The Bee Hunter (serial)/Part 3

by Zane Grey

PART III

 

“IT'LL BE A SLIDIN' WALK,” AVERRED EDD. “SHORE I'M GOIN' TO HAVE ALL THE FUN I CAN, 'CAUSE YOU'LL NEVER GO ANYWHERES WITH ME AGAIN”

LUCY WATSON goes into remote mountains of the Far West to do welfare work. One of the members of the state board had warned her of the untried venture and had endeavored to show her some of the hardships that lay ahead. “You will cause something of a stir among the young men at Cedar Ridge. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them married you,” he had added. Lucy had shrugged her shoulders and journeyed into the new country. The people are simple, wholesome and ignorant of luxuries and conveniences. Her first home has been with the Denmeades, where she has met Edd, the bee hunter—the quiet, unaffected yet dominant son. Lucy challenges Edd Denmeade's dominance at the start.

With the Denmeades the young woman accomplishes wonders—better manners creep in, better housekeeping, more conveniences— wonders with all but Edd. He asks her to go with him to the community dance; she refuses and, when she finds that he intends to take her by force, changes her mind.

At the dance she receives the attention of Edd Denmeade's deadly enemy.

A few weeks after the dance, Clara, Lucy's sister, who has paid the penalty for a hasty marriage, comes to join her.

IX (Continued)

AS THE buckboard continued to speed on its homeward way, drawn by the lively pair of horses handled so skillfully by Joe Denmeade, while he on the front seat and the two sisters on the back one ate their lunch brought from the hotel in Cedar Ridge, Lucy took occasion to observe Clara unobtrusively at opportune moments. Out in the clear, bright sunlight she seemed indeed a pale, frail flower. Always as a girl she had been pretty, but it would have been trivial to call her so now. Her face had strangely altered, and the only features remaining to stir a memory of her were the violet eyes and the golden hair. They were the same in color, though Clara's eyes, which had once been audacious, merry, almost bold in their bright beauty, were now shadowed deeply with pain. Clara had been a flirt; to-day no trace of that pert provocativeness was manifest. Indeed, suffering, shock—whatever had been the calamity that was recorded there—had removed the callow coarseness of thoughtless adolescence and had left a haunting, tragic charm. Lucy thought the transformation almost incredible. It resembled that birth of soul she had divined in Clara's letters. What had happened to her? Lucy shrank from the truth. Yet her heart swelled with wonder and ache for this sister whom she had left a wild girl and found a woman.

By the time the lunch had vanished, Joe was driving up the narrow, zigzag road leading to the height of the cedared ridge. Here he ceased to look back down the road, as if no longer expecting the boys to catch up with him. “Reckon you froze them off,” he said at length; “Sam anyhow. He'll shore never get over bein' dumped on the porch.”

Lucy, talking at random, discovered that Clara was intensely interested in her welfare work in this backwoods community. Thus encouraged, Lucy began at the beginning and told the story of her progress in every detail possible, considering that Joe was there to hear every word. In fact she talked the hours away, and was amazed when Joe drove into the Johnson clearing.

“What a hideous place!” murmured Clara, as she gazed around. “You don't live here?”

“No indeed,” replied Lucy. “This is where Sam Johnson lives. We have a few miles to go on horseback. Clara, have you anything to ride in?”

“Yes, I have an old riding suit that I hate,” said her sister.

“It doesn't matter how you feel about it,” laughed Lucy. “Where's it packed? We can go into Mr. Jenks' tent while Joe tends to the horses.”

Lucy conducted Clara to the teacher's lodgings, and then made some pretext to go outside. She wanted to think. She had not been natural. Almost fearing to look at Clara, yearning to share her burdens, hiding curiosity and sorrow in an uninterrupted flow of talk, Lucy had sought to spare her sister. What a situation! Clara the incorrigible, the merciless, the imperious, crawling on her knees! Lucy divined it was love Clara needed beyond all else. She had been horribly cheated. She had cheated herself. She had flouted sister, mother, home. Lucy began to grasp here the marvelous fact that what she had prayed for had come. Years before she had tried in girlish, unformed strength to influence this wayward sister. When she gave up city life to come to the wilderness, it had been with the settled, high resolve to do for others what she had been forced to do for herself.

The failure of her home life had been its sorrow, from which had sprung this passion to teach. She had prayed, worked, hoped, despaired, struggled. And lo, as if by some omniscient magic, Clara had been given back to her! Lucy choked over the poignancy of her emotion. She was humble. She marveled. She would never again be shaken in her faith in her ideals. How terrible to contemplate now her moments of weakness, when she might have given up!

Her absorption in thought and emotion was broken by Clara emerging from the tent. “Lucy, here's all that's left of me,” she said whimsically.

It was not possible then for Lucy to say what she thought. Clara's remark about an old riding suit had been misleading. It was not new, but it was striking. Clara's slenderness and fragility were not manifest in this outdoor garb. If she was bewitching to Lucy, what would she be to these simple, girl-worshiping backwoodsmen?

When Joe came up with the horses and saw Clara, there was no need for Lucy to imagine she exaggerated. The look in his eyes betrayed him. But if he had been struck as by lightning, it was only for a moment. “Reckon I can pack one of the valises on my saddle, an' carry another,” he said practically. “Tomorrow I'll fetch a burro to pack home the rest. I'll put them in Mr. Jenks' tent.”

“This is Baldy. Oh, he's a dear horse,” said Lucy. “Get up on him, Clara. Have you ridden lately?”

“NOT so very,” replied Clara, with voice and face sharply altering. Then she mounted with a grace and ease which brought keenly home to Lucy the fact that Clara had eloped with a cowboy and had gone to live on a ranch south of Mendino.

Soon they were traveling down the road, Joe in the lead, Lucy and Clara side by side. For Lucy there was an unreality about the situation, a something almost like a remembered dream. Clara's reticence seemed rather to augment this feeling. Gradually there welled into Lucy's mind a happy assurance, tinged perhaps with sadness.

Once Clara remarked that it was new to her to ride in the shade. She began to show interest in the trees, and when they turned off on the trail into the forest she exclaimed, “Oh, how beautiful!”

Lucy was quick to observe that Clara managed Baldy perfectly, but she was not steady in the saddle. She showed unmistakable weakness. They rode on, silent, on and on, and then down into the deep green forest, so solemn and stately, murmurous with the hum of the stream.

Clara subtly changed. “If anything could be good for me, it would be this wild forest,” she said.

“Don't say 'if,' dear. It will be,” responded Lucy.

“It makes me feel like going out of the cruel light that I hate to face, down into cool, sweet shadow, where I can feel, and not be seen!”

At the fording of the rushing brook Clare halted her horse as if compelled to speak. “Lucy, to be with you here will be like heaven,” she said low and huskily. “I didn't think anything could make me really want to live. But here! I'll never leave these beautiful, comforting woods. I could become a wild creature.”

“I—I think I understand,' replied Lucy falteringly.

From the last crossing of the rocky brook Clara appeared perceptibly to tire. Lucy rode behind her.

Halfway up the long, benched slope Clara said with a wan smile, “I don't know—I'm pretty weak.”

