Suddenly out of the corner of her eye she saw Clara sit up and reel from side to side, and turn her white face toward the furiously struggling men.

  “Clara — don’t look!” cried Lucy huskily, almost unable to speak. She moved to go to her sister, but she was spent with fright, and when Clara’s purple eyes fixed in an appalling stare, she quite gave out. Then crash and thud and scrape, harder, swifter, and the whistle of men’s breath moved back across the room into the field of her vision. Edd was dragging Middleton, flinging him. The fight was going to the implacable bee-hunter.

  “Let go, cowboy. I won’t kill you!” thundered Edd.

  Middleton’s husky reply was incoherent. For a moment renewed strength seemed to come desperately, and closing in with Edd he wrestled with the frenzy of a madman.

  Suddenly there burst out a muffled bellow of the gun. Edd seemed released from a tremendous strain. He staggered back toward Lucy. For a single soul-riving instant she watched, all faculties but sight shocked into suspension. Then Middleton swayed aside from Edd, both his hands pressed to his breast. He sank to his knees. Lucy’s distended eyes saw blood gush out over his hands. Dragging her gaze up to his face, she recoiled in a fearful awe.

  “She — she was—” he gasped thickly, his changed eyes wavering, fixing down the room. Then he lurched over on his side and lay doubled up in a heap.

  Edd’s long arm spread out and his hand went low, to release the smoking gun, while he bent rigidly over the fallen man.

  “It went — off,” he panted. “I was only — tryin’ to get it — away from him...Lucy, you saw.”

  “Oh yes, I saw,” cried Lucy. “It wasn’t — your fault. He’d have killed you...Is he — is he — ?”

  Edd straightened up and drew a deep breath.

  “Reckon he’s about gone.”

  Then he came to help Lucy to her feet and to support her. “Wal, you need a little fresh air, an’ I reckon some won’t hurt me.”

  “But Clara!...Oh, she has fainted again!”

  “No wonder. Shore she was lucky not to see the — the fight. That fellow was a devil compared to Bud Sprall.”

  “Oh!...Edd, you didn’t kill him, too?” implored Lucy.

  “Not quite. But he’s bad used up,” declared Edd as he half carried her across the threshold and lowered her to a seat on the steps. “Brace up now, city girl. Reckon this is your first real backwoods experience...Wal, it might have been worse... Now wouldn’t you have had a fine time makin’ Bud an’ his pard better men?...There, you’re comin’ around. We need to do some tall figurin’...But I reckon, far as I’m concerned, there’s nothin’ to worry over.”

  After a moment he let go of Lucy and rose from the step. “Lucy, what was it all about?” he queried quietly.

  She covered her face with her hands, and a strong shudder shook her frame.

  “Wal,” he went on, very gently, “I heard that fellow ravin’ as I come in. But all I understood was proof about the baby.”

  “That was enough to hear, don’t you think?” replied Lucy, all at once recovering her composure. Out of the chaos of her conflicting emotions had arisen an inspiration.

  “Reckon it was a good deal,” he said simply, and smiled down on her. “But you needn’t tell me nothin’ unless you want to. I always knew you’d had some trouble.”

  “Trouble!” sighed Lucy. Then averting her gaze she continued: “Edd, I ask you to keep my secret...The baby he spoke of — was — is mine.”

  He did not reply at once, nor in any way she could see or hear express whatever feeling he might have had. Lucy, once the damnable falsehood had crossed her lips, was stricken as by a plague. When she had thrown that off there was a horrible remorse pounding at the gates of her heart, Her body seemed first to receive the brunt of the blow she had dealt herself.

  “Wal, wal — so that’s it,” said Edd, in a queer, broken voice. He paused a long moment, then went on, in more usual tone. “Shore I’ll never tell...I’m doggone sorry, Lucy. An’ I’m not askin’ questions. I reckon it doesn’t make no difference to me...Now let’s think what’s best to do. I’ll have to send word from Johnson’s about this fight. But I’m goin’ to see you home first, unless you think you can get there all right.”

  “That depends on Clara. Come with me.”

  They went back into the schoolhouse to find Clam showing signs of returning consciousness.

