The Short Cut Part 33

But Wanda's heart was beating steadily now, her muscles were obeying the calm command of her will, and she was telling herself resolutely that she did have a chance. MacKelvey and Hume and the others would see no imperative need for a wild burst of speed; they would travel swiftly but they would not know that she was moving more swiftly behind them. Up and down hill they would go step by step while she, following the way she knew so well, the trails she had followed winter after winter, would find the long slopes down which she would shoot like a flash of light. It was more than possible that they would take over two hours in making the trip; she must make it in less than an hour.

"If I had only come home half an hour sooner," she cried as she fought her oblique way up a ridge she must top, "I could have laughed at them.

G.o.d be with me and I'll laugh at them yet!"

She was going too fast; she came to the crest of the ridge panting, her heart beating wildly, her body shaking. She sought to relax her muscles as she took the long racing ride down upon the far side. She went more slowly as she climbed the next ridge. She was thinking coolly now, she saw the need both of speed and of a conservation of energy. She felt no fatigue from the trip of the forenoon; she had rested long at the cave with Wayne; and yet she knew that unless she saved her strength she would be unfit for the last burst of speed at the end.

She did not follow the track the four men had left. She knew these woods too well to lose a precious yard now. Where they had turned here and there to avoid thick clumps of firs the girl, looking far ahead, economised strength and shortened distances.

"I _must_ get there first," she cried over and over again. "If these men will do the sort of thing Wayne says that they have done, if they will stop at nothing to gain their ends, what hope has he if they arrest him and charge him with Arthur's murder? There will be evidence, they will make evidence, and he will be in jail where he can not help himself."

Once she heard a faint cracking sound under her feet and her heart stopped. If a ski had broken now-- But it was only a dead brush, snow covered, and one of the lifeless twigs had snapped. She became more careful of the way, wary of being tricked by the blinding snow that appeared level when there were mounds and hollows that might have broken a ski had she been careless and unlucky. The sudden hideous fancy leaped out upon her that the breaking of a ski now might mean the death of a man, the only man in the world for her.

At last, from the crest of the highest ridge, the one from which each year she took her favourite ride down to the river, she caught sight of the little party that menaced Wayne Shandon's liberty. The men had been making better time than she had let herself believe they would; evidently MacKelvey wanted to get the thing over with, to get back to the Echo Creek that night. Beyond them, straight ahead, was the bridge.

"I can't do it! I can't do it!" she cried aloud, her voice broken with hopelessness.

Even as she hesitated, poising upon the top of the rise, one of the men far ahead turned and saw her. It was Sledge Hume. She saw his quick gesture; she almost fancied that she could hear his laugh. He would know why she followed them. He would be mocking her. Oh, how she hated the man then!

"They will leave one of the deputies at the bridge," she thought in despair. "He won't let me across. Oh, G.o.d, if there were only another crossing!"

_There was another crossing; a snowshoe rabbit had shown it to her_.

He had sought to leap it just to save the little flame of life in the tiny furred breast. He had gone to his death valiantly, but he had shown her the place, the short cut, the way that was full of menace and yet that was possible.

Her face whitened; she hesitated just a fraction of a second, balancing. Now the men were following the wide crescent of the curve which would lead them to the bridge. There was another course lying straight between the two tips of that crescent, and a great gap filled with the thunder of raging water against crags that were like the horrible teeth of a monster, broke the short cut in two.

Again Hume had turned; she noted even across the distance the contemptuous carriage of his big body and she knew that he was laughing. And again, as though it were already just before her, she fancied that she saw the chasm of the river.

"It is Wayne's ruin, it maybe Wayne's death, if they take him now!"

It seemed to her that it had not been her voice, that whispered the words. It seemed that they had come to her from the air, that some one else had spoken them. And as, hesitating no longer, she stooped forward and sped down the long slope, she swerved still further from the track the four men had made, heading straight to the river above them, opposite the Bar L-M ranch house, straight toward the only way that was left her.

