Backwoods Girl Page 9

  “Loan my eye! They’re yours to keep, you silly child,” said Lorna. “I’ll bring you some more next week. You might find something that would tempt you to come down and visit me.”

  Cindy’s lovely face closed and became expressionless. “No’m, I reckin that ain’t likely,” she said stubbornly.

  Lorna bade her goodbye, and as she crossed the door yard and reached the edge of the trail, she glanced back to see Cindy still in the open doorway and the girl’s hand lifted in a shy, child-like gesture. Like a baby waving bye-bye, Lorna told herself as she returned the gesture and went on down the trail, deep in thought.

  CHAPTER 10

  Lorna came around the store to where the sound of an axe chopping lustily had drawn her. For a moment she stood unnoticed, watching Jim as he chopped, swinging the sharp double-edged axe with a strength and an enthusiasm that widened her eyes a little.

  Finally, as he straightened and wiped the back of a gloved hand across his forehead, beaded with the sweat of his labors despite the late-afternoon cold, he became aware of Lorna watching him.

  “Oh, hello.” His tone was curt, his eyes questioning.

  “Storekeeper told me you were around here, destroying the effect of years of careful training on the part of mountain husbands. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Night Riders took after you and ‘ran you clear out of the county.”

  “Marthy insisted on doing my laundry, so I insisted on chopping the wood for the stove,” he answered coolly. “Seemed only fair.”

  “I suppose.” Lorna’s smile was warm and coaxing. “I hope you’re working up a terrific appetite. Dinner’s going to be something pretty special tonight. Venison.”

  “Really? Am I invited?”

  “Well, what a question! Do you think I’d be cooking venison just for myself? If so, that proves you don’t know what a chore it is,” Lorna assured him.

  “I suppose you shot it yourself?”

  “Thanks! I didn’t, of course. A friend of Storekeeper’s got a seven-antler buck and, of course, it’s against the law to sell deer meat which is, of course, a matter of no importance whatever, except it makes the meat taste better. Or so Storekeeper assures me.” Lorna’s manner was gay and friendly, as though last night they had not quarrelled and separated in mutual anger. “Shall I expect you in about an hour?”

  “Why not? And thanks.”

  “For what?” She gave him a long, provocative look, and Jim felt his blood leap, despite the chill of the afternoon, as she turned and walked away, hands jammed in her mackinaw pockets, her hips moving with a deliberately seductive swing.

  He turned back at last and finished his task. He filled his arms with a load so heavy that he staggered slightly as he made his way to the kitchen and filled the wood box behind the stove.

  Marthy, busy with supper preparations, thanked him shyly, not quite sure even now that it was entirely respectable to allow a man to chop firewood for her, and Jim grinned.

  “I won’t be here for supper, Marthy—,” he began.

  Marthy sniffed. “I wasn’t expectin’ ye,” she said curtly. “I ‘seen Miss Blake buyin venison steaks a while ago. It’s right tasty eatin’, effen ye know how to cook it. Ain’t cooked right, tastes like wild goat meat.”

  Jim made no attempt at an answer, knowing none was expected.

  A little later, shaved and wearing clean linen, he went up the steps of Lorna’s cabin. As the door swung open, and Lorna, gay and fresh-looking in her full-skirted, tight-bodiced calico house frock, greeted him with a warm kiss, and drew him into the snug, cheerful cabin.

  “Fix us a drink, angel-child, while I do whatever is necessary to finish up dinner,” she greeted him. “I’ve got the steaks and a salad, and I wheedled a pumpkin pie out of Marthy. Seein’s how she was a-cookin’ it fer you, anyway, she didn’t see no airthly reason how-come she shouldn’t sell it to me, seein’ you’d be a-eatin’ of it, anyway. How’m I doing with the mountain yakity-yak, by the way?”

  “Right well, ma’am, right durned well.” Jim matched her nasal whine. “Time I be’n up hyer a few mo’ weeks, I ain’t gonna be able to be understood effen I ever goes back to them flatlands.”

  Lorna clapped her hands over her ears in mock horror. “I can imagine the look on a judge’s face when you stand up and start to address the jury,” she laughed.

