Under the Tonto Rim (1991)

by Grey, Zane

  "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, pulled 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," s
he 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 with 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.

  "Let go of me, so I can see you," said Lucy, breaking away from her sister. "Oh, Clara!"

  That was all she could say to this beautiful brown-faced, radiant-eyed apparition.

  "Yes, I'm well!" cried Clara. "Strong as a bear. Almost fat! I wondered what you'd think...You see, your wilderness home and people have cured me...More! Oh, sister, I'm afraid to say it--but I'm happy, too."

  "Darling! Am I dreaming?" burst out Lucy, in a rapture. "What has happened? How have you done it? Who?...Why, I worried myself sick about you! Look at me! I'm thin, pale. And here you show yourself...Oh, Clara, you're just lovely! What have you been doing?"

  "Simple as A B C, as Danny says," retuned Clara. "When you left I just felt that I would get well and--and all right again--or I'd die trying. I took up your work, and I've done it. I worked every way they'd let me. I rode and climbed and walked every day with Joe. And eat? Oh, I've been a little pig!"

  "Every day with Joe!" echoed Lucy, with eyes of love, hope, fear, doubt upon this strange sister. "Has that changed you so wonderfully?"

  When had Lucy seen such a smile on Clara's face?

  "Yes. But no more than taking up your work," she rejoined, with sweet seriousness. "Joe cured my body. He got me out into the fields and the woods. I really wasn't so sick. I was weak, starved, spiritless. Then your work with the children, with all the Denmeades, showed me how life is worth living. I just woke up."

  "I don't care who or what has done it," cried Lucy, embracing her again. "Bless Joe!...But, oh, Clara, if he was the way Edd said he was before I left--what is he now?"

  "He loves me, yes," said Clara, with a dreaming smile.

  Lucy's lips trembled shut on a query she feared to utter, and she endeavoured to conceal her emotion by lifting her baggage to the bed.

  "Well, that's no news," she said lightly. "How's my wild-bee hunter?"

  "I can't see any change," replied Clara, laughing. "You wrote me only twice, and him not at all."

  "Him? Clara, did he expect to hear from me?" asked Lucy, facing about.

  "I'm not sure, but he wanted to. Every night when he got home from his work--he's gathering honey now--he'd come to me and ask if I'd heard. I think he missed you and Mertie. He wondered how she'd get along in Felix."

  "I ought to have written," said Lucy, as much to herself as to Clara. "But I found it hard. I wanted to...I don't know where I stand. Perhaps now...Heigho! Well, as for Mertie, he needn't have worried about her."

  "Lucy, I confess I'm curious myself," replied Clara.

  "Mertie was just a crazy country girl who'd been badly influenced," went on Lucy. "She had good stuff in her, as I guessed, and she really cared for Bert. Mertie wanted something, she didn't know what. But I knew. And I gave it to her. I bought her everything she fancied and I took her everywhere. It did not seem possible to me that anyone could be so wildly happy as she was. And Bert? Goodness! It was good to see him...They're married, and, I'm sure, settled for life."

  "Married! Well, Lucy Watson, you are a worker. So that was why you took them to Felix?" replied Clara.

  "Not at all. But it fell in with the natural order of things. Don't you breathe it. Mertie and Bert will be out here to-morrow to surprise the folks. They'll be glad. I wonder how Edd will take it."

  "He'll be happy," mused Clara. "He loves that flibbertigibbet...So they're married. It seems about all young people can do."

  "Are you speaking for yourself, or for me, sister?" queried Lucy teasingly.

  "Not for myself, surely...Lucy, I think I hear Allie calling us to supper."

  The welcome accorded Lucy in that simple household was something even more satisfying that the meed of praise she had received at Felix. Edd Denmeade was not present. His father said he was out, camping on a long bee hunt. Lucy tried to ward off conviction that his absence was a relief. Yet she wanted to see him. The feelings were contrary.

  Lucy parried the queries about Mertie by saying that she would be home to-morrow to answer for herself. The clamour of the children was subdued by the delivery of sundry presents from town. For that matter, Lucy did not for
get any of the Denmeades. She had remembered what joy a gift brought to them, one and all. For Edd she had purchased a magnifying glass and a field glass, for use in his study of bees.

  "Sis, what'd you bring me?" queried Clara jealously when they were back in the tent.

  "Myself. Is that enough?" teased Lucy.

  "Of course...Lucy, you must have spent a lot of money," said Clara seriously.

  "I shore did. All I had except what you wrote for. I have that."

  "It's very--good of you," replied Clara.

  "What'd you need so much money for?" asked Lucy frankly. "It surprised me."

  "It's--I--Well, there's a woman in Kingston," said Clara, averting her face. "I owed her money. I hated to tell you before, hoping she'd wait till I could earn some. But she wrote me."

  "How did she know you were here?" queried Lucy in surprise.

  "I wrote to her first--about it," returned Clara.

  "You mustn't owe money to anyone," said Lucy decidedly. "Send her a money order from Cedar Ridge...Don't look like that, dear. I'm glad to help you. What's mine is yours...You'll be pleased when I tell you my salary was raised and my work highly recommended. I had to teach several new welfare workers."

  And Lucy talked on and on, trying to chase away that strange look from Clara's face, and also to talk herself into a forgetfulness of questioning surprise and vague misgivings. Not in a month could Clara recover wholly from the past! Lucy was unutterably grateful for a change far beyond her hopes.