30,000 On the Hoof (36 page)

She could not endure to stay there on the moment, so she went into the kitchen, where she grappled with fear and doubt. Was she mad to take these two broken wrecks back to the wilderness? Possible illness, accident, loneliness, Barbara's obsession to wander around, would be infinitely more difficult to combat down in the canyon than in town. Here she could call in women neighbours or the doctor. Despite the strong appeal of reason supporting her fears, she succumbed to her first intuition. If there were any hopes left for Barbara and Logan, not to say bringing up the child, they might rise down in Sycamore Canyon. The labour did not appal Lucinda. Well she knew that upon the pioneer wife and mother fell the greater burdens. A strange subtle voice cried down her misgivings. And with resurging heart she plunged into the immediate tasks of getting ready.

They left Flagg with two wagons next morning before sunrise. Only faithful old Al Doyle saw them off. His last words were--and they were the last they ever heard him speak--"Wal, old-timer, it's the long road again an' the canyon in the woods. That's good. Adios!"

Lucinda rode on the driver's seat with Logan. Barbara and the boy had a little place behind, under the canvas. Evidently the movement, the grind of wheels and clip-clop of heavy hoofs had excited Barbara, who knelt on the hay to peer out with strained eyes no mortal could have read. The second wagon, driven by the negro, contained the farm tools, furniture, and utensils.

After a while Lucinda's eyes cleared so that she could see. She was glad to get out of Flagg. The black stumps, the grey flats, the green lines of pines and blue bluffs in the distance seemed to welcome her. They had not quite reached the timber belt six miles from town when Lucinda sustained a thrilling relief and joy in Logan's response to the winding road, the reins once more in his hands, the team of big horses, the rolling wheels, and the beckoning range. These had been so great a part of his life that only insanity or paralysis or death could have wholly eradicated them.

They began to call upon old associations. Lucinda's loving divination had been god-sent. Logan's heart and spirit had been broken, and the splendid rush of his life at maturity had been stemmed, stagnated, sunk in the sands of grief and hopelessness. Her great task was to keep him physically busy until this ghastly climax of tragedy wore into the past.

Life held strange recompense for the plodder.

Logan spoke at intervals, especially when they passed old camp-sites, now homesteads and ranches. Cedar Ridge, Turkey Flat, Rock Waterhole still existed in their pristine loneliness. Logan halted at the Waterhole for lunch and to rest the horses. Then he drove on till sunset, to stop at a small brook which drained into Mormon Lake.

They camped. The negro turned out to be a helpful fellow, and between him and Logan, with Lucinda cooking, they soon had camp made and supper ready. Barbara walked around, her staring dark eyes as groping as her actions. She ate, fed the boy, and helped Lucinda. Sometimes she broke out into soft, hurried speech, half coherent, and again she stood gazing into the pine forest. Logan sat beside the camp-fire, but he did not smoke. Lucinda spread her blankets under a tarpaulin pegged down from the wagon-top and lay down with weary, aching body. The camp-fire sputtered, the wind blew--then while she was fearing the old lonely sounds, her eyelids closed as if with glue and she faded into oblivion.

Next day Logan made another long drive, to the deserted cabin half-way between the south end of Mormon Lake and Sycamore Canyon. Logan might not have even thought of their nearness to the old ranch, but Lucinda, during the supper tasks and afterwards, kept talking and asking questions until he became aroused.

Before noon the next day Logan turned off the main road at the end of Long Valley and drove down through the forest towards Sycamore.

What stinging beautiful emotions flashed over her as they passed the open glade where she had first seen Barbara play' ing with the boys! From then on she was blinded by tears. They struck the down-grade. The old gate had not been closed since the cattle-drive. Logan emitted a strange hard cough, almost like a sob. He drove on, applying the brake. The wheels squeaked, the heavy wagon pushed the horses on. And then they reached a level.

"Same as always, Luce--just the same!" exclaimed Logan, huskily. "Only we are changed."

Lucinda wiped her eyes so that she could see to get off.

