Chapter 20

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 hell 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--"

"Is already working. I'm going to make it so hot for Red Shandon that he'll come to time the first show he gets. MacKelvey is on the jump and not over an hour or two behind me. It's time for trumps now, Leland."

Martin jerked his head up at MacKelvey's name and stared at Hume with keen, hard eyes.

"You're making a bold play, Mr. Hume."

"Well?" challenged Hume. "Isn't it high time for it? We might have bought the water from Shandon before and have been better off. You wouldn't stand for it; you had to gobble everything for nothing. We took the chance. It wasn't a bad gamble either, considering Shandon was away the first year and is a fool to boot. But you've lost on it. Now when you go to him and ask for the water he's going to laugh at you. But lock him up, charged with murder, make him believe that we can stretch his neck for him and he'll hang, or by God, he will come to time. Now I want a drink and something to eat. You and Conway can spend the day talking if you like; I've got a day's work cut out ahead of me."

"You're going with MacKelvey?"

Hume laughed and threw back his coat, showing the deputy sheriff's star under it.

"I had Mac swear me in six months ago," he answered. "Yes, I'm going with him."

Martin Leland rose and preceded Hume to the door.

"I shall ask my wife to see that you have something to eat right away," he said quietly. "First, Mr. Hume, I want you to know that Garth has not been doing any talking, as you have suspected."

Hume merely lifted his heavy shoulders.

"And," Leland added, a little more sharply, "I want you to know also that there is a woman here, a Miss Hazleton, whom we don't know anything about excepting that she went to Shandon's last night, and after her talk with him he rushed out to Garth demanding to be told about the mortgage. Just where she fits in I don't know. She might be anything from a chorus girl to a Reno widow."

"Oho," cried Hume, his brows suddenly drawn blackly. "He's getting a woman mixed up in his affairs, is he? That shows how much sense he has. Where is she now?"

"Here. She has asked to go out with us tomorrow."

Hume made no answer but shoving his hands into his pockets strode after Leland into the living room. He stopped at the door, a little startled by the vision which confronted him as Helga Strawn turned quickly from the window, where she had been frowning at the blinding glare of the snow without, and faced him.

She wore the clothes in which she had gone through the storm, but a hot iron had taken the wrinkles out and they fitted her superb figure admirably. Hume did not notice the clothes, he saw only the woman. She inclined her head just a little to her host, with no softening of the cold features. Upon Hume she bestowed a casual glance that came and went indifferently.

"Miss Hazleton," said Martin curtly, "this is Mr. Hume."

The eyes of the two men were keen upon her as the name was spoken. As Martin had said they did not know where this woman fitted in; it was their business to find out.

Again she bowed, very slightly. If she felt any flicker of interest, of surprise, that Hume was here, she did not betray it.

"How do you do, Mr. Hume?" was what she said, as indifferently as though in reality she had no interest in the man or knowledge of him.

Martin left the room and went to the kitchen in search of Mrs. Leland. Hume came to the window where Helga was standing.

"So you are a friend of Red Shandon's, are you?" he said bluntly.

"Am I?" The lift of her brows asked him very plainly what he meant by that and what business it was of his.

"Yes," he retorted a little warmly, perhaps for the mere reason that her very carriage hinted at a will ready to cross swords with his, and Sledge Hume was not a man to tolerate opposition in a woman. "You told him that the mortgage had been foreclosed."

"Did I?" coolly.

"And, if you care to know," he went on roughly, "you have thereby piled up a lot of trouble for your friend Shandon."

There was rare impudence in the laughter with which she answered him.

"I have a way of judging a man when I first see him," she said, her smile now flashing her amusement at him. "I didn't think that you were going to be as stupid as the rest."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," and she turned back to the window, "that what happens to Shandon or any other man in the world is absolutely immaterial so far as I am concerned. Please don't think that I'm a tender hearted little thing who is going to cry if you slap another man's face."

"You mean that you are not a friend of Shandon?" cynically.

"Your way of opening a conversation with a woman you have just met is charmingly unique! If you are trying to get something out of me you are going the wrong way about it, aren't you? You have already let out twice as much as I have!"

"Have I?"

"Yes. You have told me that there was a mortgage of which I knew nothing; that it has been concealed from Shandon; that he has learned about it; that it upsets your kettle of fish in some way; that you are going to make things hot for him because of it. All that is a good deal of information to give a stranger in less than a minute's time, don't you think, Mr. Hume?"

He laughed and yet his eyes hardened and narrowed upon her.

"You are welcome to what I have told you," he retorted. "It will be common talk in twenty-four hours."

She gave no sign of having heard. Her indifference vaguely irritated him.

"Look here, Miss Hazleton," he said significantly. "I'll tell you something else as long as I am pouring out my heart to you," a sneer under the words. "Before I'm done with Shandon he won't have a boot for his foot or a leg to walk on. And anybody who ties up with him is going to get smashed the same way!"

"It is very kind of you to warn me beforehand," she laughed softly. "The fact that I have no interest whatever in Mr. Shandon certainly should not lessen my gratitude to you, should it?"

"You want me to believe that?"

"Really there is only one thing which I do want you to believe," she said in return. "Just that it would be very strange if I should care one way or the other what you think. Isn't it perfectly glorious the way the sun strikes the snow?"

Helga Strawn's keen womanly perception had in no way misled her concerning her relative's nature. A compelling, masterful disposition like Sledge Hume's grows accustomed to having its way. She was coolly treating him as it was his role to treat others; and he did not like the change of roles. He realised that the conversation had come to an end. At the same time he knew that if he turned and left her, his usual way when all had been said, he would be taking his dismissal like a schoolboy. And he knew that as she looked out over the snow she would be smiling.

"I have heard," he went on stubbornly, "of a woman going to see Ettinger and Norfolk. It was you. Now you come to see Shandon. Do you think that I am fool enough to believe that you are not interested in the same thing I am?"

"Ah!" she said, turning swiftly. "But I did not say that I was not interested in the irrigation of Dry Valley. I am!"

"And," his old weapon, a sneer, coming back, "you are not interested in Shandon?"

"Not that much." She snapped her white fingers and Hume saw the sparkle of rings. "Shandon is a fool. So is Ettinger. I am not interested in fools." She paused a moment, her brilliant eyes meeting his. "Are you a fool like the rest, Sledge Hume?"

She puzzled him, this woman who should have been that weak, inefficient thing which Hume's conceit pictured all of her sex. He began to be a little more upon his guard in talking with her.

"No." He contented himself with the one word, only his eyes demanding an explanation.

"I don't think much of your associates," 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 glass 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, passing 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 assured 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 damn' 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 assured 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 boob, 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.