“I give my word,” replied Clara, with a firmness Lucy knew was a guerdon that the promise would be kept.

  What struck Lucy markedly on the moment was the fact that Clara did not disavow any possibility of marriage.

  The deal was settled then and there, and later, when the girls had gone to the seclusion of their tent, Clara evinced a deep emotion.

  “Lucy, I’ll be independent now,” she said. “I can pay my debt...I — I need money—”

  “My dear, you don’t owe me any money,” interposed Lucy, “if that’s what you mean.”

  Clara’s reply was more evasive than frank, again rousing in Lucy the recurrence of a surprise and a vague dread. But she dismissed them from her consciousness.

  “We’ll have to settle another thing, too,” said Lucy. “Once before you hinted you didn’t want to go to Claypool’s with me.”

  “I don’t, but I’ll go if you insist,” rejoined Clara.

  “If you will be happier here than with me, by all means stay,” replied Lucy in a hurt tone.

  “Don’t misunderstand, Lucy, darling,” cried Clara, embracing her. “I’m used to this place — these Denmeades. It’s like a sanctuary after—” She broke off falteringly. “It will be hard enough for me to teach school, let alone live among strangers...And aren’t you coming back here in the fall?”

  “I don’t know. It depends,” answered Lucy dubiously. “Well, it’s settled then. You will live here. I suppose you’ll ride horseback to and fro from the schoolhouse. That would be fine.”

  “Yes. Joe or Dick will ride with me every day, so I’ll never be alone.”

  Lucy turned away her face and busied herself with papers on her table.

  “Clara, have you anything particular you want to tell me?”

  “Why — no,” came the constrained and low reply. Lucy divined then that there was something Clara could not tell her, and it revived the old worry.

  Edd Denmeade, alone of all the family, did not take kindly to Lucy’s going to the Claypools. The others, knowing that Clara was to continue to live with them and that Lucy would probably come back in the fall, were glad to propitiate their neighbours at so little a loss.

  “But, Edd, why do you disapprove?” Lucy demanded, when she waylaid him among his beehives. She did not want to lose her good influence over him. She wanted very much more from him than she dared to confess.

  “I reckon I’ve a good many reasons,” returned Edd.

  “Oh, you have? Well, tell me just one,” said Lucy.

  “Wal, the Claypools live right on the trail from Sprall’s to Cedar Ridge.”

  “Sprall’s!...What of it?” demanded Lucy, nonplussed.

  “Bud Sprall rides that trail.”

  “Suppose he does. How does it concern me?” rejoined Lucy, growing irritated.

  “Wal, it concerns you more’n you think. Bud told in Cedar Ridge how he was layin’ for you.”

  “I don’t understand. What did he mean?”

  “Lucy, that hombre isn’t above ropin’ you an’ packin’ you off over the Rim, where he holds out with his red-faced cowboy pard.”

  “Nonsense! The day of the outlaw is past, Edd. I haven’t the least fear of Bud Sprall. Indeed, so little that I intend some day to take up my work with the Spralls.”

  Wheeling from his work, he loomed over her, and fastening a brawny hand in her blouse he drew her close. His eyes flashed a steely fire.

  “You’re not goin’ to do anythin’ of the kind,” he said, darkly.

  “Who’ll prevent me?” queried Lucy.

  “If you go to Sprall’s I’ll pack you back if I have to tie you on a hoss.”

  “You — will?” Lucy’s voice broke in her fury.

  “Shore you bet I will. Reckon you haven’t forgot that dance I made you go to. I wasn’t mad then. Wal, I’m as mad as hell now.”

  “Why do you presume to interfere with my work?”

  “Can you crawl in a hog-pen without gettin’ dirty?” he demanded. “I reckon your work is somethin’ fine an’ good. I don’t begrudge that to Sprall’s. But you can’t go there, unless just in daytime, an’ then with somebody...You think I’m jealous. Wal, I’m mot. Ask pa an’ ma about this Sprall idea of yours.”

  “But, Edd, weren’t you somewhat like Bud Sprall once? Didn’t you tell me I helped you? Might I not do the same for—”

  Edd shoved her away with violence.

