"Tell me." She looked up at him bravely enough, but he knew how this thing hurt her, and how it was going to hurt her when he told everything. Hastily, to have it over with, he repeated Dart's story and told of the quarrel with Garth.

"I believe," he said slowly, "that Dart told me the truth throughout.

I don't know how he found it out, but in part I know he was right.

Arthur mortgaged the Bar L-M to your father for twenty-five thousand dollars. You know how I went away then, how I authorised Garth to act for me just as though he were the actual owner of the property. Dart says that three months ago the mortgage was foreclosed. That was just before I came home. I heard nothing of it. He swears that he saw the sheriff's certificate of sale to your father. In California law due notice must be served upon a man whose property is threatened with sale to satisfy the holder of the mortgage. From the date of that sale until a year later the original owner has what is termed a year of redemption during which, at any time, upon his paying the amount of the mortgage and all costs, he may regain his property. Do you follow me, Wanda?"

"Yes. Go on, Wayne."

"Had I not been away, had I not furthermore given to Garth my power of attorney, that first service of notice of foreclosure would have come to me. It came to Garth instead; it had to come to him. By his simply ignoring the matter, failing to appear in court or to be represented by a lawyer when the matter was called, he allowed the Bar L-M to be sold to pay the promissory note of twenty-five thousand given by Arthur to your father. Your father bought in the property himself. It is now his and not mine; it would become absolutely his, with clear t.i.tle, if I should allow this year of redemption to pa.s.s without paying off the twenty-five thousand and costs. And that is certainly what would have happened if I had not learned of the whole wretched deal, through Dart, last night."

For a long time she did not answer. Even Wayne Shandon, who thought that he knew how the girl loved and venerated her father, could not guess how deeply this thing cut her. Presently, steadying her voice, she said:

"You are absolutely sure of this, Wayne?"

"No. Not in every detail. But in enough to make me more than ready to believe it, Wanda. Garth himself admitted the mortgage, and confessed that he had known of it all along from the day it was made, and said he knew that your father held it. Why didn't he tell me? Why didn't Mr.

Leland tell me? Why have they gone on with their plan of irrigation without making me an offer for the water right without which their whole plan falls to pieces?"

"There is only one thing to do, Wayne. You must come back with me. We must go straight to papa and ask him."

"Wanda," he answered gently, "I have fought this out all night. I hope that never in our lives will there come a time when you ask me to do a thing that I cannot do. Will you try to see this from my point of view? My first thought was to go to your father and to ask him for an explanation, just as it is your first thought. But what good could it do? In a few days now I shall go to the court house in El Toyon. If there was a mortgage, as Dart swears and Garth himself admits, it will be on record there. If notice of foreclosure were properly served, and foreclosure were then made in default of my appearance, or because Garth did not go or send a representative, if the sheriff's certificate of sale was made, the whole transaction will have been placed on record. _If_ all of this is true, Wanda, and I am very much afraid that it is, then, girl of mine, is there any reason in the world why I should go to Martin Leland with it?" His voice had hardened, and though he did not know it, Wanda had noticed the change in tone.

"Can't you see," he went on deliberately, "that after the way I have been treated I have the right to expect your father to come to me if there is any explaining to do?"

"I can't believe it," she said faintly, though belief was already strong within her. "Why should my father do a thing like that? Do you know, Wayne, that you are accusing him of a very ugly thing?"

"Yes," he said, his tone suddenly gentle again. "I am sorry for you, Wanda. But can't you see that if this is true there is only one thing in the world for me to do?"

"But," and the question uppermost in her mind demanded repet.i.tion, "why should my father so soil his hands."

"Aren't there many reasons? If he really believes that I killed Arthur, if for lack of evidence or for some other reason he feels that the law cannot touch me, wouldn't he come to tell himself--"

"Oh," she cried impetuously, "that would be mean and cowardly! For him to tell himself that robbing you would be justifiable because he was punishing a man he deemed guilty! It would be braver, more like a man, to do it for the hot reason of hatred."

After the silence with which Wayne answered her it was Wanda who again spoke.

"Wayne," she asked quietly, "is this all you have to tell me?"

