight drew from the gloom a glinting granite surface here and there, that the chamber was twenty feet wide, that it reached back into the cliffs some fifty feet. She moved back toward what seemed the rear wall, found the floor pitching steeply ahead of her, noticed a rush of fresh air stirring her hair and paused suddenly, listening. A low sound that at first she could neither locate nor a.n.a.lyse, came faintly to her as from a great distance.

With her hand on the rock wall she moved forward again slowly and cautiously. Still the floor pitched steeply as she went on, still the rush of air was in her face and with it the low rumble, growing more distinct. It was like nothing so much as rolling thunder, very far off, or the half heard beat of the ocean on a distant, rock bound coast. Again abruptly the way under foot grew almost level, she was on a plane some six feet lower than the ledge outside, and as she took another step forward, pa.s.sing round a great slab of granite that jutted out in her way, she came upon an unexpected glint of light and a sight, seen dimly, that made her cry out in startled surprise.

From far above, from some indefinite, hidden opening; the light from the big outdoors filtered down upon her. There was a brooding dusk here made vibrant with the clamouring voice that was no longer like distant thunder but resolved itself into the echoing fall of water.

Water that came from the darkness above, that flashed a few feet through the dim light, that leaped out and plunged into the darkness again, shouting and thundering as it dropped into a yawning ink black void rimmed with granite boulders. She crept closer, her ears filled with the din, her eyes bright with the strange, weird, almost unearthly beauty of the place. She crept so close, gripping one of the boulders with tightening fingers, that she could peer downward into the chasm that swallowed the water. It was only a small stream, such as is born in the High Sierra of melting snows, but its dizzy fall, its mad leaping, the echoes that were never still, caused a murmurous sound that swelled and lessened fitfully but was never still.

She found a loose stone and pushed it over the edge, leaning forward swiftly to listen, seeking to trust to her ears since her eyes could tell her nothing of the depth that lay below. She heard the stone strike, clatter against the rocky sides, strike again and again, the sound growing fainter until at last it was lost altogether in the noise of the water.