"I don't think much of your a.s.sociates," she informed him.

"You mean Leland?"

"He is bad enough. Garth Conway is worse. They are poor sort of men to swing a big deal."

"They are not swinging it," he said bluntly.

"You are?"

"Yes."

Again she paused, her tapering fingers drumming idly upon the gla.s.s through which once more she was looking out upon the shining snow.

"I was coming to talk with you anyway in a day or so," she said after a little. "I have fifty thousand dollars available. Can you use it?"

In spite of him he started. She spoke of the matter so coolly, so indifferently. And there had never been the time yet when Sledge Hume could not use fifty thousand dollars very readily.

"Go on," he said.

"I saw the other side first," she returned. "They have a bigger chance than you. But there is not a man among them. If you know what you are doing, if you know _how_ to do it, you will make and they will break.

I want to get in on the winning side. That's all."

"And if we can't make a place for you?"

"Then I'll make one for myself. I'll see the farmers again. I'll make them organise instead of bickering. I'll swing the controlling vote myself. If fifty thousand won't do it I'll put the rest in. And then we'll buy you and your crowd out or we'll sell you water or you'll go to pieces so badly that the sheriff will sell you out!"

Hume laughed. And yet he recognised swiftly that here was a woman to reckon with, that a fresh element had entered the game he was playing.

"You have a wonderful amount of confidence," he said.

"In myself," she retorted meaningly.

"I think," he said thoughtfully, pa.s.sing over her remark without answer, "that I can make a place for you, if you've really got the money."

"I think that you can," she a.s.sured him.

And so Helga Strawn played the first card in the game with her relative, Sledge Hume.

The sheriff, armed with a warrant for the arrest of Wayne Shandon, and accompanied by two deputies arrived at the Echo Creek a little before noon. They had left their horses at the same ranch house where Hume had stayed last night, coming on up the valley on snowshoes. They went immediately to Martin's study, from there to the dining room, then back to the study. Martin, Hume and Garth Conway remained with them, their voices coming in a low drone to the three women in the other part of the house. The nervousness and anxiety of both Mrs. Leland and Julia did not escape the sharp eyes of Helga Strawn.

"Hume is beginning his dirty work," she mused. "A trumped up charge of some kind to get Shandon out of the way for a while."

"I got your message," MacKelvey told Hume half angrily. "And I got busy because it's my sworn duty, not because I hankered after the job.

Your man in El Toyon swore out the warrant as you said he would. But it looks d.a.m.n' funny to me that if you fellows believe that Shandon killed his brother you had to wait until now to say so. And you can take my word for it I'd have taken my time about getting here if I hadn't known that Mr. Leland was with you in the matter."

A little after noon, the sheriff with his men left for the Bar L-M.

Garth a.s.sured them that Wayne could hardly get away before the late afternoon or the following morning, for the reason that when he left the ranch there had been a number of things yet to do before the place was closed up for the winter. MacKelvey and one of the men with him went on webs; Hume and the other man on skis.

A hundred yards from the house they came upon Willie Dart. He had travelled thus far on a pair of skis which he had found in the attic, had struggled manfully but hopelessly to manage the narrow strips of wood which pigeon toed and tripped him or interfered with each other behind him, refusing the parallelism to which Mr. Dart strove wildly to restrain them. He had fallen when they reached him and was standing to his waist in the snow, his face red, the perspiration trickling down his cheeks.

"Oho!" laughed Hume loudly. "So you were on your way to warn him, were you?"

"You big b.o.o.b, you!" shrieked Dart. "Get down and I'll shove your face in for you!"

So they left him to struggle his way back to the house, Hume's laughter booming back above the shrill imprecations of the little man. There were tears, genuine tears in Willie Dart's eyes.

CHAPTER XXI

THE SHORT CUT

Wanda Leland, her lithe body bending gracefully and easily as she drove her light skis over the glistening crust of the snow, shot down the last long slope in a sort of ecstasy inspired by the exhiliration of silent speed and the crisp brightness of the early afternoon. Stooping forward a little she took the short leap across the three foot wide gulch at the base of the knoll upon which the house stood, and laughed aloud as she landed and with gathered impetus sped a score of feet up the knoll itself.

She had left Wayne happy in the two things which mattered: He loved her even as she loved him; he was a strong man and a true. There was still sadness in her breast but it was but a sunspot in the great glory of her happiness. But now suddenly, even while her lips curved redly to her gay laughter, was the gladness to go out of her.

She saw Willie Dart upon the porch, saw him start towards her in an eagerness little less than frantic. He fairly hurled himself from the steps into the deep snow, floundered helplessly, and progressing by hard fought inches came on to meet her. As her skis, running up hill, came slowly to a stop she watched him with amused eyes. But when she saw his face, twisted with despair, she grew suddenly afraid.

"They've gone to arrest Red!" he wailed. "The sheriff and Hume and two other guys. Where is he?"

"He has gone back to the Bar L-M," she answered swiftly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean them crooks have gone to arrest him for murder," he called to her. "They left nearly an hour ago. It's a skin game of the worst kind. They want him tied up so they can work some sneaking gag and rob him of his land. Hume wants him where he can't ride a race in the spring so he'll grab Red's five thousand. The money's already up. G.o.d knows what else they've got up their dirty sleeves."

For one dizzy moment the girl grew faint with fear. And when that moment pa.s.sed she saw clearly that as matters stood Wayne Shandon had a man's work ahead of him. Thrown into jail, charged with so serious a crime as fratricide, with Hume, and perhaps her own father, doing everything in the world that they could do to hamper him, he would be carrying a handicap to break the back of a man's hope.

"They mustn't do this thing!" she cried pa.s.sionately, the eyes that had been tender a moment ago growing fierce. "Does my father know this?"

"Sure," grunted Dart disgustedly. "He's one of the combine."

"And they left an hour ago?"

"Seems like a million years. It must be awful close to an hour. Say, Wanda, I tried, honest to G.o.d, I did--"

She did not hear. She had turned away from him and was staring at the long billowing sweep of snow lying between her and those men who had gone to arrest Wayne Shandon. She saw the broken imprints of the Canadian snowshoes, the smooth tracks of the skis, and demanded sharply:

"Which men wore the webs?"

"Them tennis racket things? MacKelvey and one of his thieves."

He looked at her wonderingly. What difference did that make? But Wanda took no time for explanations. She was thinking swiftly that MacKelvey would be the man to make the arrest, that the others would accommodate their gait to his, that upon a crust like this the Canadian shoes could make no such speed as a pair of skis.

"Tell mamma, no one else, where I have gone," she cried.

And, swinging about, she took the side of the knoll in a long sweep, shot down into a hollow, rose upon the far side, crossed the trail that the four men had made, seemed to Mr. Dart's staring eyes to be balancing a moment upon a line where snow and sky met and then was gone from him, dropping out of sight into the wilderness of snow.

"She's some game little kid," he moaned, shaking his head and making a slow retreat back to the house. "But with them cutthroats an hour ahead of her, she ain't got a show. Poor old Red."