"Drive up to the cabin, Logan," she said, "and spread a blanket in the shade for Barbara and the baby... What shall I tell the teamster to do with his load?"

"Unload it, I reckon, here by the barn," rejoined Logan,' whipping his reins. "Gedap there!"

The negro arrived while Lucinda was looking around. The barn was stripped, proving how wise Al Doyle had been to advise a new outfit.

Lucinda directed the driver to unload the farming equipment and pack it into the barn, then come on up to the cabin with the furniture.

That done, Lucinda turned to the old hollow-worn path. Her feet seemed leaden. There was a pang in her breast and a constriction in her throat.

The joy she had anticipated failed to come at once. But she knew something would break the deadlock.

The brook was bank-full of snow-fed water, the old log bridge as it had been. Then she espied Logan. He had halted the wagon and was looking across at the unfinished stone corral. One look at his tortured visage was enough. The very stone Lucinda remembered seeing Logan put down on the wall sat there, mute yet trenchant with memory of the three sons who had helped build that wall with Logan, and who could not finish it because they had gone to war.

Logan drove on up to the cabin. Lucinda, lagging behind, fighting her own anguish, came to the long row of her sunflowers. They were blooming, great golden-leaved, brown-centred flowers, facing the sun. With sight of them the joy of home-coming flooded her being. She caressed the big blossoms and pressed them to her breast; then she found early golden rod and purple asters along the path. She gazed down the canyon for the first time. The high walls, the black ruins, seemed to gaze down protectingly upon her. Home! They assured her of that and they gave austere and solemn promise of the future.

Lucinda found the baby rolling and crawling on a blanket; Barbara, wildly excited by familiar scenes and objects that must have pierced close to reason, was running around in and out of the cabin. Logan was inside.

The flat flagstone lay under the hollowed log threshold. Lucinda knew both as well as her right hand. Wan bluebells smiled up at her out of the grassy margins. She peered into the cabin conscious of a clogged breast and pounding heart. Her emotions had not prepared her for practical facts. That cabin, hallowed by so much of sad and beautiful life, was a dingy, dusty, spider-webbed barn. The rude table and bench-seats and the old rustic armchair, relics of Logan's master hand so many years ago, were the only articles left inside. The bough-bed had been torn apart, no doubt for firewood; all the deer and elk horns and skins were gone from the walls. In places the yellow stones of the fireplace were crumbling.

An Indian or some cowboy artist had drawn crude but striking images on the smooth surfaces.

Logan was cursing, which sounds for once Lucinda heard with delight.

"...---- ----dirty hole not fit for cattle. This here home of ours has been a camp for low-down hunters and loafers, and later a den for skunks, wildcats, coyotes, and Lord knows what else!... There's a hole in the shingles. Some of the chinks are out between the logs. That door is hanging loose and won't shut. And dirt! Say, it's dirtier than all outdoors. Just one hell of a dump!"

"Yes, Logan--but home," rejoined Lucinda softly, as much overcome by his practical reaction as by the fact she expressed. "Huh!... Home?--Aw, thet's so, Luce."

"I'll be practical, too, husband," said Lucinda, inspired to action. "Get out the broom and mop. And water buckets. And soap. We'll sweep and brush and scrape and scrub... Mend the hinge on the door. Have the driver put a canvas over the hole in the roof. Have him cut a lot of spruce boughs.

After that's done you can unpack and carry everything in. After that, Logan, if you're able to, see if you can chop some wood."

"Hell! I can chop wood," declared Logan, in gruff resentment.

Lucinda set to work, and she kept the two men, and Barbara also, busy at various tasks. When Logan flagged and Barbara drifted off into space, Lucinda prompted them again. They could not apply themselves for long.

When sunset came, and at that season of early summer the golden rays shone through door and window, Lucinda surveyed the interior of the cabin with incredulous eyes and swelling heart. The den of hunters and beasts had been transformed. It was home once more, and more comfortable and colourful than ever before. Barbara had her old corner, where she sat on her bed with vague gaze trying to pierce a veil of mystery. Little Abe crawled around delighted with this new abode. Logan sat in his old chair, watching the fire, apparently lost to any of the grateful and beautiful feelings that stirred Lucinda.

