The Short Cut | Page 4

trail, as though she were fleeing from a fearful pursuing menace.
Shep, who had run, barking, to retrieve his lost discovery from the
black pool under the waterfall, snapped his disappointment from the
bank and then splashed through the creek after his mistress.
Two hundred yards the girl raced along the up-trail, her mare running,
her dog struggling hard to keep up. Then with a new, sudden fear she
jerked her pony to a standstill.
"I . . . I can't leave it there," her white lips were whispering. "They will
find it, and then . . . Oh, my God!"
And now her brain had ceased to act like a strangely magical camera;
now sights and sounds and faint odours about her were all unnoticed.
Her eyes, wide and staring at the winding trail before her, did not see
the broad trees or the flower sprinkled grass or the blossoming
manzanita bushes. They gazed through these things which they did not
see, and instead saw what might lie in the future, what fate the grim
gods of destiny might mete out . . . to one man . . . if the revolver below
the waterfall were found!
Her hesitation was brief; the horror of what might lurk in the future was
greater than the horror of what lay back there behind her. Again she
urged her puzzled horse back to the stream, flinging herself down just
at the edge of the pool. Far down at the bottom upon the white sand,
wedged between two white stones, the revolver lay plainly visible. The
noonday sun rested upon the deep water here and its secret was no
secret at all. She was glad that she had come back.
Snatching up the dead limb of a shrub lying close at hand, with little
difficulty or waste of time, she dragged the weapon toward her until she
could thrust her arm, elbow deep into the water, and secure it.

She shuddered as when she had first forced her hand to touch it. But
with quick, steady fingers she dried it against her skirt and thrust it into
the only place where she could be sure of safety, where its voice would
be silenced to all except her own heart, deep into the bosom of her
waist. And again she was on Gypsy's back, again fleeing along the
up-trail.
As she rode, as the rush of air whipped in her face and the leaping body
of the mare under her gave her muscles something to do, the blood
flamed again into her cheeks; courage rushed back into a heart that was
naturally unafraid.
"I have not been loyal," she whispered over and over to herself
accusingly. "I have not been a true friend. I have suspected and I know,
oh, I know so well, that it can't be! He wouldn't do a thing like that, he
couldn't!"
She topped the ridge, sped on for half a mile upon its crest, racing
straight toward the east, dropped down into another valley ten times
bigger than the one she had just quitted, and still following the trail
headed southward again. Here there were fewer trees, a sprinkling of
pine and fir, and wider open spaces. Another stream, even smaller than
Echo Creek, watered the valley. She rode through a small herd of
saddle horses that flashed away before her swift approach, their manes
and tails flying, and scarcely realised that she had disturbed them. Off
to her left, at the upper end of the valley where were a number of
grazing cattle, she thought she could distinguish the figures of a couple
of her father's cowboys riding herd. But she did not turn to them.
Gypsy, warming to the race, carried her mistress valiantly the half a
dozen miles from the ridge she had crossed to the knoll crowned with
great boled, sky seeking cedars where her father's ranch house stood.
Half a mile away the girl made out the wide verandahs, the long flight
of steps, the hammock where she had read and dozed last night, yes,
and dreamed the tender, half wistful, yet rose tinted dreams of
maidenhood. She saw, too, the stables at the base of the knoll, to the
northward, where one of the boys, Charlie or Jim, was harnessing the
greys, preparatory to hitching them to the big wagon. The thought

flashed through her mind that he counted upon going out for a load of
wood, and that he would be called upon first to bring in another burden
that he would never forget.
Her eyes went back to the house. There was some one sitting in a
rocker in the shade near the front door. It was her mother. This news
would be a bitter, bitter shock to the tender-hearted woman