before we turn in.”
She walked under the pines, along the brook, out into the open. But she did not go far. The windfalls, the clumps of sage might harbor some of the varmints Logan feared. She looked back to see he had replenished the camp fire. He stood beside it, a tall dark stalwart figure, singularly fitting this unfamiliar scene. There appeared to be something wild and raw, yet thrilling about it. The flames lighted up the exquisite lacy foliage of the pines. Sparks flew upward. The great white wagon loomed like a spectre. Black always depressed Lucinda, but white frightened her. Logan stood there spreading his hands. . . . He was splendid, she thought. She could well transfer the love she had given him as a boy to the grown man, for Logan had matured beyond his years. In repose his face showed fine stern lines. He had suffered pain, hardship, if not grief. Lucinda’s fears of Logan vanished like the columns of smoke blowing away into the darkness. She had vague fears of this West and she divined they would be magnified and multiplied, but never would there be a fear of Logan Huett. Whatever it would cost her she was glad she had answered to his call for a mate, and she would try to make herself a worthy one.
She returned to the fire and warmed her hands over the blaze. How quickly the air had chilled!
“I never knew how good fire could feel,” she said, laughing.
“Ha! You said a lot.” Then he drew her to a seat on the log nearby. He removed his pipe and knocked the ashes from it. “Lucinda, I’m not much of a fellow to talk,” he said, earnestly, with the light from the fire playing on his dark strong face and in his clear gray eyes. “Sure, I’ll talk your head off about cattle and range, bears and cougars, Indians and all that’s wild. But I mean the—the deep things—the things here—” and he tapped his broad breast. “I’ve got them here, only they’re hard to say. . . . Anyway, words would never tell how I appreciate your leaving your people, your friends, and civilized comforts, to come out to this wild Arizona range. To be my wife—my pardner! It’s almost too good to be true. And I love you for it. . . . I reckon I was selfish to make you come to me and rush you at that. But you’ll forgive me when you see our ranch—the work that’s to be done—and winter coming fast. . . . You’re only a young girl, Lucinda. Only eighteen! And I feel shame to think what you must have overcome—before you accepted. But, my dear, don’t fear I’ll rush you into real wifehood, you know, like I did into marriage. All in good time, Lucinda, when you feel you know me as I am now, and love me, and want to come to me. . . . That’s all, little girl. Kiss me goodnight and go to your bed in our prairie-schooner.”
Lucinda did as she was bidden, relieved and comforted as she had not thought possible except after long trial. She peeped out to see Logan in the flickering firelight. Then she crawled under the warm woolen blankets. How strange! How marvelous to be there! She would not have exchanged that bed, and the canvas roof with its moving weird shadows, for the palace of a princess. But the wind moaned through the pines—moaned of the terrible loneliness, the distance, the wildness of this West.
Chapter Three
Lucinda awakened sometime in the night, coming out of a dream of a strange pale place, where she wandered down empty echoing streets, fearful lest she should be seen in her boy’s garb. The night was pitch dark and silent as the grave. The crickets, the wind, the brook had all but ceased their sounds. She was cold despite the blankets. She lay there shivering while the black canopy of the canvas changed to gray. Soon she heard sharp weird piercing yelps, wild and haunting.
Dawn came. The ring of an axe and splitting of wood told her that Logan had begun his work. Lucinda sat up with an impulse to go out and join him. But the keen air made her change her mind. When she heard a fire crackling, however, she threw back the blankets and hunted for her boots. By the time she had the second one laced her fingers were numb. She donned her coat, took her little bag and crawled out.
Logan was not in sight. Lucinda made for the fire. If it had felt good the night before what did it feel now? She had not known the blessing of heat. While she warmed her hands she gazed about. The grass was gray-white with frost; far across the open Logan appeared astride one of the horses, driving in the oxen. The sky in the east was ruddy, but the all-encompassing wall of pines appeared cold, forbidding. Logan had been thoughtful to put on a bucket of water to heat. Before he arrived at the camp Lucinda had washed her face and hands and combed her hair. This morning she braided it and let it hang.
“Howdy, settler,” she called to Logan.
“Well! Hello, red-cheeks! Say, but you’re good to see this morning. . . . How’d you rest?”
“Slept like a log. Awoke once, after a queer dream. I was in a deserted town wandering about in these pants. What made those barks I heard?”
“Coyotes. I like to hear them. But wolves make me shiver. I saw the track of a big lofer out there.”
“Lofer?”
“That’s local for wolf. Perhaps that track was made by Killer Gray. He’s got a black ruff, Lucinda. I’ll shoot him and cure his hide for a rug. We must live off the land.”
Lucinda helped him prepare breakfast. Afterward, while Logan hitched the oxen to the wagon Lucinda went after the second horse. He was not easy to catch and the best she could do was to drive him into camp where Logan secured him. The exercise made her blood tingle, but she was glad to warm hands and feet at the fire. The red in the east paled and the sun arose steely. Logan, remarking that the day was not going to be so good, advised Lucinda to procure her gloves and put a blanket on the seat.
Presently the oxen were swinging on, tirelessly, their great heads nodding in unison. Lucinda marveled at them. How patient, how plodding these gentle beasts of burden! She had her first inkling of the value of such animals to the settlers in the wilderness. Thick woods swallowed up the wagon and claimed it for hours. But Lucinda was more at ease because the cold wind was shut off and the sun shone now and then.
“Move over here and take your lesson,” said Logan, at length, and put the whip in Luanda’s hands.
“What’ll I do?” she asked, breathlessly.
“Drive,” he replied, laconically.
Before she realized it Lucinda was piloting a prairie-schooner. The oxen went along as well for her as for Logan. But what would she do when he left the wagon to handle the cattle? “It’s easy,” said Logan. “Much easier than driving a team.”
“But suppose they do something,” protested Lucinda.
“Yell ‘whoa’ when you want them to stop, ‘gee’ when you want to go to the right, ‘haw’ to the left, and when you start up—a crack of the whip and ‘gidap,’” replied Logan, with suppressed mirth.
“It’s not so funny,” said Lucinda petulantly. “It looks too easy. They do go right along—but it’s straight road. What if a herd of buffalo or band of Indians broke out of the woods. . . .”
“That sure wouldn’t be funny. But the buffalo are gone, Lucinda, and we put the Apaches on the reservation. Reminds me of Matazel.”
“Who was he?” asked Lucinda a little fearfully.
“Young Apache buck. Said to be one of old Geronimo’s sons. He sure didn’t favor that ugly old devil. Matazel looks a noble red man if ever an Indian gave reason for such a fool idea. Lucinda, the Navajo braves caught your fancy. Matazel would have done that and more. He had gray eyes—the most wonderful eyes! Wild, bright, fierce! I’ll never forget the look in them when he tapped me on the breast and said: ‘Matazel live—get even!’”
