The Short Cut. Jackson GregoryЧитать онлайн книгу.
of details. She saw that the grass around was beaten down in a rude circle, heard the whining of the dog at her heels, noticed that the man lay on his right side, his head twisted so that his cheek touched his shoulder, the face hidden, one arm crumpled under him, one outflung and grasping a handful of up-rooted grass with set rigid fingers.
A sickness, a faintness, and with it an almost uncontrollable desire to run madly from this place, this thing, swept over her. But she drew closer, kneeling quickly, and put her warm hand upon the hand that clutched the wisp of grass so rigidly. It was cold, so 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 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,