The Short Cut Part 36

As only a very clever woman could have done she drew him out to talk about himself, about his motives. She listened always in apparent cool indifference, always in keen, hard interest under the surface she chose to wear. She never forgot that she had sold to him for twenty-five thousand dollars property for which she would not now accept twice that amount and which he would not relinquish for such a sum. She never forgot that, legally, she had no hope of regaining it. But there would be a way, when she came to know the man utterly, when she came to feel out every nerve of his moral being. She tried to make him talk freely about himself by the one method which must remain infallible as long as Sledge Hume was Sledge Hume, by cool criticism of him.

One day as they idled in her living room she told him abruptly that he was the most selfish man she had ever known. Her smile, as near a sneer as a smile may be and not become unlovely, the tapping of her French slipper, did not cease during his rather lengthy rejoinder.

"Selfish?" he had answered roughly. "Of course I am. Who isn't? You mean that I am the only man you know who isn't afraid to say so! All creation is selfish; selfishness is the keynote of progress, of evolution, of any sort of success. It begins with the lowest forms of life where each single celled unit takes what it needs for its own good; it is the thing which keeps life in the four footed world; it is the highest concern of the priest who while he pretends to serve mere man and a mythological Saviour never loses sight of his own reward at the end of it. It is the basic principle underlying all religion; take out of it the personal, selfish consideration, 'Be good and you can go to Heaven! be bad and go to h.e.l.l!' and your whole religion falls to pieces. Take selfishness out of the world and the world will stagnate and rot."

"I have never heard you wax so eloquent in your own defence!"

"I am not defending myself, I am explaining. I am showing you the difference between yourself and me. I see things as they are; you look at them obliquely. You wouldn't admit it, but you are as selfish as I am."

"The difference is that you are the more honest?"

"Both with myself and the world, yes."

"You pride yourself on your honesty?"

"I don't take the trouble to dissimulate."

"You have never done anything which you have kept hidden?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I have never found it necessary to make the world my father confessor."

"Do you wish me to regard you as what people call an honest man, Mr.

Hume? Aren't you telling me that to put money in your own pocket you would do what people call a dishonourable act?"

"You are the only woman I have ever met who has any claim to brains,"

he answered, paying the compliment in his blunt, rough fas.h.i.+on. "Don't you know me well enough to realise that I don't ask people to set my standards for me? Don't you know a man, when you see him, big enough to set his own standards?"

She came to see that the man was not without a rough hewn sort of greatness, that in his way as he had said, he was a big man. He bred in her strange, dual emotions. In the beginning she had felt for him only the cold hatred of which the woman was thoroughly capable; gradually and begrudgingly she began to feel an equally cold admiration for the strength of the man. She told herself that that admiration was utterly impersonal, that it arose from the fact that Hume was in reality stronger than other men she knew, that it was possible for her to acknowledge it because she did have brains, as he had said. It was an admiration which, she judged coolly, need in no way lessen her hatred for him, which rather would intensify it.

Throughout the winter she strove with single purpose to slip into the man's confidence. Having recognised Hume's peculiar strength, having sought his weaknesses, knowing that he was no man's or woman's fool, she did not make a fool of herself by giving him an inkling of her intentions. When she was most interested it was her role to appear most indifferent; here was the one vulnerable point her searching fingers had found in the sh.e.l.l of his egoism. Indifference piqued him.

It was as though she had gathered three armies and hurled them at him.

From the centre she attacked with indifference, striving to draw his attention from other points. She ma.s.sed two distinct flanking movements stealthily. Upon one side she brought to bear upon a keen brain a brain as keen; upon the other she calmly deployed the charm of her regal beauty. The man had seemed a machine, emotionless. But since he was human, since blood, Hume blood though it was, ran through his veins, he must have emotions like other men. They might be hidden, they might be of stunted, pale growth. In one case she would uncover them, in another she would develop. Already she admired him as a vital, compelling force. She would make him admire a similar force In her; she would make him admire the physical perfection of her. She was a woman, she was amply endowed with brain and instinct and beauty. And she was far too shrewd to overlook a single weapon which lay at her hand.