  “Please carry her outside,” said Lucy.

  As he lifted the girl in his arms Lucy’s fearful gaze roved round the room. Amid the ruins of the crude furniture lay the inert form of Jim Middleton, face down, hands outstretched in a pool of blood. Though the sight sickened her, Lucy gazed until she had convinced herself that there was no life in the prostrate form. Then she hurried after Edd and reeled out into the sunlight and the sweet fresh air. Edd carried Clara to the shade of pines at the edge of the clearing.

  “I’ll go down to the brook,” he said. “Reckon we don’t want her seein’ me all over blood.”

  Presently Clara’s pale eyelids fluttered and unclosed, to reveal eyes with purple abysses, hard for Lucy to gaze into. She raised Clara’s head in her arms.

  “There, dear, you’re all right again, aren’t you?”

  “Where is he?” whispered Clara.

  “Edd’s gone down to the brook to fetch some water. He’s all right.”

  “I mean — him...Ah, I saw!” went on Clara. “Edd killed him!”

  “I fear so,” said Lucy hurriedly. “But it was an accident. Edd fought to get the gun. It went off...Don’t think of that. God has delivered you. I have the letter Mrs. Gerald wrote Middleton. He did not betray you. And now he’s dead...Edd knows nothing about your relation to this cowboy. See that you keep silent.”

  Edd returned at this juncture with a shining face, except for a wound over his temple; and he handed his wet scarf to Lucy.

  “Wal, shore she’s come to,” he drawled, with all his old coolness “That’s good...Now I’ll saddle up her horse an’ pretty soon she’ll be able to ride home.”

  “I think she will,” returned Lucy. “But what shall I say about — about this?”

  “Say nothin’,” he replied tersely. “I’ll do the talkin’ when I get home...An’, Lucy, on my way to Johnson’s I’ll take a look at my old friend Bud Sprall. If he’s alive, which I reckon he is, I’ll tell him damn’ good an’ short what happened to his pard, an’ that he’ll get the same unless he moves out of the country. These woods ain’t big enough for us two.”

  “He might waylay you again as he did this time — and shoot you,” said Lucy fearfully.

  “Wal, way-layin’ me once will be enough, I reckon. Bud has a bad name, an’ this sneaky trick on you girls will fix him. They’ll run him out of the country.”

  While Edd saddled Clara’s horse Lucy walked her to and fro a little.

  “Let’s go. I can ride,” averred Clara. “I’d rather fall off than stay here.”

  Edd helped her mount and walked beside her to where the trail entered the clearing. Lucy caught up with them, full of misgiving, yet keen to get out of sight of the school-house.

  “Go right home,” said Edd. “I’ll stop at Claypool’s on my way up an’ tell them somethin’. Shore I won’t be long. An’ if you’re not home I’ll come a-rarin’ down the trail to meet you.”

  “Oh, Edd — be careful!” whispered Lucy. She hardly knew what she meant, and she could not look at him. Clara rode on into the leaf-bordered trail. Lucy made haste to follow. Soon the golden light of the clearing no longer sent gleams into the forest. They entered the green, silent sanctuary of the pines. Lucy felt unutterable relief. How shaded, how, protecting, how helpful the great trees! They had the primitive influence of nature. They strengthened her under the burden she had assumed. Whatever had been the wild prompting of her sacrifice, she had no regret for herself, nor could she alter it.

  Clara reeled in her saddle, clinging to the pommel but as she rode on it appeared she gathered strength until Lucy came to believe she would finish out the ride. And what a tragic ride that was! Clara never once looked back, never spoke. The pearly pallor still showed under her tan. Lucy felt what was going on in her sister’s soul, and pitied her. Scorn for Clara’s weakness, anger at her duplicity, had no power against love. The reckoning had come and the worst had befallen. Lucy experienced relief in the knowledge of this. Clara’s future must be her care. It was not right, but she would make it right; it was not safe, yet she must insure its safety. And all at once she realised how she loved Edd Denmeade, and that eventually she would have gone to him as naturally as a bird to its mate. Then the green forest seemed to pierce her agony with a thousand eyes.

