Under the Tonto Rim (1991) (37 page)

Never before had the forest been so enchanting as on that summer morning. She punished herself ruthlessly by going to the fragrant glade where she had learned her first lessons from the wilderness. Weeks had passed, yet every pine needle seemed in its place. Woodpeckers hammered on the dead trunks; sap suckers glided head downward round the brown-barked trees; woodland butterflies fluttered across the sunlit spaces; blue jays swooped screechin' from bough to bough; red squirrels tore scratchingly in chattering pursuit of one another. Crows and hawks and eagles sailed the sunny world between the forest tips and the lofty Rim. It was hot in the sun; cool in the shade. The scent of pine was overpoweringly sweet. A hot, drowsy summer breeze stirred through the foliage. And the golden aisle near Lucy's retreat seemed a stream for myriads of Edd's homing bees, humming by to the hives.

Lucy tried to convince herself that all forests possessed the same qualities as this one--that the beauty and charm and strength of it came from her eye and heart--that wherever she went to work she now could take this precious knowledge with her. Trees and creatures of the wild were ministers to a harmony with nature.

A forest was a thing of infinite mystery, a multiple detail, of immeasurable design. Trees, rocks, brush, brook could not explain the home instinct engendered in the wild coverts, the shaded dells, the dark caverns, the lonely aisles, the magnificent archways. The green leaves of the trees brought the rain from the sea and created what they lived upon. The crystal springs under the mossy cliffs were born of thirsty foliage, of the pulse in the roots of the trees. These springs were the sources of rivers. They were the fountains of all life. If the forests perished, there would be left only desert, desolate and dead.

Lucy sat under her favourite pine, her back against the rough bark, and she could reach her hand out of the shade into the sun. She thought for what seemed a long time. Then the forgot herself in a moment of abandon. She kissed and smelled the fragrant bark; she crushed handfuls of the brown pine needles, pricking her fingers till they bled; she gathered the pine cones to her, soiling her hands with the hot pitch. And suddenly overcome by these physical sensations, she lifted face and arms to the green canopy above and uttered an inarticulate cry, poignant and wild.

Then a rustling in the brush startled her; and as if in answer to her cry Edd Denmeade strode out of the green wall of thicket, right upon her.

"Reckon you was callin' me," he said, in his cool, easy drawl.

"Oh-h!...You frightened me!" she exclaimed, staring up at him. He wore his bee-hunting garb, ragged from service and redolent of the woods. His brown, brawny shoulder bulged through a rent. In one hand he carried a short-handled axe. His clean-shaven, tanned face shone almost golden, and his clear grey eyes held a singular piercing softness. How tall and lithe and strong he looked! A wild-bee hunter! But that was only a name. Lucy would not have had him different.

"Where'd you come from?" she asked, suddenly realising the imminence of some question that dwarfed all other problems.

"Wal, I trailed you," he replied.

"You saw me come here?...You've been watching me?"

"Shore. I was standin' in that thicket of pines, peepin' through at you."

"Was that--nice of you--Edd?" she faltered.

"Reckon I don't know. All I wanted to find out was how you really felt about leavin' us all--an' my woods."

"Well, did you learn?" she asked, very low.

"I shore did."

"And what is it?"

"Wal, I reckon you feel pretty bad," he answered simply. "First off I thought it was only your old trouble. But after a while I could see you hated to leave our woods. An' shore we're all part of the woods. If I hadn't seen that I'd never have let you know I was there watchin' you."

"Edd, I do hate to leave your woods--and all your folks--and you--more than I can tell," she said sadly.

"Wal, then, what're you leavin' for?" he asked bluntly.

"I must."

"Reckon that don't mean much to me. Why must you?"

"It won't do any good to talk about it. You wouldn't understand--and I'll be upset. Please don't ask me."

"But, Lucy, is it fair not to tell me anythin'?" he queried ponderingly. "You know I love you like you told me a man does when he thinks of a girl before himself."

"Oh no--it isn't!" burst out Lucy poignantly, suddenly, strangely overcome by his unexpected declaration.