  Jim grinned at her, but his eyes were steady. “Since that’s something not likely to happen, we won’t worry about it at the moment. A drink, I believe you said?” He brushed the matter aside.

  Lorna lowered her eyes so that he would not see the flash of exasperation in them, and went back to the kitchen.

  When they were seated at the table and had agreed the venison steaks were not bad, but that neither of them could understand why hunters should get so enthusiastic about shooting deer, Lorna looked straight at him.

  “I went visiting today,” she announced.

  “Did you now? Marthy or Jennie Hayney?”

  “Neither. Cindy Grady,” said Lorna quietly.

  Jim’s eyes narrowed, and she saw his hand close on his knife and fork before he put them quietly down and leaned back, watching her. “And did she tell you where the Indian gold was buried?” he asked dryly.

  “Don’t be silly! I didn’t ask her, of course. I don’t imagine she knows. She told me about a bandit’s hoard that’s supposed to be all in gold bars, stamped with the mark of the U. S. Mint, hidden in a cave somewhere, but she assured me she has all the money she needs, so she isn’t interested in hunting for gold,” said Lorna. “Imagine that infant! All the money she needs! You should have seen her eyes pop when I handed her a ten-dollar bill.”

  “Oh? And would it be impolite to ask you why you gave her a ten-dollar bill?” he asked after a moment.

  “For one of her rugs, of course, and I bought another one for the same price. Jim, they are beautiful. Exquisite work, and the patterns are beautiful. And do you know what that tight-wad cheat Storekeeper pays the child for the same rug? A lousy dollar or two. Why, in town they would bring twenty-five dollars apiece easily,” said Lorna eagerly.

  Jim’s eyes on her were coolly measuring. “But you were bighearted, and you gave her ten dollars apiece!” he said.

  Despite the gentleness of Jim’s tone, there was a sting in the words. Lorna ‘s face flushed, and her green eyes blazed. “I gave her ten times what Storekeeper would have given her,” she pointed out.

  “And less than half what you can get for the rugs when you take them back to town,” Jim said in retaliation.

  “The rugs are to be used here in the cabin,” she said stiffly. “I plan to take one with me to show around, and see if I can’t get some orders for Cindy. I’m sure many of my friends will be delighted to buy her work, and don’t look so damned smug! Cindy will get every penny!”

  “Why are you so interested in Cindy, since you say you no longer believe she knows of any hidden Indian gold,” demanded Jim.

  Lorna shrugged carelessly, and her eyes would not quite meet his. “Because I can’t imagine anything more ghastly than the kind of life that child lives,” she said. “The appalling loneliness of it, the bleak poverty. She has some lovely old things up there that could be sold for enough money to give her a year’s schooling, and maybe some sort of training to earn her living somewhere where she could have a normal life like other girls her age.”

  Jim was thoughtful, but she saw by his expression that he did not agree with her. “Somehow, Lorna, I feel she is happier where she is—.”

  “What possible happiness could she know there?”

  “The happiness a woodland creature feels for its own burrow, in its own setting,” said Jim quietly. “Cindy reminds me of a small wild thing, free and untrammeled up there, living her own life, answerable to nobody, independent as the wind that blows. She told me she
has everything she wants—.”

  “She doesn’t even know how to want things! She’s never known anything but that old cabin and these mountains.”

  “You’ve got a point there,” Jim agreed reluctantly. “But somehow I’m convinced that she’s better off, happier, right where she is. So—let her alone, Lorna—please!”

  Lorna stared at him, wide-eyed. “Let her alone? Jim, for Pete’s sake, I’m only being kind to the girl. I took her some magazines, and asked her to visit me in town, so that I could outfit her with proper clothes and show her the sights. What’s wrong with that?” she demanded, honestly puzzled and resentful.

  “Nothing I suppose,” he admitted. “It’s kind of you and all that. But—well, somehow it would be like caging a wild bird.”

  Lorna studied him with sudden sharpness. “Jim, you’re not making a fool of yourself, are you?” she demanded.

  “Sounds quite probable,” he admitted. “I often have.”

  “Are you falling in love with Cindy?” she prodded him.

  Jim straightened, and his eyes flashed. “Now that’s about the silliest thing I ever heard!”

  “I wonder!”

