The Short Cut Part 9

"Watch!" yelled Big Bill as he and Shandon thundered along after them, their ropes already in their hands, nooses widening. "See who takes her lead away from her!"

It was half a mile to the far end of the little valley where the almost sheer pitch of the mountains would bring the fleeing animals to a stop.

And before they had gone a hundred yards Wayne Shandon's eyes had discovered Little Saxon.

The colt had been almost the last of the two score horses when their startled flight began; already he was seeking the place that was rightfully his, already he had pa.s.sed half of the herd and running like some great greyhound, was eating up the distance which lay between his outstretched nose and Lady Lightfoot's flickering hoofs. A horse to be seen in a flash by a knowing eye even in a herd many times bigger than this one. A king of a horse, standing a hand taller than the tallest of his companions, with great flowing muscles moving liquidly, with iron lungs under a vast iron chest, with a neck every fine line of which revealed the racing thoroughbred, with tireless strength in the tensing shoulders and hips, with speed in the delicately formed, slender legs; running easily, every leaping stride hurling his great body in advance of some one of the other horses, his floating mane and tail spun silk that flashed in the sun like s.h.i.+mmering gold, his flas.h.i.+ng hoofs like a deer's for dainty grace, his coat a deep, rich, red bay.

"Watch him run!" shouted Big Bill. "Watch him run!"

Two lengths behind Lady Lightfoot, a length . . . and then Little Saxon had slipped by, flashed by, pa.s.sed like a gleam of summer sunlight, and the mare snapped viciously at the lean, clean body that brushed against her own, robbing her of her place. Big Bill laughed joyously.

"Jealous as a cat, huh, Red? See that?"

"And no man has ever ridden him," muttered Shandon. "Only one man is ever going to ride you, Little Saxon."

But that day they did not take Little Saxon with them back to the home corrals; it would be many a day yet before Little Saxon's training began, before his proud spirit compromised with steel and leather and a master's hand.

With half the distance to the far end of the little valley pa.s.sed, Little Saxon was a length ahead of Lady Lightfoot, his quivering nostrils scenting danger behind, free range and freedom ahead. Thus Little Saxon first, Lady Lightfoot jealously guarding and keeping her place as second in the headlong flight, a slim barrelled sorrel close at the Lady's heels, the rest of the horses following in a close packed body, the fleeing animals came to the natural bulwark which the mountains lifted before them. Their ropes swinging in ever widening loops, hissing swifter and swifter until in broadening circles they sang shrilly, Wayne Shandon and Big Bill swept on after them.

"Lightfoot first!" cried Shandon sharply. "It's too rocky, Bill--"

The ground was too broken to chance putting a rope over the defiant neck of the three year old who had never known what it was to have hemp touch his lithe body. With Lady Lightfoot it was different. She would leap aside, she would throw her head one way or the other as she saw the la.s.so leave the hand of her would-be captor; but once it touched her she would stop stone still, too wise, too experienced to struggle against the inevitable.

At last the fleeing horses stopped, whirled and with up-p.r.i.c.ked ears and flas.h.i.+ng eyes waited and watched. Lady Lightfoot's angry snort trumpeted her fear and defiance; she moved not so much as a muscle except of her eyes which swept swiftly back and forth from Big Bill to Shandon, from Shandon to Big Bill. Then, as almost at the same instant two ropes sped their hissing way toward her she leaped forward, swerved aside, dropped her head a little--and then, instead of breaking into a wild flight, she bunched her four feet and slid to a trembling standstill before either rope had tightened about a steel saddle horn.

"Wise ol' lady," chuckled Big Bill as he and Shandon rode closer to the mare coiling their ropes. "Ain't forgot who's who, have you, Lady?"

The other horses saw their chance and took it. Little Saxon in the lead from the first terrified leap, they shot by Lady Lightfoot, swerved widely about Shandon, and were off and away down the valley.

"Let 'em go," cried Shandon. "We'll follow in a minute and drive them on down to the corrals."

He swung down from his saddle and went up to Lady Lightfoot's high lifted head, a head that rose higher in the air as he drew near.

Laying a gentle hand on the quivering nose, he rubbed it softly, speaking to the animal in a tone that coaxed and soothed and a.s.sured.

He talked to her as a man talks who loves a horse, understands it--as he might talk to a human being. And Big Bill, watching, nodded and grunted approval as he saw Shandon slip the hard bit between the strong teeth, and at last swing up into the saddle and turn a high spirited but well trained and obedient mare down the valley after the runaways.

Fifteen minutes later they caught up with the stragglers of Little Saxon's followers. And it was then that Little Saxon snorted his last defiance at pursuit and achieved his freedom.

The animals had been driven again into a woodland _cul de sac_. Here there was a wide reaching plot of gra.s.sy, unbroken soil, and here the two men counted upon teaching the three year old his first lesson of the supremacy of man. As they drew nearer their ropes were again ready, trailing at their sides. Again the horses drew close together, bunched in a ma.s.s of watchful distrust. Little Saxon alone held slightly apart, his great head lifted high, scenting mischief. He saw the ropes before they were lifted, and at the first whirl of hemp into the hated loop he knew instinctively that it was he whom they threatened.

