30,000 On the Hoof (12 page)

"Oh, if this--this only lasts!" cried Lucinda, and turned' to her work.

It was to find that her task did not prohibit visual and mental study of the changed wilderness.

She built a fire outdoors and put the large iron kettle upon it. How vividly this outdoor fire, the smell of smoke, and the kettle, recalled the autumn days at home when her mother made, peach jam and apple butter to preserve for winter! And hard on that succeeded the poignant pinch of her poverty. She' had nothing to preserve for winter except the wild grapes she had stolen from the turkeys.

While these grapes were stewing Lucinda happened to think of the potato crop, long given up by Logan as a failure. She took the forked spade from among Logan's few tools, and hurried out across the canyon to the shaded swale of black soil. It was a long, narrow acre lined by some big pine trees. The shrivelled potato-plants were hardly to be found in the grass and weeds, but the outline of the long rows could be discerned.

Lucinda shoved the spade deep under some dead vines and pried upwards.

The spade stuck in something hard. Pulling it out, she uncovered the hill, to expose great brown potatoes, one of which showed the wet marks where the fork had pierced. Lucinda fell upon her knees in virtual rapture to dig energetically with her hands. Potatoes! Could she be dreaming? In that single hill she unearthed nineteen, all solid, perfect, and some as large as quart measures. Missouri could not boast of such potatoes as these. That black soil--mast, Logan called it, a mould of leaf and pine needle--accounted for such growth. But Lucinda could not trust to this one hill. She dug up another, to exhume half a dozen enormous ones. Then she tried a hill in another row, and then another, with a like result. Evidently they had matured early in the rich soil before the hot spell came.

"Oh, it isn't all bad--Logan's luck!" she exclaimed, gladly. "What a pity he didn't find out before he left! He could have hauled a whole wagon-load to Flagg."

She carried some of the potatoes back to the cabin, thinking that she would endeavour to dig and sick the crop before Logan's return. By mid-afternoon she had filled all her crocks with the grape-jam. Then she milked the two cows Logan had put in the pen, after which she got her supper.

Sunset blazed gold and red down in the canyon, and when it faded the cool wind breathed down from the heights.

At dusk Lucinda barred herself in the cabin. Coyote had been her only companion before, but now she had the bright-eyed, crowing baby. The mother side of her felt like a lioness; there remained, however, that stifled but resurging nature of Lucinda Baker which she feared would never grow callous to loneliness, to solitude, to dread of elemental things and the worse ones of the imagination.

The wind did not rise and no wild beasts prowled about the cabin. Lucinda went to sleep and did not awaken until the hungry baby proclaimed his wants. When the smoky, still morning came, and Lucinda saw the white on the grass and the blanket of fog far down the canyon, she thought she had gained a victory over herself.

That day, in addition to her other tasks, Lucinda dug three rows of potatoes, and spread them out to dry. Before she stopped she found it back-breaking toil. Yet it had made her happy as cooking and washing and mending never had. The dank odour of the black soil, the feel of the potatoes, the hot sun pouring down, and the sweat on her brow--all proof that she had the vigour and the will, that she was indisputably a pioneer wife--these raw sensations, added to the uplifting ones of yesterday, made her perceive her lot in a stronger, clearer light, made her begin to build against the outrageous shocks that she knew must ensue.

Hour after hour Lucinda laboured in the field. If she halted occasionally to catch her breath or straighten her aching back, she gazed out at the ever-changing canyon scene. Sometimes she saw Logan's cattle down the grey stretch; often deer and turkeys watched her without fleeing; once a herd of elk, some with great antlered heads, rolled and cracked the stones on the slope. And every day the smoky veil of autumn deepened, the stillness grew more pronounced, the colours took on more fiery hues, the plaintive notes of birds heading south accentuated the silence. A living, breathing presence in the great forest seemed to hang suspended over them, waiting for a voice.

At last, on the eighth day, Lucinda sacked the final pile of potatoes; and she viewed the field with more than satisfaction. Huett's amaze and gladness would be divided between sight of this abounding yield of potatoes and realization of his wife's prodigious labours.

