by Zane Grey
“She’ll be right across there,” he said, pointing with long arm. “I can line her half-way across. Reckon I see the tree now. It’s an oak, sort of grey in colour, standin’ on a ledge. An’ it’s got a dead top an’ one big crooked branch.”
“Very well, I’ll remember every word,” warned Lucy.
“I’ll go ahead, so when you come slidin’ I can grab you,” he said.
“See that you don’t miss me,” replied Lucy, as she started to follow him down off the ledge. At first the descent, though steep, was easy enough. Had Edd zigzagged down she would have had no trouble at all. But he descended straight down over bare earth, rock slides, banks and benches, swerving only for trees and brush, and then taking care to get back again in alignment with whatever he had marked to guide him. Lucy could not go slowly, unless she sat down, which, despite an almost irresistible temptation, she scorned to do. Quite abruptly, without preparation, she found herself standing at the top of a wonderful green and brown slope dotted by pine trees and remarkable for its waved effect. It descended at an angle of forty-five degrees, an open forest standing almost on end! The green colour was grass; the brown, pine needles. This place made Lucy’s heart leap to her throat. An absolutely unaccountable and new species of fright assailed her. Never in her life before had she seen a slope like that, or been attacked by such dread.
“Wal, here’s where we slide,” drawled Edd, gazing up at her. “Whatever you do, do it quick, an’ keep in line with me.”
Then he started down. His action here was very much different from any before. He descended sidewise, stepping, or rather running, on the edge of his boots, holding gun and bucket in his left hand, and reaching back with his right. His position corresponded with the slant of the slope. He slid more than he ran. His right hand often touched the ground behind him. He left a furrow in grass and needles. Forty or fifty feet below he lodged on a bench. Then he straightened round to look up at Lucy.
“Wal, city girl!” he called gaily. His voice was bantering, full of fun.
It lent Lucy recklessness. Through it she recovered from the queer locked sensation.
“All right, country boy, I’m coming,” she replied, with bravado.
Then she launched herself, heedlessly attempting to imitate Edd’s method of procedure. A few swift steps landed her upon the pine needles. Quick as lightning her feet flew up and she fell. Frantically she caught the ground with her hands and held on, stopped her momentum. Both breath and bravado had been jarred out of her.
“Wal, you’ve started comin’, so come on,” called Edd, never cracking a smile.
Lucy, holding on in most undignified manner, glared down upon him, making one last desperate effort to keep her equilibrium and her temper. If he had laughed or smiled, she might have trusted him more.
“Did you get me here on purpose?” she demanded, with magnificent disregard of reason.
“Shore. We’re on our bee line. You couldn’t be talked out of it,” he replied.
“I mean on this terrible hill,” she added, weakening.
“How’d I know she’d make a bee-line over this hill?” he demanded.
Lucy, seeing that action, not talk, was imperative, got up, and ran downhill right at him. She forgot his method of descending, but executed a very good one of her own. She ran, she flew, she fell, right upon Edd. He caught her outstretched hands and kept her from upsetting.
“Heavens!” gasped Lucy. “Suppose you hadn’t been here?”
“Wal, you’d have slid some,” he said. “But, honest, you did that fine.”
“It was an accident,” confessed Lucy as she fearfully gazed below. The next stage, to a bench below, seemed still steeper, and the one below that made Lucy’s head reel.
“I’m sorry I called you city girl,” he said contritely. “For you’re shore game, an’ quick on your feet. You hunt bees like you dance.”
Lucy’s misery was not alleviated by the compliment, because she knew she was a sham; nevertheless, she felt a weak little thrill. Maybe she could go on without killing herself.
“Don’t hang on to me,” added Edd as again he started. “That’s not the way. We’ll both slip, an’ if we do we’ll go clear to the bottom, same as if this hill was snow...When I make it down there you come, same as you got here.”
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Lucy wildly. “Don’t worry, I’ll come.”
Edd made a splendid achievement of the next descent, and halted in a favourable position to wait for Lucy. It encouraged her. Stifling her vacillations, she launched herself with light steps, leaning back, and depending on her gloved hand. She kept her feet most of the distance, but landed before Edd in a sliding posture. On the next attempt a couple of pine trees made descent easy for her. Below that were successive stages calculated to give her undue confidence.
