The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Call of the Canyon, by Zane Grey

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Title: The Call of the Canyon

Author: Zane Grey

Release Date: September, 1999 [eBook #1881]
[Most recently updated: May 24, 2022]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: Bill Brewer

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CALL OF THE CANYON ***

[Illustration]




The Call of the Canyon

by Zane Grey


Contents

 CHAPTER I
 CHAPTER II
 CHAPTER III
 CHAPTER IV
 CHAPTER V
 CHAPTER VI
 CHAPTER VII
 CHAPTER VIII
 CHAPTER IX
 CHAPTER X
 CHAPTER XI
 CHAPTER XII




CHAPTER I


What subtle strange message had come to her out of the West? Carley
Burch laid the letter in her lap and gazed dreamily through the window.

It was a day typical of early April in New York, rather cold and gray,
with steely sunlight. Spring breathed in the air, but the women passing
along Fifty-seventh Street wore furs and wraps. She heard the distant
clatter of an L train and then the hum of a motor car. A hurdy-gurdy
jarred into the interval of quiet.

“Glenn has been gone over a year,” she mused, “three months over a
year—and of all his strange letters this seems the strangest yet.”

She lived again, for the thousandth time, the last moments she had
spent with him. It had been on New-Year’s Eve, 1918. They had called
upon friends who were staying at the McAlpin, in a suite on the
twenty-first floor overlooking Broadway. And when the last quarter hour
of that eventful and tragic year began slowly to pass with the low
swell of whistles and bells, Carley’s friends had discreetly left her
alone with her lover, at the open window, to watch and hear the old
year out, the new year in. Glenn Kilbourne had returned from France
early that fall, shell-shocked and gassed, and otherwise incapacitated
for service in the army—a wreck of his former sterling self and in many
unaccountable ways a stranger to her. Cold, silent, haunted by
something, he had made her miserable with his aloofness. But as the
bells began to ring out the year that had been his ruin Glenn had drawn
her close, tenderly, passionately, and yet strangely, too.

“Carley, look and listen!” he had whispered.

Under them stretched the great long white flare of Broadway, with its
snow-covered length glittering under a myriad of electric lights. Sixth
Avenue swerved away to the right, a less brilliant lane of blanched
snow. The L trains crept along like huge fire-eyed serpents. The hum of
the ceaseless moving line of motor cars drifted upward faintly, almost
drowned in the rising clamor of the street. Broadway’s gay and
thoughtless crowds surged to and fro, from that height merely a thick
stream of black figures, like contending columns of ants on the march.
And everywhere the monstrous electric signs flared up vivid in white
and red and green; and dimmed and paled, only to flash up again.

Ring out the Old! Ring in the New! Carley had poignantly felt the
sadness of the one, the promise of the other. As one by one the siren
factory whistles opened up with deep, hoarse bellow, the clamor of the
street and the ringing of the bells were lost in a volume of continuous
sound that swelled on high into a magnificent roar. It was the voice of
a city—of a nation. It was the voice of a people crying out the strife
and the agony of the year—pealing forth a prayer for the future.

Glenn had put his lips to her ear: “It’s like the voice in my soul!”
Never would she forget the shock of that. And how she had stood
spellbound, enveloped in the mighty volume of sound no longer
discordant, but full of great, pregnant melody, until the white ball
burst upon the tower of the Times Building, showing the bright figures
1919.

The new year had not been many minutes old when Glenn Kilbourne had
told her he was going West to try to recover his health.

Carley roused out of her memories to take up the letter that had so
perplexed her. It bore the postmark, Flagstaff, Arizona. She reread it
with slow pondering thoughtfulness.

WEST FORK,
_March_ 25.


DEAR CARLEY:

It does seem my neglect in writing you is unpardonable. I used to be a
pretty fair correspondent, but in that as in other things I have
changed.

One reason I have not answered sooner is because your letter was so
sweet and loving that it made me feel an ungrateful and unappreciative
wretch. Another is that this life I now lead does not induce writing. I
am outdoors all day, and when I get back to this cabin at night I am
too tired for anything but bed.

Your imperious questions I must answer—and that _must_, of course, is a
third reason why I have delayed my reply. First, you ask, “Don’t you
love me any more as you used to?”... Frankly, I do not. I am sure my
old love for you, before I went to France, was selfish, thoughtless,
sentimental, and boyish. I am a man now. And my love for you is
different. Let me assure you that it has been about all left to me of
what is noble and beautiful. Whatever the changes in me for the worse,
my love for you, at least, has grown better, finer, purer.

And now for your second question, “Are you coming home as soon as you
are well again?”... Carley, I _am_ well. I have delayed telling you
this because I knew you would expect me to rush back East with the
telling. But—the fact is, Carley, I am not coming—just yet. I wish it
were possible for me to make you understand. For a long time I seem to
have been frozen within. You know when I came back from France I
couldn’t talk. It’s almost as bad as that now. Yet all that I was then
seems to have changed again. It is only fair to you to tell you that,
as I feel now, I hate the city, I hate people, and particularly I hate
that dancing, drinking, lounging set you chase with. I don’t want to
come East until I am over that, you know... Suppose I never get over
it? Well, Carley, you can free yourself from me by one word that I
could never utter. I could never break our engagement. During the hell
I went through in the war my attachment to you saved me from moral
ruin, if it did not from perfect honor and fidelity. This is another
thing I despair of making you understand. And in the chaos I’ve
wandered through _since_ the war my love for you was my only anchor.
You never guessed, did you, that I lived on your letters until I got
well. And now the fact that I might get along without them is no
discredit to their charm or to you.

It is all so hard to put in words, Carley. To lie down with death and
get up with death was nothing. To face one’s degradation was nothing.
But to come home an incomprehensibly changed man—and to see my old life
as strange as if it were the new life of another planet—to try to slip
into the old groove—well, no words of mine can tell you how utterly
impossible it was.

My old job was not open to me, even if I had been able to work. The
government that I fought for left me to starve, or to die of my
maladies like a dog, for all it cared.

I could not live on your money, Carley. My people are poor, as you
know. So there was nothing for me to do but to borrow a little money
from my friends and to come West. I’m glad I had the courage to come.
What this West is I’ll never try to tell you, because, loving the
luxury and excitement and glitter of the city as you do, you’d think I
was crazy.

Getting on here, in my condition, was as hard as trench life. But now,
Carley—something has come to me out of the West. That, too, I am unable
to put into words. Maybe I can give you an inkling of it. I’m strong
enough to chop wood all day. No man or woman passes my cabin in a
month. But I am never lonely. I love these vast red canyon walls
towering above me. And the silence is so sweet. Think of the hellish
din that filled my ears. Even now—sometimes, the brook here changes its
babbling murmur to the roar of war. I never understood anything of the
meaning of nature until I lived under these looming stone walls and
whispering pines.

So, Carley, try to understand me, or at least be kind. You know they
came very near writing, “Gone west!” after my name, and considering
_that_, this “Out West” signifies for me a very fortunate difference. A
tremendous difference! For the present I’ll let well enough alone.


_Adios_. Write soon. Love from
GLENN.


Carley’s second reaction to the letter was a sudden upflashing desire
to see her lover—to go out West and find him. Impulses with her were
rather rare and inhibited, but this one made her tremble. If Glenn was
well again he must have vastly changed from the moody, stone-faced, and
haunted-eyed man who had so worried and distressed her. He had
embarrassed her, too, for sometimes, in her home, meeting young men
there who had not gone into the service, he had seemed to retreat into
himself, singularly aloof, as if his world was not theirs.

Again, with eager eyes and quivering lips, she read the letter. It
contained words that lifted her heart. Her starved love greedily
absorbed them. In them she had excuse for any resolve that might bring
Glenn closer to her. And she pondered over this longing to go to him.

Carley had the means to come and go and live as she liked. She did not
remember her father, who had died when she was a child. Her mother had
left her in the care of a sister, and before the war they had divided
their time between New York and Europe, the Adirondacks and Florida,
Carley had gone in for Red Cross and relief work with more of sincerity
than most of her set. But she was really not used to making any
decision as definite and important as that of going out West alone. She
had never been farther west than Jersey City; and her conception of the
West was a hazy one of vast plains and rough mountains, squalid towns,
cattle herds, and uncouth ill-clad men.

So she carried the letter to her aunt, a rather slight woman with a
kindly face and shrewd eyes, and who appeared somewhat given to
old-fashioned garments.

“Aunt Mary, here’s a letter from Glenn,” said Carley. “It’s more of a
stumper than usual. Please read it.”

“Dear me! You look upset,” replied the aunt, mildly, and, adjusting her
spectacles, she took the letter.

Carley waited impatiently for the perusal, conscious of inward forces
coming more and more to the aid of her impulse to go West. Her aunt
paused once to murmur how glad she was that Glenn had gotten well. Then
she read on to the close.

“Carley, that’s a fine letter,” she said, fervently. “Do you see
through it?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Carley. “That’s why I asked you to read it.”

“Do you still love Glenn as you used to before—”

“Why, Aunt Mary!” exclaimed Carley, in surprise.

“Excuse me, Carley, if I’m blunt. But the fact is young women of modern
times are very different from my kind when I was a girl. You haven’t
acted as though you pined for Glenn. You gad around almost the same as
ever.”

“What’s a girl to do?” protested Carley.

“You are twenty-six years old, Carley,” retorted Aunt Mary.

“Suppose I am. I’m as young—as I ever was.”

“Well, let’s not argue about modern girls and modern times. We never
get anywhere,” returned her aunt, kindly. “But I can tell you something
of what Glenn Kilbourne means in that letter—if you want to hear it.”

“I do—indeed.”

“The war did something horrible to Glenn aside from wrecking his
health. Shell-shock, they said! I don’t understand that. Out of his
mind, they said! But that never was true. Glenn was as sane as I am,
and, my dear, that’s pretty sane, I’ll have you remember. But he must
have suffered some terrible blight to his spirit—some blunting of his
soul. For months after he returned he walked as one in a trance. Then
came a change. He grew restless. Perhaps that change was for the
better. At least it showed he’d roused. Glenn saw you and your friends
and the life you lead, and all the present, with eyes from which the
scales had dropped. He saw what was _wrong_. He never said so to me,
but I knew it. It wasn’t only to get well that he went West. It was to
get away.... And, Carley Burch, if your happiness depends on him you
had better be up and doing—or you’ll _lose_ him!”

“Aunt Mary!” gasped Carley.

“I mean it. That letter shows how near he came to the Valley of the
Shadow—and how he has become a man.... If I were you I’d go out West.
Surely there must be a place where it would be all right for you to
stay.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Carley, eagerly. “Glenn wrote me there was a lodge
where people went in nice weather—right down in the canyon not far from
his place. Then, of course, the town—Flagstaff—isn’t far.... Aunt Mary,
I think I’ll go.”

“I would. You’re certainly wasting your time here.”

“But I could only go for a visit,” rejoined Carley, thoughtfully. “A
month, perhaps six weeks, if I could stand it.”

“Seems to me if you can stand New York you could stand that place,”
said Aunt Mary, dryly.

“The idea of staying away from New York any length of time—why, I
couldn’t do it I... But I can stay out there long enough to bring Glenn
back with me.”

“That may take you longer than you think,” replied her aunt, with a
gleam in her shrewd eyes. “If you want my advice you will surprise
Glenn. Don’t write him—don’t give him a chance to—well to suggest
courteously that you’d better not come just yet. I don’t like his words
‘just yet.’”

“Auntie, you’re—rather—more than blunt,” said Carley, divided between
resentment and amaze. “Glenn would be simply wild to have me come.”

“Maybe he would. Has he ever asked you?”

“No-o—come to think of it, he hasn’t,” replied Carley, reluctantly.
“Aunt Mary, you hurt my feelings.”

“Well, child, I’m glad to learn your feelings are hurt,” returned the
aunt. “I’m sure, Carley, that underneath all this—this blasé ultra
something you’ve acquired, there’s a real heart. Only you must hurry
and listen to it—or—”

“Or what?” queried Carley.

Aunt Mary shook her gray head sagely. “Never mind what. Carley, I’d
like your idea of the most significant thing in Glenn’s letter.”

“Why, his love for me, of course!” replied Carley.

“Naturally you think that. But I don’t. What struck me most were his
words, ‘out of the West.’ Carley, you’d do well to ponder over them.”

“I will,” rejoined Carley, positively. “I’ll do more. I’ll go out to
his wonderful West and see what he meant by them.”

Carley Burch possessed in full degree the prevailing modern craze for
speed. She loved a motor-car ride at sixty miles an hour along a
smooth, straight road, or, better, on the level seashore of Ormond,
where on moonlight nights the white blanched sand seemed to flash
toward her. Therefore quite to her taste was the Twentieth Century
Limited which was hurtling her on the way to Chicago. The unceasingly
smooth and even rush of the train satisfied something in her. An old
lady sitting in an adjoining seat with a companion amused Carley by the
remark: “I wish we didn’t go so fast. People nowadays haven’t time to
draw a comfortable breath. Suppose we should run off the track!”

Carley had no fear of express trains, or motor cars, or transatlantic
liners; in fact, she prided herself in not being afraid of anything.
But she wondered if this was not the false courage of association with
a crowd. Before this enterprise at hand she could not remember anything
she had undertaken alone. Her thrills seemed to be in abeyance to the
end of her journey. That night her sleep was permeated with the steady
low whirring of the wheels. Once, roused by a jerk, she lay awake in
the darkness while the thought came to her that she and all her fellow
passengers were really at the mercy of the engineer. Who was he, and
did he stand at his throttle keen and vigilant, thinking of the lives
intrusted to him? Such thoughts vaguely annoyed Carley, and she
dismissed them.

