A few days later, Wayde and Lynn walked down the path through the woods to the spot where Bert had displayed the gun to Lynn and had told the story that had set Wayde free.
He walked with his arm about her, and they moved slowly, their heads bent. It was as though they walked in a world, new-minted of summer gold, that was all their own.
A faint rustling in the bushes finally penetrated the lovely haze of Lynn’s senses, and she stopped so suddenly that Wayde’s arm tightened about her and he looked down at her anxiously.
“What is it, darling? Did you see a snake?” he asked. But Lynn was looking straight toward the wall of low-growing bushes from which the rustling had come. It was as though she did not even hear Wayde’s anxious question. And then she smiled toward the bushes and called softly, “Is that you, Bert?”
There was a moment of dead silence broken only by the song of the birds and the scolding of a startled squirrel. And then the bushes parted and Bert stood there, poised for flight, his worried, frightened eyes on Wayde.
“It’s me, Miss Lynn,” he said awkwardly. “I wasn’t doin’ no harm.”
Lynn moved away from Wayde to reach a hand out to Bert and draw him out of his screen and into the open beneath the giant beech tree.
“Bert, you know Mr. McCullers, don’t you?” she said gently.
Bert lifted worried, frightened eyes that glanced at Wayde and away.
“Yes, ma’am, I know Mr. McCullers, but he weren’t here that day. Weren’t nobody here but Larry, same’s I done tole you and that policeman,” he blurted.
“Of course he wasn’t, Bert,” said Lynn in the gentle tone one uses to a frightened child. “You told the truth, Bert, and so Mr. McCullers wants to thank you.”
Once more Bert turned his harried, anxious eyes to Wayde.
“You ain’t mad at me, Mr. McCullers?” he asked.
“How could I be, Bert?” Wayde offered his hand in a gesture of friendship, and Bert slid his palm down his ancient overalls before he touched Wayde’s hand for just a moment. “I’m very grateful to you, Bert. If it hadn’t been for you, I might never have been able to prove my innocence of Larry’s charge. I’ll always be grateful for that.”
“I jes’ tole the truth, Mr. McCullers,” Bert insisted.
“I know, Bert,” Wayde said quietly, deeply touched by the humility of the pathetic creature. “I want to do something to prove how grateful I am, Bert. So I’m going to fix things so that nobody can ever bring a gun into these woods again, so that all your friends here will be safe.”
Bert’s slow mind took in the enormity of the thing Wayde was promising, and a light of almost unbearable joy spread over his big moon-face. He could not speak; his emotions were too much for him. But the look on his face was enough to attest the depth of his joy as he turned and plunged away from them once more into the bushes.
Lynn watched Wayde’s face, and there was a mist of tears in her own eyes.
“That was a very kind thing to do, Wayde,” she said softly.
“Kind? After what he did for me?”
“After what he did for us!” Lynn corrected him firmly, and linked her arm through his.
Wayde said quietly, “I don’t mean only what he told the chief about the Larry Holland shooting. It began way before that, my reasons for being grateful to Bert.”
Lynn looked up questioningjy.
“When you came up to the Hill to ask me to post this property — remember?” he pointed out. “You’d never have come near me if it hadn’t been for your concern about Bert and his friends. You were too busy hating me.”
Lynn nodded soberly, her eyes thoughtful.
“I guess I would have stayed clear of you,” she admitted after a moment. “I came to see you that day because of Bert and his ‘little folks.’ And I left, still convinced that I hated you.”
Wayde studied her curiously.
“There was a while there when I thought you were about the snootiest, most unpleasant gal I’d ever had the misfortune to meet,” he admitted, and Lynn gasped with outrage. “Oh, I thought you were beautiful.”
“I’m not and I never was.”
“Be quiet,” Wayde ordered sternly. “To me you were beautiful, and you’ve grown more beautiful every time I’ve seen you. I still can’t quite understand when or why you stopped hating me, now that I come to think of it. Why did you?”
Lynn laughed and said softly, “Oh, Steve told me that you can’t hate someone as furiously as I hated you — or thought I did — without running the risk of being in love with that person. So I decided to see if he was right. And you know something? He was!”
Wayde said sternly, “Now don’t tell me I’m going to have to grateful to Steve as well as to Bert!”
“Would you mind that so much? After all, if he hadn’t dropped those few words of rather acid wisdom, I might never have discovered that I didn’t hate you after all.”
Wayde nodded. “Then I’m grateful to Steve. I don’t have to like him, do I?”
“Well, no, I guess not,” Lynn said slowly. “Matter of fact, I’m having a little trouble liking him right at the moment. But I’m sure his intentions were good all along.”
“Nice epitaph, I must say. You know what good intentions are for, don’t you? They’re reputed to make excellent paving stones in Hades!” Wayde told her. And before she could protest, he went on, “Let’s get the rest of this job done so we can have some time for ourselves. I’ve got to persuade your mother that a formal wedding, and a month’s delay for trousseau and parties and the like of that, is a waste of time.”
“You’ve got a nice job cut out for you,” Lynn warned him. “I’ve been trying to accomplish the same thing, with a spectacular lack of success, I might add.”
“Well, we are of age,” Wayde pointed out. “We could elope.”