Lucy called a halt then, and Joe manifested a silent solicitude. He helped Clara dismount and led her off the trail to a little glade carpeted with pine needles. Lucy sat down and made Clara lay her head in her lap. There did not seem to be anything to say. Clara lay with closed eyes, her white face and golden hair gleaming in the subdued forest light. Her forehead was wet. She held very tightly to Lucy's hand. Lucy was not unaware of the strange, rapt gaze Joe cast upon the slender form lying so prone. Several times he went back to the horses, and returned restlessly.

On the last of these occasions, as he reached Lucy's side Clara opened her eyes to see him. It was just an accident of meeting glances, yet to Lucy, in her tense mood, it seemed an unconscious searching, wondering.

“You think me a poor, weak creature, don't you?” asked Clara, smiling.

“No. I'm shore sorry you're sick,” he replied simply, and turned away.

Presently they all mounted again and resumed the journey up the slope. When they reached the level forest land above Clara had to have a longer rest.

“What's that awful wall of rock?” she asked, indicating the towering Rim.

“Reckon that's the fence in our backyard,” replied Joe.

“I couldn't jump that, could I?” murmured Clara.

MEANWHILE the sun sank behind scattered, creamy clouds that soon turned to rose and gold, and beams of light stretched along the wandering wall. Lucy thrilled to see how responsive Clara was to the wildness and beauty of the scene. Yet all she said was, “Let me live here.”

“It'll be dark soon. And we've still far to go,” returned Lucy with concern.

“Oh, I can make it,” replied Clara, rising. “I meant I'd just like to lie here—forever.”

They resumed the ride. Twilight fell, and then the forest duskiness enveloped them. The last stretch out of the woods and across the Denmeade clearing, up the lane, was ridden in the dark. Lucy leaped off, and caught Clara as she reeled out of the saddle, and half carried her into the tent to the bed. The hounds were barking and baying; the children's voices rang out; heavy boots thumped on the cabin porch. Lucy hastened to light her lamp. Joe set the valises inside the tent.

“Is she all right?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

“I'm—here,” panted Clara, answering for herself, and the purport of her words was significant.

“She's worn out,'” said Lucy. “Joe, you've been very good. I'm glad I picked you, as you called it.”

“What'll I tell ma?” he asked.

Just say Clara can't come in to supper. I'll come, and fetch her something.”

Joe tramped away in the darkness, his spurs jingling. Lucy closed the door, brightened the lamp, threw off gloves, hat, coat, and bustled round, purposely finding things to do, so that the inevitable disclosure from Clara could be postponed Lucy did not want to know any more.

“Come here; sit by me,” said Clara weakly.

LUCY complied, and felt a constriction in her throat. Clara clung to her. In the lamplight the dark eyes looked unnaturally big in the white face.

“I'm here,” whispered Clara.

“Yes, thank heaven, you are,” asserted Lucy softly.

“I must tell you about——”

“Clara, you needn't tell me any more. But if you must, make it short.”

“Thank you.... Lucy, you never saw Rex Wilcox but once.You didn't know him. But what you heard was true. He's handsome, but no good—nothing but a wild rodeo cowboy. I ran away with him, believing in him, thinking I loved him. I was crazy. We went to a ranch, an awful hole, in the desert out of Mendino. The people were low trash. He told them we were married. He swore to me we would be married next day. I refused to stay and started off. He caught me, threatened me, frightened me. I was only a kid. Next day we went to Mendino. There was no preacher nearer than Sanchez. We went there, and found he was out of town. Jim dragged me back to the ranch. There I learned a sheriff was looking for him. We had a terrible quarrel. He was not at all what I thought. Of course he meant to marry me; he wanted to do so in Felix. But I was afraid. We hurried away from there. But after—he didn't care; and I found I didn't love him. To cut it short, I ran away from him. I couldn't go home. So I went to work at Kingston. I tried several jobs. They were all so hard; the last one was too much tor me. I went downhill. Then——”

“Clara,” interrupted Lucy, distraught by the husky voice of her sister, the torture of that face, the passion to confess, “never mind any more; that's enough. You poor girl! You don't need to tell me. Indeed you were crazy. But, dear, I don't hold you guilty of anything but a terrible mistake. It certainly does not matter to me, unless to make me love you more.”

“But, sister, I must tell you,” whispered Clara faintly.

“You've told enough. Forget that story. You're here with me. You're going to stay. You'll get well. In time this trouble will be as if it had never been!”

“But, Lucy, my heart is broken, my life ruined,” whispered Clara. “I begged to come to you only for fear of worse.”

“It's bad now, I know,” replied Lucy stubbornly. “But it's not as bad as it looks. I've learned that about life. I can take care of you, get back your health and spirit, let you share my work. Sister, there's no worse, whatever you meant by that. This wilderness, these backwoods people will change your whole outlook on life. I know, Clara. They have changed me.”

Mutely, with quivering lips and streaming eyes, Clara drew Lucy down to a close embrace.

X

“WAL, didn't you-all invite yourselves to pick beans?” drawled Edd, coming out at the head of a procession of big and little Denmeades.

“Wal, we shore did aboot that,” drawled Lucy, mimicking him. “Don't you see I'm rigged out to chase beans, bears, or bees?”

“Which reminds me you haven't gone wild-bee huntin' yet,” said he reflectively.

“Humph! I'd have to invite myself again to that also,” declared Lucy.

“Honest, soon as the beans are picked I'll take you. An' I've lined a new tree. Must have a lot of honey.”

Mrs. Denmeade called out, “Make him stick to that, Miss Lucy. He's shore awful stingy about takin' anyone bee huntin'.”

“Come, Clara,” called Lucy into the tent. “We're farmers today. Fetch my gloves.”

When Clara appeared, the children, Liz and Lize, made a rush for her and went romping along, one on each side of her, down the trail ahead of the procession. Lucy fell in beside Edd, and she was thinking, as she watched Clara adapting herself to the light steps of the youngsters, that the improvement in her sister was almost too good to be true. Yet the time since Clara had arrived at the Denmeades, measured by the sweetness and strength of emotion it had engendered, seemed much longer than its actual duration of a few weeks.

“IT IS A FACT,” LUCY WHISPERED. “I COULD LIVE HERE”

“Wal, teacher, summer's about over,” Edd was saying. “An' soon the fall dances will begin.”

“Indeed? What a pity you can't go!” claimed Lucy tantalizingly.

“Why can't I?”

“Because you vowed you'd enough after taking me that time.”

“Wal, reckon I did. But shore I could change my mind, same as you.”

“Am I changeable? I was only teasing, Edd. I get a hunch that you're going to ask me again.”

“Correct; you're a smart scholar. How do you feel about goin'?”

“Shall I refuse, so you can indulge your—your wild-bee-hunter proclivities and pack me down on your horse?”

“Sometimes I don't savvy you,” he said dubiously. “Reckon all girls have a little Sadie Purdue in them.”

“Yes, they have, Edd, I'm ashamed to confess,” replied Lucy frankly. “I'd like to go with you. But of course that'll depend on Clara. To be sure, she's getting well—wonderful! It makes me happy. Still she's far from strong enough for one of your dances.”