A long half-day wait in Chicago was a tedious preliminary to the second
part of her journey. But at last she found herself aboard the
California Limited, and went to bed with a relief quite a stranger to
her. The glare of the sun under the curtain awakened her. Propped up on
her pillows, she looked out at apparently endless green fields or
pastures, dotted now and then with little farmhouses and tree-skirted
villages. This country, she thought, must be the prairie land she
remembered lay west of the Mississippi.

Later, in the dining car, the steward smilingly answered her question:
“This is Kansas, and those green fields out there are the wheat that
feeds the nation.”

Carley was not impressed. The color of the short wheat appeared soft
and rich, and the boundless fields stretched away monotonously. She had
not known there was so much flat land in the world, and she imagined it
might be a fine country for automobile roads. When she got back to her
seat she drew the blinds down and read her magazines. Then tiring of
that, she went back to the observation car. Carley was accustomed to
attracting attention, and did not resent it, unless she was annoyed.
The train evidently had a full complement of passengers, who, as far as
Carley could see, were people not of her station in life. The glare
from the many windows, and the rather crass interest of several men,
drove her back to her own section. There she discovered that some one
had drawn up her window shades. Carley promptly pulled them down and
settled herself comfortably. Then she heard a woman speak, not
particularly low: “I thought people traveled west to see the country.”
And a man replied, rather dryly. “Wal, not always.” His companion went
on: “If that girl was mine I’d let down her skirt.” The man laughed and
replied: “Martha, you’re shore behind the times. Look at the pictures
in the magazines.”

Such remarks amused Carley, and later she took advantage of an
opportunity to notice her neighbors. They appeared a rather quaint old
couple, reminding her of the natives of country towns in the
Adirondacks. She was not amused, however, when another of her woman
neighbors, speaking low, referred to her as a “lunger.” Carley
appreciated the fact that she was pale, but she assured herself that
there ended any possible resemblance she might have to a consumptive.
And she was somewhat pleased to hear this woman’s male companion
forcibly voice her own convictions. In fact, he was nothing if not
admiring.

Kansas was interminably long to Carley, and she went to sleep before
riding out of it. Next morning she found herself looking out at the
rough gray and black land of New Mexico. She searched the horizon for
mountains, but there did not appear to be any. She received a vague,
slow-dawning impression that was hard to define. She did not like the
country, though that was not the impression which eluded her. Bare gray
flats, low scrub-fringed hills, bleak cliffs, jumble after jumble of
rocks, and occasionally a long vista down a valley, somehow
compelling—these passed before her gaze until she tired of them. Where
was the West Glenn had written about? One thing seemed sure, and it was
that every mile of this crude country brought her nearer to him. This
recurring thought gave Carley all the pleasure she had felt so far in
this endless ride. It struck her that England or France could be
dropped down into New Mexico and scarcely noticed.

By and by the sun grew hot, the train wound slowly and creakingly
upgrade, the car became full of dust, all of which was disagreeable to
Carley. She dozed on her pillow for hours, until she was stirred by a
passenger crying out, delightedly: “Look! Indians!”

Carley looked, not without interest. As a child she had read about
Indians, and memory returned images both colorful and romantic. From
the car window she espied dusty flat barrens, low squat mud houses, and
queer-looking little people, children naked or extremely ragged and
dirty, women in loose garments with flares of red, and men in white
man’s garb, slovenly and motley. All these strange individuals stared
apathetically as the train slowly passed.

“Indians,” muttered Carley, incredulously. “Well, if they are the noble
red people, my illusions are dispelled.” She did not look out of the
window again, not even when the brakeman called out the remarkable name
of Albuquerque.

Next day Carley’s languid attention quickened to the name of Arizona,
and to the frowning red walls of rock, and to the vast rolling
stretches of cedar-dotted land. Nevertheless, it affronted her. This
was no country for people to live in, and so far as she could see it
was indeed uninhabited. Her sensations were not, however, limited to
sight. She became aware of unfamiliar disturbing little shocks or
vibrations in her ear drums, and after that a disagreeable bleeding of
the nose. The porter told her this was owing to the altitude. Thus, one
thing and another kept Carley most of the time away from the window, so
that she really saw very little of the country. From what she had seen
she drew the conviction that she had not missed much. At sunset she
deliberately gazed out to discover what an Arizona sunset was like just
a pale yellow flare! She had seen better than that above the Palisades.
Not until reaching Winslow did she realize how near she was to her
journey’s end and that she would arrive at Flagstaff after dark. She
grew conscious of nervousness. Suppose Flagstaff were like these other
queer little towns!

Not only once, but several times before the train slowed down for her
destination did Carley wish she had sent Glenn word to meet her. And
when, presently, she found herself standing out in the dark, cold,
windy night before a dim-lit railroad station she more than regretted
her decision to surprise Glenn. But that was too late and she must make
the best of her poor judgment.

Men were passing to and fro on the platform, some of whom appeared to
be very dark of skin and eye, and were probably Mexicans. At length an
expressman approached Carley, soliciting patronage. He took her bags
and, depositing them in a wagon, he pointed up the wide street: “One
block up an’ turn. Hotel Wetherford.” Then he drove off. Carley
followed, carrying her small satchel. A cold wind, driving the dust,
stung her face as she crossed the street to a high sidewalk that
extended along the block. There were lights in the stores and on the
corners, yet she seemed impressed by a dark, cold, windy bigness. Many
people, mostly men, were passing up and down, and there were motor cars
everywhere. No one paid any attention to her. Gaining the corner of the
block, she turned, and was relieved to see the hotel sign. As she
entered the lobby a clicking of pool balls and the discordant rasp of a
phonograph assailed her ears. The expressman set down her bags and left
Carley standing there. The clerk or proprietor was talking from behind
his desk to several men, and there were loungers in the lobby. The air
was thick with tobacco smoke. No one paid any attention to Carley until
at length she stepped up to the desk and interrupted the conversation
there.

“Is this a hotel?” she queried, brusquely.

The shirt-sleeved individual leisurely turned and replied, “Yes,
ma’am.”

And Carley said: “No one would recognize it by the courtesy shown. I
have been standing here waiting to register.”

With the same leisurely case and a cool, laconic stare the clerk turned
the book toward her. “Reckon people round here ask for what they want.”

Carley made no further comment. She assuredly recognized that what she
had been accustomed to could not be expected out here. What she most
wished to do at the moment was to get close to the big open grate where
a cheery red-and-gold fire cracked. It was necessary, however, to
follow the clerk. He assigned her to a small drab room which contained
a bed, a bureau, and a stationary washstand with one spigot. There was
also a chair. While Carley removed her coat and hat the clerk went
downstairs for the rest of her luggage. Upon his return Carley learned
that a stage left the hotel for Oak Creek Canyon at nine o’clock next
morning. And this cheered her so much that she faced the strange sense
of loneliness and discomfort with something of fortitude. There was no
heat in the room, and no hot water. When Carley squeezed the spigot
handle there burst forth a torrent of water that spouted up out of the
washbasin to deluge her. It was colder than any ice water she had ever
felt. It was piercingly cold. Hard upon the surprise and shock Carley
suffered a flash of temper. But then the humor of it struck her and she
had to laugh.

“Serves you right—you spoiled doll of luxury!” she mocked. “This is out
West. Shiver and wait on yourself!”

Never before had she undressed so swiftly nor felt grateful for thick
woollen blankets on a hard bed. Gradually she grew warm. The blackness,
too, seemed rather comforting.

“I’m only twenty miles from Glenn,” she whispered. “How strange! I
wonder will he be glad.” She felt a sweet, glowing assurance of that.
Sleep did not come readily. Excitement had laid hold of her nerves, and
for a long time she lay awake. After a while the chug of motor cars,
the click of pool balls, the murmur of low voices all ceased. Then she
heard a sound of wind outside, an intermittent, low moaning, new to her
ears, and somehow pleasant. Another sound greeted her—the musical
clanging of a clock that struck the quarters of the hour. Some time
late sleep claimed her.

Upon awakening she found she had overslept, necessitating haste upon
her part. As to that, the temperature of the room did not admit of
leisurely dressing. She had no adequate name for the feeling of the
water. And her fingers grew so numb that she made what she considered a
disgraceful matter of her attire.

Downstairs in the lobby another cheerful red fire burned in the grate.
How perfectly satisfying was an open fireplace! She thrust her numb
hands almost into the blaze, and simply shook with the tingling pain
that slowly warmed out of them. The lobby was deserted. A sign directed
her to a dining room in the basement, where of the ham and eggs and
strong coffee she managed to partake a little. Then she went upstairs
into the lobby and out into the street.

A cold, piercing air seemed to blow right through her. Walking to the
near corner, she paused to look around. Down the main street flowed a
leisurely stream of pedestrians, horses, cars, extending between two
blocks of low buildings. Across from where she stood lay a vacant lot,
beyond which began a line of neat, oddly constructed houses, evidently
residences of the town. And then lifting her gaze, instinctively drawn
by something obstructing the sky line, she was suddenly struck with
surprise and delight.

“Oh! how perfectly splendid!” she burst out.

Two magnificent mountains loomed right over her, sloping up with
majestic sweep of green and black timber, to a ragged tree-fringed snow
area that swept up cleaner and whiter, at last to lift pure glistening
peaks, noble and sharp, and sunrise-flushed against the blue.

Carley had climbed Mont Blanc and she had seen the Matterhorn, but they
had never struck such amaze and admiration from her as these twin peaks
of her native land.

“What mountains are those?” she asked a passer-by.

“San Francisco Peaks, ma’am,” replied the man.

“Why, they can’t be over a mile away!” she said.

“Eighteen miles, ma’am,” he returned, with a grin. “Shore this Arizonie
air is deceivin’.”

“How strange,” murmured Carley. “It’s not that way in the Adirondacks.”

She was still gazing upward when a man approached her and said the
stage for Oak Creek Canyon would soon be ready to start, and he wanted
to know if her baggage was ready. Carley hurried back to her room to
pack.

She had expected the stage would be a motor bus, or at least a large
touring car, but it turned out to be a two-seated vehicle drawn by a
team of ragged horses. The driver was a little wizen-faced man of
doubtful years, and he did not appear obviously susceptible to the
importance of his passenger. There was considerable freight to be
hauled, besides Carley’s luggage, but evidently she was the only
passenger.

“Reckon it’s goin’ to be a bad day,” said the driver. “These April days
high up on the desert are windy an’ cold. Mebbe it’ll snow, too. Them
clouds hangin’ around the peaks ain’t very promisin’. Now, miss,
haven’t you a heavier coat or somethin’?”

“No, I have not,” replied Carley. “I’ll have to stand it. Did you say
this was desert?”

“I shore did. Wal, there’s a hoss blanket under the seat, an’ you can
have that,” he replied, and, climbing to the seat in front of Carley,
he took up the reins and started the horses off at a trot.

At the first turning Carley became specifically acquainted with the
driver’s meaning of a bad day. A gust of wind, raw and penetrating,
laden with dust and stinging sand, swept full in her face. It came so
suddenly that she was scarcely quick enough to close her eyes. It took
considerable clumsy effort on her part with a handkerchief, aided by
relieving tears, to clear her sight again. Thus uncomfortably Carley
found herself launched on the last lap of her journey.

All before her and alongside lay the squalid environs of the town.
Looked back at, with the peaks rising behind, it was not unpicturesque.
But the hard road with its sheets of flying dust, the bleak railroad
yards, the round pens she took for cattle corrals, and the sordid
debris littering the approach to a huge sawmill,—these were offensive
in Carley’s sight. From a tall dome-like stack rose a yellowish smoke
that spread overhead, adding to the lowering aspect of the sky. Beyond
the sawmill extended the open country sloping somewhat roughly, and
evidently once a forest, but now a hideous bare slash, with ghastly
burned stems of trees still standing, and myriads of stumps attesting
to denudation.

The bleak road wound away to the southwest, and from this direction
came the gusty wind. It did not blow regularly so that Carley could be
on her guard. It lulled now and then, permitting her to look about, and
then suddenly again whipping dust into her face. The smell of the dust
was as unpleasant as the sting. It made her nostrils smart. It was
penetrating, and a little more of it would have been suffocating. And
as a leaden gray bank of broken clouds rolled up the wind grew stronger
and the air colder. Chilled before, Carley now became thoroughly cold.

There appeared to be no end to the devastated forest land, and the
farther she rode the more barren and sordid grew the landscape. Carley
forgot about the impressive mountains behind her. And as the ride wore
into hours, such was her discomfort and disillusion that she forgot
about Glenn Kilbourne. She did not reach the point of regretting her
adventure, but she grew mightily unhappy. Now and then she espied
dilapidated log cabins and surroundings even more squalid than the
ruined forest. What wretched abodes! Could it be possible that people
had lived in them? She imagined men had but hardly women and children.
Somewhere she had forgotten an idea that women and children were
extremely scarce in the West.

Straggling bits of forest—yellow pines, the driver called the
trees—began to encroach upon the burned-over and arid barren land. To
Carley these groves, by reason of contrast and proof of what once was,
only rendered the landscape more forlorn and dreary. Why had these
miles and miles of forest been cut? By money grubbers, she supposed,
the same as were devastating the Adirondacks. Presently, when the
driver had to halt to repair or adjust something wrong with the
harness, Carley was grateful for a respite from cold inaction. She got
out and walked. Sleet began to fall, and when she resumed her seat in
the vehicle she asked the driver for the blanket to cover her. The
smell of this horse blanket was less endurable than the cold. Carley
huddled down into a state of apathetic misery. Already she had enough
of the West.