  “I saw the girl exactly once!”

  “But for a period of more than twenty-four hours, wasn’t it? One hell of a lot can happen in twenty-four hours—as I should know!”

  He grinned at her, striving to deny the faint hostility she was arousing in him. “Oh, but you’re different,” he reminded her.

  “Different from Cindy? I’m a woman. So is she.”

  “She’s a kid, Lorna, a child, an innocent, unsophisticated child.”

  “Now, that’s something else that makes me wonder! Is she? Judging from the free-tongued chatter of the mountain gals, it makes one think.”

  Jim could no longer hide his anger. “Oh, come now, you’re not going to accept the word of women like Marthy and Jennie about the kid!” he protested. “Jennie’s afraid Cindy’s going to marry her big oaf of a son.”

  “And Marthy? What’s sharpened her tongue?”

  “Oh, Marthy ‘s tongue was sharp at birth, and its been whetted by drudgery, the grinding poverty she’s always known, and the thick hide of Storekeeper.”

  Lorna’s eyes were still studying him sharply. “So you think all the gossip about Cindy is based on’ jealousy and envy,” she said slowly after a moment. “I’ve met the girl. She’s lovely, and she’s as seductive as Eve. Oh, I grant you she probably is unaware of her tremendous sex appeal, but the menfolks in these parts are not.”

  “I’m not sure just what you’re getting at,” said Jim stiffly.

  “Just that where there’s so much smoke, there’s usually at least a spark of fire,” Lorna told him.

  “Lorna, I’ve known a good many women,” Jim said earnestly. “In my—former profession I came up against women from just about all walks of life. I do feel that I know a little something about the sex, and I’d stake my life on Cindy’s child-like innocence and decency.”

  “Then why is she living like a hermit? Why is she so terrified when you mention the city and city folks to her? Why was she scared out of her wits when I invited her to visit me and let me show her the town? She told me she had been in a city, and she didn’t like it,” Lorna said.

  “She was born and brought up here by her grandmother, and I suppose towns scare her, just as captivity scares any wild young thing. Have you ever seen a young animal captured in its native wilds and placed for the first time on exhibition in a zoo? Its first reaction is absolute terror—but that doesn’t mean it has a guilty past,” Jim pointed out.

  Lorna stood up suddenly, her lovely face white and twisted with anger. “I need a drink,” she said curtly and mixed herself a stiff one. She asked whether he wanted one, but Jim held up his half-emptied glass and shook his head.

  She came back to her chair, drinking deeply, and then she stood looking down into the glass, turning it this way and that, so that the liquor swirled, catching light from the shaded lamp. Then she raised her eyes and looked straight at Jim.

  “Cindy is beginning to bore me,” she said. “How many more of these am I going to need?”

  “If I may coin a phrase,” Jim said mockingly, “why not let your conscience be your guide?”

  “Conscience hell! I told you when we first met that my conscience is a tough little devil, but he knows I’m boss,” she said. “Are you staying tonight? Or do I have to get drunk?”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “It’s not an order.”

  “All I ask is permission.”

  “That you have, and you damned well know it. Why else do you think I came up here this weekend?”

  Jim eyed her curiously. “You’re a fantastic person, Lorna. I’ve never known anyone quite like you.”

  “Yet you know all about women!”

  “I don’t know all about women. Just a little. I’m too stupid to really understand them, and too smart to try to.”

  She finished her drink, laughed at him provocatively, and moved towards the bedroom. “Give me ten minutes,” she said.

  “Make it five,” Jim urged, and his eyes were aflame.

  Lorna paused in the bedroom doorway, and with a sudden, lithe movement stepped out of her dress and stood before him, clad in brief panties and a wisp of a lace and chiffon bra. Without a word she held out her arms to him, and Jim moved swiftly and caught her close, his eyes avid as he caressed her. He could sense her awakening to a flaming desire that made her press herself closer to him, giving a small, whimpering cry as she crushed her mouth on his.

  Lorna was a hard woman to dispute with, but soft and pliable in lovemaking. She was sweet, and warm, and soft and scented. She was all woman.