"No. I want you to understand what I am going to do, what I must do, if this is all true. It is what they have driven me to do, unless I prove myself to be what your father thinks me, a weak willed, worthless do-nothing. You don't want me to be that, Wanda?"

"No," she replied thoughtfully. "I want you to be a man."

"Then," he cried sharply, "there is man's work cut out for me! I have twenty-five thousand dollars and more to raise in a very short time. I have my reply to make to men who have used me as a fool! I have the water that the Dry Valley needs. I can go on with the thing which they have tried to do, I can whip them at their own game, playing mine open with the cards on the table. I can refuse to be the toad under the stone; I can make my fight to have my rights. Against opposition that has been underhanded I can offer opposition that is a man's answer to a challenge. It is they, not I, who began the trouble. Had Martin Leland come to me and asked for a water right, I should have given it to him freely as you know. Why, the woman who came to you last night--"

"Miss Hazleton?" she said very quietly, though the girl's heart was beating hard as she waited for his answer.

"Helga Strawn," he answered bluntly. "Hume's cousin."

Her smile, a little wistful but with a quick flash of gladness, surprised him. And he did not understand when she rose swiftly and came to him and put her arms round his neck.

"I am afraid that I have been naughty, Wayne," she whispered. "No, I'll tell you some other time. Tell me about her."

He told her Helga's vague plan, showed her the chance for him with Ettinger, Norfolk and the stragglers lined up with him.

"I love you, Wanda," he said suddenly at the end. "So much that what you want done is the thing that I must do. But you must see very clearly that the time has come when I must play the man's part or the weakling's."

"First you are going to be very sure? Sure that papa has done this?"

"Yes, dear."

"Then," she said, lifting her face to his, her eyes shining, "if you find it true I want you to do the man's part, Wayne. You knew that I would, didn't you, Wayne?"

"Yes," he whispered. "G.o.d bless you, yes."

"And, Wayne, dear--"

"Yes?"

"Do you think that Helga Strawn is very beautiful?"

Whereupon he laughed happily at her, and despite the cloud in their sky which had grown suddenly bigger and blacker so that the shadow of it lay across their lives, they were very gay together.

CHAPTER XX

HUME PLAYS A TRUMP

Before Wanda and Wayne had finished making merry over their little luncheon in the cave, each striving bravely to look at the future honestly and unafraid, to look upon the present contentedly, an event had happened that was already shaping their lives in a way which they could not foresee. Sledge Hume had come to the Echo Creek.

During the past night, shortly after the arrival of Garth Conway, Jim had ridden from the range house to the nearest village, something less than a dozen miles down the valley, with orders to telephone a message to Hume. The message, a mystery in itself to Jim, had been clear enough to the man to whom it was sent and had brought him hastening across the fifty miles lying between his ranch in the Dry Lands and the Echo Creek. In the darkness he had come on as far as he could, until the snow stopped him. He had spent the night at a house twenty miles from Leland's place and now, hours before he could reasonably have been expected, he entered Martin's study unceremoniously.

"So there's h.e.l.l to pay," he said shortly by way of greeting. "The red headed fool has discovered something, has he?"

He flung off his coat and strode to the fireplace. Garth and Leland were together, had been together all morning, planning what was to be done. Hume stared at Leland frowningly and then slowly transferred his regard to Conway.

"I suppose your brains have been leaking out of your mouth again," he said contemptuously.

Garth, his agitation of last night having left him nervous and irritable, retorted hotly.

"Gentlemen," said Leland gravely, "may I remind you that this is hardly a time for personal recriminations? We are not here to quarrel with one another. I sent you word immediately, Mr. Hume, not because I saw any necessity for your coming here but that you might know what we have to expect at the earliest possible moment. Garth and myself have been talking it over--"

"Talking!" exploded Hume angrily. "Well, I didn't come to talk.

There's going to be something besides a puling string of words now."

"If you have a suggestion--"

"You bet I have! I've been expecting just this thing ever since you began playing the game with Conway there as a stool pigeon. If we'd have sent him on a trip to Paris and paid his expenses we'd have saved trouble and money. Can I have a drink and something to eat? I'm half starved."

"Certainly. But your suggestion--"