  Chapter XV

  AT THE CONCLUSION of that ride Clara collapsed and had to be carried into her tent, where she fell victim to hysteria and exhaustion. Lucy had her hands full attending to her sister and keeping the kindly Denmeades from hearing some of Clara’s ravings.

  Next day Clara was better, and on Sunday apparently herself again. To Lucy’s amaze she announced she could and would go back to school next day.

  “But, Clara — how can you, considering—” faltered Lucy.

  “I know what you mean,” replied her sister. “It’ll be rather sickening, to say the least. Yet I’d prefer to be sick than have the awful feeling of dread I had before.”

  Nevertheless, Lucy would not hear of Clara’s going to teach for at least a week. Amy Claypool would be glad to act as substitute teacher for a few days, or, failing that, the pupils could be given a vacation. Clara did not readily yield this point, though at last she was prevailed upon. During these days Lucy avoided much contact with the Denmeades. It was not possible, however, not to hear something about what had happened.

  Upon his return Edd had conducted himself precisely as before the tragedy, a circumstance that had subtle effect upon Lucy. By degrees this bee-hunter had grown big in her sight, strong and natural in those qualities which to her mind constituted a man. From Joe she learned certain developments of the case. Bud Sprall, late on the day of the fight, had been carried to Johnson’s, the nearest ranch, and there he lay severely injured. Middleton had not been removed until after the sheriff had viewed his remains on Saturday. Gossip from all quarters was rife, all of it decidedly favourable to Edd. The dead cowboy had not been well known at Cedar Ridge, and not at all by the name of Middleton.

  On Monday Lucy returned to her work at Claypool’s, leaving the situation unchanged so far as she was concerned. She and Edd had not mentioned the thing that naturally concerned them both so vitally nor had Lucy confessed to Clara what she had take upon herself. There would be need of that, perhaps, after the sheriff’s investigation.

  Lucy’s work did not in this instance alleviate a heavy heart. Once more alone, away from the worry about Clara’s health and the excitement of the Denmeades, she was assailed by grief. Clara’s act, viewed in any light possible, seemed a sin, no less terrible because of unfortunate and mitigating circumstances. It was something that had been fostered long ago in the family. Lucy had expected it. She blamed the past, the lack of proper home training and ideals, the influence inevitable from her father’s business.

  After her work hours each day she would walk off into the deep forest, and there, hidden from any eyes she would yield to the moods of the moment. seemed as various as the aspects of her trouble. But whatever the mood happened to be, grief was its dominant note. Clara had gotten beyond her now. She was married, and settled, providing Joe Denmeade was as fine a boy as he seemed. But if Clara’s true story became public property and Joe repudiated her, cast her off — then her future was hopeless. Lucy could not face this possibility. It quite baffled her.

  Then there was something else quite as insupportable to face. Sooner or later she must take up the burden she had claimed as her own. It would be hard. It meant she must abandon her welfare work there among the people she had come to love. They needed her. She would have to go farther afield or take up some other kind of work. It was not conceivable that her sister’s child could be left to the bringing up of strangers. That would only be shifting the responsibility of the weak Watson blood upon someone else. It did not make in the least for the ideal for which Lucy was ready to lay down her life.

  Perhaps hardest of all was the blow to what now she recognised as her unconscious hopes of love, dreams of happy toil as a pioneer’s wife. She knew now, when it was too late, what she could have been capable of for Edd Denmeade. She had found a fine big love for a man she had helped develop. She would rather have had such consciousness than to have met and loved a man superior in all ways to Edd. Somehow the struggle was the great thing. And yet she had loved Edd also because he was self-sufficient without her help. How she cared for him now, since the killing of one enemy and crippling of another, was hard for her to define. So that this phase of her grief was acute, poignant, ever-present, growing with the days.

  She found out, presently, that going into the forest was a source of comfort. When there seemed no comfort she went to the lonely solitude of trees and brush, of green coverts and fragrant wild dells, and always she was soothed, sustained. She could not understand why, but it was so. She began to prolong the hours spent in the woods, under a looming canyon wall, or beside a densely foliaged gorge from which floated up the drowsy murmur of a stream. All that the wild forest land consisted of passed into her innermost being. She sensed that the very ground she trod was full of graves of races of human beings who had lived and fought there, suffered in their blindness and ignorance, loved and reared their young, and had grown old and died. No trace left! No more than autumn leaves! It seemed to be this lesson of nature that gradually came to her. Thereafter she went to the woods early in the mornings as well as the afternoons, and finally she had courage to go at night.