  “Ahuh! So you want to work the same on Bud?...Wal, the day you make up to him as you did to me I’ll go back to white mule...An’ I’ll kill him!”

  As he stalked away, grim and dark, Lucy shook off a cold clutch of fear and remorse, and ran after him.

  “Edd! You must not talk so — so terribly!” she cried appealingly. “You seem to accuse me of — of something...Oh that I haven’t been fair to you!”

  “Wal, have you, now?” he queried, glaring down at her.

  “Indeed — I — I think so.”

  “Aw, you’re lyin’. Maybe you’re as deep as your sister. Shore I’d never deny you’d been an angel to my family. But you worked different on me. I was only a wild-bee hunter. You made me see what I was — made me hate my ignorance an’ habits. You let me be with you, many an’ many a time. You talked for hours an’ read to me, an’ worked with me, all the time with your sweet, sly girl ways. An’ I changed. I don’t know how I changed, but it’s so. You’re like the queen of the bees...All you told me love meant I’ve come to know. I’d do any an’ all of those things you once said love meant...But if you work the same on Bud Sprall you’ll be worse than Sadie Purdue. She had sweet, purry cat ways, an’ she liked to be smoothed. That was shore where Sadie didn’t cheat.”

  “Cheat!...Edd Denmeade, do you mean — you think I made you love me — just to save you from your drinking, fighting habits?” queried Lucy, very low.

  “No. I reckon I don’t mean that. You just used your — yourself. Your smiles an’ sweet laugh — your talk — your pretty white dresses — your hands — lettin’ me see you — lettin’ me be with you — keepin’ me from other girls — workin’ on me with yourself...Now didn’t you? Be honest.”

  “Yes. You make me see it. I did,” confessed Lucy bravely. “I’m not sorry — for I — I—”

  “Wal, you needn’t figure me wrong,” he interrupted. “I’m not sorry, either. Reckon for my family’s sake I’m glad. Shore I have no hopes of ever bein’ anythin’ but a lonely wild-bee hunter...But I couldn’t stand your workin’ that on Bud Sprall.”

  “You misunderstand me, Edd,” returned Lucy. “I couldn’t have done what you imagined. Now I fear I can never do anything...You have made me ashamed. Made me doubt myself.”

  “Wal, I reckon that won’t be so awful bad for you,” he drawled, almost caustically, and left her.

  This interview with Edd befell just before Lucy’s time of departure to the Claypools, most inopportunely and distressingly for her. Edd had declared a great, and what he held a hopeless, love for her. Lucy suffered an exaltation embittered by doubt, distress, even terror. The sheer fact that he loved her was a tremendous shock. Not that she had not known of his affection, but that he had arisen out of his crudeness to her ideal of love! She could not overcome her pride in her power to uplift him. It was sweet, strange, sustaining, yet fraught with terrors for her. It forced her into a position where she must find out the truth and bigness of love herself. She could not trust this new elemental self, this transformation of Lucy Watson in the wilderness. She must have long lonely hours — days — nights to fight the problem. What terrified her was the memory of that beautiful mesa homestead and the thought of Edd Denmeade’s love. Together they threatened to storm her heart.

  Next morning Lucy was ready early for her departure. She had entirely overlooked what kind of an occasion it might be, but she soon discovered that it was not to be joyous. The children were pitiful in their grief. Lucy felt as if she had died. They were inconsolable. Mary was the only one of them who bade her good-bye. Mrs. Denmeade said she was glad for the sake of the Claypools.

  “Wal, Miss Lucy,” said Denmeade, with his rugged grin, “reckon by the time you get through with the Claypools an’ Johnsons you’ll find us all gone to seed an’ needin’ you powerful bad.”

  “Then I’ll be happy to come back,” replied Lucy.

  Clara, however, gave Lucy the most thought-provoking surprise of this leave-taking. Evidently she had cried before getting up, and afterward she was pale and silent. When Edd and Joe arrived with saddle horses and the burros, Lucy, after taking out her baggage to be packed, returned to find Clara had broken down. Lucy could not understand this sudden weakness. It was not like Clara. They had a most affecting scene, which left Lucy shaken and uncertain. But she had the sweet assurance of Clara’s love and reliance upon her. For the rest, her sister’s emotion seemed a betrayal. Lucy felt that in Clara’s clinging hands, her streaming hidden eyes, her incoherent words. But in the few moments of stress left her before departure she could neither comfort Clara nor find out any adequate reason for this collapse.