But the sleet storm passed, the clouds broke, the sun shone through,
greatly mitigating her discomfort. By and by the road led into a
section of real forest, unspoiled in any degree. Carley saw large gray
squirrels with tufted ears and white bushy tails. Presently the driver
pointed out a flock of huge birds, which Carley, on second glance,
recognized as turkeys, only these were sleek and glossy, with flecks of
bronze and black and white, quite different from turkeys back East.
“There must be a farm near,” said Carley, gazing about.

“No, ma’am. Them’s wild turkeys,” replied the driver, “an’ shore the
best eatin’ you ever had in your life.”

A little while afterwards, as they were emerging from the woodland into
more denuded country, he pointed out to Carley a herd of gray
white-rumped animals that she took to be sheep.

“An’ them’s antelope,” he said. “Once this desert was overrun by
antelope. Then they nearly disappeared. An’ now they’re increasin’
again.”

More barren country, more bad weather, and especially an exceedingly
rough road reduced Carley to her former state of dejection. The jolting
over roots and rocks and ruts was worse than uncomfortable. She had to
hold on to the seat to keep from being thrown out. The horses did not
appreciably change their gait for rough sections of the road. Then a
more severe jolt brought Carley’s knee in violent contact with an iron
bolt on the forward seat, and it hurt her so acutely that she had to
bite her lips to keep from screaming. A smoother stretch of road did
not come any too soon for her.

It led into forest again. And Carley soon became aware that they had at
last left the cut and burned-over district of timberland behind. A cold
wind moaned through the treetops and set the drops of water pattering
down upon her. It lashed her wet face. Carley closed her eyes and
sagged in her seat, mostly oblivious to the passing scenery. “The girls
will never believe this of me,” she soliloquized. And indeed she was
amazed at herself. Then thought of Glenn strengthened her. It did not
really matter what she suffered on the way to him. Only she was
disgusted at her lack of stamina, and her appalling sensitiveness to
discomfort.

“Wal, hyar’s Oak Creek Canyon,” called the driver.

Carley, rousing out of her weary preoccupation, opened her eyes to see
that the driver had halted at a turn of the road, where apparently it
descended a fearful declivity.

The very forest-fringed earth seemed to have opened into a deep abyss,
ribbed by red rock walls and choked by steep mats of green timber. The
chasm was a V-shaped split and so deep that looking downward sent at
once a chill and a shudder over Carley. At that point it appeared
narrow and ended in a box. In the other direction, it widened and
deepened, and stretched farther on between tremendous walls of red, and
split its winding floor of green with glimpses of a gleaming creek,
bowlder-strewn and ridged by white rapids. A low mellow roar of rushing
waters floated up to Carley’s ears. What a wild, lonely, terrible
place! Could Glenn possibly live down there in that ragged rent in the
earth? It frightened her—the sheer sudden plunge of it from the
heights. Far down the gorge a purple light shone on the forested floor.
And on the moment the sun burst through the clouds and sent a golden
blaze down into the depths, transforming them incalculably. The great
cliffs turned gold, the creek changed to glancing silver, the green of
trees vividly freshened, and in the clefts rays of sunlight burned into
the blue shadows. Carley had never gazed upon a scene like this.
Hostile and prejudiced, she yet felt wrung from her an acknowledgment
of beauty and grandeur. But wild, violent, savage! Not livable! This
insulated rift in the crust of the earth was a gigantic burrow for
beasts, perhaps for outlawed men—not for a civilized person—not for
Glenn Kilbourne.

“Don’t be scart, ma’am,” spoke up the driver. “It’s safe if you’re
careful. An’ I’ve druv this manys the time.”

Carley’s heartbeats thumped at her side, rather denying her taunted
assurance of fearlessness. Then the rickety vehicle started down at an
angle that forced her to cling to her seat.




CHAPTER II


Carley, clutching her support, with abated breath and prickling skin,
gazed in fascinated suspense over the rim of the gorge. Sometimes the
wheels on that side of the vehicle passed within a few inches of the
edge. The brakes squeaked, the wheels slid; and she could hear the
scrape of the iron-shod hoofs of the horses as they held back stiff
legged, obedient to the wary call of the driver.

The first hundred yards of that steep road cut out of the cliff
appeared to be the worst. It began to widen, with descents less
precipitous. Tips of trees rose level with her gaze, obstructing sight
of the blue depths. Then brush appeared on each side of the road.
Gradually Carley’s strain relaxed, and also the muscular contraction by
which she had braced herself in the seat. The horses began to trot
again. The wheels rattled. The road wound around abrupt corners, and
soon the green and red wall of the opposite side of the canyon loomed
close. Low roar of running water rose to Carley’s ears. When at length
she looked out instead of down she could see nothing but a mass of
green foliage crossed by tree trunks and branches of brown and gray.
Then the vehicle bowled under dark cool shade, into a tunnel with mossy
wet cliff on one side, and close-standing trees on the other.

“Reckon we’re all right now, onless we meet somebody comin’ up,”
declared the driver.

Carley relaxed. She drew a deep breath of relief. She had her first
faint intimation that perhaps her extensive experience of motor cars,
express trains, transatlantic liners, and even a little of airplanes,
did not range over the whole of adventurous life. She was likely to
meet something, entirely new and striking out here in the West.

The murmur of falling water sounded closer. Presently Carley saw that
the road turned at the notch in the canyon, and crossed a clear swift
stream. Here were huge mossy boulders, and red walls covered by
lichens, and the air appeared dim and moist, and full of mellow, hollow
roar. Beyond this crossing the road descended the west side of the
canyon, drawing away and higher from the creek. Huge trees, the like of
which Carley had never seen, began to stand majestically up out of the
gorge, dwarfing the maples and white-spotted sycamores. The driver
called these great trees yellow pines.

At last the road led down from the steep slope to the floor of the
canyon. What from far above had appeared only a green timber-choked
cleft proved from close relation to be a wide winding valley, tip and
down, densely forested for the most part, yet having open glades and
bisected from wall to wall by the creek. Every quarter of a mile or so
the road crossed the stream; and at these fords Carley again held on
desperately and gazed out dubiously, for the creek was deep, swift, and
full of bowlders. Neither driver nor horses appeared to mind obstacles.
Carley was splashed and jolted not inconsiderably. They passed through
groves of oak trees, from which the creek manifestly derived its name;
and under gleaming walls, cold, wet, gloomy, and silent; and between
lines of solemn wide-spreading pines. Carley saw deep, still green
pools eddying under huge massed jumble of cliffs, and stretches of
white water, and then, high above the treetops, a wild line of canyon
rim, cold against the sky. She felt shut in from the world, lost in an
unscalable rut of the earth. Again the sunlight had failed, and the
gray gloom of the canyon oppressed her. It struck Carley as singular
that she could not help being affected by mere weather, mere heights
and depths, mere rock walls and pine trees, and rushing water. For
really, what had these to do with her? These were only physical things
that she was passing. Nevertheless, although she resisted sensation,
she was more and more shot through and through with the wildness and
savageness of this canyon.

A sharp turn of the road to the right disclosed a slope down the creek,
across which showed orchards and fields, and a cottage nestling at the
base of the wall. The ford at this crossing gave Carley more concern
than any that had been passed, for there was greater volume and depth
of water. One of the horses slipped on the rocks, plunged up and on
with great splash. They crossed, however, without more mishap to Carley
than further acquaintance with this iciest of waters. From this point
the driver turned back along the creek, passed between orchards and
fields, and drove along the base of the red wall to come suddenly upon
a large rustic house that had been hidden from Carley’s sight. It sat
almost against the stone cliff, from which poured a white foamy sheet
of water. The house was built of slabs with the bark on, and it had a
lower and upper porch running all around, at least as far as the cliff.
Green growths from the rock wall overhung the upper porch. A column of
blue smoke curled lazily upward from a stone chimney. On one of the
porch posts hung a sign with rude lettering: “Lolomi Lodge.”

“Hey, Josh, did you fetch the flour?” called a woman’s voice from
inside.

“Hullo I Reckon I didn’t forgit nothin’,” replied the man, as he got
down. “An’ say, Mrs. Hutter, hyar’s a young lady from Noo Yorrk.”

That latter speech of the driver’s brought Mrs. Hutter out on the
porch. “Flo, come here,” she called to some one evidently near at hand.
And then she smilingly greeted Carley.

“Get down an’ come in, miss,” she said. “I’m sure glad to see you.”

Carley, being stiff and cold, did not very gracefully disengage herself
from the high muddy wheel and step. When she mounted to the porch she
saw that Mrs. Hutter was a woman of middle age, rather stout, with
strong face full of fine wavy lines, and kind dark eyes.

“I’m Miss Burch,” said Carley.

“You’re the girl whose picture Glenn Kilbourne has over his fireplace,”
declared the woman, heartily. “I’m sure glad to meet you, an’ my
daughter Flo will be, too.”

That about her picture pleased and warmed Carley. “Yes, I’m Glenn
Kilbourne’s fiancée. I’ve come West to surprise him. Is he here....
Is—is he well?”

“Fine. I saw him yesterday. He’s changed a great deal from what he was
at first. Most all the last few months. I reckon you won’t know him....
But you’re wet an’ cold an’ you look fagged. Come right in to the
fire.”

“Thank you; I’m all right,” returned Carley.

At the doorway they encountered a girl of lithe and robust figure,
quick in her movements. Carley was swift to see the youth and grace of
her; and then a face that struck Carley as neither pretty nor
beautiful, but still wonderfully attractive.

“Flo, here’s Miss Burch,” burst out Mrs. Hutter, with cheerful
importance. “Glenn Kilbourne’s girl come all the way from New York to
surprise him!”

“Oh, Carley, I’m shore happy to meet you!” said the girl, in a voice of
slow drawling richness. “I know you. Glenn has told me all about you.”

If this greeting, sweet and warm as it seemed, was a shock to Carley,
she gave no sign. But as she murmured something in reply she looked
with all a woman’s keenness into the face before her. Flo Hutter had a
fair skin generously freckled; a mouth and chin too firmly cut to
suggest a softer feminine beauty; and eyes of clear light hazel,
penetrating, frank, fearless. Her hair was very abundant, almost
silver-gold in color, and it was either rebellious or showed lack of
care. Carley liked the girl’s looks and liked the sincerity of her
greeting; but instinctively she reacted antagonistically because of the
frank suggestion of intimacy with Glenn.

But for that she would have been spontaneous and friendly rather than
restrained.

They ushered Carley into a big living room and up to a fire of blazing
logs, where they helped divest her of the wet wraps. And all the time
they talked in the solicitous way natural to women who were kind and
unused to many visitors. Then Mrs. Hutter bustled off to make a cup of
hot coffee while Flo talked.

“We’ll shore give you the nicest room—with a sleeping porch right under
the cliff where the water falls. It’ll sing you to sleep. Of course you
needn’t use the bed outdoors until it’s warmer. Spring is late here,
you know, and we’ll have nasty weather yet. You really happened on Oak
Creek at its least attractive season. But then it’s always—well, just
Oak Creek. You’ll come to know.”

“I dare say I’ll remember my first sight of it and the ride down that
cliff road,” said Carley, with a wan smile.

“Oh, that’s nothing to what you’ll see and do,” returned Flo,
knowingly. “We’ve had Eastern tenderfeet here before. And never was
there a one of them who didn’t come to love Arizona.”

“Tenderfoot! It hadn’t occurred to me. But of course—” murmured Carley.

Then Mrs. Hutter returned, carrying a tray, which she set upon a chair,
and drew to Carley’s side. “Eat an’ drink,” she said, as if these
actions were the cardinally important ones of life. “Flo, you carry her
bags up to that west room we always give to some particular person we
want to love Lolomi.” Next she threw sticks of wood upon the fire,
making it crackle and blaze, then seated herself near Carley and beamed
upon her.

“You’ll not mind if we call you Carley?” she asked, eagerly.

“Oh, indeed no! I—I’d like it,” returned Carley, made to feel friendly
and at home in spite of herself.

“You see it’s not as if you were just a stranger,” went on Mrs. Hutter.
“Tom—that’s Flo’s father—took a likin’ to Glenn Kilbourne when he first
came to Oak Creek over a year ago. I wonder if you all know how sick
that soldier boy was.... Well, he lay on his back for two solid
weeks—in the room we’re givin’ you. An’ I for one didn’t think he’d
ever get up. But he did. An’ he got better. An’ after a while he went
to work for Tom. Then six months an’ more ago he invested in the sheep
business with Tom. He lived with us until he built his cabin up West
Fork. He an’ Flo have run together a good deal, an’ naturally he told
her about you. So you see you’re not a stranger. An’ we want you to
feel you’re with friends.”

“I thank you, Mrs. Hutter,” replied Carley, feelingly. “I never could
thank you enough for being good to Glenn. I did not know he was so—so
sick. At first he wrote but seldom.”

“Reckon he never wrote you or told you what he did in the war,”
declared Mrs. Hutter.

“Indeed he never did!”

“Well, I’ll tell you some day. For Tom found out all about him. Got
some of it from a soldier who came to Flagstaff for lung trouble. He’d
been in the same company with Glenn. We didn’t know this boy’s name
while he was in Flagstaff. But later Tom found out. John Henderson. He
was only twenty-two, a fine lad. An’ he died in Phœnix. We tried to get
him out here. But the boy wouldn’t live on charity. He was always
expectin’ money—a war bonus, whatever that was. It didn’t come. He was
a clerk at the El Tovar for a while. Then he came to Flagstaff. But it
was too cold an’ he stayed there too long.”

“Too bad,” rejoined Carley, thoughtfully. This information as to the
suffering of American soldiers had augmented during the last few
months, and seemed to possess strange, poignant power to depress
Carley. Always she had turned away from the unpleasant. And the misery
of unfortunates was as disturbing almost as direct contact with disease
and squalor. But it had begun to dawn upon Carley that there might
occur circumstances of life, in every way affronting her comfort and
happiness, which it would be impossible to turn her back upon.

