The Short Cut by Jackson Gregory Page A

upon the Bar L-M. Even now you are trying to steal his ranch from him. Wayne has never done a thing so vile as that in all his life. Oh! I am ashamed."
    Her voice grew harsh in her throat; her face was no longer white, two spots of anger burned in her cheeks. She broke off panting, her eyes growing harder, brighter as they challenged his.
    "Martin," cried Mrs. Leland, coming swiftly to the girl's side. "Be careful."
    "Careful!" shouted Leland, his face red with his fury. "When one of my blood loses her last shred of decency, when she takes up with a low, dissolute unprincipled Shandon? The worst of a bad lot. May God curse him, may God curse her if she clings to him!"
    "You have never spoken to me like this before," cried Wanda passionately. "You will never do it again."
    "Listen to me," thundered Leland, his heavier voice drowning the girl's words. "If your father does a thing which your untrained, woman's brain cannot rightly understand are you the one to judge and condemn him? Because a lying Shandon has cast his cursed spell over your romantic fancies are you to leap to these ridiculous conclusions? Am I the man to do a dishonourable thing? Ask other men out in the world where my dealings are an open book. Ask your mother. If, to you, who have gone hungering for lies to a man amply competent to tell them to you, it has seemed that I have done a mean thing for selfish purposes is it your place to judge me? Listen, I tell you. I have known for a year and a half that Wayne Shandon murdered his brother and robbed the dead body. I have seen, although all men know this fact as well as I do, that he has been trickster enough to cover his bloody tracks; that it would be hard to convict him in court. I have seen that it lay within my power, that it has become my duty, to punish him in another way. Not a thing have I done that is not just, that the law courts will not sanction. And yet, when I had wrested from him the thing his red hands took with his brother's life, I should have punished him a little as he deserves. Is a man like him deserving of any other treatment?"
    "How do you know all this?" she demanded, all that dormant fierceness of the female heart Hashing from the depths to the surface. "Did you see him kill Arthur?"
    "Don't be a fool," he retorted.
    "Or were you over ready to believe because you hated him, and because the tool you would lay your hand to would not only punish him but enrich you? And you call me traitress!"
    For a moment Martin Leland, his face convulsed, his hands clenched, his great body towering over her, looked as though he were going to strike her down. Then, without a word, he left the room and returned swiftly to the study where MacKelvey and Hume were waiting for him.
    Wanda stood looking after him, her body stiff and erect, her face lifted, her eyes unchanging. Her mother laid a quick hand upon the girl's arm. Then, suddenly the tired body relaxed, the flaming spirit softened, and Wanda, white and trembling, dropped sobbing upon the couch.
    "Wanda, Wanda," whispered her mother softly, kneeling and putting her hands gently upon the shaking shoulders. "I am sorry. And yet, Wanda, I am proud of what my daughter has done to-day."
    The mother heart comforted. And even before the storm of sobs, shaken from the girl by strained and jangling nerves, had ceased, Mrs. Leland was trying to make excuses for her husband.
    "He has just been blinded by hate," she said bravely. "Some day he will see the light."
    "Gee," commented Willie Dart, outside the door, resuming his pacing up and down upon the front porch. "If Red turns that girl down I'll marry her myself!"
    Had Martin Leland's iron nature asked such a thing as sympathy it would have received little satisfaction from the interview that night in his study. MacKelvey's greeting to him was, "Martin, that girl of yours is a wonder! There's not a man in the country would have tackled the thing she did to-day."
    "Pshaw," grunted Hume, his sneering manner having