"I'm sorry. Oh, so sorry! Poor Wayne. That will make it so much harder for him."
"Yes. It is going to make it hard for him, Wanda. Harder than you have imagined." She paused as if considering the advisability of what she had started to say, and then ended simply, hopelessly, "They are going to think that Wayne shot him!"
"They mustn't!" cried Wanda hotly. "They haven't the right. It would be thinking a lie, a wicked, hideous lie!"
Mrs. Leland shook her head sadly.
"Wanda," she went on quietly, "the first thing Garth said when I told him was that Wayne had quarrelled with Arthur last night. I don't mind so much what Garth says and does, but … I think that Martin is going to suspect Wayne of this, if he doesn't already suspect him."
"But, surely father isn't so unjust, just because he doesn't like Wayne…"
"If it were nothing more than just not liking him! Your father isn't capable of a feeling that is merely negative about people, child. He hated the boys' father; Wayne I think he hates as bitterly."
"But why, mamma? Surely there is no reason …"
"Men, strong men like your father, don't always wait for reasons, Wanda," said Mrs. Leland gently. "He has never forgotten that had circumstances been a very, very little different I might have married the other Wayne Shandon. When we were married and the other Wayne Shandon bought land so close to us your father was the angriest man I ever saw. That was before your time, dear. He rode across the valley the next day; he has never told me what happened but his face was still white when he came home. There are only a few things which can stir Martin into a passion like that."
"But, surely, mamma …"
"When the other Wayne Shandon married and the boys were born it made no difference with Martin. When the other Wayne Shandon died and his wife died and the boys were left the hatred in your father's breast did not die with them. He transferred it to Arthur and the Wayne you know. Toward Wayne especially it has grown strong and bitter."
"But why to him more than to Arthur?"
"Because, my dear, Wayne is his father over and over again! Because he has the same red hair and the same eyes with the same way of laughing. Because his voice is the same, his carriage is the same, his mad, reckless heart the same. Because everytime that Martin sees the Wayne Shandon that you know he sees the old Wayne Shandon I knew … and he hated."
"But it can't be that if a man hates another, and he dies, the man will go on hating his son just for being his son! Father is not so unjust as that, mamma! He will not suspect Wayne of murder, of murdering his own brother, just because of his father!"
Mrs. Leland's hands were interlocked tensely. "There are other reasons, there will be other things remembered about the boy which will make suspicion so easy."
"I know what you mean," the girl cried, breathing deeply. "He is reckless, he is wild, I know. He gambles, he has quarrels with many men. He does things that we would not do, but then we are women! He does things that father would not do, but then father is not young any longer! He is wild because his nature is inherited from his father; it's in his blood, he's young and he has grown up with the far out places. But he is not bad! He is not the kind of man to do a thing like this. What do men call him, men who know him and what he is? They don't call him Coward, they don't call him Cheat, they don't call him mean or dishonest or ungenerous! They call him Reckless, Red Reckless, and they love him! Oh, mamma, can't you see that it is impossible …"
Mrs. Leland rose to her feet, her face grown suddenly pinched and white.
"I don't know," she said with a sigh.
"You believe it too!" cried the girl. "You think that Wayne Shandon killed his own brother!"
A delicate flush stained her mother's cheeks.
"Wanda, child, you mustn't say that," she almost whispered. "I don't believe it. I won't believe it. And if I did … Wanda, I'd remember the man his father was, the gentleman, the true-hearted gentleman, and I should say that I did not believe."
Then, turning quickly so that her wondering daughter could not see the eyes that were blurred with a mist of tears, she left the room.
When she had gone Wanda snatched up the trunk key from her table and thrust it quickly into her bosom. Then she sat down again on the edge of her bed and stared out toward the orchard where the sunlight lay bright and warm upon the apple blossoms … and saw only the quiet body by Echo Creek, that and the face of the man people called Red Reckless.
CHAPTER III.
SUSPICION
Why had her mother come to her in such a way? Why had she been so quick to see what people would say? Did she believe that Wayne Shandon had killed Arthur; was she afraid that Wanda might have found something that would incriminate him; and did she want to warn her of what the inevitable result of such a disclosure would be?
And she had found something! She had known from the first sight of it, half hidden by Shep's eager pays, that it was Wayne Shandon's. He had shown it to her only last week.
"I am going to teach you to shoot as I shoot," he had laughed, bringing the revolver out of his pocket. "Then I am going to give it to you. And then you are going to make me a pretty bow and give me a pretty smile and say, 'Thank you, Red,' as you did when I chastised your first suitor! Remember, Wanda?"
"Only I don't call you 'Red' any more," she had laughed back at him. "We're grown up now, you know, and Wayne is much more dignified and … and respectful."
"And you can handle your own suitors now," he had retorted. "More artistically and with equal finality!"
Only a week ago out there in the orchard where now the sunlight lay in golden splashes over the fruit trees, she and Red Reckless had bantered each other as they strolled toward the house where Arthur was sitting on the veranda with her mother, watching them. It was a sparkling morning like to-day's, and they had spoken of the old school days before Mr. Shandon sent his two sons to the East to school, of the time when she was eight and he was fifteen and he had "licked" a boy whom she did not like but who was stubborn in vowing that the little girl should eat a red cheeked apple he had brought her. A week ago, and now Arthur Shandon was dead and men were ready to believe that Wayne Shandon had killed him.
She sat very still, while her mind wandered in many directions. The old days rose up vividly bringing back the young faces of Arthur and Wayne and Garth Conway,—they had all played Prisoner's Base and Anti-over at the little white school house down in the valley. She remembered the day when a letter came from Mr. Shandon summoning Arthur and Wayne and Garth to the East, and how merry the boys had been over it. She missed them dreadfully after they went away until vacation came and her own father had taken her with him on a tour of inspection to his four other ranches, up and down the State. For three years she did not see the three boys, their letters had ceased, and she was well on the way to forget her playfellows. And then, when she was twelve and Wayne Shandon nineteen, he had come back.
He had run away. He had quarrelled with his father, and Arthur had tried to show him that he was unreasonable. Then the boy's hot temper had flashed out at his brother and finally at Garth Conway who had long been accustomed to thinking as Arthur Shandon thought. So the youth, in whom love of adventure and hatred of restraint were already marked characteristics, had sold his books, the saddle pony which his father's generosity had given him, his guns and fishing tackle, in fact everything which he might sell even to his spare clothing, had caught a night train and come West again.
Wanda's mother had tried to reason with the boy when he came to them, laughing at the trick he had played his father, full of mockery of the hidebound ways of cities, and had wanted to send him back to Mr. Shandon. She had cried a little over him and kissed him and talked gently with him as was her motherly way. But Wanda's father berated him severely and sternly