At this juncture Flo returned to the room, and again Carley was struck
with the girl’s singular freedom of movement and the sense of sure
poise and joy that seemed to emanate from her presence.

“I’ve made a fire in your little stove,” she said. “There’s water
heating. Now won’t you come up and change those traveling clothes.
You’ll want to fix up for Glenn, won’t you?”

Carley had to smile at that. This girl indeed was frank and
unsophisticated, and somehow refreshing. Carley rose.

“You are both very good to receive me as a friend,” she said. “I hope I
shall not disappoint you.... Yes, I do want to improve my appearance
before Glenn sees me.... Is there any way I can send word to him—by
someone who has not seen me?”

“There shore is. I’ll send Charley, one of our hired boys.”

“Thank you. Then tell him to say there is a lady here from New York to
see him, and it is very important.”

Flo Hutter clapped her hands and laughed with glee. Her gladness gave
Carley a little twinge of conscience. Jealously was an unjust and
stifling thing.

Carley was conducted up a broad stairway and along a boarded hallway to
a room that opened out on the porch. A steady low murmur of falling
water assailed her ears. Through the open door she saw across the porch
to a white tumbling lacy veil of water falling, leaping, changing, so
close that it seemed to touch the heavy pole railing of the porch.

This room resembled a tent. The sides were of canvas. It had no
ceiling. But the rough-hewn shingles of the roof of the house sloped
down closely. The furniture was home made. An Indian rug covered the
floor. The bed with its woolly clean blankets and the white pillows
looked inviting.

“Is this where Glenn lay—when he was sick?” queried Carley.

“Yes,” replied Flo, gravely, and a shadow darkened her eyes. “I ought
to tell you all about it. I will some day. But you must not be made
unhappy now.... Glenn nearly died here. Mother or I never left his
side—for a while there—when life was so bad.”

She showed Carley how to open the little stove and put the short
billets of wood inside and work the damper; and cautioning her to keep
an eye on it so that it would not get too hot, she left Carley to
herself.

Carley found herself in an unfamiliar mood. There came a leap of her
heart every time she thought of the meeting with Glenn, so soon now to
be, but it was not that which was unfamiliar. She seemed to have a
difficult approach to undefined and unusual thoughts. All this was so
different from her regular life. Besides she was tired. But these
explanations did not suffice. There was a pang in her breast which must
owe its origin to the fact that Glenn Kilbourne had been ill in this
little room and some other girl than Carley Burch had nursed him. “Am I
jealous?” she whispered. “No!” But she knew in her heart that she lied.
A woman could no more help being jealous, under such circumstances,
than she could help the beat and throb of her blood. Nevertheless,
Carley was glad Flo Hutter had been there, and always she would be
grateful to her for that kindness.

Carley disrobed and, donning her dressing gown, she unpacked her bags
and hung her things upon pegs under the curtained shelves. Then she lay
down to rest, with no intention of slumber. But there was a strange
magic in the fragrance of the room, like the piny tang outdoors, and in
the feel of the bed, and especially in the low, dreamy hum and murmur
of the waterfall. She fell asleep. When she awakened it was five
o’clock. The fire in the stove was out, but the water was still warm.
She bathed and dressed, not without care, yet as swiftly as was her
habit at home; and she wore white because Glenn had always liked her
best in white. But it was assuredly not a gown to wear in a country
house where draughts of cold air filled the unheated rooms and halls.
So she threw round her a warm sweater-shawl, with colorful bars
becoming to her dark eyes and hair.

All the time that she dressed and thought, her very being seemed to be
permeated by that soft murmuring sound of falling water. No moment of
waking life there at Lolomi Lodge, or perhaps of slumber hours, could
be wholly free of that sound. It vaguely tormented Carley, yet was not
uncomfortable. She went out upon the porch. The small alcove space held
a bed and a rustic chair. Above her the peeled poles of the roof
descended to within a few feet of her head. She had to lean over the
rail of the porch to look up. The green and red rock wall sheered
ponderously near. The waterfall showed first at the notch of a fissure,
where the cliff split; and down over smooth places the water gleamed,
to narrow in a crack with little drops, and suddenly to leap into a
thin white sheet.

Out from the porch the view was restricted to glimpses between the
pines, and beyond to the opposite wall of the canyon. How shut-in, how
walled in this home!

“In summer it might be good to spend a couple of weeks here,”
soliloquized Carley. “But to _live_ here? Heavens! A person might as
well be buried.”

Heavy footsteps upon the porch below accompanied by a man’s voice
quickened Carley’s pulse. Did they belong to Glenn? After a strained
second she decided not. Nevertheless, the acceleration of her blood and
an unwonted glow of excitement, long a stranger to her, persisted as
she left the porch and entered the boarded hall. How gray and barn-like
this upper part of the house! From the head of the stairway, however,
the big living room presented a cheerful contrast. There were warm
colors, some comfortable rockers, a lamp that shed a bright light, and
an open fire which alone would have dispelled the raw gloom of the day.

A large man in corduroys and top boots advanced to meet Carley. He had
a clean-shaven face that might have been hard and stern but for his
smile, and one look into his eyes revealed their resemblance to Flo’s.

“I’m Tom Hutter, an’ I’m shore glad to welcome you to Lolomi, Miss
Carley,” he said. His voice was deep and slow. There were ease and
force in his presence, and the grip he gave Carley’s hand was that of a
man who made no distinction in hand-shaking. Carley, quick in her
perceptions, instantly liked him and sensed in him a strong
personality. She greeted him in turn and expressed her thanks for his
goodness to Glenn. Naturally Carley expected him to say something about
her fiance, but he did not.

“Well, Miss Carley, if you don’t mind, I’ll say you’re prettier than
your picture,” said Hutter. “An’ that is shore sayin’ a lot. All the
sheep herders in the country have taken a peep at your picture. Without
permission, you understand.”

“I’m greatly flattered,” laughed Carley.

“We’re glad you’ve come,” replied Hutter, simply. “I just got back from
the East myself. Chicago an’ Kansas City. I came to Arizona from
Illinois over thirty years ago. An’ this was my first trip since.
Reckon I’ve not got back my breath yet. Times have changed, Miss
Carley. Times an’ people!”

Mrs. Hutter bustled in from the kitchen, where manifestly she had been
importantly engaged. “For the land’s sakes!” she exclaimed, fervently,
as she threw up her hands at sight of Carley. Her expression was indeed
a compliment, but there was a suggestion of shock in it. Then Flo came
in. She wore a simple gray gown that reached the top of her high shoes.

“Carley, don’t mind mother,” said Flo. “She means your dress is lovely.
Which is my say, too.... But, listen. I just saw Glenn comin’ up the
road.”

Carley ran to the open door with more haste than dignity. She saw a
tall man striding along. Something about him appeared familiar. It was
his walk—an erect swift carriage, with a swing of the march still
visible. She recognized Glenn. And all within her seemed to become
unstable. She watched him cross the road, face the house. How changed!
No—this was not Glenn Kilbourne. This was a bronzed man, wide of
shoulder, roughly garbed, heavy limbed, quite different from the Glenn
she remembered. He mounted the porch steps. And Carley, still unseen
herself, saw his face. Yes—Glenn! Hot blood seemed to be tingling
liberated in her veins. Wheeling away, she backed against the wall
behind the door and held up a warning finger to Flo, who stood nearest.
Strange and disturbing then, to see something in Flo Hutter’s eyes that
could be read by a woman in only one way!

A tall form darkened the doorway. It strode in and halted.

“Flo!—who—where?” he began, breathlessly.

His voice, so well remembered, yet deeper, huskier, fell upon Carley’s
ears as something unconsciously longed for. His frame had so filled out
that she did not recognize it. His face, too, had unbelievably
changed—not in the regularity of feature that had been its chief charm,
but in contour of cheek and vanishing of pallid hue and tragic line.
Carley’s heart swelled with joy. Beyond all else she had hoped to see
the sad fixed hopelessness, the havoc, gone from his face. Therefore
the restraint and nonchalance upon which Carley prided herself
sustained eclipse.

“Glenn! Look—who’s—here!” she called, in voice she could not have
steadied to save her life. This meeting was more than she had
anticipated.

Glenn whirled with an inarticulate cry. He saw Carley. Then—no matter
how unreasonable or exacting had been Carley’s longings, they were
satisfied.

“You!” he cried, and leaped at her with radiant face.

Carley not only did not care about the spectators of this meeting, but
forgot them utterly. More than the joy of seeing Glenn, more than the
all-satisfying assurance to her woman’s heart that she was still
beloved, welled up a deep, strange, profound something that shook her
to her depths. It was beyond selfishness. It was gratitude to God and
to the West that had restored him.

“Carley! I couldn’t believe it was you,” he declared, releasing her
from his close embrace, yet still holding her.

“Yes, Glenn—it’s I—all you’ve left of me,” she replied, tremulously,
and she sought with unsteady hands to put up her dishevelled hair.
“You—you big sheep herder! You Goliath!”

“I never was so knocked off my pins,” he said. “A lady to see me—from
New York!... Of course it had to be you. But I couldn’t believe.
Carley, you were good to come.”

Somehow the soft, warm look of his dark eyes hurt her. New and strange
indeed it was to her, as were other things about him. Why had she not
come West sooner? She disengaged herself from his hold and moved away,
striving for the composure habitual with her. Flo Hutter was standing
before the fire, looking down. Mrs. Hutter beamed upon Carley.

“Now let’s have supper,” she said.

“Reckon Miss Carley can’t eat now, after that hug Glenn gave her,”
drawled Tom Hutter. “I was some worried. You see Glenn has gained
seventy pounds in six months. An’ he doesn’t know his strength.”

“Seventy pounds!” exclaimed Carley, gayly. “I thought it was more.”

“Carley, you must excuse my violence,” said Glenn. “I’ve been hugging
sheep. That is, when I shear a sheep I have to hold him.”

They all laughed, and so the moment of readjustment passed. Presently
Carley found herself sitting at table, directly across from Flo. A
pearly whiteness was slowly warming out of the girl’s face. Her frank
clear eyes met Carley’s and they had nothing to hide. Carley’s first
requisite for character in a woman was that she be a thoroughbred. She
lacked it often enough herself to admire it greatly in another woman.
And that moment saw a birth of respect and sincere liking in her for
this Western girl. If Flo Hutter ever was a rival she would be an
honest one.

Not long after supper Tom Hutter winked at Carley and said he “reckoned
on general principles it was his hunch to go to bed.” Mrs. Hutter
suddenly discovered tasks to perform elsewhere. And Flo said in her
cool sweet drawl, somehow audacious and tantalizing, “Shore you two
will want to spoon.”

“Now, Flo, Eastern girls are no longer old-fashioned enough for that,”
declared Glenn.

“Too bad! Reckon I can’t see how love could ever be old-fashioned. Good
night, Glenn. Good night, Carley.”

Flo stood an instant at the foot of the dark stairway where the light
from the lamp fell upon her face. It seemed sweet and earnest to
Carley. It expressed unconscious longing, but no envy. Then she ran up
the stairs to disappear.

“Glenn, is that girl in love with you?” asked Carley, bluntly.

To her amaze, Glenn laughed. When had she heard him laugh? It thrilled
her, yet nettled her a little.

“If that isn’t like you!” he ejaculated. “Your very first words after
we are left alone! It brings back the East, Carley.”

“Probably recall to memory will be good for you,” returned Carley. “But
tell me. Is she in love with you?”

“Why, no, certainly not!” replied Glenn. “Anyway, how could I answer
such a question? It just made me laugh, that’s all.”

“Humph! I can remember when you were not above making love to a pretty
girl. You certainly had me worn to a frazzle—before we became engaged,”
said Carley.

“Old times! How long ago they seem!... Carley, it’s sure wonderful to
see you.”

“How do you like my gown?” asked Carley, pirouetting for his benefit.

“Well, what little there is of it is beautiful,” he replied, with a
slow smile. “I always liked you best in white. Did you remember?”

“Yes. I got the gown for you. And I’ll never wear it except for you.”

“Same old coquette—same old eternal feminine,” he said, half sadly.
“You know when you look stunning.... But, Carley, the cut of that—or
rather the abbreviation of it—inclines me to think that style for
women’s clothes has not changed for the better. In fact, it’s worse
than two years ago in Paris and later in New York. Where will you women
draw the line?”

“Women are slaves to the prevailing mode,” rejoined Carley. “I don’t
imagine women who dress would ever draw a line, if fashion went on
dictating.”

“But would they care so much—if they had to work—plenty of work—and
children?” inquired Glenn, wistfully.

“Glenn! Work and children for modern women? Why, you are dreaming!”
said Carley, with a laugh.

She saw him gaze thoughtfully into the glowing embers of the fire, and
as she watched him her quick intuition grasped a subtle change in his
mood. It brought a sternness to his face. She could hardly realize she
was looking at the Glenn Kilbourne of old.

“Come close to the fire,” he said, and pulled up a chair for her. Then
he threw more wood upon the red coals. “You must be careful not to
catch cold out here. The altitude makes a cold dangerous. And that gown
is no protection.”

“Glenn, one chair used to be enough for us,” she said, archly, standing
beside him.

But he did not respond to her hint, and, a little affronted, she
accepted the proffered chair. Then he began to ask questions rapidly.
He was eager for news from home—from his people—from old friends.
However he did not inquire of Carley about her friends. She talked
unremittingly for an hour, before she satisfied his hunger. But when
her turn came to ask questions she found him reticent.