Lucinda finished strongly, but ruefully looked at her calloused palms and the capable, hands that had once been tender. She would never again see them white and soft, even if the dirt could be scrubbed out of the blistered skin. Her round arms were as brown as the oak leaves, and her tanned face had become impervious to the sun. The little wall-mirror told Lucinda that she was a handsomer woman than she had been a girl. But who was there to see her now? Logan never looked at her that way. Lucinda experienced a poignant return of the old yearning for friendly faces, gay voices, for the life that she had been brought up in. The old revolt against loneliness, against this bitter, forsaken range where she had blindly expected to find neighbours, women, close at hand, lifted its hydra-head and had to be cudgelled down. Neighbourly settlement of this land would never come in her day. She must resign that longing, she must make work, baby, and Logan fill her life. There was always compensation for loss. She believed in time she would find consolation in toil such as she had just ended.

That afternoon the sun had faded under a grey haze. Lucinda marked the change only at sunset, when she missed the rose and gold colours. She feared it might mean a change in the weather. Wet, heavy roads would slow Huett, if not detain him. Probably he was far on his way home now. She refused to be depressed by the untoward sign, did her chores as usual, and went to bed early.

Sooner or later Lucinda awakened. Apparently no sound had disturbed her rest. The child was asleep beside her. Coyote did not move. She listened.

And she became aware of such silence as had never before lain upon that cabin. She could not tell where the window was, which proved that the night outside was as black as pitch. The air felt appreciably warmer.

After a prolonged moment of suspense and uncertainty; a low rumble, almost indistinguishable, came up out of the south-west. It sounded far away. Lucinda wondered if it was a landslide somewhere in one of the canyons. Avalanches were heard infrequently, though they occurred in the spring or rainy season.

Moments dragged on. It came again--a faint rumble, as if made by a rolling rock. Then a long interval ensued before the next disturbance, which seemed closer, louder, and was unmistakably thunder. Could it be a belated thunderstorm, at the end of October? Then she remembered Logan's telling her that some of the worst storms known to the canyon country of Arizona slipped up at night heralded by a few insignificant rumbles of thunder.

Ah! Her arch-enemy, the wind! A long, strange sigh seemed to sift through the forest, on over the cabin, and down the canyon. It ceased. Lucinda strained her sensitive ears. Even the tips of the pines were silent. Then the still, oppressive heaviness and impenetrable blackness warned Lucinda that she had not sensed these before. Dread clamped down upon her.

Suddenly, lightning flared, weird and pale outside the window, to be followed almost instantly by an angry short clap of thunder. Lucinda gathered her endurance to withstand more; but there was no continued flash of lightning and roll of splitting clouds.

Instead the wind gained strength in volume. Its soft, low moan swelled to a steady wail that grew, seemed swallowed up in an oncoming roar. Lucinda trembled under her blankets. This storm could be no less than the belated equinoctial disturbance--in that latitude a dreadful onslaught of the elements.

A mighty roar of gale swooped over the canyon. Lucinda could sense that the fiercer stratum of wind passed over her cabin, missing all but the tops of the lofty pines. Above the tumult, up on the ridges, crash after crash split the din, witness to the fact that old and dead pines were falling like leaves before the blast.

But Lucinda knew that the autumnal hurricane was no respecter of pines, even like those in the prime of life which surrounded the canyon. She heard them creak, she felt their sway in the lift of the cabin. That one giant with the blasted top--she was positive that one would crash. What was happening up on the ridge-tops was now of no moment to her. The menace was close at hand.

A terrible splitting crack that drowned the uproar ended in an earth-jarring crash. Stones rattled down from the chimney. The cabin settled down from its leap, and the wind roared on as before, high up, with its steady whine punctuated by more shocks low down in the canyon.

Then the flood-gates of the black sky opened to add a roaring deluge of rain to the frenzy of the wind.

All the rest of the night Lucinda lay there stiffly, clutching her baby to her breast, until she was deaf and numb, insensible to pain and terror; the storm raged by and grey dawn broke.