“Joe asked her, an' she said she'd go if you went too. I reckon she meant with me. I'd let Joe take her to the dance. You can manage her. Why, your slightest wish is law to Clara. That shore makes me think heaps of her. Wal, she could dance a few, an' look on some. Then we'd come home early.”

So they talked as they walked along the cool, sandy, pine-mat bordered trail. It was quite a walk from the cabin to what the Denmeades called the high field.

The Denmeades made the picking of beans a holiday, almost a gala occasion. Every one of the family was on hand, and Uncle Bill packed two big bags of lunch and a bucket of water.

The bean pickers rushed through the morning hours; at noon they took time to eat slowly, and to talk and joke. Lucy enjoyed this pleasant interval.

It had but one break, an instant toward the end, when she espied Joe Denmeade, sitting as always quietly in the background, with eyes of worship fixed upon Clara's face. That troubled Lucy's conscience.

After lunch the men soon finished picking and sacking the beans. Then Edd and his brothers stalked off to fetch the pack burros. Uncle Bill still found tasks to do, while Denmeade rested and talked to his wife. Lucy leaned comfortably against the oak, grateful for relief from work and, because of it, appreciating infinitely more the blessing of rest. She did not try very hard to resist a drowsy spell, out of which she was roused to attention by a remark of Denmeade to his wife.

“Wal, it'd shore make bad feelin' between the Denmeades an' Johnsons if Sam homesteaded on the mesa.”

“Reckon it would, but he's goin' to do it,” returned Mrs. Denmeade. “Mertie told me.”

“Sadie Purdue's back of that,” said Denmeade meditatively.

“She'd never forgive Edd. It'd be too bad if Sam beat Edd out of that homestead.”

“Don't worry, wife. Sam ain't a-goin' to,” returned her husband. “Edd located the mesa, found the only water. He's just been waitin' to get himself a woman.”

“But Edd oughtn't to wait no longer,” protested Mrs. Denmeade.

“Wal, I reckon,” rejoined Denmeade thoughtfully, “we'll begin cuttin' logs an' get ready to run up a cabin. It's bad enough for us to be on the outs with Spralls, let alone Johnsons. I'm goin' to walk up to the mesa right now.”

SUITING action to word Denmeade started off. Lucy sat up and impulsively called, “Please take me with you, Mr. Denmeade. I—Id like to walk a little.”

“Come right along,” he responded heartily.

Lucy joined him and entered the woods, taking two steps to one of his long strides.

“I'm goin' up to a place we call the mesa,” he was saying. “Edd has long set his heart on homesteadin' there. It ain't far, but uphill a little. Sam Johnson has been talkin' around. Shore there ain't no law hyar to prevent him stealin' Edd's homestead. An' I reckon there's bad blood enough. So I'm goin' to begin work right off. That'll throw Sam off the trail, an' then we won't have no call to hurry.”

At last they reached a level. Lucy looked up, to be stunned by the towering, overpowering bulk of the Rim, red and gold, with its black-fringed crown, bright and beautiful in the westering sun. She gazed backward, down over a grand sweep of forest, rolling and ridging away to the far-flung peaks. Her position here was much higher than on any point she had frequented, and closer to the magnificent Rim.

“There's two or three hundred acres of flat land hyar,” said Denmeade, sweeping his hand back toward the dense forest. “Rich red soil. Enough water for two homesteads, even in dry spells. I'm hopin' Dick or Joe will homestead hyar some day. It's the best farmland I know of. It'll have to be cleared, an' that's a heap of work.”

DENMEADE led her on under the vast pines to the edge of a gully. She looked down into a green, white, brown, golden chaos of tree trunks, foliage, bowlders and cliffs, trailing vines and patches of yellow flowers, matted thickets of fallen timber—in all an exceedingly wild hollow cut deep into the mesa. Lucy heard the babble and tinkle of water she could not see.

“Edd aims to have his cabin hyar,” explained Denmeade. “I heard him say once he'd clear an acre hyar, leaving these big trees an' the forest all around. The crop field he wants a little ways off. He'd keep his bees down in the gully, clearin' out some. Now you rest yourself while I climb down to the water. It's shore been a dry season, an' last winter the snows was light. I reckon I can get a good line on how much water there'll be in dry seasons.”

Denmeade clambered down a steep trail, leaving Lucy above. Though she stood amidst deep forest, yet she could see the Rim in two directions, and the magnificent looming tower stood right above her. It marked the bold entrance of the cañon. In the other direction Lucy looked down a slant of green, darkly divided by the depression made by the gully, to the rolling forest below that led the eye on and on to the dim purple ranges. A cry seemed to ring out of the remote past, appealing to Lucy's heart.

“If I loved Edd Denmeade, how happy I could be in a home here!” It did not seem to be the Lucy Watson she knew that whispered these involuntary words. They came from beyond reason, intelligence, consideration. They flashed up out of instinct. She did not resent them, though she stood aghast at intimations beyond her control. “It is a fact,” she whispered. “I could live here. I'd want Clara to be close. I'd want to go back to Felix now and then. I'd want books, letters, papers—to keep up with my idea of progress. I'd want to go on with my welfare work. But these are nothing. They do not induce me to want to live in a log cabin.”

Half an hour later Denmeade led the way back across the mesa by a shorter route, and down the slope by an old trail. Lucy trudged along in his tracks.

AS THEY again approached level forest Lucy caught glimpses of the yellow clearing. She heard the discordant bray of a burro, then the shrill peal of childish laughter. She emerged on the edge of the timber in time to see the packed burros filing away through the corn, and on top of the last two sat Liz and Lize, triumphantly riding on sacks of beans. Edd strode beside them. Mrs. Denmeade and Allie were plodding on ahead.

Denmeade cut across the cornfield, while Lucy wended her way back along the edge of the woods to the pine tree where she had left Clara. Perhaps Clara, too, had gone with the others. The day was over. Sunset was gilding the Rim. Crickets had begun to chirp. The air had perceptibly cooled. Crows were sailing across the clearing. Faint and sweet came the shouts of the children.

Then Lucy espied her sister, sitting with her back against the pine. Joe Denmeade stood near, gazing down upon her. If either was talking Lucy could not hear what was said; but she inclined to the thought that on the instant there was no speech. They did not hear her footsteps on the soft earth. Without apparent cause Lucy experienced a thrill that closely approached shock. How utterly she, too, was at the mercy of her imagination! Clara and Joe together in perfectly simple pose—what was there in that to stop Lucy's heart? Yet there seemed profound significance in Joe's gazing down upon Clara as she sat there, with the last touch of the sun making a golden blaze of her hair.

It was twilight when Lucy arrived at the tent, and, wearied with exertion and emotion, throbbing and burning, she threw herself on the bed to rest. Clara came just as darkness fell. “Are you there, Lucy?” she asked, stumbling into the tent.

“Shore I'm heah,” drawled Lucy.

“Why did you leave me alone—to walk back with that boy?” queried Clara. “He's falling in love with me—the fool!”

