The Short Cut | Page 3

cold that she drew
back suddenly, shuddering.
Not even now did she know who the man was. It had not yet entered
her mind that she could know him. She rose to her feet, and walking
softly as though her footfall in the grass might waken some one
sleeping, she moved about the still figure, to the other side, so that she
might see the face. Then she cried out softly, piteously, and Shep
ceased his whining and came to her around the body, rubbing against
her skirts.
"Arthur!" She came closer, knelt again and put her hands gently upon
the short-cropped, curling hair. "Oh, Arthur! Is it you?" Only now did
she know how this man with the young, frank face had died. Now she
saw blood smeared on the white forehead, a bullet wound torn in the
temple. She sprang to her feet, staring with wide eyes at the little hole
through which the man's soul had fled. She turned hastily toward her
horse, came back, placed her straw hat tenderly over the short curling
hair, and ran to Gypsy.
She was vaguely conscious that her brain was acting as it had never
acted before, that her excited nerves were filling her mind with a mass
of sensations and fragmentary thoughts strangely clearcut and definite.
Like some wonderfully constructed camera her faculties, in an instant
no longer than the time required for the clicking of the shutter,
photographed a hawk circling high up in the sky, a waving branch, with
no less truth and vividness than the body sprawling there in the grass.
Emotions, scents, sounds, objects blended into a strange mental
snap-shot, no one detail less clear than another.
Jerking the mare's tie rope free from the oak, she flung herself into the
saddle, and turned back toward the trail that led across the creek and

over the ridge. But Shep had found something else in the grass half a
dozen steps beyond the dead man, something that he sniffed at and
nosed and that excited him. Making a little detour, she rode back to the
spot where the dog, barking now, was waiting for her.
As she leaned forward looking down upon this second thing the
shepherd dog had found, she clutched suddenly at the horn of her
saddle as though all her strength had dribbled out of her, and she were
going to fall. The keen nostrils of the animal had led him to this object
with its sinister connection with the tragedy and he had pawed at it,
dragging it toward him and free of the green tangle into which it had
fallen or been flung.
It was a revolver, thirty-eight calibre, unlike the weapons one might
expect to find here in the range country or about the sawmills further
back . . . and the girl recognised it. The deadly viciousness of the
firearm was disguised by the pearl grip and silver chasings until it had
seemed a toy. But here was Arthur Shandon dead, with a bullet in his
brain, and here almost at his side was a revolver she knew so well. . . .
She covered her face with her hands and shook like one of the pine
needles above her head caught in a quick breath of air. Shep looked up
at her with his sharp, eager bark and then the gladness of discovery in
his eyes changed suddenly into wistful wonder. Gypsy, with tossing
head and jingling bridle, turned toward the crossing, quickening her
stride, ready to break into a trot.
At last the girl jerked her hands away from a face that was white and
miserable, and with angry spur and rein brought the mare back to the
spot where the revolver lay. Slipping down, she hesitated a moment,
glancing swiftly about as though afraid some one might see her, even
with a look that was almost suspicious at the quiet body of Arthur
Shandon, and stooping suddenly swept up the thing that had been a toy
yesterday and was so hideously tragic to-day. It was with a great effort
of her will that she compelled her fingers to touch it, forced them to
close upon it and take it up. Then with a little cry into which loathing
and dread merged, she cast it from her, flinging it far down stream so
that it fell into a black pool below a tiny, frothing waterfall.

"I can't believe it. I won't believe it!" she murmured in a voice that
shook even as her hands were shaking. "It is too terrible!"
No longer could she look at the huddled form in the grass, the young,
frank face that was so still and white and cold in the sunshine.
Throwing herself into the saddle, she swung Gypsy's head about toward
the