“Wal, this is plumb bad,” ejaculated Edd, gazing below and to right and left. “But we can’t climb back. An’ it’s worse on each side. Reckon there’s nothin’ to do but slide.”
And he did slide and fall and roll, and finally lodge against a tree.
“Hey! you can’t do worse than that!” he shouted. “Come on. Don’t wait an’ think...Come a-rarin’.”
Lucy was in a strange state of suspended exhilaration and acute panic. She was both inhibited and driven. Actually she closed her eyes on the instant she jumped. Then she ran. Her objective was Edd and she had to look. She expected to plunge head over heels, yet she reached Edd upright, and earned another compliment. They went on with varying luck, but at least they made remarkable progress. The farther down this slope they proceeded the thicker lay the mats of pine needles and the scantier grew the patches of grass. Naturally the needles slipped and slid downward. Also, trees and brush grew scarce. Then, to make the situation worse, the descent took a sharper angle and the benches cropped out farther apart. At last they reached a point where Edd seemed at a loss. The slope just below was not only more precipitous and longer than any yet, but it ended in a jump-off, the extent of which Edd could not determine.
“Lucy, I’ve played hob gettin’ you into this,” he said, in remorse.
“It was my fault,” returned Lucy, frightened by his gravity. “Go on. Let’s get down — before I lose my nerve.”
All the nerve she had left oozed out as she watched Edd slide to the landing-place selected below. He never took a step. He sat down and slid like a streak. Lucy thought he was going over the precipice. But he dug heels into needles and ground, and stopped his flight in the nick of time.
“Not so bad as it looked,” he shouted. How far below he was now “Come on. It’s safe if you let yourself slide straight. So you won’t miss me!”
But Lucy did not obey. She realised how silly she was, but she simply could not deliberately sit down and slide. She essayed to do as she had done above. And her feet flew higher than her head. She alighted upon her back and began to shoot down. She turned clear over on her face. Dust and flying needles blinded her. Frantically she dug in with hands and feet, and rolled and slid to a halt.
When she cleared her sight she found she had got out of line with Edd. He was crawling along the precipice to intercept her. Lying prone on the slippery slope, she had to hold with all her might to keep from sliding. Edd’s yells, added to all that had happened, terrified her, and she clung there instinctively. It seemed a frightful drop to where Edd knelt. She would miss him and slide over the precipice. Inch by inch she felt herself slip. She screamed. Edd’s voice pierced her drumming ears.
“...darn fool, you! Let go! Slide!”
Lucy let go because she could no longer hold on. Then she seemed to rush through air and flying needles and clouds of dust. Swifter she slid. Her sight blurred. Sky and trees grew indistinct. She slid from her back over on her face, and plunged down. A mass of debris seemed to collect on her as she plunged. Suddenly she collided with something and stopped with terrific shock. She felt Edd’s clutch on her. But she could not see. Again she was moving, sliding, held back, pul
led and dragged, and at last seemed to reach a halt. Breathless, stunned, blinded, burning as with fire, and choked with dust, Lucy wrestled to sit up.
“You shore slid,” Edd was saying. “You knocked us over the ledge. But we’re all right now. I’ll go back for my gun.”
Lucy’s mouth was full of dirt and pine needles her eyes of dust. She sputtered and gasped, and could not see until welcome tears washed her sight clear. Then she found she was at the foot of the terrible slope. Edd was crawling up to the bench above. Her hair and blouse and trousers, even her boots and pockets, were full of dust, pine needles, twigs, and dirt. Standing up, shaking and spent, she essayed to rid herself of all she had collected in that slide. Incredible to believe, she had not sustained even a bruise that she was aware of. Then Edd came slipping down, gun and bucket in hand. As he reached her he seemed to be labouring under some kind of tremendous strain.
“No — use!” he choked. “Shore — I can’t — hold it.”
“What, for goodness’ sake?” burst out Lucy.
“If I — don’t laugh — I’ll bust,” he replied, suddenly falling down.
“Pray don’t do anything so — so vulgar as that last,” said Lucy, attempting hauteur.