“Oh, Clara! He'd be a fool if he wasn't,” retorted Lucy.

“But it'll only make him wretched. And you—you must stop believing I'm worthy of love.”

“Maybe Joe is like me,” said Lucy; and this reply silenced her sister.

XI

SEPTEMBER came, with the first touches of frost on the foliage, the smoky haze hovering over the hollows, the melancholy notes of robins and wild canaries, the smell of forest fire in the air. Edd did not remind Lucy that he had promised to take her bee hunting. This, like so many things in the past, piqued her; and the more she upbraided herself for that, the less could she forget it.

Finally she said to him one night at supper, “Edd, I thought you were going to take me bee hunting.”

“Shore. Whenever you say,” replied Edd.

“Then I say tomorrow,” returned Lucy.

“Edd, I seen the other day that Miss Lucy's boots wasn't hobnailed,” spoke up his father. “Reckon you mustn't forget to put some nails in them for her. Else she might slip an' hurt herself.”

“Wal, now you tax me, I'll just naturally have to hobnail her boots,” returned Edd dryly. “But fact was, I wanted to see her slide around some.”

“Very sweet of you, Edd,” interposed Lucy in the same tone. “Couldn't you wait till winter and find me some ice?”

“Say, slidin' down a slope of grass an' pine needles will take the tenderfoot out of you,” he retorted.

“Oh, then you think I need that?”

“Wal, I reckon you don't need no more,” he said quaintly.

“Is Edd complimenting me?” asked Lucy, appealing to Mrs. Denmeade, who nodded smilingly. “Thanks. Very well, Edd; I shall fetch my boots for you to hobnail. And tomorrow you may have the pleasure of watching me slide.”

AFTER supper she watched him at work. He had an iron last, upside down, over which he slipped one of her boots. Then with a hammer he pounded small-headed hobnails into the soles.

Presently he removed the boot and Lucy examined the sole, to find two rows of hobnails neatly and symmetrically driven round the edge. Inside these rows were the initials of her name.

“Well, you're also an artist,” she said. “I suppose you want to make it easy for anyone to know my boot tracks.”

“Wal, I can't say as I'd like anyone trailin' you,” he replied, with a deep, grave look at her.

Lucy changed the subject.

When she returned to her tent, dusk had fallen and Clara was sitting in the doorway. Lucy threw the boots inside and sat down on the lower step to lean back against her sister. Often they had spent the gloaming hour this way. The cool, melancholy night was settling down like a mantle over the forest land. Bells on the burros tinkled musically; a cow lowed in the distance; a nighthawk whistled his strange, piercing note.

“Lucy, I like Edd Denmeade,” said Clara presently.

“Goodness! Don't let him see it or, poor fellow, he——”

“Please take me seriously,” interrupted Clara. “I believed I'd always hate men. But to be honest with myself and you, I find I can't. I like Mr. Denmeade and Uncle Bill—and the boys. Edd is a wonderful fellow. He's deep. He's so cool, drawly and kind. At first his backwoodsness, so to call it, offended me. But I soon saw that is his great attraction for me. As you know, I've gone with a lot of city boys, without ever thinking about what they were. I wonder. City clothes and manners, nice, smooth, white hands ought not be much in the make-up of a man. Edd's old jeans, his crude talk and ways, his big, rough hands—they don't repel me any more. I don't quite understand, but I feel it. He's good for me. Lucy dear. Do you know what I mean?”

“YES; and I'm glad. You've had a bitter blow. As for me, I don't really know whether Edd has been good—or bad—for me.”

“Lucy!”

“Listen. I'll tell you something,” went on Lucy; and she related the story of Edd's taking her to the dance.

“How funny!” exclaimed Clara, laughing. “How—I don't know what! If he had been rude—you know; fresh, I mean—I'd have despised him. But the way you told it—oh, I think it's rich. I believe I would have liked him better.”

Lucy might have confessed that deep in her heart she had done this very thing herself, but the fact was not acceptable to her. “Joe is the best of the Denmeades, and quite the nicest boy I ever knew,” she said earnestly. “What do you think of him, Clara?”

“It's dreadful of me, but I like to be with him,” whispered Clara. “He's so—so sweet; that's the only word. But it does not fit him either. He has the same strong qualities as Edd. Lucy, that boy rests me. He soothes me. He makes me ashamed. Tell me all about him.”

“Well, Joe's ears will burn,” laughed Lucy, and then she began her estimate of Joe Denmeade. She was generous. But in concluding with the facts about him that had come under her observation and been told her by his people, Lucy held rigidly to truth.

“All that!” murmured Clara thoughtfully. “And I'm the only girl he ever looked at? Poor Joe!”

Next morning there was a white frost. Lucy felt it and smelled it before she got up to peep out behind the curtain of the tent door. The sun had just tipped the great promontory, a pale blaze that made the frost on grass and logs shine like an encrustment of diamonds.

By nine o'clock all trace of frost had vanished from grass and logs. Edd presented himself at the tent. “Wal, I'm ararin' to go.”

“Yes, you are!” called Lucy banteringly. “Here I've been ready these last two hours.”

“City girl! You can't line bees till the sun gets warm.”

“Backwoods boy! Why not?”

“Bees don't work so early. You see, it's gettin' along toward fall.”

They set off across the lane, through the strip of woods, and out into the sorghum field.

Lucy experienced an unaccountable embarrassment. She felt like a callow girl taking her first walk with a boy. She did not feel at all at her ease in this riding garb, though the freedom of it had never been so manifest. Then she did not discover her usual fluency of speech. Finding herself alone with this stalwart bee hunter, facing a long day in the wilderness, had turned out to be something more than thrilling.

LUCY essayed to throw off the handicap. “What's in your little black bucket?” she inquired.

“Honey. I burn it to make a sweet, strong scent in the woods. That shore fetches the bees.”

“What's the gun for?”

“Wal, sometimes a bear smells the honey an' comes along. Bears love sweet stuff, most of all honey.”

Through the woods ahead Lucy.caught a glimpse of light and open sky.

Then Edd halted her. “I hear turkeys cluckin',” he whispered. “Hold my bucket, an' keep right close to me, so you can see. Walk Injun now.”

Lucy complied instinctively, and she was all eyes and ears. She could not, however, give undivided attention to the scene in front, and at the same time proceed noiselessly. Edd walked slower and stooped lower as the trail led round a corner of thicket toward the open. Lucy saw a long, narrow clearing, overgrown with small green cedars and patches of sumac shining red and gold in the sunlight. At the same instant she saw something move, a white-and-brown object flashing low down. Edd swiftly rose. The gun cracked so suddenly that Lucy was startled. Then followed a tremendous flapping of wings. Huge black-and-gray birds flew and sailed out of the clearing into the woods, crashing through the foliage. Next Lucy heard a loud threshing in the brush just in front, and a heavy thumping. Both sounds diminished in volume, then ceased.

“WAL, I reckon you'll have turkey for dinner tomorrow,” said Edd. Lucy followed him to the open place where lay a beautiful wild turkey, its shiny plumage all ruffled and disheveled, its wings wide, its gorgeous bronze-and-white tail spread like a huge fan.