"Wal, then, tell me all about it," he entreated.

Lucy stared hard at the clusters of fragrant pine needles she had gathered in her lap. Alarming symptoms in her breast gave her pause. She was not mistress of her emotions. She could be taken unawares. This boy had supreme power over her, if he knew how to employ it. Lucy struggled with a new and untried situation.

"Edd, I owe a duty to--to myself--and to my family," she said, and tried bravely to look at him.

"An' to somebody else?" he demanded, with sudden passion. He dropped on his knees and reached for Lucy. His hands were like iron. They lifted her to her knees and drew her close. He was rough. His clasp hurt. But these things were nothing to the expression she caught in his eyes--a terrible flash that could mean only jealousy.

"Let me go!" she cried wildly, trying to get away. Her gaze drooped. It seemed she had no anger. Her heart swelled as if bursting. Weakness of will and muscle attacked her.

"Be still an' listen," he ordered, shaking her. He need not have employed violence. "Reckon you've had your own way too much...I lied to you about how I killed that cowboy."

"Oh, Edd--then it wasn't an accident?" cried Lucy, sinking limp against him. All force within her seemed to coalesce.

"It shore wasn't," he replied grimly. "But I let you an' everybody think so. That damned skunk! He was tryin' his best to murder me. I had no gun...I told him I wouldn't hurt him...Then what'd he do? He was cunnin' as hell. He whispered things--hissed them at me like a snake--vile words about you--what you were. It was a trick. Shore he meant to surprise me--make me lose my nerve...so he could get the gun. An' all the time he pulled only the harder. He could feel I loved you. An' his trick near worked. But I seen through it--an I turned the gun against him."

"Oh, my God! you killed him--intentionally!" exclaimed Lucy.

"Yes. An' it wasn't self-defence. I killed him because of what he called you."

"Me!...Oh, of course," cried Lucy hysterically. A deadly sweetness of emotion was fast taking the remnant of her sense and strength. In another moment she would betray herself--her love, bursting at its dam--and what was infinitely worse, her sister.

"Lucy, it don't make no difference what that cowboy said--even if it was true," he went on, now huskily. "But--were you his wife or anybody's?"

"No!" flashed Lucy passionately, and she spoke the truth in a fierce pride that had nothing to do with her situation, or the duty she had assumed.

"Aw--now!" he panted, and let go of her. Rising, he seemed to be throwing off an evil spell.

Lucy fell back against the pine tree, unable even to attempt to fly from him. Staring at Edd, she yet saw the green and blue canopy overhead, and the golden gleam of the great wall. Was that the summer wind thundering in her ears? How strangely Edd's grimness had fled; Then--there he was looming over her again--eager now, rapt with some overwhelming thought. He fell beside her, close, and took her hand in an action that was a caress.

"Lucy--will you let me talk--an' listen close?" he asked, in a tone she had never heard.

She could not see his face now and dared not move.

"Yes," she whispered, her head sinking a little, drooping away from his eyes.

"Wal, it all come to me like lightnin'," he began, in a swift, full voice, singularly rich. And he smoothed her hand as if to soothe a child. "I've saved up near a thousand dollars. Reckon it's not much, but it'll help us start. An' I can work at anythin'. Shore you must have a little money, too...Wal, we'll get your baby an' then go far off some place where nobody knows you, same as when you come here. We'll work an' make a home for it. Ever since you told me I've been findin' out I was goin' to love your baby...It'll be the same as if it was mine. We can come back here to live, after a few years. I'd hate never to come back. I've set my heart on that mesa homestead...Wal, no one will ever know. I'll forget your--your trouble, an' so will you. I don't want to know any more than you've told me. I don't hold that against you. It might have happened to me. But for you it would have happened to my sister Mertie...Life is a good deal like bee-huntin'. You get stung a lot. But the honey is only the sweeter...All this seems to have come round for the best, an' I'm not sorry, if only I can make you happy."

Lucy sac as if in a vice, shocked through and through with some tremendous current.