"We've got him," grunted Big Bill, confident too soon of easy victory.

Behind the herd rose the cliffs, in front the men came on and at the side was a deep gorge, so steep sided that a horse would not think of going down into it, washed wide by the spring torrents. It never entered Big Bill's head nor Wayne Shandon's nor the heads of the terrified companions of Little Saxon that there was a way in that direction open for flight. But Little Saxon saw his enemies coming threateningly nearer and he took his chance. He drew back until his golden tail swept the granite cliffs; he paused there a brief second, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, measuring chance and distance; he gathered his great muscles as he had never gathered them before; his vast chest swelled to a mighty sigh; and then, before Wayne Shandon or Big Bill had guessed the plan that had risen in his brain he had wagered his life against his liberty.

"Back, Bill!" shouted Shandon warningly, throwing Lady Lightfoot back on her haunches, swinging her away from the plunging three year old.

"He's going to jump!"

"G.o.d!" yelled Big Bill, as he too jerked his horse back. "He'll break his neck!"

They saw the big horse running, already as a blur of speed before he had done the thirty yards to the rock walled gorge, saw the glinting light from floating mane and tail, heard the thunder of his pounding hoofs, and then--

Then Little Saxon put into his gliding muscles all of the thoroughbred spirit that was in his blood, and taking recklessly his one chance he hurled his great body forward, leaping splendidly. For an instant as that rebellious, beautiful body was suspended in mid air, high above certain death, neither man breathed. Then, with the sharp sound of hard hoofs striking hard rock, Little Saxon landed easily and safely upon the far side, and his silken mane, flowing tail and red bay hide s.h.i.+ning with a metallic gleam in the sunlight, he had pa.s.sed on, through the trees, into an open trail, around a bend and out of sight.

Big Bill rode close up to the gorge.

"I wouldn't jump a horse acrost that for a million dollars!" he said, wondering at what he had seen.

And Wayne Shandon, his eyes very bright, his face a little flushed, cried eagerly,

"A mere horse, no. But Little Saxon isn't that! He's more clean spirit than horse fles.h.!.+"

Big Bill did not answer. Perhaps he had not heard. He was thinking:

"When he does break Little Saxon--that wild devil of a man on that wild devil of a horse-- What a pair of them!"

CHAPTER VII

THE GLADNESS THAT SINGS

"Well?" laughingly. "Don't you know me?"

Wayne Shandon, riding idly down a lane through the pines, had come close before he saw her sitting with her back to a tree, her camera and empty lunch basket lying beside her. He had left Big Bill and had come on alone, pa.s.sing around the head of the lake and following the trail which Little Saxon's flying hoofs had made in the fresh sod. Now, as with a quick hand upon Lady Lightfoot's reins he came to a stop, he very promptly forgot all about Little Saxon.

The girl, leaving Gypsy tethered beyond a grove of firs, had found upon the skirt of a densely wooded slope a spot that was like a corner of a woodland fairyland, dim and dusky and sweet scented. The noontide was warm with the rippling sunlight above, a down-filtering ray touched her bare head and dropped flecks of gold in her braided hair.

Shandon, motionless for a little, did not speak nor did his expression change except that it grew more frankly filled with admiration, with sheer wonder at her loveliness.

"Really," she bantered, still laughingly, not to be confused by her old playfellow's look. "I'm neither ghost, goblin nor evil spirit, nor anything worse than just a girl, you know!"

"Are you . . . just a girl?" He raised his hand slowly, lifting his hat. But not yet did he smile back into her smiling eyes. She had never seen him so grave. "I don't know. You are not the same girl I used to know."

"Why, Wayne," she retorted merrily. "It's only a year. You weren't expecting wrinkles already, were you?"

The steadiness of his gaze made her wonder. His eyes clung to hers for a long moment, left them to travel swiftly up and down the sweet young body that was no longer the body of "just a girl," noted how wonderfully the promise of girlhood had been fulfilled in budding womanhood, came back to her hair and throat and smiling mouth, rested again upon her eyes.

"You are not the same Wanda I used to know," he insisted soberly, shaking his head at her. "Not the Wanda I used to play with at school, to hunt birds' nests with, to steal apples for, to fight other boys for. Who are you, you wonderful thing?"

"The same Wanda," she told him merrily. "And, if you please, not a _thing_ at all."

"Do you remember," he went on quietly, still gently serious, "the day when I whipped little Willie Thorp for you?"

"Yes," she answered lightly, yet not remembering all that he remembered. "Of course. You--"

"You came and put both little fat, warm, sun-burned arms round me and kissed me then, Wanda. Would you kiss me now?"

"You should have said that last night," she dimpled up at him. She thought she knew him too well to take him seriously when he dropped into one of his bantering moods, just trying perhaps to see if he could drive a little flush of confusion into her cheeks. "I was so glad to see you, I might have forgotten I had grown up. That we have grown up," she said.

"I wish I had," he said abruptly, flinging his head up with the old gesture she remembered so well. "Wanda, you are the most wonderful girl-woman in the world! What has happened to you? What have you done to yourself? What have you done to your eyes? Do you know, Miss Wanda Leland--are you a little witch and do you do it on purpose?--that those two eyes of yours can make madness in a man's soul?"