She had made up her mind. She was resolute now and yet she was frightened. In a little while the roar of the river smote her ears and it seemed at once to call to her and jeer at her. She fancied that it was like Hume's voice, mocking her. She remembered just how the banks fell straight down to the whirlpools; she remembered again the splash of the falling snow when she had come so close to her death. The very feeling that had gripped her then, like ice against the beatings of her heart, gripped her now. She was as one in a nightmare, drawn on, rus.h.i.+ng on to the peril from which she shrank.

She lost sight of Hume and the rest as she left the straight, cleared roadway and the trees came between her and them.

"They're all the same," Sledge Hume was laughing as he turned and waited a moment for MacKelvey to come up with him. "I never saw a woman yet who wasn't willing to tackle the impossible in a flash and then go to pieces with hysterics in the middle of the job."

On, gathering speed with the flinging of each yard behind her, her polished skis singing as they leaped downward, hardly seeming to touch the brittle crust of snow underfoot, standing erect that she might see far ahead and turn in time for a mound that spoke of a boulder, Wanda was rus.h.i.+ng on toward the river. Its shouting voices, like the voices of many giant things In brutal laughter, swelled and thundered ever more distinct, ever more jeering. It seemed to her that there were ten thousand Sledge Humes taunting her, sneering at the blind recklessness of a mere woman. She knew that the blood had crept out of her face and that she was afraid. And she knew that there is one thing in the world, G.o.d-created, that is greater, stronger than fear.

"I have leaped distances greater than that before," she told herself stubbornly.

"With certain death dragging at you if you missed?" the rude laughter of the river through its rocky way taunted her.

Her skis were running slowly again; she had come to the level land once more. She must make a little turn to avoid the thick grove through which she had gone slowly last year after the rabbit. She must turn upstream a little too. There were ten minutes of driving one ski after the other, then the steep climb of another ridge, the last ridge lying between her and the river. She climbed it swiftly, stubbornly and unhesitatingly.

"If Wayne were coming to me would he hesitate?" she asked herself angrily. "Because I am not a man am I a coward? Shall I fail him the first time in our lives that he has need of me? Is a woman like that a fit thing to be a strong man's wife?"

At the top of this last climb she paused. She was not afraid now. The colour had come back into her face, her blood was running steadily.

She might be going to her death. Was death then so great a thing? Was it as great as her love?

"If I were afraid now," she told herself quietly, "I should know that I do not love Wayne as other women have loved other men. Then I should not deserve to live to love him weakly."

From here she could not see MacKelvey, Hume and the others. She knew that by this time they would have crossed the bridge. Then she tried not to think of them. Briefly she studied the steep sloping sweep of the snow, trying to mark the way she must go. She found the spot the rabbit had chosen, the narrowest place with the far bank three or four feet lower than the near bank. Frowningly seeking the detail of a sheet of glaring white which seemed without mound or hollow but which she knew was full of uneven ridges and sinks, she made out at last such a ridge lying parallel to the river's edge and close to it. A log had fallen there; she remembered having seen it in the summer. With the little hollow this side, with the short upward slope that would give her a natural take-off, she would make it help her.

She would strike this low up-sloping mound in a moment when she swept down upon it from the crest of the ridge upon which she now stood; she would take the tiny dip in a fraction of a second too brief to have a name; she would rise, leaping as she rose--

The supreme moment came.

She loosened the band about her waist, breathing deeply. She bent her slender body this way and that, straightening up, stooping, twisting from side to side. She felt that every individual muscle must be made ready, keyed up to the work that was to be done in a flying moment.

She must be steady, she must be sure. Not a fibre of her being must weaken or tremble or be uncertain.

"Dear G.o.d," she whispered, "make me strong and worthy and unafraid."

Then she lifted her hands a little, holding them out from her sides, her fingers outstretched, her arms taking the place of the pole she had tossed away. Her skis clung to the snow. She slipped the right foot back and forth, making sure that it had gathered none of the feathery stuff that lay just under the thin crust. When it ran smoothly she tested the left ski. And then slowly she stooped forward, her hands still out. She felt a little stir, knew that she was moving, just barely moving. She stooped further forward now, quickly. The s.h.i.+fting of her weight had its instantaneous effect. The slow, scarcely perceptible moving was changed into a smooth glide that grew in a yard to a swiftly accelerating speed. Then she straightened up, balancing with taut muscles, rus.h.i.+ng downward.