  “Hey!” called Edd for the third time. “Reckon the burros are rarin’ to go, if you ain’t.”

  Lucy left Clara face down on the bed. Before she closed the door she called back softly: “Don’t be afraid to trust me with your troubles. I’ll share them....Good-bye.”

  Lucy had seen the Claypool clearing, but she had never been inside the cabins. There were two families and many children, all assembled to greet her. Allie and Gerd still lived there, pending the clearing of a new tract of forest near by. They took charge of Lucy and led her to the little hut that had been constructed for her use. It had been built of slabs fresh from the sawmill, and these boards, being the outside cut from logs, still retained the bark. The structure was crude, yet picturesque, and it pleased Lucy. The inside was the yellow hue of newly cut pine, and it smelled strongly of the woods. Lucy had to laugh. What a wonderful little playhouse that would have been — if she were still a little girl! It had one window, small, with a Wooden shutter, a table, and a closet, a shelf, and a built-in box couch, full of fragrant spruce. A deer skin with the fur uppermost lay on the floor. In the corner nearest the door was a triangular-shaped shelf, three feet above the floor, and under it sat a bucket full of water and on it a basin and dipper and lamp.

  Allie and Gerd were plainly proud of this lodging house for Lucy.

  “It’s pretty far from the cabins,” concluded Gerd, “but there’s a big bar for your door. Nothin’ can get in.”

  “I am delighted with it,” declared Lucy.

  Edd and Joe drove the pack burros over to Lucy’s new abode and carried her bags in. She noted that Edd was so tall he could not stand upright in her little room.

  “Wal, I reckon Gerd shore didn’t figure on your entertainin’ me,” drawled Edd with a grin.

  “It’s pretty nice,” said Joe practically. “With your rugs an’ pictures, an’ the way you fix things up, it’ll be Jake.”

  Edd lingered a moment longer than the others at the door, his big black sombrero turning round in his hands.

  “Wal, Lucy, do I go get me some white mule an’ hunt up Bud Sprall?” he queried with all his cool, easy complexity.

  Lucy felt the sting of blood in her cheeks. When she stepped toward him, as he stood outside and below, one foot on the threshold, his face was about on a level with hers. Lucy looked straight into his eyes.

  “No, you don’t, unless you want me to call you again what hurt you so once.”

  “An’ what’s that? I disremember.”

  “You know!” she retorted, not quite sure of herself.

  “Wal, I reckon you won’t need do that,” he said, simply. “I was only foolin’ you about the white mule. I wouldn’t drink again, no matter what you did. An’ I reckon I wouldn’t pick a fight, like I used to.”

  Lucy had been subjected to a wide range of emotions through the last twenty-four hours, and she was not prepared for a statement like this. It wrought havoc in her breast. In swift impulse she bent forward and kissed Edd on the cheek. Then as swiftly she drew back, slammed the door, and stood there trembling. She heard him gasp, and the jingle of his spurs, as slowly he walked away.

  “There! I’ve played hob at last!” whispered Lucy. “But I don’t care...Now, my wild-bee hunter, I wonder if you’ll take that for a Sadie Purdue trick?”

  Chapter XIV

  CONGENIAL WORK WITH happy, eager, simple people made the days speed by so swiftly that Lucy could not keep track of them.

  She let six weeks and more pass before she gave heed to the message Clara sent from the school-house by the Claypool children. From other sources Lucy learned that Clara was the best teacher ever employed by the school board. She was making a success of it, from a standpoint of both good for the pupils and occupation for herself.

  Joe Denmeade happened to ride by Claypool’s one day, and he stopped to see Lucy. Even in the few weeks since she left the Denmeades there seemed to be marked improvement in Joe, yet in a way she could hardly define. Something about him rang so true and manly.