But sight of this imperturbable backwoods boy giving way to uncontrollable mirth affected Lucy peculiarly. Her resentment melted away. Something about Edd was infectious.
“I must have been funny,” she conceded.
Edd appeared incapacitated for any verbal explanation of how laughter-provoking she had been; and Lucy at last broke her restraint and shared his hilarity.
An hour later Lucy perched upon a ledge high above the canyon, exhausted and ragged, triumphant and gay, gazing aloft at a grey old oak tree that had breasted the winds and lightnings for centuries. Part of it was dead and bleached, but a mighty limb spread from the fork, with branches bearing myriads of broad green leaves and clusters of acorns. On the under side of this huge limb was a knot hole encrusted with a yellow substance. Beeswax. It surrounded the hole and extended some distance along the under side, changing the grey colour of the bark to yellow. A stream of bees passed in and out of that knot hole. Edd had followed his bee line straight to the bee tree.
“She’s a hummer,” he was saying as he walked to and fro, gazing upward with shining eyes. “Shore, it’s an old bee tree. Reckon that whole limb is hollow an’ full of honey...Easy to cut an’ let down without smashin’! I’ll save maybe fifty gallons.”
“Aren’t you afraid of those bees?” asked Lucy, seeing how they swooped down and circled round Edd.
“Bees never sting me,” he said.
Lucy assumed that if there was no danger for him there would be none for her; and desiring to see the bees at close range as they streamed in and out of the aperture, she arose and approached to where Edd stood.
Hardly had she raised her head to look up when a number of bees whizzed down round her face. In alarm Lucy struck at them with her gloves, which she carried in her hand.
“Don’t hit at them!” shouted Edd, in concern. “You’ll make them mad.”
But it was too late. Lucy had indeed incurred their wrath and she could not resist beating at them.
“Oh, they’re after me!...Chase them away... Edd...” She screamed the last as she backed away, threshing frantically at several viciously persistent bees. Then, as she backed against a log and lost her balance, one of the bees darted down to sting her on the nose. Lucy fell back over the log. The bee stayed on her nose until she pulled it off, not by any means without voicing a piercing protest. Then she bounded up and beat a hasty retreat to a safer zone. For a moment she ached with the burning sting. Then the humiliation of it roused her ire. The glimpse she had of Edd through the saplings caused her to suspect that he had again succumbed to shameless glee. Else why did he hide behind the bee tree?
Lucy was inclined to nurse her wrath as well as her nose. At any rate, she sat down to tenderly hold the injured member. It was swelling. She would have a huge, red, ugly nose. When Edd came to her at length, looking rather sheepish, Lucy glared at him.
“That horrid old bee stung me right on my nose,” she burst out. “Just for that I’ll not go to the dance.”
“I have some salve I made. It’ll take out the sting an’ swellin’,” he replied kindly.
“Does it look very bad yet!”
“No one’d ever see it,” he comforted.
“Oh, but it hurts. But if it doesn’t disfigure me for life I guess I can stand it.”
He gazed thoughtfully down upon her.
“You stuck to me bettor than any girl I ever took on a bee hunt. I’m shore goin’ to tell everybody. Pa an’ ma will be tickled. Now I’m askin’ you. Reckonin’ it all, aren’t you glad you had that awful spill an’ then got stung?”
“Well,” replied Lucy, gazing up at him just as, thoughtfully, “I’m not glad just this minute — but perhaps I will be later.”
Two hours of leisurely travel down a gradual descent, through a trailless forest, brought Lucy and her guide back to the brook. Edd had been careful to choose open woodland and the easiest going possible. Sunset found them crossing the clearing. Lucy could just wag along, yet she could still look up with delight in the golden cloud pageant, and at the sun-fired front of the Rim.
“Edd, you forgot the turkey,” said Lucy as they entered the lane.
“Nope. It was only out of our way, comin’ back. After supper I’ll jump a hoss an’ ride after it.”
“Well, Edd, thank you for — our bee hunt.”
As she passed the yard she waved and called gaily to the Denmeades, hiding to the last the fact that she was utterly spent. Clara heard her and flung open the door of the tent, glad-eyed and excited. Lucy staggered up into the tent and, closing the door, she made a long fall to the bed.
“Oh — Clara,” she whispered huskily, “I’m killed I’m dead!...Walked, climbed, slid, and stung to death!...Yes, stung! Look at my poor nose!...We found a bee line, and went a thousand miles — up and down...I stuck to that wild-bee hunter I did, Clara...But, oh, it’s done something to me!...What a glorious, glorious day!”
Clara leaned lovingly over her, and listened intently, and watched with sad, beautiful, wise eyes.
“Lucy, dear,” she said gently, “you’re in love with that wild-bee hunter.”
Chapter XI
LATE IN OCTOBER Lucy returned from Felix, where she had stayed four weeks instead of two, as she originally intended. Her work had so interested the welfare board that they considered the experiment a success, and they brought her in contact with other workers whom they wanted to have the benefit of Lucy’s experience. Thus she had found herself rather an important personage in that little circle.
Though the stage arrived at Cedar Ridge late in the afternoon, Lucy did not want to tarry there till next day. She had a strange, eager longing to get back to her sister and to the place she called home, the lonely homestead under the Rim. That had been the cause, she thought, of her restlessness while in the city.
Bert and Mertie, vastly important about the change in their lives, hurried to his home to reveal their secret, assuring Lucy that they would come out to the ranch next day. Lucy hired one of the few automobiles in Cedar Ridge, and in charge of a competent driver she arrived at Johnson’s just before sunset. Sam’s younger brother offered to ride up to Denmeade’s with her, and pack her baggage. As there was no school session during late fall and winter, Mr. Jenks had left with the understanding that he would return in the spring.
Once on horseback again, Lucy began to feel free. How long she had been gone! What changes had come! These were exemplified in the transformation fall had wrought in the verdure along the trails. Only the great pines had not changed, yet their needle foliage had a tinge of brown. The fern leaves that had waved so beautifully green and graceful were now crisp and shrivelled; the grape vines were yellow; the brown-eyed daisies were all gone; the sycamore trees were turning and the cottonwoods had parted w
ith their beauty. Likewise had the walnut trees.
In places where Lucy could see the Rim she was astounded and delighted. She had carried away a picture of the coloured walls, but now there was a blaze of gold, purple, cerise, scarlet, all the hues of fire. Frost had touched maples, aspens, oaks, with a magic wand. It seemed another and more beautiful forest land that she was entering. Up and down, everywhere along the trail, her horse waded through autumn leaves. The level branches of spruce and pine, that reached close to her, were littered with fallen leaves, wrinkled and dried. How different the sound of hoofs! Now they padded, rustled, when before they had crunched and cracked.
The melancholy days had come. As the sunset hues failed Lucy saw purple haze as thick as smoke filling the hollows. The aisles were deserted of life, sear and brown, shading into twilight. She rode down into the deep forest glen and up out of it before overtaken by night. How comforting the dusky halls of the woodland! Assuredly she was going to find out something about herself when she could think it out. Sam’s little brother talked whenever the trail was steep and his horse lagged close to Lucy’s. Homely bits of news, pertaining to his simple life, yet Lucy found them sweet.
The hunter’s moon lighted the last mile of the ride up to the Denmeade clearing. Weird, moon-blanched, the great wall seemed to welcome her. What had come to her under its looming shadow? Black and silent the forest waved away to the dim boundaries. Lucy forgot her weariness. The baying of the hounds loosened the thrills that had been in abeyance, waiting for this moment when she rode up the lane. She peered for the white gleam of her canvas tent. Gone! Had Clara moved into the cabin? Then she made out that the tent wall had been boarded half-way up and the roof shingled. A light shone through the canvas. Lucy could scarcely wait to get her baggage from the boy and to tell him what to do.
Her voice stirred scrape of chair and flying footsteps inside the tent. The door swept open and Clara rushed out with a cry of welcome. Even in the poignant joy of the moment Lucy, as she folded Clara in a close embrace, missed the fragile slenderness that had characterised her sister’s form. Then they were in the brightly lighted tent, where for a little the sweetness of reunion precluded all else.