“Oh, no, I’d never play a dirty trick like that on Mother!” Lynn said firmly. “She’s got her heart set on seeing her only daughter married with a big splash, and she’s going to have it.”
“My wishes don’t count for anything?”
“Darling, don’t sound pathetic!” Lynn laughed at him. “After we’re married, your wish will be my law! I faithfully promise that. But let’s give Mother this big thrill that she wants so much! Please?”
“When you look at me like that, and use that tone, there’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t promise you,” Wayde agreed, and heaved a sigh as he walked with her through the woods and to the cleared land that marked the beginning of the Estes farm.
As they walked across the back lot and toward the house, Jed came up from the barn and Mamie appeared on the back porch.
“Wayde, this is Mr. Estes,” Lynn proffered introductions. “Mr. Estes, Mr. McCullers.”
“Well, sure, I know Mr. McCullers,” Jed said briskly, and added, “mighty glad to know you come out o’ all your trouble, Mr. McCullers.”
“It was entirely through Bert that I did, Mr. Estes, and I want to show my appreciation, if you will allow me,” said Wayde, and held out an envelope.
Jed drew back, affronted.
“Reckon we ain’t lookin’ for no reward, Mr. McCullers.”
“It’s not money, Mr. Estes,” Wayde told him quietly. “It’s a deed to this property here. I very much want you to have it, and I would not attempt to set a money value on what Bert did for me.”
“Reckon Bert didn’t do nothin’ but what his Maw and me have allus tried to teach him, to tell the truth,” said Jed, eyeing the proffered envelope with wide eyes. “A deed to this property, Mr. McCullers? You mean the whole three hundred acres?”
“Of course, Mr. Estes,” Wayde told him. “And if there are any improvements, a new house, barn, anything you like, have them done and send me the bill.”
“Why, Mr. McCullers!” Jed still had not accepted the envelope. “This here property is worth maybe fifteen thousand dollars, if you was wantin’ to sell it.”
“I’m not, Mr. Estes, I couldn’t now, even if I wanted to. The property is yours. The deed has already been recorded and the year’s taxes have been paid,” Wayde assured him, and once more extended the envelope.
Jed took it hesitantly and looked down at it and then up at Mamie who was standing at the top of the steps, her face pale beneath the old-fashioned sun-bonnet thrust back from her eyes.
“Mamie and me been tenant-farmers all our lives, Mr. McCullers,” he said awkwardly, his voice hoarse. “Reckon we never thought there’d be a time when we’d own our own farm!”
“Well, you do now, Mr. Estes and Mrs. Estes,” Wayde smiled up at Mamie and went on earnestly, “I want to do something for Bert himself; Lynn here has told me what he’d like most. I’ve already contracted for a woven wire fence eight feet high that will enclose the woods and make the whole place a sanctuary. Nobody will ever be able to hunt there again!”
“Oh,” gasped Mamie, her hands twisted together against her lean middle, “they ain’t nothin’ in God’s green world my poor boy would like more. Mr. McCullers, givin’ us the farm is a mighty kind thing we ain’t never gonna forget. But givin’ my boy pertection for his ‘little folks’—nobody could do a kinder thing or one more appreciated. We’re thankin’ you, Mr. McCullers — we’ll be a-thankin’ you the longest day we live.”
Somewhat abashed by the fevor of their gratitude, Wayde turned to Lynn, and they said good-bye, leaving the overcome Estes family with some difficulty. As they walked back toward the woods, Lynn was very thoughtful.
“Was it the way you wanted it, darling?” Wayde asked when the woods enfolded them and she had not spoken.
She looked up at him with shining eyes misted with tears.
“I think,” she said huskily, “that you’re the finest, kindest, most decent …” Her voice broke and tears slipped down her face as Wayde’s arms enfolded her, cradling her close.
“Well, I didn’t ask you what you thought they’d like,” he said. “But I wanted to do something to show my gratitude and — well, I knew better than to offer them money. After all, the place should belong to them, not to me. And a stout, woven-wire fence around the woods seemed to me the best protection for Bert and his little pals. Maybe I should have asked your advice.”
“You blessed idiot,” she stammered, smiling at him through her tears. “I’d never even have thought of giving them the farm or the fence. It would take somebody like you, generous as you are …”
“Now wait a minute,” Wayde protested, scowling in embarrassment. “You trying to make a heroic philanthropist out of me? I’m not. I’m just trying to prove I’m grateful.”
“Stop tearing yourself down!” Lynn ordered unsteadily. “It’s just that I’ll never get to know you — not the real you. There are so many of you. But just so long as all of them are in love with me …”
“They are — the whole legion of them!” Wayde assured her firmly.
“And I’m in love with all of them,” Lynn laughed shakily. “Let’s go back and see what we can do to persuade Mother to change her plans.”
“Oh, by all means, let’s!”
“Don’t count on it too much, though,” Lynn warned him. “She can be pretty stubborn when she makes up her mind.”
She glanced up at him, and the vagrant dimple danced beside her mouth. “I’ve been told I’m very much like her, by the way. Maybe I should warn you.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Wayde answered, and his voice deepened as he looked into her eyes, “and be almighty glad to have a chance!”