He had fallen upon rather hard days at first out here in the West; then
his health had begun to improve; and as soon as he was able to work his
condition rapidly changed for the better; and now he was getting along
pretty well. Carley felt hurt at his apparent disinclination to confide
in her. The strong cast of his face, as if it had been chiseled in
bronze; the stern set of his lips and the jaw that protruded lean and
square cut; the quiet masked light of his eyes; the coarse roughness of
his brown hands, mute evidence of strenuous labors—these all gave a
different impression from his brief remarks about himself. Lastly there
was a little gray in the light-brown hair over his temples. Glenn was
only twenty-seven, yet he looked ten years older. Studying him so, with
the memory of earlier years in her mind, she was forced to admit that
she liked him infinitely more as he was now. He seemed proven.
Something had made him a man. Had it been his love for her, or the army
service, or the war in France, or the struggle for life and health
afterwards? Or had it been this rugged, uncouth West? Carley felt
insidious jealousy of this last possibility. She feared this West. She
was going to hate it. She had womanly intuition enough to see in Flo
Hutter a girl somehow to be reckoned with. Still, Carley would not
acknowledge to herself that his simple, unsophisticated Western girl
could possibly be a rival. Carley did not need to consider the fact
that she had been spoiled by the attention of men. It was not her
vanity that precluded Flo Hutter as a rival.

Gradually the conversation drew to a lapse, and it suited Carley to let
it be so. She watched Glenn as he gazed thoughtfully into the amber
depths of the fire. What was going on in his mind? Carley’s old
perplexity suddenly had rebirth. And with it came an unfamiliar fear
which she could not smother. Every moment that she sat there beside
Glenn she was realizing more and more a yearning, passionate love for
him. The unmistakable manifestation of his joy at sight of her, the
strong, almost rude expression of his love, had called to some
responsive, but hitherto unplumbed deeps of her. If it had not been for
these undeniable facts Carley would have been panic-stricken. They
reassured her, yet only made her state of mind more dissatisfied.

“Carley, do you still go in for dancing?” Glenn asked, presently, with
his thoughtful eyes turning to her.

“Of course. I like dancing, and it’s about all the exercise I get,” she
replied.

“Have the dances changed—again?”

“It’s the music, perhaps, that changes the dancing. Jazz is becoming
popular. And about all the crowd dances now is an infinite variation of
fox-trot.”

“No waltzing?”

“I don’t believe I waltzed once this winter.”

“Jazz? That’s a sort of tinpanning, jiggly stuff, isn’t it?”

“Glenn, it’s the fever of the public pulse,” replied Carley. “The
graceful waltz, like the stately minuet, flourished back in the days
when people rested rather than raced.”

“More’s the pity,” said Glenn. Then after a moment, in which his gaze
returned to the fire, he inquired rather too casually, “Does Morrison
still chase after you?”

“Glenn, I’m neither old—nor married,” she replied, laughing.

“No, that’s true. But if you were married it wouldn’t make any
difference to Morrison.”

Carley could not detect bitterness or jealousy in his voice. She would
not have been averse to hearing either. She gathered from his remark,
however, that he was going to be harder than ever to understand. What
had she said or done to make him retreat within himself, aloof,
impersonal, unfamiliar? He did not impress her as loverlike. What irony
of fate was this that held her there yearning for his kisses and
caresses as never before, while he watched the fire, and talked as to a
mere acquaintance, and seemed sad and far away? Or did she merely
imagine that? Only one thing could she be sure of at that moment, and
it was that pride would never be her ally.

“Glenn, look here,” she said, sliding her chair close to his and
holding out her left hand, slim and white, with its glittering diamond
on the third finger.

He took her hand in his and pressed it, and smiled at her. “Yes,
Carley, it’s a beautiful, soft little hand. But I think I’d like it
better if it were strong and brown, and coarse on the inside—from
useful work.”

“Like Flo Hutter’s?” queried Carley.

“Yes.”

Carley looked proudly into his eyes. “People are born in different
stations. I respect your little Western friend, Glenn, but could I wash
and sweep, milk cows and chop wood, and all that sort of thing?”

“I suppose you couldn’t,” he admitted, with a blunt little laugh.

“Would you want me to?” she asked.

“Well, that’s hard to say,” he replied, knitting his brows. “I hardly
know. I think it depends on you.... But if you did do such work
wouldn’t you be happier?”

“Happier! Why Glenn, I’d be miserable!... But listen. It wasn’t my
beautiful and useless hand I wanted you to see. It was my engagement
ring.”

“Oh!—Well?” he went on, slowly.

“I’ve never had it off since you left New York,” she said, softly. “You
gave it to me four years ago. Do you remember? It was on my
twenty-second birthday. You said it would take two months’ salary to
pay the bill.”

“It sure did,” he retorted, with a hint of humor.

“Glenn, during the war it was not so—so very hard to wear this ring as
an engagement ring should be worn,” said Carley, growing more earnest.
“But after the war—especially after your departure West it was terribly
hard to be true to the significance of this betrothal ring. There was a
let-down in all women. Oh, no one need tell _me!_ There was. And men
were affected by that and the chaotic condition of the times. New York
was wild during the year of your absence. Prohibition was a joke.—Well,
I gadded, danced, dressed, drank, smoked, motored, just the same as the
other women in our crowd. Something drove me to. I never rested.
Excitement seemed to be happiness—Glenn, I am not making any plea to
excuse all that. But I want you to know—how under trying
circumstances—I was absolutely true to you. Understand me. I mean true
as regards love. Through it all I loved you just the same. And now I’m
with you, it seems, oh, so much more!... Your last letter hurt me. I
don’t know just how. But I came West to see you—to tell you this—and to
ask you.... Do you want this ring back?”

“Certainly not,” he replied, forcibly, with a dark flush spreading over
his face.

“Then—you love me?” she whispered.

“Yes—I love you,” he returned, deliberately. “And in spite of all you
say—very probably more than you love me.... But you, like all women,
make love and its expression the sole object of life. Carley, I have
been concerned with keeping my body from the grave and my soul from
hell.”

“But—dear—you’re well now?” she returned, with trembling lips.

“Yes, I’ve almost pulled out.”

“Then what is wrong?”

“Wrong?—With me or you,” he queried, with keen, enigmatical glance upon
her.

“What is wrong between us? There is something.”

“Carley, a man who has been on the verge—as I have been—seldom or never
comes back to happiness. But perhaps—”

“You frighten me,” cried Carley, and, rising, she sat upon the arm of
his chair and encircled his neck with her arms. “How can I help if I do
not understand? Am I so miserably little?... Glenn, _must_ I tell you?
No woman can live without love. I need to be loved. That’s all that’s
wrong with _me_.”

“Carley, you are still an imperious, mushy girl,” replied Glenn, taking
her into his arms. “I need to be loved, too. But that’s not what is
wrong with me. You’ll have to find it out yourself.”

“You’re a dear old Sphinx,” she retorted.

“Listen, Carley,” he said, earnestly. “About this love-making stuff.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I love you. I’m starved for your kisses.
But—is it right to ask them?”

“Right! Aren’t we engaged? And don’t I want to give them?”

“If I were only _sure_ we’d be married!” he said, in low, tense voice,
as if speaking more to himself.

“Married!” cried Carley, convulsively clasping him. “Of course we’ll be
married. Glenn, you wouldn’t jilt me?”

“Carley, what I mean is that you might never really marry me,” he
answered, seriously.

“Oh, if that’s all you need be sure of, Glenn Kilbourne, you may begin
to make love to me now.”


It was late when Carley went up to her room. And she was in such a
softened mood, so happy and excited and yet disturbed in mind, that the
coldness and the darkness did not matter in the least. She undressed in
pitchy blackness, stumbling over chair and bed, feeling for what she
needed. And in her mood this unusual proceeding was fun. When ready for
bed she opened the door to take a peep out. Through the dense blackness
the waterfall showed dimly opaque. Carley felt a soft mist wet her
face. The low roar of the falling water seemed to envelop her. Under
the cliff wall brooded impenetrable gloom. But out above the treetops
shone great stars, wonderfully white and radiant and cold, with a
piercing contrast to the deep clear blue of sky. The waterfall hummed
into an absolutely dead silence. It emphasized the silence. Not only
cold was it that made Carley shudder. How lonely, how lost, how hidden
this canyon!

Then she hurried to bed, grateful for the warm woolly blankets.
Relaxation and thought brought consciousness of the heat of her blood,
the beat and throb and swell of her heart, of the tumult within her. In
the lonely darkness of her room she might have faced the truth of her
strangely renewed and augmented love for Glenn Kilbourne. But she was
more concerned with her happiness. She had won him back. Her presence,
her love had overcome his restraint. She thrilled in the sweet
consciousness of her woman’s conquest. How splendid he was! To hold
back physical tenderness, the simple expressions of love, because he
had feared they might unduly influence her! He had grown in many ways.
She must be careful to reach up to his ideals. That about Flo Hutter’s
toil-hardened hands! Was that significance somehow connected with the
rift in the lute? For Carley admitted to herself that there was
something amiss, something incomprehensible, something intangible that
obtruded its menace into her dream of future happiness. Still, what had
she to fear, so long as she could be with Glenn?

And yet there were forced upon her, insistent and perplexing, the
questions—was her love selfish? was she considering him? was she blind
to something he could see? Tomorrow and next day and the days to come
held promise of joyous companionship with Glenn, yet likewise they
seemed full of a portent of trouble for her, or fight and ordeal, of
lessons that would make life significant for her.




CHAPTER III


Carley was awakened by rattling sounds in her room. The raising of
sleepy eyelids disclosed Flo on her knees before the little stove, in
the act of lighting a fire.

“Mawnin’, Carley,” she drawled. “It’s shore cold. Reckon it’ll snow
today, worse luck, just because you’re here. Take my hunch and stay in
bed till the fire burns up.”

“I shall do no such thing,” declared Carley, heroically.

“We’re afraid you’ll take cold,” said Flo. “This is desert country with
high altitude. Spring is here when the sun shines. But it’s only
shinin’ in streaks these days. That means winter, really. Please be
good.”

“Well, it doesn’t require much self-denial to stay here awhile longer,”
replied Carley, lazily.

Flo left with a parting admonition not to let the stove get red-hot.
And Carley lay snuggled in the warm blankets, dreading the ordeal of
getting out into that cold bare room. Her nose was cold. When her nose
grew cold, it being a faithful barometer as to temperature, Carley knew
there was frost in the air. She preferred summer. Steam-heated rooms
with hothouse flowers lending their perfume had certainly not trained
Carley for primitive conditions. She had a spirit, however, that was
waxing a little rebellious to all this intimation as to her
susceptibility to colds and her probable weakness under privation.
Carley got up. Her bare feet landed upon the board floor instead of the
Navajo rug, and she thought she had encountered cold stone. Stove and
hot water notwithstanding, by the time she was half dressed she was
also half frozen. “Some actor fellow once said w-when you w-went West
you were c-camping out,” chattered Carley. “Believe me, he said
something.”

The fact was Carley had never camped out. Her set played golf, rode
horseback, motored and house-boated, but they had never gone in for
uncomfortable trips. The camps and hotels in the Adirondacks were as
warm and luxurious as Carley’s own home. Carley now missed many things.
And assuredly her flesh was weak. It cost her effort of will and real
pain to finish lacing her boots. As she had made an engagement with
Glenn to visit his cabin, she had donned an outdoor suit. She wondered
if the cold had anything to do with the perceptible diminishing of the
sound of the waterfall. Perhaps some of the water had frozen, like her
fingers.

Carley went downstairs to the living room, and made no effort to resist
a rush to the open fire. Flo and her mother were amused at Carley’s
impetuosity. “You’ll like that stingin’ of the air after you get used
to it,” said Mrs. Hutter. Carley had her doubts. When she was
thoroughly thawed out she discovered an appetite quite unusual for her,
and she enjoyed her breakfast. Then it was time to sally forth to meet
Glenn.

“It’s pretty sharp this mawnin’,” said Flo. “You’ll need gloves and
sweater.”

Having fortified herself with these, Carley asked how to find West Fork
Canyon.

“It’s down the road a little way,” replied Flo. “A great narrow canyon
opening on the right side. You can’t miss it.”

Flo accompanied her as far as the porch steps. A queer-looking
individual was slouching along with ax over his shoulder.

“There’s Charley,” said Flo. “He’ll show you.” Then she whispered:
“He’s sort of dotty sometimes. A horse kicked him once. But mostly he’s
sensible.”

At Flo’s call the fellow halted with a grin. He was long, lean, loose
jointed, dressed in blue overalls stuck into the tops of muddy boots,
and his face was clear olive without beard or line. His brow bulged a
little, and from under it peered out a pair of wistful brown eyes that
reminded Carley of those of a dog she had once owned.

“Wal, it ain’t a-goin’ to be a nice day,” remarked Charley, as he tried
to accommodate his strides to Carley’s steps.

“How can you tell?” asked Carley. “It looks clear and bright.”

“Naw, this is a dark mawnin’. Thet’s a cloudy sun. We’ll hev snow on
an’ off.”

“Do you mind bad weather?”

“Me? All the same to me. Reckon, though, I like it cold so I can loaf
round a big fire at night.”

“I like a big fire, too.”

“Ever camped out?” he asked.

“Not what you’d call the real thing,” replied Carley.

“Wal, thet’s too bad. Reckon it’ll be tough fer you,” he went on,
kindly. “There was a gurl tenderfoot heah two years ago an’ she had a
hell of a time. They all joked her, ’cept me, an’ played tricks on her.
An’ on her side she was always puttin’ her foot in it. I was shore
sorry fer her.”

“You were very kind to be an exception,” murmured Carley.

“You look out fer Tom Hutter, an’ I reckon Flo ain’t so darn above
layin’ traps fer you. ’Specially as she’s sweet on your beau. I seen
them together a lot.”