  And it was at night she came to feel deepest. Darkness emphasised the mystery of the forest. Night birds and crickets, prowling coyotes with their haunting barks, the wind sad and low in the pines, the weird canopy of foliage overhead studded with stars of white fire — these taught her the littleness of her life and the tremendousness of the spirit from which she had sprung. She was part of the universe. The very fear she had of the blackness, the beasts, and the unknown told of her inheritance. She came at length to realise that this spell engendered by nature, if it could be grasped in its entirety and held, would make bearable all aches of heart and miseries of mind. Her contact with actual life covered twenty little years in a town among many people; her instincts, the blood that beat at her temples, the longings of her bones, had been bred of a million years in the solitude and wild environment of the dim past. That was why the forest helped her.

  A Saturday in June was the day set for an investigation of the fight that had resulted in the death of Jim Middleton. It would be an ordeal for which Lucy had endeavoured to prepare herself.

  But from what she heard and saw of the people interested she judged the day was to be rather a gala one. Certainly the Denmeades were not worried. Lucy did not see Edd, but Joe seemed more than usually cheerful, and evidently he had prevailed somewhat upon Clara. If she had any misgivings as to what might develop, she certainly did not show them. She rode by with Joe and the other Denmeades before Lucy was ready. Allie and Gerd dressed up for the occasion as if they were going to a dance. Lucy rode with them as far as Johnson’s where she was invited to go the rest of the way in a car with Sam and other of the Johnsons. During this part of the ride Lucy had little chance to think or brood. The party was a merry one, and their attitude toward the occasion was manifested by a remark Sam finally made to Lucy:

  “Say, cheer up. You’re worryin’ about this investigation. It won’t amount to shucks. Everybody in the country is glad of what Edd did. Shore there won’t be any court proceedings. This whole case would have been over long ago an’ forgotten if Bud Sprall hadn’t been too bad crippled to talk. Just you wait.”

  Lucy found some little grain of assurance in Sam’s words, and bore up under her dread. Perhaps she worried too much, and felt too deeply, she thought. Sam drove as if he were going to a party, and the twenty miles or more seemed as nothing. Cedar Ridge was full of people, to judge from the horses, cars, and vehicles along each side of the main street. When Sam halted with a grand flourish before the hotel Lucy was thrilled to see Edd Denmeade step out from a motley crowd. He was looking for her, and he smiled as he met her glance. He read her mind.

  “Howdy, Lucy I Reckon you needn’t be scared. Shore it’s all right,” he said, pressing her hand as he helped her out. “Howdy there, you Sam! Just saw Sadie an’ she shore looks pert. Howdy, you-all!”

  Lucy was conducted into the hotel parlour by the sheriff, who seemed very gallant and apologetic and most desirous of impressing her with the fact that this meeting was a pleasure to him.

  The magistrate she met there appeared equally affable. He was a little man, with sharp blue eyes and ruddy shaven face, and he had only one ann.

  “Wal, now, it was too bad to drag you away from thet good work we’re all a-hearin’ aboot,” he said.

  “Judge,” spoke up the sheriff, “we got Edd’s story an’ now all we want is this girl’s. She see the fight over the gun.”

  “Sit down, miss, an’ pray don’t look so white,” said the magistrate, with a kindly smile. “We see no call to take this case to court. Jest answer a few questions an’ we’ll let you off...You was the only one who see the fight between Edd an’ thet cowboy?”

  “Yes. My sister had fainted and lay on the floor,” replied Lucy. “But just at the last of it I saw her sit up. And after, when I looked back, she had fainted again.”

  “Now we know thet Harv Sprall threw a gun on Edd—”

  “Sprall!” interrupted Lucy. “You’re mistaken. The other fellow was Bud Sprall and he wasn’t in the schoolroom. Edd had the fight for the gun with—”