Arising wearily, she uncovered the red coals of her fire and replenished it with chips and cones. She made breakfast and fed the baby before gathering courage enough to look out. She heard the sullen chafe of the flooded brook. When she unbarred and opened her door the sun had arisen, bright and steely.

Lucinda gazed out upon a changed canyon. The great pine had fallen so close to the cabin that some tips of its branches had broken against the wall. The other trees adjacent had withstood the gale. High up on the slopes windfalls were scattered about. The brook was a yellow river, swirling down the canyon, its muddy surface covered with driftwood and leaves. She would not be able to cross to milk the cows that day; and if Logan returned he would be compelled to camp on the other side. The glorious golden groves of aspen, the scarlet ravines, the patches of sumach, the thickets of oak and maple, only yesterday a mosaic of bronze and russet and purple, all appeared devastated of beauty and stood shrunken and drab under the cruel morning light. The drenched pines loomed dark, their foliage thinned of all their lacy brown. It was as if a blight had passed over the wilderness. Something was gone. The wind moaned its requiem in the tips of the pines. The still, warm, smoky, glamorous days, that seemed always afternoon, were as irretrievable as the fallen leaves.

Lucinda did not see how the sun could shine so brightly. The elements of Nature were as relentless as the beasts that clawed and ripped live flesh. Another season had come, the herald of winter. These changes had to be. The days and weeks and months rolled on in their inscrutable cycle. Life also had to go on; and human beings were like leaves tossed about in the turgid flood. A nameless, imponderable force lay heavy upon her.

Her depression wore away during the day, like the flooded brook, which gradually ran down to normal. With her endless tasks before her and the prospect of Logan's return nearing, Lucinda recovered from the shock.

Every vicissitude was leaving her stronger. She began to divine that there was a lesson to be taught through all this, if only she could find the courage and necessary intelligence to absorb it. Still she feared blindly that she might be beaten down into the submissiveness and lethargy of an ox, although her common sense repudiated this.

Next morning the brook had fallen low enough for Lucinda to ford it and milk the cows. At noon the sun was bright and warm. She emptied the sacks of potatoes and spread them to dry. Every few minutes she would halt in her task to gaze yearningly at the road to see if Logan was coming. He was long overdue. There was scarcely anything left to eat in the cabin...

That night she slept poorly and was restless when awake. The dawning of a fine, clear day usually cheered Lucinda, but this morning she seemed distraught. Her work did not take her mind off Logan's failure to arrive.

From anxiety she passed to dread.

He would be coming soon; she felt that. But she surrendered to an impulse to climb from the canyon to watch along the road.

She did not mind the journey, although little George was growing heavy.

When she reached the top and drew out on the main road she sank to rest on the same log where she had waited for Logan that day the oxen ran away with her. The spot appeared unfamiliar. After gazing about, she decided a better view could be obtained up on the rocky bluff above the canyon road. Pantingly she climbed the short distance.

From this location she could see the yellow road winding along the edge of the forest, and several miles beyond where it cut up over a bare ridge. As she watched, a moving white spot appeared. It was a prairie-schooner. The slow, snail-like movement attested to the team of oxen.

"Oh! it's Logan!" she cried, breathless with relief and joy. "Baby, here comes your daddy now!"

All at once Lucinda's queer, undefined dread vanished like a shadow over which the sun rose. How glad she was that she had come up to see him before he could reach home! It would be an hour yet before he turned off to descend into the canyon, and with so heavy a load he might be longer.

"But he mustn't see me here!" exclaimed Lucinda; suddenly confronted by her childish anxiety. She hurried down the bluff and into the weedy road.

Coyote had gone off chasing some animal. She called, but the dog did not return. As Lucinda went on; leaving the gate open, she wondered what Logan would say to the great fallen pine that had so nearly crushed the cabin? Probably he would take it practically, as he did nearly everything: "Gosh! that equinox laid a winter's firewood right at my door!" None the less, Lucinda felt that all was well again. It would be six months before he could leave her in the spring. Six long months without the dreaded lonely oppressiveness that had weighed upon her so heavily.