The Short Cut | Page 9

turning quickly so that her wondering daughter could not see the
eyes that were blurred with a mist of tears, she left the room.
When she had gone Wanda snatched up the trunk key from her table
and thrust it quickly into her bosom. Then she sat down again on the
edge of her bed and stared out toward the orchard where the sunlight
lay bright and warm upon the apple blossoms . . . and saw only the
quiet body by Echo Creek, that and the face of the man people called
Red Reckless.

CHAPTER III
SUSPICION
Why had her mother come to her in such a way? Why had she been so
quick to see what people would say? Did she believe that Wayne
Shandon had killed Arthur; was she afraid that Wanda might have
found something that would incriminate him; and did she want to warn
her of what the inevitable result of such a disclosure would be?
And she had found something! She had known from the first sight of it,
half hidden by Shep's eager pays, that it was Wayne Shandon's. He had
shown it to her only last week.
"I am going to teach you to shoot as I shoot," he had laughed, bringing
the revolver out of his pocket. "Then I am going to give it to you. And
then you are going to make me a pretty bow and give me a pretty smile
and say, 'Thank you, Red,' as you did when I chastised your first suitor!
Remember, Wanda?"
"Only I don't call you 'Red' any more," she had laughed back at him.
"We're grown up now, you know, and Wayne is much more dignified
and . . . and respectful."
"And you can handle your own suitors now," he had retorted. "More
artistically and with equal finality!"
Only a week ago out there in the orchard where now the sunlight lay in
golden splashes over the fruit trees, she and Red Reckless had bantered
each other as they strolled toward the house where Arthur was sitting
on the veranda with her mother, watching them. It was a sparkling
morning like to-day's, and they had spoken of the old school days
before Mr. Shandon sent his two sons to the East to school, of the time
when she was eight and he was fifteen and he had "licked" a boy whom
she did not like but who was stubborn in vowing that the little girl
should eat a red cheeked apple he had brought her. A week ago, and
now Arthur Shandon was dead and men were ready to believe that
Wayne Shandon had killed him.

She sat very still, while her mind wandered in many directions. The old
days rose up vividly bringing back the young faces of Arthur and
Wayne and Garth Conway,--they had all played Prisoner's Base and
Anti-over at the little white school house down in the valley. She
remembered the day when a letter came from Mr. Shandon summoning
Arthur and Wayne and Garth to the East, and how merry the boys had
been over it. She missed them dreadfully after they went away until
vacation came and her own father had taken her with him on a tour of
inspection to his four other ranches, up and down the State. For three
years she did not see the three boys, their letters had ceased, and she
was well on the way to forget her playfellows. And then, when she was
twelve and Wayne Shandon nineteen, he had come back.
He had run away. He had quarrelled with his father, and Arthur had
tried to show him that he was unreasonable. Then the boy's hot temper
had flashed out at his brother and finally at Garth Conway who had
long been accustomed to thinking as Arthur Shandon thought. So the
youth, in whom love of adventure and hatred of restraint were already
marked characteristics, had sold his books, the saddle pony which his
father's generosity had given him, his guns and fishing tackle, in fact
everything which he might sell even to his spare clothing, had caught a
night train and come West again.
Wanda's mother had tried to reason with the boy when he came to them,
laughing at the trick he had played his father, full of mockery of the
hidebound ways of cities, and had wanted to send him back to Mr.
Shandon. She had cried a little over him and kissed him and talked
gently with him as was her motherly way. But Wanda's father berated
him severely and sternly and Wayne flushed and bit his lip and then
went away from them as he had gone away from the East.
More years, happy years for Wanda Leland, sped by and she did not