Now she was flying as a bird flies that skims the snow. Only the little whine of the ski song over the crust, the flying particles from before the upturned ends, a dust of diamonds, told that the speeding body was not in reality defying gravity, scorning the earth beneath.

The pitch steepened before her, the skis rose and dipped over the little uneven places, the air cut at her face, stung her eyes. Half way down, when the skis struck a little mound from which she dared not try to swerve, she in sober truth flew, not touching the crust again for five or six feet. She landed easily, crouching a little, tensing her already taut muscles, steadying herself, plunging onward at a speed that was like an eagle's dip. And then another second, another and she heard the whine of the air about her ears, saw the black gulf from which the roar of the river boomed up at her and her skis rose to the take-off she had chosen.

As never before in all her life did the girl's will call upon the muscles of her body. Her hands far out now, like the still pinions of some strange being of a strange white world, her lithe body as tense as wire, she gathered her strength, felt her body rising as the skis slipped up the short slope of the mound, knew that in one flying second there lay both success and death. At the very instant, when, had she let herself go, she would be slipping down to the water that was grinding at the rocks, she leaped.

Higher and higher she rose in the air, carried onward, upward by the impetus of her wild race and by the slight aid of her take-off had given her. Higher yet and further out although it seemed to her still heart that her body was hanging motionless, that it was the earth leaping beneath her, flying backward, rus.h.i.+ng away, hurling the chasm of the river under her. She did not look down; it might have meant death to look down. She kept her eyes fastened now upon the far bank, the place where she sought to land, where she must throw herself forward to avoid slipping back.

And yet she saw the black gulf under her. It was too black, too wide, too full of shrieking menace for her not to see it even while she did not look at it. She was hanging still in air, it was rus.h.i.+ng at her, there was an instant filled with eternity. And then, Wayne's name upon her lips, she had described the great arc, she had struck six feet from the treacherous margin on the far side, her skis were running smoothly under her, at first swiftly, then slowly, and a glad cry of thankfulness broke from her lips.

She had not even fallen, she did not have to hurl herself p.r.o.ne to clutch at the snow with her fingers. She sped on, came slowly to a standstill and then her heart leaping, her blood racing, her eyes bright and wet she was over the ridge and speeding forward again, the roar of the river lost to her ears, the form of a man bringing a horse out of a snow surrounded barn in her eyes.

He cried out as he saw her racing across the snow to him, cried out in wonder. He dropped his horse's rope and turned to meet her. She saw that he was still on his skis, saw too that not a thousand yards beyond the house four men were coming on swiftly.

"Wanda!"

"Wayne." She had come close enough to call now and lifted her voice clearly. "MacKelvey and Hume and two more men are there, right there.

They are going to arrest you for Arthur's murder. They mean to keep you shut up in jail until they ruin you. They will make evidence to hang you. You must go, go quick."

He swung about quickly, caught sight of the four men who had seen Wanda and who were lessening the distance by quick strides. His face blackened to a great anger. Then he turned back to her and his face flushed with a great happiness. For in the man as in the woman love was stronger than fear or hatred.

"You golden hearted, wonderful woman!" he cried softly. He reached out his arms as she swept by and gathered her into them. He kissed her softly. And then, swiftly, he turned away.

"After a few days, come to the cave," he said eagerly. "If I let them take me now it would mean more than my ruin, more than my death, Wanda.

They won't take me. When a man is arrested for Arthur's murder it is going to be the right man."

And striking out mightily, steadily he left her, driving his straight way toward the broken country of the upper end of the valley.

When they came to where she lay, Hume first, they found Wanda Leland very still and white, motionless save for the little sobs shaking her.

Hume's anger broke out into a wordy fury. He shook his fist at her prostrate body and cursed. But he did not sneer. There was too deep a wonder in his heart. He knew, they all knew, what it meant to have done what she had done. And MacKelvey, a hard man robbed by her of his prey, took off his hat and lifted her gently and said simply, and in full reverence: