Chapter 1
The weather was just perfect that day, impossible to be bettered. Warm sunlight streamed down, bathing the valley. The bus chugged steadily up the steep hill, and through the gaps in the trees Amy Lovett could see the lovely green fields strolling off toward the horizon.
Beautiful, she thought.
She was a city girl, and she didn't know much about the beauties of nature. Just an occasional Sunday in the park, or a drive across the river when she was going out with anybody with a car. Even then, she usually made those trips at night, and the pale light of the moon was all that illuminated the scenery.
Now the golden, glorious sunlight bathed everything. Fleecy clouds dotted the sky. All across the three-mile width of the valley, little bright dots gave evidence of peaceful homes.
It was a vision out of a dream. And, thought Amy, this was the kind of dream she had had for so very long. The peaceful valley, the soft clouds, the lovely fields-and Walter.
Walter Hanrahan. "Bull," his friends called him. He was part of the dream. Thinking of him, Amy felt a little shiver of delight pass through her loins.
She was a pretty girl. Just past nineteen, dressed well though not expensively. Blonde hair, curly and pale; clear blue eyes. Her young body was softly ripe, with swelling breasts, full hips, tender buttocks.
She closed her eyes, remembering, as the bus continued onward. Remembering a day a month earlier, in April, back in the busy city. She was walking through the park, on a Sunday afternoon, with her friend Paula who was bold and adventurous, to an extent that made Amy ashamed of her own shyness. Paula suggested, that day, that they have some fun by picking up a couple of fellows. Reluctantly, Amy had agreed to the idea.
They found two soldiers-or, perhaps, the two soldiers found them. They were on furlough, and looking for company. It was just luck that Amy found herself with the handsomer of the two. And Paula, for all her scheming, was forced to take the second best.
That was how Amy had met Bull Hanrahan, who now had a place in her most intimate dreams.
Walter-she hated to call him Bull-had picked her out in preference to Paula. That was unusual. She had been unable to get him out of her mind. The few weeks that had passed since his return to camp had been unbearable-but now she was going to see him again. Impatience had brought her to the bursting point.
Much to Amy's surprise, her aunt and uncle hadn't objected to her departure. She had always thought they liked her, that they hadn't objected to taking her in after the death of her parents. Still, they had let her leave without discussion.
"Are you going to marry him?" they asked, point-blank. They didn't want details about him. They just wanted to know.
Amy's lips had trembled. "Yes," she said, quivering the way she did when she told a lie. Only, this was no lie-she was really going to marry him.
Or was she?
She did not answer the ugly question that sprang up in her mind. She turned to the window again, studying the peaceful scene. Just a little more than an hour, now. Did it matter Bull didn't know she was en route? She imagined he'd be overjoyed when she showed up.
Or maybe not, she thought anxiously. Maybe men dislike surprises of this sort. I should have told him first, she thought. But it couldn't matter too much. Bull loved her. She had no doubts of that.
It was hard to believe, though. She and Paula had just been making a pickup for the fun of it, to kill a sunny afternoon. She hadn't expected love to come from it. And certainly not from someone like Bull. Why, he wasn't the kind of man she had dreamed of. He was too rough.
But love had come. She relaxed, feeling the warmth of her lave, and her fears dissolved. Soon a house snug in the hills would be hers-hers and Bull's. There was no reason to be nervous. She was being foolish. Bull had told her many times that he loved her. They had met just about daily, after that Sunday in the park, Bull waiting for her after work. Of course he loved her! How could she possibly doubt it?
But, as the mental debate went on, she began to frown. It was almost as though the closer she came to her destination, the more she doubted her course. It had seemed so right, when she had made the decision back in the city. The days had just dragged wearily on, after Bull had gone back to camp.
And just that single letter from him! No doubt he didn't realize how she waited, desperately anxious, for the arrival of the daily mail, only to meet with cold disappointment each day. Well, Bull wasn't the letter writing sort. Just the same, one letter in two and a half weeks was far from sufficient.
But he loves me, she thought. He told me, so many times!
She believed him. But separation could make love fade. She told herself that if she did not go to him, she might lose him. That would be a catastrophe. So, casually, she told her friends and relatives that she was leaving to be married.
Amy's cheeks reddened as she recalled her brief love affair. It had happened so suddenly. Time had blurred and become nothing, and she had lived only from one meeting with Bull to the next, and then, suddenly, it had been the last date before he was to return. She had known all the time that she would have only two weeks with him. But she had pushed the knowledge to the back of her mind. Now there was no pretending any more. She was leaving.
The last date was vividly imprinted on her mind. She had resisted Bull at first, after they had gone to that shabby hotel room. She had not really expected him to want to make love to her. But he did. And she found herself surrendering to a man for the first time in her nineteen years.
She had done it because she. wanted to bind him to her, to forge a link that would carry past his departure and keep her from losing him. She had not expected it would be so beautiful. Urgently he had removed her clothes, had put his big hands on the tender flesh of her breasts, and had clasped her body against his. Half frightened, half wonderstruck, she had let him take her. The pain had been brief, and after that it was all splendor and wonder, the wonder of being wanted, of being possessed, fully and completely.
That too was a knowledge which she alone possessed, a weightier evidence that all the rest that she was doing the right thing now. Bull had told her he loved her, whispered it to her in all the ways that a man could and, finally, he had proved it to her in a way that she could not recall without a surge of tender yearning.
It was a yearning that went beyond that, a yearning that had become a hunger, that made her restless and eager to know Bull's love again. This was something Amy would not have admitted to anyone. It seemed right to her, but it was associated in her mind with shame and the knowledge of wrongdoing and was colored by these feelings also. She wanted it to be right this time. They would be married as soon as she arrived.
She peered out at the landscape and saw by the shadows that evening was approaching. Soon she would be in Millersville, half an hour from Camp Barton-and Bull.
"Millersville," the driver called.
She scrambled to her feet, excusing herself to the lady who sat beside her. Out in the aisle she waited for the bus to halt, so that the driver could help her with her bags. Suddenly she became very tense and the palms of her hands were moist. From where she was standing she could not see the town at all and she wanted very much to be off the bus and stepping into her future. After all, Bull had chosen her, not Paula.