The eternal looms were weaving, the warp of her being, the woof of his being were drawn into the intricate pattern of human destiny. Smiles and tears, hopes and fears, emotions of which a man is unconscious, ambitions and failures, achievements--all go into the invisible fabric.

Already Sledge Hume and Helga Strawn had come to find something to admire in each other. The short sight of a clever man and a clever woman could not discern what lay at the end. And the end was rus.h.i.+ng upon them with tremendous speed.

CHAPTER XXIV

UNDER THE SURFACE

Early in January there arrived in El Toyon a gentleman with a scrubbing brush moustache, a pleasant, portly personality, a pair of twinkling black eyes, a seemingly limitless amount of leisure, discriminating taste for liquors and cigars, a fountain pen and a check book. The name he wrote upon the hotel register was Edward Kinsell. He disabused the mind of the proprietor, Charlie Granger, by a.s.suring him that he was not a drummer. In his genial way he was quite ready to tell all about himself. He was an old bachelor, counting upon becoming the husband of a great little woman just as soon as the courts had disposed of the present inc.u.mbent. He had been rolling down the rocky trail at a pretty swift gait in town, and his doctor had warned him that the lady In question would have been set free and would no doubt have chosen and elected another life partner before Mr. Kinsell found his way to the church unless he took up the simple life.

So Mr. Kinsell, having availed himself for a week or two of Charlie Granger's hospitality, found at last a vine twined cottage not too far from the hotel kitchen and barroom, and leased it forthwith. He played many games of poker, apparently possessed of a rare ability to play good hands badly and poor hands well so that while he generally lost he lost but little; he took up sleighing with great delight, usually taking a small boy along with him to drive; he amused himself writing daily letters or picture postcards to the great little woman; he became a friend of all the dogs in town; he bought drinks for the village vagabonds; altogether he disported himself harmlessly and pleasantly quite as a portly old bachelor with a scrubbing brush moustache should do while seeking rejuvenation and awaiting a decree. He was always upon the verge of entering some local project which he never entered.

He made more friends in the six months of his stay--he left in June,--than any other man in El Toyon had made in a year.

He dined with the preacher and talked infant psychology with the teacher; he bet Charlie Granger ten dollars on a dog-fight over which he waxed red faced and enthusiastic; he got himself catalogued by the saloon loungers as a hot sport; he evinced a warm interest in the country races to be run in the Spring. In that connection he learned that Granger held stakes amounting to ten thousand dollars on a single race that would never be run; he was informed that the money was already as good as Sledge Hume's. He became interested in Hume and in Red Reckless; he even went to the length of travelling into the Dry Lands to get a squint at Endymion, and then sought out Big Bill and studied Little Saxon's good points. Everything in the world seemed to interest Edward Kinsell.

The winter slipped by and the herds went back to the mountain ranges.

The Lelands were again at the Echo Creek. Time and a natural strong affection had cooled the heat of pa.s.sion in father and daughter. Love and consanguinity narrowed the breach which lay between them, although the rupture, if it ever healed completely, would leave its scar. Each nature came to make certain allowances for the other; their intercourse, though not intimate, was amicable. Neither made any reference before the other to Wayne Shandon. And, as naturally as this condition arose, Wanda and her mother drew closer together.

Upon the Bar L-M Big Bill was competent, hard working foreman. He still hoped for the impossible, he still obeyed orders and sought tirelessly to make Little Saxon all that Shandon could have done.

Willie Dart, growing as time wore on hollow eyed from his nocturnal vigils, slept in a hay loft with a shot gun perilously near his eager right hand.

Shandon was yet in the mountains, his headquarters Wanda's cave. It seemed at times to his impatient desires that Brisbane was doing nothing; that just the evidence he himself had told the lawyer that night in White Rock should have led long before now to the arrest of Sledge Hume. But he refused to brood over it, telling himself doggedly that if Brisbane were doing nothing there was nothing to be done. He knew his man. And already Shandon had found an occupation which was to keep him busy and far from unhappy day and night.

News of the outside world came to him in the few meetings with Wanda which were bright highlights in his life. She dared not come too often for MacKelvey himself or one of his deputies was a frequent and unheralded guest at Leland's. But she came when she could, meeting him below the cliffs, her camera serving as her reason for going into the forests, bringing him books, little delicacies surrept.i.tiously prepared by her own hands, a newspaper now and then rescued from Julia's wood box, prints of the pictures she had taken. Wanda still saw Dart frequently, and from his gossiping lips brought word of what occurred upon the Bar L-M. Garth Conway, she had not seen. Her father heard from him by post, saw him now and then in the outside world; she did not know what Conway was doing but imagined that he was keeping in touch with Leland for the sake of the irrigation scheme which seemed a still born failure.

Through Wanda and Dart a meeting between Shandon and Big Bill was arranged. The two men met after dark near the head of Laughter Lake; Shandon gave his detailed orders to his foreman, a.s.suring him that Brisbane was at work upon the case and that before long word would come from him for the fugitive to give himself up; there would be a quick preliminary hearing and he would be released. Shandon's optimism glowed into warmer life with the warming of the spring sun. Little Saxon must be kept in condition; arrangements must be made for the open handed welcome and hospitality to be afforded the crowds that would come up for the races in June. There would be much for Big Bill to superintend: choice beeves must be brought up for the barbecue; a rude platform must be constructed for the dance which was to conclude the day of festivity. In every detail Big Bill took his orders gravely and obeyed them to the letter.

In another matter Big Bill had long ago acted, having been informed in the early winter of Shandon's wishes. Ettinger was told that sooner or later the man whose property controlled the upper waters of the river flowing from Laughter Lake would come back. When he did return he was going to do just the thing Ettinger himself had suggested. Ettinger was to hold out, and induce the others to hold out with him if he could. And, since Leland was stubborn, since the whole matter was in the air just now, Ettinger saw nothing better to do than accept the tip which Big Bill gave him. A similar message went to Helga Strawn.

May came in, radiant and glowing, and men from many miles away visited the Bar L-M to look over the course upon which the race meet was to be held. MacKelvey spent weary days and nights driving his relentless quest; Sledge Hume seemed sullenly idle; Helga Strawn coolly Indifferent to the world about her; and still Wayne Shandon received no encouraging word from Brisbane. May ran through half its allotted days of thaw and bursting seeds; the day for the race was less than a month away, and still Shandon clung to his solitudes, wondering, beginning to doubt.

And then one day he had a visitor.

It was after sunset. He had been out all day, upon the higher table land where he had set rudely constructed traps for rabbits. He had returned in the early dusk, finding his way down the fissure from the rocks above to his cave. And as he made his fire and began the preparations for his evening meal, he heard a very discreet cough at the entrance of the cave.

The cough was repeated, and then there entered the cavern a portly, pleasant looking gentleman with a scrubbing brush moustache.

"Howdy-do, Mr. Shandon?" he said genially, removing his hat to mop his moist forehead and then coming closer to extend his hand. "I was pa.s.sing and thought I'd drop in."

Shandon who had been squatting by the fire got to his feet and stared.

"Well?" he demanded sharply. He fully expected to hear other voices in a moment, MacKelvey's voice, perhaps Sledge Hume's.

"My card," smiled the genial gentleman pleasantly. "One of my various cards, rather." He extended it, adding, "I thought I'd run in and bring you a handful of cigars. You must be in sad need of them, eh?"

The card explained that its owner was Mr. Edward Kinsell. The name meant nothing to Shandon and he said so bluntly.

"To be sure," acknowledged Mr. Kinsell. He extended the other hand with the cigars, took a stool by the fire, crossed his knees and added drily, "I've been on the lay, though, for pretty close to six months.

Great chap, Brisbane, isn't he? By the way here is a note from him."

The note, dated several months earlier, simply stated that Edward Kinsell could be depended upon to do all that any man could in the matter of gathering up the evidence he was being paid by Shandon to get. Shandon's eyes, suddenly bright, an eager note in his voice, he shot out his hand warmly, and cried,

"You have found something?"

"My dear Mr. Shandon," smiled Kinsell, "I have found out so many things that it's a wonder I don't have a continual headache. You'll pardon my not having called upon you sooner? I have really been so busy--"

"You knew where to find me all the time?" incredulously.

Kinsell nodded and smiled approvingly as Wayne lighted a cigar.

"Of course. I always make it a point to be in a position to get into close touch with my princ.i.p.al in case of urgent need."