  Later, when she had fallen into an exhausted slumber of fulfillment, Jim lay beside her, wide awake. She had been as gloriously satisfying, as exquisitely deft in her lovemaking as any woman he had ever known, but somehow, the completion of her surrender, superb as it had been, had not fully relieved him of a tension that made sleep stand far away from him.

  Careful not to disturb her, he slid out of bed and went into the living room, where the fire still burned. In lieu of the robe he did not have, he wrapped a blanket about himself and sat down in front of the fire, lighting a cigarette, his eyes on the flames.

  In spite of the hour of passionate abandonment and complete fulfillment he had just had with Lorna, his mind was full of Cindy. He was oddly disturbed at Lorna’s careless suggestion of taking Cindy to Atlanta with her. There was no reason why he should object. It was no business of his. Yet, Cindy seemed so innocently vulnerable, so virginally untaught. What might Lorna not teach the child? He realized, sitting there, that he did not want Lorna to have the chance to teach Cindy anything. Lorna, with her casual attitude towards matters of sex, was no fit companion for a girl like Cindy.

  Lorna had accused him of falling in love with Cindy, and he had laughed the idea to scorn. Yet, sitting here in the midnight hours, he realized that Cindy was somebody very special to him. He had a deeply protective feeling for her. He wanted to take care of her, cherish her, keep her safe from the murky paths that Lorna trod so gaily.

  For a little while he thought what it would be like to love Cindy, to know her as he knew Lorna, to hold her close and hard in his arms through dark, enchanted hours. To know every lovely inch of her delectable young body, to be married to Cindy! He was startled to realize suddenly that that was what he wanted. Not just to sleep with her, seduce her and then leave her, but to be married to her, to father her children, to live with her in the cabin near the top of Old Hungry to practice his profession here in this out-of-the-way place, for already he knew there was need for a lawyer who would have the interests of these mountain people at heart. Working with Cindy, married to Cindy, he accepted her statement that o
ne needed very little money in order to live as she wanted to live.

  In the cold grey light of dawn, Jim would have derided such thoughts. However, here in this warm, quiet room they clustered close, and he found them very attractive. He would educate Cindy, teach her to read books and all about the so-called better things of life. But even as the phrase crept into his mind, he grinned sardonically. Whatever he might be able to teach Cindy out of books, she would teach him a thousand times more out of her shy, innocent young heart.

  They could make a good life, even a fine life here. He was as sure of it, as sure as he was that he would see Cindy very soon; that he would begin his courtship as soon as Lorna had gone back to town. He would have to woo her carefully, win her confidence, lead her very gently and carefully, because she was such a shy, wild young thing. The very thought of such a courtship, and the way it must end was one that set his nerves throbbing and his pulse beating faster.

  CHAPTER 11

  MONDAY MORNING, soon after breakfast, Jim left his cabin and walked down towards the creek. He knew that Marthy was busy in the kitchen, and Storekeeper was engrossed in conversation with two shaggy-looking men who had arrived half an hour ago, and who were sitting in the store in front of the big stove which was glowing red.

  Jim had no wish to be seen, and he was taking precautions against the sharp eyes of anyone who might be curious about “the city feller.” He wanted no gossip about his visit to Cindy to be added to the ugly rumors that were abroad already about the girl.

  He crossed the creek on stepping stones, balancing carefully, for though the water moved too swiftly to freeze over, it was still bitterly cold, and a careless step might easily plunge him into it ankle-deep. On the far side, he glanced back and saw that a few more steps down a grade would take him out of sight of the store, and he began working his way towards Old Hungry, confident that somewhere out of sight of Jennie Hayney he would be able to cross the creek without being seen and approach the cabin where Cindy lived in bleak loneliness.

  There was no trail on this side of the creek, and the climb, once he had emerged from the gully that had hid him from the store, was steep and arduous. He paused now and then to get his breath and to feast his eyes on the splendor of the mountains that seemed to recede, fold on fold, until they were lost in the blueness of the sky. In summer it must be magnificent, he thought, but now, with all the trees bare except the eternal green of the tall pines and the cedars, it was awesome. No living thing moved in his view. Here and there, dimly seen in the morning sunlight that was thin and cold, he caught sight of a wisp of smoke that spoke of a human habitation tucked under a shelf of rock, or built against the very side of the mountain itself.