"Edd Denmeade," she whispered, "are you asking me--to--to marry you?"

"I'm more than askin', Lucy darlin'."

"After what I confessed?" she added unbelievingly.

"Shore. But for that I'd never had the courage to ask again...I've come to hope maybe you'll love me some day."

This moment seemed the climax of the strain under which Lucy had long kept up. It had the shocking power of complete surprise and unhoped-for rapture. It quite broke down her weakened reserve.

"I--love you now--you big--big--" she burst out, choking at the last, and blinded by tears she turned her face to Edd's and, kissing his cheek, she sank on his shoulder. But she was not so close to fainting that she failed to feel the effect of her declaration upon him. He gave a wild start, and for a second Lucy felt as if she were in the arms of a giant. Then he let go of her, and sat rigidly against the tree, supporting her head on his shoulder. She could hear the thump of his heart. Backwoodsman though he was, he divined that this was not the time to forget her surrender and her weakness. In the quiet of the succeeding moments Lucy came wholly into a realisation of the splendour of her love.

It was late in the day when they returned to the clearing. Hours had flown on the wings of happiness and the thrill of plans. Lucy forgot the dark shadow. And not until they emerged from the forest to see Clara standing in the tent door, with intent gaze upon them, did Lucy remember the bitter drops in her cup. Clara beckoned imperiously, with something in her look or action that struck Lucy singularly. She let go of Edd's hand, which she had been holding almost unconsciously.

"Wal, I reckon your sharp-eyed sister is on to us," drawled Edd.

"It seems so. But, Edd--she'll be glad, I know."

"Shore. An' so will Joe an' all the Denmeades. It's a mighty good day for us."

"The good fortune is all on my side," whispered Lucy, as they approached the tent.

Clara stood on the threshold, holding the door wide. Her face had the pearly pallor and her eyes the purple blackness usual to them in moments of agitation. She did not seem a girl any longer. Her beauty was something to strike the heart.

"Lucy--come in--you and your gentleman friend," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. Yet there was a faint note of pride or mockery of self or of them in it.

"Wal, Clara, you may as well kiss me an' be done with it," drawled Edd, as he entered behind Lucy. "For you're goin' to be my sister two ways."

Clara's response was electrifying. Her face seemed to blaze with rapture and the swift kiss she gave Edd admitted of no doubt as to her acceptance of Edd's blunt speech. But she made no move to approach Lucy.

Joe Denmeade sat on the edge of the bed, white and spent. Sight of him caused Lucy's heart to leap to her throat.

"Howdy, Lucy!" he said, with a smile that was beautiful, "Is my brother Edd talkin' straight?"

"Yes, Joe. I'm going to be doubly your sister," she replied.

"I couldn't ask no more," he rejoined, with deep feeling.

There followed a moment of constraint. Lucy could not grasp the situation, but she felt its tensity. Then, trembling, she turned to face Clara.

"I have told Joe," said Clara as Lucy met her eyes.

Lucy received this blow fully, without preparation, and following hard on stress of feeling that had left her spent. Her intelligence was swift to accept the wondrous and almost incredible fact of Clara's regeneration, but her emotions seemed dead or locked in her breast. Mutely she stared at this beloved sister. She saw an incalculable change, if she saw clearly at all. She might have been dazed. In that endless moment there was a slow action of her own mind, but something she expressed wrought havoc in Clara. The glow, the rapture, the exaltation that so enhanced Clara's beauty, suddenly faded and died. Even her moment of supreme victory had been full of thought of self. But Lucy's agony transformed it.

"I--told him," burst out Clara, sobbing. "I couldn't stand it--any longer. I wanted him to know...I could have gone on--living a lie--if you had not taken my--my shame. But that was too much. It killed something in me...So I told him I couldn't let you do it. I must do it myself. And I gave Joe up...But, Lucy, he forgave me!...He will stand by me!"

"Oh, Joe--how splendid--of you!" gasped Lucy, and with the hard utterance her bound faculties seemed to loosen. She ran to Joe's side. "But how can you meet this--this terrible situation?"