  During Joe’s short visit it chanced that all the Claypools gathered on the porch, and Gerd, lately come from Cedar Ridge, narrated with great gusto the gossip. It was received with the interest of lonely people who seldom had opportunities to hear about what was going on. Gerd’s report of the latest escapade of one of the village belles well known to them all was received with unrestrained mirth. Such incident would have passed unmarked by Lucy had she not caught the expression that fleeted across Joe Denmeade’s face. That was all the more marked because of the fact of Joe’s usually serene, intent impassibility. Lucy conceived the certainty that this boy would suffer intensely if he ever learned of Clara’s misfortune. It might not change his love, but it would surely kill something in him — the very something that appealed so irresistibly to Clara.

  The moment was fraught with a regurgitation of Lucy’s dread — the strange premonition that had haunted her — that out of the past must come reckoning. It remained with her more persistently than ever before, and was not readily shaken off.

  Some days later, one Friday toward the end of May, Lucy rode down the school-house trail to meet Clara and fetch her back to Claypool’s to stay over Sunday. It had been planned for some time, and Lucy had looked forward to the meeting with both joy and apprehension.

  This school-house trail was new to her, and therefore one of manifold pleasure. It led through forest and glade, along a tiny brook, and on downhill toward the lower country.

  Lucy was keen to catch all the woodland features that had become part of her existence, without which life in this wilderness would have lost most of its charm. Only a year had passed since first it had claimed her! The time measured in work, trial, change, seemed immeasurably longer. Yet Lucy could not say that she would have had it otherwise. Always she was putting off a fateful hour or day until she was ready to meet it. Her work had engrossed her. In a few weeks she had accomplished as much with the Claypools as she had been able to do for the Denmeades in months. She had learned her work. Soon she could go to the Johnsons. Then back to the Denmeades! To the higher and wilder forest land under the Rim! But she was honest enough to confess that there were other reasons for the joy. Lucy lingered along the trail until a meeting with the Claypool and Miller children told her that school was out. They were riding burros and ponies, in some cases two astride one beast, and they were having fun. Lucy was hailed with the familiarity of long-established regard, a shrill glad clamour that swelled her heart with its message.

  “Hurry home, you rascals,” admonished Lucy, as she rode back into the trail behind them. Then she urged her horse into a lope, and enjoyed the sweet forest scents fanning her face, and the moving by of bright-coloured glades and shady green dells. In a short time she reached the clearing and the schoolhouse. She had not been there for a long time. Yet how well she remembered it!

  At first glance she could not see any horses hitched about, but she heard one neigh. It turned out to be Baldy, and he was poking his nose over the bars of a small corral that had recently been erected in the shade of pines at the edge of the clearing. Lucy tied her horse near and then ran for the school-house.

  The door was open. Lucy rushed in, to espy Clara at the desk, evidently busy with her work.

  “Howdy, little schoolmarm!” shouted Lucy. Clara leaped up, suddenly radiant.

  “Howdy yourself, you old backwoods Samaritan!” returned Clara, and ran to embrace her.

  Then, after the first flush of this meeting, they both talked at once, without any particular attention to what the other was saying. But that wore off presently and they became rational.

  “Where’s Joe?” queried Lucy, desirous of coming at once to matters about which she had a dearth of news.

  “He and Mr. Denmeade have gone to Winbrook to buy things for Joe’s cabin.”

  “Are you riding the trails alone?” asked Lucy quickly.

  “I haven’t yet,” replied Clara, with a laugh. “Joe has taken good care of that. Edd rode down with me this morning. He went to Cedar Ridge to get the mail. Said he’d get back to ride up with us.”

  “You told him I was coming after you?”

  “Shore did, an’ reckon he looked silly,” drawled Clara.

  “Oh Indeed?...” Lucy then made haste to change the subject. She had not set eyes upon Edd since the day she had shut her door in his face, after the audacious and irreparable kiss she had bestowed upon his cheek. She did not want to see him, either, and yet she did want to tremendously.

  “Let’s not wait for him,” she said hurriedly.

  “What’s wrong with you?” demanded Clara. “Edd seems quite out of his head these days. When I mention you he blushes...Yes!”

  “How funny — for that big bee hunter!” replied Lucy, essaying a casual laugh.

  “Well, I’ve a hunch you’re the one who should blush,” said Clara dryly.