Darkness stole up the canyon while she prepared supper. The night-hawks and the insects began their familiar choruses. A glorious rose and gold after-glow slowly paled above the western rim. The brook babbled as of old. Nature had not changed. Lucinda recalled the prayers of her youth.

Her task was infinite, almost insurmountable, but her faith grew stronger. When night came, while she lay awake by Logan's side, with Barbara's corner silent as the grave, and the old wind-song mourning in the tips of the pines, then she seemed divided between hope and terror.

In the hours when she wooed slumber she became prey to the past, to her early years here, to memory of her awakening to real love for her pioneer husband, to the coming of their first-born, to that terrible and fascinating Matazel, to Abe's birth in a cow-manger, and so on through all the succeeding years of trial down to this agonizing end for the Huetts.

However, when morning came and the sun shone and the canyon smiled in its early summer dress, Lucinda did not fall prey to such memories. Her hope for the future battled with realism, with the thought of age and poverty, of her insupportable task with Logan and Barbara.

Night and day then for a week her mind worked from the sombre to the bright, from the material fact to the spiritual belief, before she noted a gain for the latter. She grasped something to her soul that she could not explain. She no longer pondered over the inscrutable ways of God. She forgot the horror of war and the crawling maggots of men who fostered it.

Her work lay here in this wild canyon and was still a long way from being finished.

Lucinda soon began her labours in the garden. About the only thing she could keep Logan steadily at was chopping wood. He seemed to enjoy that, and his swing of axe had much of its old vigour; but when she sent him to the pasture to bring in one of the horses, saddle and snake down dead aspen and oak to chop, he seldom materialized unless she hunted him up.

Manifestly this was what she must do! Mostly she found Logan beside the old unfinished 'stone corral. At these sad times she hated to break in on his reveries, and some days she could not bring herself to this cruelty, and she left him alone with his memories. Nevertheless it was forced on her to see that she must keep him working.

With Barbara she had less trouble. Barbara would obey as long as the idea of work lingered in her mind, but when sooner or later it faded, she would wander away. She always wanted to go into the woods. There seemed to be something beckoning to her off under the dark pines. She would sit by the door on the old porch bench and watch the canyon trail, a habit appearing to Lucinda to be the one nearest rationality. It had to do, Lucinda thought, with vague mind-pictures of Abe riding up the canyon. It was heart-rending to watch, but Lucinda found some inexplicable grain of hope in it.

Little Abe had improved and grew like a weed. Sometimes Barbara neglected to nurse him, but he never forgot when he was hungry. When Lucinda told Logan that they must have a milk cow very soon, Logan agreed, and almost instantly let the need slip from his mind.

Lucinda, with some help from Logan and Barbara, succeeded in planting her garden patch by the end of June. This time, in a normal season, was not too late to ensure a crop before the severe frosts came, and with their supplies and the meat she hoped Logan would provide they could live well through even a fairly severe winter.

"Logan," she said one night as he sat by the fire, "summer is getting along. You must snake down a lot of firewood and chop it for winter."

"Plenty of time, wife," he said. "Why, it can't be June yet."

"June has passed, husband," she replied patiently. "You should have all the wood cut and stowed before Indian-summer comes."

"Why ought I?"

"Because at that season you roam around the forest locating the game.

Getting ready for your fall hunt! You forget. There never was anything you'd let interfere with that. We must have plenty of venison hung up and frozen, a lot of turkeys, an elk haunch or two--and some of those nice juicy bear-ribs that always pleased you."

She did not betray her intense hope for his reception of these suggestions. Long she had refrained from urging them. If he showed no interest--if he failed to respond... She dared not follow out her train of thought.

"Huntin' season!--By gosh, I never thought of that," he ejaculated, lifting his shaggy head with a flare of grey-stone eyes. She had struck fire from him and was overjoyed. Next instant he sagged back. "Aw hell!--Huntin' without Abe?--I don't know... I reckon I couldn't."