“Yes?” interrogated Carley, encouragingly.

“Kilbourne is the best fellar thet ever happened along Oak Creek. I
helped him build his cabin. We’ve hunted some together. Did you ever
hunt?”

“No.”

“Wal, you’ve shore missed a lot of fun,” he said. “Turkey huntin’.
Thet’s what fetches the gurls. I reckon because turkeys are so good to
eat. The old gobblers hev begun to gobble now. I’ll take you gobbler
huntin’ if you’d like to go.”

“I’m sure I would.”

“There’s good trout fishin’ along heah a little later,” he said,
pointing to the stream. “Crick’s too high now. I like West Fork best.
I’ve ketched some lammin’ big ones up there.”

Carley was amused and interested. She could not say that Charley had
shown any indication of his mental peculiarity to her. It took
considerable restraint not to lead him to talk more about Flo and
Glenn. Presently they reached the turn in the road, opposite the
cottage Carley had noticed yesterday, and here her loquacious escort
halted.

“You take the trail heah,” he said, pointing it out, “an’ foller it
into West Fork. So long, an’ don’t forget we’re goin’ huntin’ turkeys.”

Carley smiled her thanks, and, taking to the trail, she stepped out
briskly, now giving attention to her surroundings. The canyon had
widened, and the creek with its deep thicket of green and white had
sheered to the left. On her right the canyon wall appeared to be
lifting higher—and higher. She could not see it well, owing to
intervening treetops. The trail led her through a grove of maples and
sycamores, out into an open park-like bench that turned to the right
toward the cliff. Suddenly Carley saw a break in the red wall. It was
the intersecting canyon, West Fork. What a narrow red-walled gateway!
Huge pine trees spread wide gnarled branches over her head. The wind
made soft rush in their tops, sending the brown needles lightly on the
air. Carley turned the bulging corner, to be halted by a magnificent
spectacle. It seemed a mountain wall loomed over her. It was the
western side of this canyon, so lofty that Carley had to tip back her
head to see the top. She swept her astonished gaze down the face of
this tremendous red mountain wall and then slowly swept it upward
again. This phenomenon of a cliff seemed beyond the comprehension of
her sight. It looked a mile high. The few trees along its bold rampart
resembled short spear-pointed bushes outlined against the steel gray of
sky. Ledges, caves, seams, cracks, fissures, beetling red brows, yellow
crumbling crags, benches of green growths and niches choked with brush,
and bold points where single lonely pine trees grew perilously, and
blank walls a thousand feet across their shadowed faces—these features
gradually took shape in Carley’s confused sight, until the colossal
mountain front stood up before her in all its strange, wild,
magnificent ruggedness and beauty.

“Arizona! Perhaps this is what he meant,” murmured Carley. “I never
dreamed of anything like this.... But, oh! it overshadows me—bears me
down! I could never have a moment’s peace under it.”

It fascinated her. There were inaccessible ledges that haunted her with
their remote fastnesses. How wonderful would it be to get there, rest
there, if that were possible! But only eagles could reach them. There
were places, then, that the desecrating hands of man could not touch.
The dark caves were mystically potent in their vacant staring out at
the world beneath them. The crumbling crags, the toppling ledges, the
leaning rocks all threatened to come thundering down at the breath of
wind. How deep and soft the red color in contrast with the green! How
splendid the sheer bold uplift of gigantic steps! Carley found herself
marveling at the forces that had so rudely, violently, and grandly left
this monument to nature.

“Well, old Fifth Avenue gadder!” called a gay voice. “If the back wall
of my yard so halts you—what will you ever do when you see the Painted
Desert, or climb Sunset Peak, or look down into the Grand Canyon?”

“Oh, Glenn, where are you?” cried Carley, gazing everywhere near at
hand. But he was farther away. The clearness of his voice had deceived
her. Presently she espied him a little distance away, across a creek
she had not before noticed.

“Come on,” he called. “I want to see you cross the stepping stones.”

Carley ran ahead, down a little slope of clean red rock, to the shore
of the green water. It was clear, swift, deep in some places and
shallow in others, with white wreathes or ripples around the rocks
evidently placed there as a means to cross. Carley drew back aghast.

“Glenn, I could never make it,” she called.

“Come on, my Alpine climber,” he taunted. “Will you let Arizona daunt
you?”

“Do you want me to fall in and catch cold?” she cried, desperately.

“Carley, big women might even cross the bad places of modern life on
stepping stones of their dead selves!” he went on, with something of
mockery. “Surely a few physical steps are not beyond you.”

“Say, are you mangling _Tennyson_ or just kidding me?” she demanded
slangily.

“My love, Flo could cross here with her eyes shut.”

That thrust spurred Carley to action. His words were jest, yet they
held a hint of earnest. With her heart at her throat Carley stepped on
the first rock, and, poising, she calculated on a running leap from
stone to stone. Once launched, she felt she was falling downhill. She
swayed, she splashed, she slipped; and clearing the longest leap from
the last stone to shore she lost her balance and fell into Glenn’s
arms. His kisses drove away both her panic and her resentment.

“By Jove! I didn’t think you’d even attempt it!” he declared,
manifestly pleased. “I made sure I’d have to pack you over—in fact,
rather liked the idea.”

“I wouldn’t advise you to employ any such means again—to dare me,” she
retorted.

“That’s a nifty outdoor suit you’ve on,” he said, admiringly. “I was
wondering what you’d wear. I like short outing skirts for women, rather
than trousers. The service sort of made the fair sex dippy about
pants.”

“It made them dippy about more than that,” she replied. “You and I will
never live to see the day that women recover their balance.”

“I agree with you,” replied Glenn.

Carley locked her arm in his. “Honey, I want to have a good time today.
Cut out all the _other_ women stuff.... Take me to see your little gray
home in the West. Or is it gray?”

He laughed. “Why, yes, it’s gray, just about. The logs have bleached
some.”

Glenn led her away up a trail that climbed between bowlders, and
meandered on over piny mats of needles under great, silent, spreading
pines; and closer to the impondering mountain wall, where at the base
of the red rock the creek murmured strangely with hollow gurgle, where
the sun had no chance to affect the cold damp gloom; and on through
sweet-smelling woods, out into the sunlight again, and across a wider
breadth of stream; and up a slow slope covered with stately pines, to a
little cabin that faced the west.

“Here we are, sweetheart,” said Glenn. “Now we shall see what you are
made of.”

Carley was non-committal as to that. Her intense interest precluded any
humor at this moment. Not until she actually saw the log cabin Glenn
had erected with his own hands had she been conscious of any great
interest. But sight of it awoke something unaccustomed in Carley. As
she stepped into the cabin her heart was not acting normally for a
young woman who had no illusions about love in a cottage.

Glenn’s cabin contained one room about fifteen feet wide by twenty
long. Between the peeled logs were lines of red mud, hard dried. There
was a small window opposite the door. In one corner was a couch of
poles, with green tips of pine boughs peeping from under the blankets.
The floor consisted of flat rocks laid irregularly, with many spaces of
earth showing between. The open fireplace appeared too large for the
room, but the very bigness of it, as well as the blazing sticks and
glowing embers, appealed strongly to Carley. A rough-hewn log formed
the mantel, and on it Carley’s picture held the place of honor. Above
this a rifle lay across deer antlers. Carley paused here in her survey
long enough to kiss Glenn and point to her photograph.

“You couldn’t have pleased me more.”

To the left of the fireplace was a rude cupboard of shelves, packed
with boxes, cans, bags, and utensils. Below the cupboard, hung upon
pegs, were blackened pots and pans, a long-handled skillet, and a
bucket. Glenn’s table was a masterpiece. There was no danger of
knocking it over. It consisted of four poles driven into the ground,
upon which had been nailed two wide slabs. This table showed
considerable evidence of having been scrubbed scrupulously clean. There
were two low stools, made out of boughs, and the seats had been covered
with woolly sheep hide. In the right-hand corner stood a neat pile of
firewood, cut with an ax, and beyond this hung saddle and saddle
blanket, bridle and spurs. An old sombrero was hooked upon the pommel
of the saddle. Upon the wall, higher up, hung a lantern, resting in a
coil of rope that Carley took to be a lasso. Under a shelf upon which
lay a suitcase hung some rough wearing apparel.

Carley noted that her picture and the suit case were absolutely the
only physical evidences of Glenn’s connection with his Eastern life.
That had an unaccountable effect upon Carley. What had she expected?
Then, after another survey of the room, she began to pester Glenn with
questions. He had to show her the spring outside and the little bench
with basin and soap. Sight of his soiled towel made her throw up her
hands. She sat on the stools. She lay on the couch. She rummaged into
the contents of the cupboard. She threw wood on the fire. Then,
finally, having exhausted her search and inquiry, she flopped down on
one of the stools to gaze at Glenn in awe and admiration and
incredulity.

“Glenn—you’ve actually lived here!” she ejaculated.

“Since last fall before the snow came,” he said, smiling.

“Snow! Did it snow?” she inquired.

“Well, I guess. I was snowed in for a week.”

“Why did you choose this lonely place—way off from the Lodge?” she
asked, slowly.

“I wanted to be by myself,” he replied, briefly.

“You mean this is a sort of camp-out place?”

“Carley, I call it my home,” he replied, and there was a low, strong
sweetness in his voice she had never heard before.

That silenced her for a while. She went to the door and gazed up at the
towering wall, more wonderful than ever, and more fearful, too, in her
sight. Presently tears dimmed her eyes. She did not understand her
feeling; she was ashamed of it; she hid it from Glenn. Indeed, there
was something terribly wrong between her and Glenn, and it was not in
him. This cabin he called home gave her a shock which would take time
to analyze. At length she turned to him with gay utterance upon her
lips. She tried to put out of her mind a dawning sense that this
close-to-the-earth habitation, this primitive dwelling, held strange
inscrutable power over a self she had never divined she possessed. The
very stones in the hearth seemed to call out from some remote past, and
the strong sweet smell of burnt wood thrilled to the marrow of her
bones. How little she knew of herself! But she had intelligence enough
to understand that there was a woman in her, the female of the species;
and through that the sensations from logs and stones and earth and fire
had strange power to call up the emotions handed down to her from the
ages. The thrill, the queer heartbeat, the vague, haunting memory of
something, as of a dim childhood adventure, the strange prickling sense
of dread—these abided with her and augmented while she tried to show
Glenn her pride in him and also how funny his cabin seemed to her.

Once or twice he hesitatingly, and somewhat appealingly, she imagined,
tried to broach the subject of his work there in the West. But Carley
wanted a little while with him free of disagreeable argument. It was a
foregone conclusion that she would not like his work. Her intention at
first had been to begin at once to use all persuasion in her power
toward having him go back East with her, or at the latest some time
this year. But the rude log cabin had checked her impulse. She felt
that haste would be unwise.

“Glenn Kilbourne, I told you why I came West to see you,” she said,
spiritedly. “Well, since you still swear allegiance to your girl from
the East, you might entertain her a little bit before getting down to
business talk.”

“All right, Carley,” he replied, laughing. “What do you want to do? The
day is at your disposal. I wish it were June. Then if you didn’t fall
in love with West Fork you’d be no good.”

“Glenn, I love people, not places,” she returned.

“So I remember. And that’s one thing I don’t like. But let’s not
quarrel. What’ll we do?”

“Suppose you tramp with me all around, until I’m good and hungry. Then
we’ll come back here—and you can cook dinner for me.”

“Fine! Oh, I know you’re just bursting with curiosity to see how I’ll
do it. Well, you may be surprised, miss.”

“Let’s go,” she urged.

“Shall I take my gun or fishing rod?”

“You shall take nothing but _me_,” retorted Carley. “What chance has a
girl with a man, if he can hunt or fish?”

So they went out hand in hand. Half of the belt of sky above was
obscured by swiftly moving gray clouds. The other half was blue and was
being slowly encroached upon by the dark storm-like pall. How cold the
air! Carley had already learned that when the sun was hidden the
atmosphere was cold. Glenn led her down a trail to the brook, where he
calmly picked her up in his arms, quite easily, it appeared, and
leisurely packed her across, kissing her half a dozen times before he
deposited her on her feet.

“Glenn, you do this sort of thing so well that it makes me imagine you
have practice now and then,” she said.

“No. But you are pretty and sweet, and like the girl you were four
years ago. That takes me back to those days.”

“I thank you. That’s dear of you. I think I am something of a cat....
I’ll be glad if this walk leads us often to the creek.”

Spring might have been fresh and keen in the air, but it had not yet
brought much green to the brown earth or to the trees. The cotton-woods
showed a light feathery verdure. The long grass was a bleached white,
and low down close to the sod fresh tiny green blades showed. The great
fern leaves were sear and ragged, and they rustled in the breeze. Small
gray sheath-barked trees with clumpy foliage and snags of dead
branches, Glenn called cedars; and, grotesque as these were, Carley
rather liked them. They were approachable, not majestic and lofty like
the pines, and they smelled sweetly wild, and best of all they afforded
some protection from the bitter wind. Carley rested better than she
walked. The huge sections of red rock that had tumbled from above also
interested Carley, especially when the sun happened to come out for a
few moments and brought out their color. She enjoyed walking on the
fallen pines, with Glenn below, keeping pace with her and holding her
hand. Carley looked in vain for flowers and birds. The only living
things she saw were rainbow trout that Glenn pointed out to her in the
beautiful clear pools. The way the great gray bowlders trooped down to
the brook as if they were cattle going to drink; the dark caverns under
the shelving cliffs, where the water murmured with such hollow mockery;
the low spear-pointed gray plants, resembling century plants, and which
Glenn called mescal cactus, each with its single straight dead stalk
standing on high with fluted head; the narrow gorges, perpendicularly
walled in red, where the constricted brook plunged in amber and white
cascades over fall after fall, tumbling, rushing, singing its water
melody—these all held singular appeal for Carley as aspects of the wild
land, fascinating for the moment, symbolic of the lonely red man and
his forbears, and by their raw contrast making more necessary and
desirable and elevating the comforts and conventions of civilization.
The cave man theory interested Carley only as mythology.