“Gobbler, two years old,” said Edd. “Just fine for eatin'. I'll hang him up in the shade, an' get him on our way home.”

He carried the turkey into the edge of the woods, where Lucy heard him tramping around and breaking branches. When he emerged again, he led her to the upper end of this clearing, meanwhile telling her that his father had years before cut the timber off and tried to cultivate the ground. It had not been a successful venture. A tiny stream of water ran through the upper end, making smooth deep holes in the red clay. Edd pointed out deer and turkey tracks, with muddy water in them. He followed the stream to its source in a spring at the head of the clearing. A small, shallow basin full of water, weeds and moss lay open to the sun.

“Wal, here's where we start,” announced Edd enthusiastically. “Listen to the hum of bees.” The air seemed murmurous and melodious with it—a sweet, drowsy, summer sound.

Lucy gazed all around. “Oh, I hear them.

“But where are they?” she cried.

“Wal, they're flyin' around, workin' in the tops of these pine saplings,” replied Edd.

“Do they get honey up there?” queried Lucy in amaze.

“They shore get somethin',” replied Edd. “If you go climbin' round pine trees an' get your hands all stuck up with pitch an' sap you'll think so too. I reckon bees get somethin' in these pines to help make their wax. Now look down along the edge of the water. You'll see bees lightin' an' flyin' up. I've watched them hundreds of times, but I never made shore whether they drank, or diluted their honey, or mixed their wax with water.”

“WELL! Who'd have thought honeybees so interesting. Yes, I see some. Will they sting me?'”

“Tame as flies,” returned Edd easily.

Trustingly Lucy got down on hands and knees, and then lay prone, with her face just above the water. Here, at distance of a foot, she could see the bees distinctly. At once she noted several varieties, some yellow-and-black, which she knew to be yellow jackets, some fuzzy and brown like the tame honeybee, and a few larger, darker. As she leaned there, these wilder bees flew away.

Edd knelt to one side and pointed at the bees. “The yellow ones are jackets, an' she shore hates them.”

“She! Who's she?” queried Lucy.

“Wal, I call the wild bees she. Reckon because I've caught an' tamed queen bees. Shore that's some job.”

“I remember now. You told me in rainy season the yellow jackets fought and killed the wild bees and stole their honey. These yellow bees are the ones. They're pretty, but they're mean looking.”

“Hold still,” said Edd suddenly. “There's a wild bee, the kind I'm goin' to line today. He lit by that little stone.”

“I see him,” whispered Lucy.

“Wal, now look close. Is he drinkin' or movin' his legs in the water? You see he's just at the edge. Look at his knees. See the little yellow balls. That's wax.”

“How funny!” said Lucy, laughing. “Why, his legs look deformed, burdened with those balls. Where does he carry his honey?”

“I NEVER was shore, but I reckon in his mouth. Some bee hunters think the yellow balls are honey. I never did. It tastes like wax.”

“It's beeswax. I know what that is. But where does the bee use it?”

“Shore you'll see that when I cut down a bee tree.”

Apart from Lucy's great sympathy with the singular passion this wild-bee hunter had for his calling, she was quite fascinated on her own account. It needed very little to stimulate Lucy's interest, especially in a problem or mystery, or something that required reason, study, perseverance to solve. She was getting acquainted with bees. The yellow jackets were lively, aggressive, busybody little insects that manifestly wanted the place to themselves. The wild bees had a very industrious and earnest look. At the approach of yellow jackets, they rose and flew, to settle a little farther away. Lucy espied bees all along the edge of the water. The big one Edd had called her attention to flew away, and presently another took its place. Lucy wished for a magnifying glass, and told Edd that if they had one, they could tell exactly what the bee was doing there.

“By George!” ejaculated Edd in most solemn rapture. “Shore we could. I never thought of that. Wal, I never even heard of a glass that'd magnify. Where can we get one?”

“I'll fetch you one from Felix.”

“Lucy, I reckon I don't want you to go, but I'd shore love to have that kind of a glass.”

“Why don't you want me to go?” asked Lucy gayly.

“IT'S hard to say. I've heard the folks talkin'. Ma thinks it grand for Mertie. But I'm not so shore. Reckon Mertie will have a grand time. You're awful good to take her. But won't she get her head full of notions about clothes an' city boys?”

“Edd, you're worrying a lot, aren't you?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“Haven't you faith in me? I'm going to satisfy Mertie's passion for pretty things. Once in her life! And I'm going to see that Bert Hall goes with us.” Lucy raised on her elbows to mark the effect of this statement upon her companion.

For once his stoicism was disrupted. He seemed thunderstruck. Then his dark face beamed and his gray eyes shone with the piercing light Lucy found hard to face. “Wal! Who in the world's ever goin' to make up to you for your goodness?”

“Edd, it's not goodness exactly,” returned Lucy, somewhat affected by his emotion. “It's not my welfare work either. I guess I'll get more out of it than Mertie and Bert—real happiness, you know.”

“Shore. But I know what I think.”

Lucy dropped back to study the bees. A number of the wild species had settled down right under her eyes.

They were of different sizes and hues, and the very smallest carried the largest balls of wax on his knees. She strained her eyes to see perfectly, and was rewarded by sight of an almost imperceptible motion of both their heads and legs.

“Edd, I believe they drink and wet their wax—both—at the same time.”

“Wal, shore I've reckoned that often. Now get up an' watch me line a bee.”

This brought Lucy to her feet with alacrity. Edd's voice sounded a note entirely at variance with his usual easy, cool, drawling nonchalance. About most things he was apparently indifferent, but anything pertaining to his beloved bee hunting touched him to the quick.

“Now you stand behind me an' a little to one side,” he directed. “An' we'll face toward that far point on the Rim. Eagle Rock, we call it. Most of the bees here take a line over there.”

Suddenly he pointed. “See that one.”

Though Lucy strained her eyes, she saw nothing. The wide air seemed vacant.

“DON'T look up so high,” he said. “These bees start low. You've shore got to catch her right close. There goes another.”

“I'm afraid my eyes aren't good,” complained Lucy, as she failed again.

“No; keep on lookin'. You'll line her in a minute.”

Just then Lucy caught sight of a tiny black object shooting over her head, and darting with singularly level, swift flight straight away. It did not appear to fly. It swept.

“Oh, Edd, I see one. He's gone.”

“Shore. You've got to hang your eye onto her.”

Lucy caught a glimpse of another speeding bee, lost it, and then sighted another. She held this one in view for what seemed an endless moment. Then having got the knack of following, she endeavored to concentrate all her powers of vision. Bee after bee she watched. They had a wonderful, unvarying flight. Indeed she likened them to bullets. But they were remarkably visible. No two bees left the water hole together. There was a regularity about their appearance.

“Wal, you're doin' fine. You'll shore make a bee hunter,” said Edd. “Now let's face west awhile.”

Lucy found this direction unobstructed by green slope and red wall. It was all open sky. A line of bees sped off, and Lucy could follow them until they seemed to merge into the air.

“Why do some bees go this way, and some that other way?” she queried.

“SHE belongs to different bee trees. She knows the way home better than any other livin' creature. Can't you see that? Straight as a string! Reckon you never heard the old sayin', 'makin' a bee line for home.'”

“Oh, is that where that comes from?” ejaculated Lucy, amused. “I certainly appreciate what it means now.”

“Now shift back to this other bee line,” instructed Edd. “When you ketch another follow her till you lose her, an' then tell me where that is. Mark the place.”

Lucy made several attempts before she succeeded in placing the disappearance of a bee close to the tip of a tall pine on the distant ridge.

“Wal, that's linin' as good as ever Mertie or Allie,” asserted Edd, evidently pleased, and he picked up his gun and bucket. “We're off.”

“What do we do now?” queried Lucy.

“Can't you reckon it out?”

“Oh, I see. We've got the bee line. We follow it to that pine tree where I lost the last bee.”

“Right an' exactly,” drawled Edd.

“Oh, what fun! It's like a game. Then where do we go?”

“Wal, I can't say till we get there.”

“We'll watch again. We'll sight more bees. We'll get their line. We'll follow it as far as we can see—mark the spot—and then go on,” declared Lucy excitedly.

“Lucy, your granddad might have been a wild-bee hunter,” said Edd, with an approving smile.

“He might, only he wasn't,” laughed Lucy. “You can't make any wild-bee hunter of me, Edd Denmeade.”

“Shore, but you might make one of yourself,” drawled Edd.

Lucy had no reply for that. Falling in behind him as he headed across the clearing, she pondered over his words. Had they been subtle, a worthy response to her rather blunt double meaning, or just his simplicity, so apt to hit the truth? She could not be sure, but she decided hereafter to think before she spoke.

EDD crossed the clearing and plunged into the forest. As he entered the timber Lucy saw him halt to point out a tree some distance ahead. This of course was how he marked a straight line. Lucy began to guess the difficulty of that and the strenuous nature of traveling in a straight line through dense and rugged forest. She had to scramble over logs and climb over windfalls; she had to creep through brush and under fallen trees; she had to wade into ferns as high as her head and tear aside vines that were as strong as ropes.

They reached the bank above the roaring brook. As Edd paused to choose a place to get down the steep declivity, Lucy had a moment to gaze about her. What a wild, dark, deep glen! The forest monarchs appeared to mat overhead and hide the sun. The ruggedness of Nature, of storm and flood, of fight to survive manifested itself all around her.

“Wal, shore if you can't follow me, you can squeal,” shouted Edd above the roar of the brook.

“Squeal! Me? Never in your life,” replied Lucy, with more force than elegance. “If I can't follow you, I can't; that's all. But I'll try.”

“Reckon I didn't mean squeal as you took it,” returned Edd; and without more ado he plunged in giant strides right down the bank.

Lucy plunged likewise, fully expecting to break her neck. Instead, however, she seemed to be taking seven-league-boot steps in soft earth that slid with her. Once her hands touched. Then, ridiculously easily, she arrived at the bottom of the forty-foot embankment. Most amusing of all was the fact that Edd never even looked back. Certainly it was not discourtesy, for Edd was always thoughtful. He simply had no concern about her accomplishing this descent.

Crossing the brook had more qualms for Lucy; and when she saw Edd leap from one slippery rock to another, she thought it was a good thing she had been put on her mettle. Edd reached the other side without wetting a foot. Lucy chose bowlders closer together and, by good judgment added to luck, she got safely across, though not without wet boots.

Then she climbed after Edd up a bank of roots that was as easy as a ladder, and thence on into the forest again. A thicket of pine saplings afforded welcome change. How subdued the light, how sweet the scent of pine! Edd broke the dead branches and twigs as he passed, so that she did not have to stoop. Soon the hum of the brook died away. Footsteps on the soft needles gave forth no sound. Silent, shaded, lonely, this pine swale appealed strongly to Lucy. Soon it ended in a rough, open ridge of cedar, oak and occasional pine, where Edd's zigzag climb seemed steep and long. It ended in an open spot close to a tree Lucy recognized.

“And I thought—we'd never—get here,” panted Lucy.

“That was easy. Can you pick out where we stood down in the clearin'?”

LUCY gazed down the slope, across the green thicket, and then the heavy timber marking the channel of the brook, on to the open strip, bright with its red sumac.

“Yes, I see the water,” she replied.

“Wal, turn your back to that an' look straight the other way an' you'll soon get our—bee line.”

She had not stood many moments as directed before she caught the arrowy streak of bees, flying straight over the ridge. But owing to the background of green, instead of the sky that had served as background, she could not follow the bees very far.

“Here's where we make easy stages,” remarked Edd, and started on.

Open ridge and hollow occupied the next swift hour. Lucy had enough to do to keep up with her guide. The travel, however, was not nearly so rough as that below, so that she managed without undue exertion.

Edd's easy stages proved to be short distances from mark to mark, at every one of which he took pleasure in having Lucy again catch the bee line.

“When are you going to burn the honey in your bucket?” asked Lucy once, happening to remember what Edd had told her.

“I don't know. Maybe I won't have to,” he replied. “If I lose the bee line then I'll need to burn honey.”

“It seems, if things keep on as they are, you'll lose only me,” observed Lucy.

“Tired?”

“Not a bit. But if I had to keep this up all day I might get tired.”

“We'll eat lunch under the bee tree—when we find it.”

“That's most welcome news. Not because I want the hunt to be short at all; I'm having the time of my life. But I'm hungry.”

“It's always good to be hungry when you're in the woods,” he informed her.

“Why?” she asked.

“BECAUSE when you do get to camp or back home, near starved to death, everythin' tastes so good, an' you feel as if you never knew how good food is.”

Lucy was beginning to appreciate what this philosophy might mean in more ways than applied to hunger. It was good to starve, to thirst, to resist, to endure.

The bee line led to the top of a slope, and a hollow deeper, rougher than any of the others, and much wider. Edd lined the bees across to the timber on the summit of the ridge beyond, but he was concerned because there appeared so little to mark the next stage. The pines on that side were uniform in size, shape and color. There were no dead tops or branches.

“Now this is easy, if we go straight down an' up,” said Edd. “But if we go round, head this hollow, I reckon I might lose our bee line.”

“Why should we go round?” inquired Lucy.

“Because that'd be so much easier for you,” he explained.

“THANKS. But did you hear me squeal? Remember, if I fall by the wayside—I mean by the bee line—that my spirit was willing, but my flesh was weak.”

“Humph! Sometimes I don't know about you, Lucy Watson,” he said dubiously.

Edd zigzagged up the slope, and the turns were so abrupt that Lucy began for the first time to feel a strain. Edd saw it, and paused every few moments to give her time to regain breath and strength. He did not encourage her to waste either in speech.

At last they surmounted the great timbered incline. Lucy fell on a pine mat, so out of breath that she gasped.

But she was proud of this achievement already. With her breath regained, and that pain gone from her side, she was not the least the worse for her exertion. Indeed she felt strong and eager to pursue the bee line to its end.

The beautiful open forest was soon to end in a formidable rocky cañon, not more than half a mile wide, but very deep and rugged. Lucy stood on the verge and gazed, with her heart in her eyes.