Lonelier, wilder, grander grew Glenn’s canyon. Carley was finally
forced to shift her attention from the intimate objects of the canyon
floor to the aloof and unattainable heights. Singular to feel the
difference! That which she could see close at hand, touch if she
willed, seemed to, become part of her knowledge, could be observed and
so possessed and passed by. But the gold-red ramparts against the sky,
the crannied cliffs, the crags of the eagles, the lofty, distant blank
walls, where the winds of the gods had written their wars—these haunted
because they could never be possessed. Carley had often gazed at the
Alps as at celebrated pictures. She admired, she appreciated—then she
forgot. But the canyon heights did not affect her that way. They
vaguely dissatisfied, and as she could not be sure of what they
dissatisfied, she had to conclude that it was in herself. To see, to
watch, to dream, to seek, to strive, to endure, to find! Was that what
they meant? They might make her thoughtful of the vast earth, and its
endless age, and its staggering mystery. But what more!

The storm that had threatened blackened the sky, and gray scudding
clouds buried the canyon rims, and long veils of rain and sleet began
to descend. The wind roared through the pines, drowning the roar of the
brook. Quite suddenly the air grew piercingly cold. Carley had
forgotten her gloves, and her pockets had not been constructed to
protect hands. Glenn drew her into a sheltered nook where a rock jutted
out from overhead and a thicket of young pines helped break the
onslaught of the wind. There Carley sat on a cold rock, huddled up
close to Glenn, and wearing to a state she knew would be misery. Glenn
not only seemed content; he was happy. “This is great,” he said. His
coat was open, his hands uncovered, and he watched the storm and
listened with manifest delight. Carley hated to betray what a weakling
she was, so she resigned herself to her fate, and imagined she felt her
fingers numbing into ice, and her sensitive nose slowly and painfully
freezing.

The storm passed, however, before Carley sank into abject and open
wretchedness. She managed to keep pace with Glenn until exercise warmed
her blood. At every little ascent in the trail she found herself
laboring to get her breath. There was assuredly evidence of abundance
of air in this canyon, but somehow she could not get enough of it.
Glenn detected this and said it was owing to the altitude. When they
reached the cabin Carley was wet, stiff, cold, exhausted. How welcome
the shelter, the open fireplace! Seeing the cabin in new light, Carley
had the grace to acknowledge to herself that, after all, it was not so
bad.

“Now for a good fire and then dinner,” announced Glenn, with the air of
one who knew his ground.

“Can I help?” queried Carley.

“Not today. I do not want you to spring any domestic science on me
now.” Carley was not averse to withholding her ignorance. She watched
Glenn with surpassing curiosity and interest. First he threw a quantity
of wood upon the smoldering fire.

“I have ham and mutton of my own raising,” announced Glenn, with
importance. “Which would you prefer?”

“Of your own raising. What do you mean?” queried Carley.

“My dear, you’ve been so steeped in the fog of the crowd that you are
blind to the homely and necessary things of living. I mean I have here
meat of both sheep and hog that I raised myself. That is to say, mutton
and ham. Which do you like?”

“Ham!” cried Carley, incredulously.

Without more ado Glenn settled to brisk action, every move of which
Carley watched with keen eyes. The usurping of a woman’s province by a
man was always an amusing thing. But for Glenn Kilbourne—what more
would it be? He evidently knew what he wanted, for every movement was
quick, decisive. One after another he placed bags, cans, sacks, pans,
utensils on the table. Then he kicked at the roaring fire, settling
some of the sticks. He strode outside to return with a bucket of water,
a basin, towel, and soap. Then he took down two queer little iron pots
with heavy lids. To each pot was attached a wire handle. He removed the
lids, then set both the pots right on the fire or in it. Pouring water
into the basin, he proceeded to wash his hands. Next he took a large
pail, and from a sack he filled it half full of flour. To this he added
baking powder and salt. It was instructive for Carley to see him run
his skillful fingers all through that flour, as if searching for lumps.
After this he knelt before the fire and, lifting off one of the iron
pots with a forked stick, he proceeded to wipe out the inside of the
pot and grease it with a piece of fat. His next move was to rake out a
pile of the red coals, a feat he performed with the stick, and upon
these he placed the pot. Also he removed the other pot from the fire,
leaving it, however, quite close.

“Well, all eyes?” he bantered, suddenly staring at her. “Didn’t I say
I’d surprise you?”

“Don’t mind me. This is about the happiest and most bewildered
moment—of my life,” replied Carley.

Returning to the table, Glenn dug at something in a large red can. He
paused a moment to eye Carley.

“Girl, do you know how to make biscuits?” he queried.

“I might have known in my school days, but I’ve forgotten,” she
replied.

“Can you make apple pie?” he demanded, imperiously.

“No,” rejoined Carley.

“How do you expect to please your husband?”

“Why—by marrying him, I suppose,” answered Carley, as if weighing a
problem.

“That has been the universal feminine point of view for a good many
years,” replied Glenn, flourishing a flour-whitened hand. “But it never
served the women of the Revolution or the pioneers. And they were the
builders of the nation. It will never serve the wives of the future, if
we are to survive.”

“Glenn, you rave!” ejaculated Carley, not knowing whether to laugh or
be grave. “You were talking of humble housewifely things.”

“Precisely. The humble things that were the foundation of the great
nation of Americans. I meant work and children.”

Carley could only stare at him. The look he flashed at her, the sudden
intensity and passion of his ringing words, were as if he gave her a
glimpse into the very depths of him. He might have begun in fun, but he
had finished otherwise. She felt that she really did not know this man.
Had he arraigned her in judgment? A flush, seemingly hot and cold,
passed over her. Then it relieved her to see that he had returned to
his task.

He mixed the shortening with the flour, and, adding water, he began a
thorough kneading. When the consistency of the mixture appeared to
satisfy him he took a handful of it, rolled it into a ball, patted and
flattened it into a biscuit, and dropped it into the oven he had set
aside on the hot coals. Swiftly he shaped eight or ten other biscuits
and dropped them as the first. Then he put the heavy iron lid on the
pot, and with a rude shovel, improvised from a flattened tin can, he
shoveled red coals out of the fire, and covered the lid with them. His
next move was to pare and slice potatoes, placing these aside in a pan.
A small black coffee-pot half full of water, was set on a glowing part
of the fire. Then he brought into use a huge, heavy knife, a
murderous-looking implement it appeared to Carley, with which he cut
slices of ham. These he dropped into the second pot, which he left
uncovered. Next he removed the flour sack and other inpedimenta from
the table, and proceeded to set places for two—blue-enamel plate and
cup, with plain, substantial-looking knives, forks, and spoons. He went
outside, to return presently carrying a small crock of butter.
Evidently he had kept the butter in or near the spring. It looked dewy
and cold and hard. After that he peeped under the lid of the pot which
contained the biscuits. The other pot was sizzling and smoking, giving
forth a delicious savory odor that affected Carley most agreeably. The
coffee-pot had begun to steam. With a long fork Glenn turned the slices
of ham and stood a moment watching them. Next he placed cans of three
sizes upon the table; and these Carley conjectured contained sugar,
salt, and pepper. Carley might not have been present, for all the
attention he paid to her. Again he peeped at the biscuits. At the edge
of the hot embers he placed a tin plate, upon which he carefully
deposited the slices of ham. Carley had not needed sight of them to
know she was hungry; they made her simply ravenous. That done, he
poured the pan of sliced potatoes into the pot. Carley judged the heat
of that pot to be extreme. Next he removed the lid from the other pot,
exposing biscuits slightly browned; and evidently satisfied with these,
he removed them from the coals. He stirred the slices of potatoes round
and round; he emptied two heaping tablespoonfuls of coffee into the
coffee-pot.

“Carley,” he said, at last turning to her with a warm smile, “out here
in the West the cook usually yells, ‘Come and get it.’ Draw up your
stool.”

And presently Carley found herself seated across the crude table from
Glenn, with the background of chinked logs in her sight, and the smart
of wood smoke in her eyes. In years past she had sat with him in the
soft, subdued, gold-green shadows of the Astor, or in the sumptuous
atmosphere of the St. Regis. But this event was so different, so
striking, that she felt it would have limitless significance. For one
thing, the look of Glenn! When had he ever seemed like this,
wonderfully happy to have her there, consciously proud of this dinner
he had prepared in half an hour, strangely studying her as one on
trial? This might have had its effect upon Carley’s reaction to the
situation, making it sweet, trenchant with meaning, but she was hungry
enough and the dinner was good enough to make this hour memorable on
that score alone. She ate until she was actually ashamed of herself.
She laughed heartily, she talked, she made love to Glenn. Then suddenly
an idea flashed into her quick mind.

“Glenn, did this girl Flo teach you to cook?” she queried, sharply.

“No. I always was handy in camp. Then out here I had the luck to fall
in with an old fellow who was a wonderful cook. He lived with me for a
while. ... Why, what difference would it have made—had Flo taught me?”

Carley felt the heat of blood in her face. “I don’t know that it would
have made a difference. Only—I’m glad she didn’t teach you. I’d rather
no girl could teach you what I couldn’t.”

“You think I’m a pretty good cook, then?” he asked.

“I’ve enjoyed this dinner more than any I’ve ever eaten.”

“Thanks, Carley. That’ll help a lot,” he said, gayly, but his eyes
shone with earnest, glad light. “I hoped I’d surprise you. I’ve found
out here that I want to do things well. The West stirs something in a
man. It must be an unwritten law. You stand or fall by your own hands.
Back East you know meals are just occasions—to hurry through—to dress
for—to meet somebody—to eat because you have to eat. But out here they
are different. I don’t know how. In the city, producers, merchants,
waiters serve you for money. The meal is a transaction. It has no
significance. It is money that keeps you from starvation. But in the
West money doesn’t mean much. You must work to live.”

Carley leaned her elbows on the table and gazed at him curiously and
admiringly. “Old fellow, you’re a wonder. I can’t tell you how proud I
am of you. That you could come West weak and sick, and fight your way
to health, and learn to be self-sufficient! It is a splendid
achievement. It amazes me. I don’t grasp it. I want to think.
Nevertheless I—”

“What?” he queried, as she hesitated.

“Oh, never mind now,” she replied, hastily, averting her eyes.


The day was far spent when Carley returned to the Lodge—and in spite of
the discomfort of cold and sleet, and the bitter wind that beat in her
face as she struggled up the trail—it was a day never to be forgotten.
Nothing had been wanting in Glenn’s attention or affection. He had been
comrade, lover, all she craved for. And but for his few singular words
about work and children there had been no serious talk. Only a play day
in his canyon and his cabin! Yet had she appeared at her best?
Something vague and perplexing knocked at the gate of her
consciousness.




CHAPTER IV


Two warm sunny days in early May inclined Mr. Hutter to the opinion
that pleasant spring weather was at hand and that it would be a
propitious time to climb up on the desert to look after his sheep
interests. Glenn, of course, would accompany him.

“Carley and I will go too,” asserted Flo.

“Reckon that’ll be good,” said Hutter, with approving nod.

His wife also agreed that it would be fine for Carley to see the
beautiful desert country round Sunset Peak. But Glenn looked dubious.

“Carley, it’ll be rather hard,” he said. “You’re soft, and riding and
lying out will stove you up. You ought to break in gradually.”

“I rode ten miles today,” rejoined Carley. “And didn’t mind it—much.”
This was a little deviation from stern veracity.

“Shore Carley’s well and strong,” protested Flo. “She’ll get sore, but
that won’t kill her.”

Glenn eyed Flo with rather penetrating glance. “I might drive Carley
round about in the car,” he said.

“But you can’t drive over those lava flats, or go round, either. We’d
have to send horses in some cases miles to meet you. It’s horseback if
you go at all.”

“Shore we’ll go horseback,” spoke up Flo. “Carley has got it all over
that Spencer girl who was here last summer.”

“I think so, too. I am sure I hope so. Because you remember what the
ride to Long Valley did to Miss Spencer,” rejoined Glenn.

“What?” inquired Carley.

“Bad cold, peeled nose, skinned shin, saddle sores. She was in bed two
days. She didn’t show much pep the rest of her stay here, and she never
got on another horse.”

“Oh, is that all, Glenn?” returned Carley, in feigned surprise. “Why, I
imagined from your tone that Miss Spencer’s ride must have occasioned
her discomfort.... See here, Glenn. I may be a tenderfoot, but I’m no
mollycoddle.”

“My dear, I surrender,” replied Glenn, with a laugh. “Really, I’m
delighted. But if anything happens—don’t you blame me. I’m quite sure
that a long horseback ride, in spring, on the desert, will show you a
good many things about yourself.”

That was how Carley came to find herself, the afternoon of the next
day, astride a self-willed and unmanageable little mustang, riding in
the rear of her friends, on the way through a cedar forest toward a
place called Deep Lake.

Carley had not been able yet, during the several hours of their
journey, to take any pleasure in the scenery or in her mount. For in
the first place there was nothing to see but scrubby little gnarled
cedars and drab-looking rocks; and in the second this Indian pony she
rode had discovered she was not an adept horsewoman and had proceeded
to take advantage of the fact. It did not help Carley’s predicament to
remember that Glenn had decidedly advised her against riding this
particular mustang. To be sure, Flo had approved of Carley’s choice,
and Mr. Hutter, with a hearty laugh, had fallen in line: “Shore. Let
her ride one of the broncs, if she wants.” So this animal she bestrode
must have been a bronc, for it did not take him long to elicit from
Carley a muttered, “I don’t know what bronc means, but it sounds like
this pony acts.”