It was a stunning surprise. The deep gorge notched the Rim. Red and yellow crags, cliffs, ledges and benches varied with green slopes were all steps down and down to the black depths. A murmur of running water soared upward.

“Dog-gone!” ejaculated Edd. “Shore I was hopin' we'd find our bee tree on this side of Doubtful cañon. I reckon you can't make it.”

“Suppose I do make it, can we go home an easier way?”

“Shore. I can find easy goin', downhill all the way,” replied Edd.

“Well, then, I propose we rest here and have our lunch. Then cross. Before we start, though, you might let me see you burn some honey. Just for fun.”

THIS plan met with Edd's approval. Just below they found a huge, flat ledge of rock, projecting out over the abyss. Part of it was shaded by a bushy pine, and here Edd spread the lunch.

Then while Lucy sat down to eat he built a tiny fire out on the edge of the rock. Next he placed a goodly bit of honey on a stone close enough to the fire to make it smoke. “Pretty soon we'll have some fun,” he said.

“Wrong! We're having fun now—at least I am,” retorted Lucy.

“Wal, then, I mean some more fun,” he corrected.

Whereupon they fell with hearty appetite upon the ample lunch Mrs. Denmeade had provided. Edd presently said he heard bees whiz by. But a quarter of an hour elapsed before any bees actually began to drop down over the smoking honey. Then Edd poured some of the honey out on the rock. The bees circled and alighted. More came and none left Lucy asked why they did not fly away.

“Makin' pigs of themselves,” he said. “But soon as they get all they can hold they'll fly.”

By the time the lunch was finished a swarm of bees of different sizes and hues had been attracted to the honey, and many were departing. As they came from different directions, so they left. Edd explained this to be owing to the fact that these bees belonged to different trees.

“Do all these wild bees live in trees?” she asked.

“All but the yellow jackets. They have holes in the ground. I've seen where many holes had been dug out by bears. Wal, we played hob with the lunch. An' now I reckon it's high time we begin our slide down this cañon.”

“Slide? Can't we walk?”

“I reckon you'll see. It'll be a slidin' walk,” averred Edd. “Shore I'm goin' to have all the fun I can, 'cause you'll shore never go anywheres with me again.”

“My! How terrible this sliding walk must be. But I might fool you, Edd. I've decided to go to the dance with you, an' let Clara go with Joe.”

“Aw! That's nice of you,” he replied with frank gladness. His face lighted at some anticipation. “Joe will shore be proud.”

He walked out upon the ledge to get his bucket, driving the bees away with his sombrero; and when he had secured it, he took a last, long look across the cañon. Lucy noticed what a picture he made, standing there, tall, round-limbed, supple, his youthful, leonine face sharp against the sky. He belonged there. He fitted the surroundings. He was a development of forest and cañon wilderness. The crudeness once so objectionable to her was no longer manifest. Was it because of change and growth in him, or in her? Lucy fancied it was the latter. Edd had vastly improved, but not in the elemental quality from which had sprung his crudeness.

“SHE'LL be right across there,” he said, pointing with long arm. “I can line her halfway 'cross. Reckon I see the tree now. It's an oak, sort of gray in color, standin' on a ledge. An' it's got a dead top an' one big, crooked branch. I'll go ahead, so when you come slidin' I can grab you,” he said.

At first the descent, though steep, was easy enough. But 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!

“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.

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. Then she 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 gazed fearfully below. The next stage, to another bench, seemed still steeper, and one beyond 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 onto me,” added Edd, as again he started. “That's not the way. We'll both slip, ain' 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.”

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 realized 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 was 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 débris 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 laboring 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 the 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.

An hour later Lucy perched upon a ledge high above the cañon, exhausted and ragged, triumphant and gay, gazing aloft at a gray 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 incrusted with a yellow substance—beeswax. It surrounded the hole and extended some distance along the under side, changing the gray color 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. When Edd came to her, 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' swelling,” he replied kindly.

He gazed thoughtfully down upon her. “You stuck to me better than any girl I ever took on a bee hunt. I'm shore goin' to tell everybody. Pa an' ma will be tickled. 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 she 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 gayly 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.”

XII

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.

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. 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 halfway 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 characterized 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,” returned 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 serious sweetness. “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 endeavored 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 sure not, 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 I—— 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 has good stuff in her, as I guessed, and she really cares 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 tomorrow 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 than 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 tomorrow to answer for herself. The clamor of the children was subdued by the delivery of sundry presents from town. For that matter, Lucy did not forget any of the Denmeades. She had remembered what joy a gift brought to them, one and all.

For Edd, with particular thoughtfulness, 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.

“Lucy, I've news for you. Mr. Denmeade told me that both the Claypools and Johnsons had complained to him because he was keeping you here so long. They say you're partial to the Denmeades, and that if you don't go to them soon, they'll report you. I hope it's not possible for them to hurt you.”

LUCY had expected to hear this very news. While in Felix she had anticipated it, and prepared her employers for complaints of this nature.

“They can't hurt me, Clara,” she rejoined soberly. “I made this job, and I can handle it to suit myself. But the Claypools and Johnsons are right. I am partial to the Denmeades, so far. I always meant to be fair, and I shall try to be. Circumstances, however, make my duty harder than I thought it would be. Indeed I was fortunate to come here first. I owe my success to that. Now I've got to face the music. We'll ride down to Claypools and then to Johnsons, and arrange to go to them in the spring and summer. But we'll return here in the fall.”

“We! Must I go with you?” exclaimed Clara.

“Must you? Why, Clara, of course you must go with me,” declared Lucy in amaze. “Whatever are you thinking of? How could I get along without you now?”

“I—I thought you might let me stay here,” replied Clara, with confusion rare in her. “These Denmeades have put something back in my heart. To live near that Sam Johnson would drive me wild. Mrs. Denmeade says the Spralls are bad, and Edd says you'll go there despite him or all of us. I met Bud Sprall one day when I was hunting squirrels with Joe. He was at the dance we went to in September. I caught him looking at me. And you should have seen him looking at me when I was with Joe. Lucy, he couldn't have heard about me, could he?”

“I don't see how,” declared Lucy emphatically. “'Way up here in this wilderness? Impossible! I did not hear about you even in Felix. I met all our old friends. But no one even hinted of what you fear.”

Clara received this information with a stress of feeling disproportionate to its importance, Lucy thought, and she seemed singularly grateful for it.

“Lucy, there's bad blood between Edd and this Bud Sprall,” went on Clara. “I've heard things not intended for my ears. You've got to hold in your wild-bee hunter, or he'll kill Bud Sprall.”

“CLARA, I called Edd Denmeade my wild-bee hunter just for fun,” protested Lucy. “I—I thought it would amuse you. But, goodness, he's not mine; that's ridiculous. And I'm not responsible for his feuds. He hated Bud Sprall before I ever came here.”

“That's perfectly true, Lucy, but the fact remains Edd is yours, whether you want him or not. And you can keep him from killing this fellow.”

“What have I got to do?” demanded Lucy flippantly. “I suppose you'll suggest that I—I throw myself into Edd's arms to keep him from becoming a murderer.”

“It'd be noble welfare work, wouldn't it? And you like the boy!”

“I don't like him so much as that,” muttered Lucy doggedly.

“Well, then, you're as fickle as I used to be. For when you came back from the bee hunt with Edd last month, you were in love, or else I don't know that little old disease.”

Next day Lucy was too devoted to getting settled and taking up the threads of her work to face at once the serious self-scrutiny that was inevitable. She welcomed any excuse to postpone it. Besides, she was weary of introspection. She felt like a fluttering leaf attached to a shaking twig, and soon to be at the mercy of the storm. Always something was going to happen, but so far as she could tell, it had not happened yet. Clara was an enigma. Despite the marvelous improvement in her, Lucy could not dispel a vague dread. It was intuitive, and resembled the shadow of a sword over her head.

She had a frank talk with Denmeade about the Claypools and the Johnsons. The old backwoodsman was honest and fair in his attitude toward them, in his statement of how much more they needed Lucy now than his own family.

Late that afternoon Mertie and Bert arrived in their best Felix clothes, mysteriously radiant. They had timed their arrival for an hour when the whole family was at home.

When Lucy presented herself to the family on the porch the wild excitement had subsided.

“RECKON the boys an' girls will storm Mertie tomorrow, shore,” Denmeade was saying. “An' you want to make ready for a high old time.”

Lucy mounted the porch to gaze about her, smiling, with pretended surprise. “What's all the fun about?” she inquired.

“Wal, now, Miss Lucy,” ejaculated Denmeade, rising, and actually taking off his hat; then he seized her hand in his big rough ones and beamed down on her, his brown, grizzled face as rugged as the bark of a pine, yet expressive of the deepest feeling. “Wal, now, you played hob!”

That was all he had time to say before the children enveloped Lucy, and Allie and Mrs. Denmeade for once manifested their womanly appreciation of her goodness to them. The boys were undemonstrative. Dick stood like a tall sapling, outlined against the open sky. Joe sat in the background against the wall, quiet-eyed, intent. Edd had evidently just come home, for his ragged leather chaps and his jeans bore substance and odor of the woods. He stood behind Mertie, who sat on the edge of the table, pale with the passion of her importance and the sensation she had created. She had her hands back of her, holding to Edd's. The bright silk dress contrasted strangely with the subdued colors around her. Bert stood, foot on a bench, elbow on his knee, gazing adoringly down upon his bride. His gaudy necktie matched her gown.

“Howdy, city girl,” drawled Edd to Lucy. He gave her no other greeting.

The deep gaze accompanying his words was embarrassing and baffling to Lucy. She laughed and retorted, “Howdy, wild-bee hunter.”

Thereupon Mertie launched again into the wild and whirling recital that evidently Lucy's arrival had broken for the moment.

WHEN presently she paused for breath, Bert announced to Denmeade, “Pa turned over the sawmill to me. Weddin' present!”

“Dog-gone me!” ejaculated father-in-law Denmeade vociferously. “If you ain't lucky, gettin' the mill an' Mert at one lick.

“Wal, to talk business, we've been runnin' up a log cabin for Joe's homestead, over on the mesa. 'Crost the gully from Edd's place. An' I'm wonderin' if you can saw an' deliver a lot of floor boards, door frames an' such.”

“I just can, you bet,” declared the young man. “Give me your order. I'll deliver lumber at foot of the mesa trail in less than a week.”

“Fine! You're a Jasper for rustlin'. Shore I expected to pack the lumber up on the burros. Long job, but Dick an' Joe can drive the pack while the rest of us work. Edd expects to be done cuttin' for honey soon. Then he can help. We'll have Joe's cabin done by the time snow flies.”

“Get pencil an' paper, so we can figure out just what lumber you want.”

Father and son-in-law went into the kitchen, while Mertie broke into further elaboration of her romance. Lucy remained a few moments longer, fascinated by the rapt faces of the listening Denmeades, especially Edd. He seemed transfigured. Lucy suffered a twinge of remorse for having considered him a clod. How tremendously he had been affected by this happy settling of Mertie's affairs! More than once Lucy had heard it said that a Denmeade married was safe. Presently Lucy returned to her tent and unfinished tasks.

SUPPER was not ready until dusk, a fact which testified to the upsetting of the household. Then the lack of the usual bountiful meal was made up for by merriment. Lucy felt glad to free herself from an excitement that had begun to wear on her nerves. Moreover, she needed to be alone. As she passed Clara and Joe sitting on the porch steps she could just catch the gleam of their faces in the dim lamplight, Clara's pensive and sweet, and Joe's locked in its impassive, youthful strength. Oh, boy and girl! thought Lucy with a pang. They could not help themselves. One called to the other. Clara's tragic girlhood was fading into a past that was gone. She had to live, to breathe, to move; and this wilderness called to primitive emotions.

As Lucy halted a moment to pay her usual silent tribute to the black rim above and the stars of white fire, she heard the gate creak, and then a quick step and jingle of spurs.

“Wait,” called Edd, with a ring in his voice. He could see her in the dark when she could not see him.

The word, the tone halted her, and she seemed conscious of a sudden inward stilling. His tall form appeared, blacker than the darkness, and loomed over her. Involuntarily Lucy took a backward step. Then Edd clasped her in his arms.

It was like the hug of a bear. Lucy's arms were pinned to her sides, and she was drawn so close she could scarcely catch her breath. A terrible weakness assailed her—not of anger, not of resentment! It was something else, strangely akin to a mingling of amaze and relief. Caught at last in her own toils!

“Oh—Edd,” she whispered, meaning to beg to be let go, but she never completed the appeal. Her arms moved instinctively upward, until stopped by the giant clasp that held her. What had she meant to do? How her mind whirled! He did not speak, and the moment seemed an age.

SHE felt the ripple of his muscles and the rough flannel of his shirt against her cheek. The scent of pine and honeybees and the woodland clung to his clothes. Lucy quivered on the brink of a tumultuous unknown.

Suddenly his arms uncoiled. Lucy swayed a little, not sure of her equilibrium.

“Shore I had to,” he gasped huskily. “Words don't come easy—for me. God bless you for savin' Mertie.”

He plunged away into the blackness, his boots thumping, his spurs clinking. Lucy stood motionless, gazing into the gloom where he had vanished. Her heart seemed to take a great drop. Shivering, she went into the tent.

There she swiftly put a few knots of wood into the stove, set the damper, blew out the lamp, and hurriedly undressed for bed.

The darkness and the blankets were comforting. A faint crackle of burning wood broke the silence and tiny streaks of firelight played upon the tent walls.

“It was for Mertie he held me in his arms,” whispered Lucy.

And she had taken it for herself. His gratitude had betrayed her. Lucy realized now that if her arms had been free she would have lifted them round his neck. She had not known what she was doing. But now she knew she loved him—Edd Denmeade, backwoodsman, wild-bee hunter. She suffered no shame in that. Indeed there was a hidden voice deep within her ready to ring the truth. She had sought to save, and she had lost herself.

(Concluded in the May Home Journal)