Carley had inquired the animal’s name from the young herder who had
saddled him for her.

“Wal, I reckon he ain’t got much of a name,” replied the lad, with a
grin, as he scratched his head. “For us boys always called him
Spillbeans.”

“Humph! What a beautiful cognomen!” ejaculated Carley, “But according
to Shakespeare any name will serve. I’ll ride him or—or—”

So far there had not really been any necessity for the completion of
that sentence. But five miles of riding up into the cedar forest had
convinced Carley that she might not have much farther to go. Spillbeans
had ambled along well enough until he reached level ground where a long
bleached grass waved in the wind. Here he manifested hunger, then a
contrary nature, next insubordination, and finally direct hostility.
Carley had urged, pulled, and commanded in vain. Then when she gave
Spillbeans a kick in the flank he jumped stiff legged, propelling her
up out of the saddle, and while she was descending he made the queer
jump again, coming up to meet her. The jolt she got seemed to dislocate
every bone in her body. Likewise it hurt. Moreover, along with her idea
of what a spectacle she must have presented, it quickly decided Carley
that Spillbeans was a horse that was not to be opposed. Whenever he
wanted a mouthful of grass he stopped to get it. Therefore Carley was
always in the rear, a fact which in itself did not displease her.
Despite his contrariness, however, Spillbeans had apparently no
intention of allowing the other horses to get completely out of sight.

Several times Flo waited for Carley to catch up. “He’s loafing on you,
Carley. You ought to have on a spur. Break off a switch and beat him
some.” Then she whipped the mustang across the flank with her bridle
rein, which punishment caused Spillbeans meekly to trot on with
alacrity. Carley had a positive belief that he would not do it for her.
And after Flo’s repeated efforts, assisted by chastisement from Glenn,
had kept Spillbeans in a trot for a couple of miles Carley began to
discover that the trotting of a horse was the most uncomfortable motion
possible to imagine. It grew worse. It became painful. It gradually got
unendurable. But pride made Carley endure it until suddenly she thought
she had been stabbed in the side. This strange piercing pain must be
what Glenn had called a “stitch” in the side, something common to
novices on horseback. Carley could have screamed. She pulled the
mustang to a walk and sagged in her saddle until the pain subsided.
What a blessed relief! Carley had keen sense of the difference between
riding in Central Park and in Arizona. She regretted her choice of
horses. Spillbeans was attractive to look at, but the pleasure of
riding him was a delusion. Flo had said his gait resembled the motion
of a rocking chair. This Western girl, according to Charley, the sheep
herder, was not above playing Arizona jokes. Be that as it might,
Spillbeans now manifested a desire to remain with the other horses, and
he broke out of a walk into a trot. Carley could not keep him from
trotting. Hence her state soon wore into acute distress.

Her left ankle seemed broken. The stirrup was heavy, and as soon as she
was tired she could no longer keep its weight from drawing her foot in.
The inside of her right knee was as sore as a boil. Besides, she had
other pains, just as severe, and she stood momentarily in mortal dread
of that terrible stitch in her side. If it returned she knew she would
fall off. But, fortunately, just when she was growing weak and dizzy,
the horses ahead slowed to a walk on a descent. The road wound down
into a wide deep canyon. Carley had a respite from her severest pains.
Never before had she known what it meant to be so grateful for relief
from anything.

The afternoon grew far advanced and the sunset was hazily shrouded in
gray. Hutter did not like the looks of those clouds. “Reckon we’re in
for weather,” he said. Carley did not care what happened. Weather or
anything else that might make it possible to get off her horse! Glenn
rode beside her, inquiring solicitously as to her pleasure. “Ride of my
life!” she lied heroically. And it helped some to see that she both
fooled and pleased him.

Beyond the canyon the cedared desert heaved higher and changed its
aspect. The trees grew larger, bushier, greener, and closer together,
with patches of bleached grass between, and russet-lichened rocks
everywhere. Small cactus plants bristled sparsely in open places; and
here and there bright red flowers—Indian paintbrush, Flo called
them—added a touch of color to the gray. Glenn pointed to where dark
banks of cloud had massed around the mountain peaks. The scene to the
west was somber and compelling.

At last the men and the pack-horses ahead came to a halt in a level
green forestland with no high trees. Far ahead a chain of soft gray
round hills led up to the dark heaved mass of mountains. Carley saw the
gleam of water through the trees. Probably her mustang saw or scented
it, because he started to trot. Carley had reached a limit of strength,
endurance, and patience. She hauled him up short. When Spillbeans
evinced a stubborn intention to go on Carley gave him a kick. Then it
happened.

She felt the reins jerked out of her hands and the saddle propel her
upward. When she descended it was to meet that before-experienced jolt.

“Look!” cried Flo. “That bronc is going to pitch.”

“Hold on, Carley!” yelled Glenn.

Desperately Carley essayed to do just that. But Spillbeans jolted her
out of the saddle. She came down on his rump and began to slide back
and down. Frightened and furious, Carley tried to hang to the saddle
with her hands and to squeeze the mustang with her knees. But another
jolt broke her hold, and then, helpless and bewildered, with her heart
in her throat and a terrible sensation of weakness, she slid back at
each upheave of the muscular rump until she slid off and to the ground
in a heap. Whereupon Spillbeans trotted off toward the water.

Carley sat up before Glenn and Flo reached her. Manifestly they were
concerned about her, but both were ready to burst with laughter. Carley
knew she was not hurt and she was so glad to be off the mustang that,
on the moment, she could almost have laughed herself.

“That beast is well named,” she said. “He spilled me, all right. And I
presume I resembled a sack of beans.”

“Carley—you’re—not hurt?” asked Glenn, choking, as he helped her up.

“Not physically. But my feelings are.”

Then Glenn let out a hearty howl of mirth, which was seconded by a loud
guffaw from Hutter. Flo, however, appeared to be able to restrain
whatever she felt. To Carley she looked queer.

“Pitch! You called it that,” said Carley.

“Oh, he didn’t really pitch. He just humped up a few times,” replied
Flo, and then when she saw how Carley was going to take it she burst
into a merry peal of laughter. Charley, the sheep herder was grinning,
and some of the other men turned away with shaking shoulders.

“Laugh, you wild and woolly Westerners!” ejaculated Carley. “It must
have been funny. I hope I can be a good sport.... But I bet you I ride
him tomorrow.”

“Shore you will,” replied Flo.

Evidently the little incident drew the party closer together. Carley
felt a warmth of good nature that overcame her first feeling of
humiliation. They expected such things from her, and she should expect
them, too, and take them, if not fearlessly or painlessly, at least
without resentment.

Carley walked about to ease her swollen and sore joints, and while
doing so she took stock of the camp ground and what was going on. At
second glance the place had a certain attraction difficult for her to
define. She could see far, and the view north toward those strange
gray-colored symmetrical hills was one that fascinated while it
repelled her. Near at hand the ground sloped down to a large rock-bound
lake, perhaps a mile in circumference. In the distance, along the shore
she saw a white conical tent, and blue smoke, and moving gray objects
she took for sheep.

The men unpacked and unsaddled the horses, and, hobbling their forefeet
together, turned them loose. Twilight had fallen and each man appeared
to be briskly set upon his own task. Glenn was cutting around the foot
of a thickly branched cedar where, he told Carley, he would make a bed
for her and Flo. All that Carley could see that could be used for such
purpose was a canvas-covered roll. Presently Glenn untied a rope from
round this, unrolled it, and dragged it under the cedar. Then he spread
down the outer layer of canvas, disclosing a considerable thickness of
blankets. From under the top of these he pulled out two flat little
pillows. These he placed in position, and turned back some of the
blankets.

“Carley, you crawl in here, pile the blankets up, and the tarp over
them,” directed Glenn. “If it rains pull the tarp up over your head—and
let it rain.”

This direction sounded in Glenn’s cheery voice a good deal more
pleasurable than the possibilities suggested. Surely that cedar tree
could not keep off rain or snow.

“Glenn, how about—about animals—and crawling things, you know?” queried
Carley.

“Oh, there are a few tarantulas and centipedes, and sometimes a
scorpion. But these don’t crawl around much at night. The only thing to
worry about are the hydrophobia skunks.”

“What on earth are they?” asked Carley, quite aghast.

“Skunks are polecats, you know,” replied Glenn, cheerfully. “Sometimes
one gets bitten by a coyote that has rabies, and then he’s a dangerous
customer. He has no fear and he may run across you and bite you in the
face. Queer how they generally bite your nose. Two men have been bitten
since I’ve been here. One of them died, and the other had to go to the
Pasteur Institute with a well-developed case of hydrophobia.”

“Good heavens!” cried Carley, horrified.

“You needn’t be afraid,” said Glenn. “I’ll tie one of the dogs near
your bed.”

Carley wondered whether Glenn’s casual, easy tone had been adopted for
her benefit or was merely an assimilation from this Western life. Not
improbably Glenn himself might be capable of playing a trick on her.
Carley endeavored to fortify herself against disaster, so that when it
befell she might not be wholly ludicrous.

With the coming of twilight a cold, keen wind moaned through the
cedars. Carley would have hovered close to the fire even if she had not
been too tired to exert herself. Despite her aches, she did justice to
the supper. It amazed her that appetite consumed her to the extent of
overcoming a distaste for this strong, coarse cooking. Before the meal
ended darkness had fallen, a windy raw darkness that enveloped heavily
like a blanket. Presently Carley edged closer to the fire, and there
she stayed, alternately turning back and front to the welcome heat. She
seemingly roasted hands, face, and knees while her back froze. The wind
blew the smoke in all directions. When she groped around with blurred,
smarting eyes to escape the hot smoke, it followed her. The other
members of the party sat comfortably on sacks or rocks, without much
notice of the smoke that so exasperated Carley. Twice Glenn insisted
that she take a seat he had fixed for her, but she preferred to stand
and move around a little.

By and by the camp tasks of the men appeared to be ended, and all
gathered near the fire to lounge and smoke and talk. Glenn and Hutter
engaged in interested conversation with two Mexicans, evidently sheep
herders. If the wind and cold had not made Carley so uncomfortable she
might have found the scene picturesque. How black the night! She could
scarcely distinguish the sky at all. The cedar branches swished in the
wind, and from the gloom came a low sound of waves lapping a rocky
shore. Presently Glenn held up a hand.

“Listen, Carley!” he said.

Then she heard strange wild yelps, staccato, piercing, somehow
infinitely lonely. They made her shudder.

“Coyotes,” said Glenn. “You’ll come to love that chorus. Hear the dogs
bark back.”

Carley listened with interest, but she was inclined to doubt that she
would ever become enamoured of such wild cries.

“Do coyotes come near camp?” she queried.

“Shore. Sometimes they pull your pillow out from under your head,”
replied Flo, laconically.

Carley did not ask any more questions. Natural history was not her
favorite study and she was sure she could dispense with any first-hand
knowledge of desert beasts. She thought, however, she heard one of the
men say, “Big varmint prowlin’ round the sheep.” To which Hutter
replied, “Reckon it was a bear.” And Glenn said, “I saw his fresh track
by the lake. Some bear!”

The heat from the fire made Carley so drowsy that she could scarcely
hold up her head. She longed for bed even if it was out there in the
open. Presently Flo called her: “Come. Let’s walk a little before
turning in.”

So Carley permitted herself to be led to and fro down an open aisle
between some cedars. The far end of that aisle, dark, gloomy, with the
bushy secretive cedars all around, caused Carley apprehension she was
ashamed to admit. Flo talked eloquently about the joys of camp life,
and how the harder any outdoor task was and the more endurance and pain
it required, the more pride and pleasure one had in remembering it.
Carley was weighing the import of these words when suddenly Flo
clutched her arm. “What’s that?” she whispered, tensely.

Carley stood stockstill. They had reached the furthermost end of that
aisle, but had turned to go back. The flare of the camp fire threw a
wan light into the shadows before them. There came a rustling in the
brush, a snapping of twigs. Cold tremors chased up and down Carley’s
back.

“Shore it’s a varmint, all right. Let’s hurry,” whispered Flo.

Carley needed no urging. It appeared that Flo was not going to run. She
walked fast, peering back over her shoulder, and, hanging to Carley’s
arm, she rounded a large cedar that had obstructed some of the
firelight. The gloom was not so thick here. And on the instant Carley
espied a low, moving object, somehow furry, and gray in color. She
gasped. She could not speak. Her heart gave a mighty throb and seemed
to stop.

“What—do you see?” cried Flo, sharply, peering ahead. “Oh!... Come,
Carley. _Run!_”

Flo’s cry showed she must nearly be strangled with terror. But Carley
was frozen in her tracks. Her eyes were riveted upon the gray furry
object. It stopped. Then it came faster. It magnified. It was a huge
beast. Carley had no control over mind, heart, voice, or muscle. Her
legs gave way. She was sinking. A terrible panic, icy, sickening,
rending, possessed her whole body.

The huge gray thing came at her. Into the rushing of her ears broke
thudding sounds. The thing leaped up. A horrible petrifaction suddenly
made stone of Carley. Then she saw a gray mantlelike object cast aside
to disclose the dark form of a man. Glenn!

“Carley, dog-gone it! You don’t scare worth a cent,” he laughingly
complained.

She collapsed into his arms. The liberating shock was as great as had
been her terror. She began to tremble violently. Her hands got back a
sense of strength to clutch. Heart and blood seemed released from that
ice-banded vise.

“Say, I believe you were scared,” went on Glenn, bending over her.

“Scar-ed!” she gasped. “Oh—there’s no word—to tell—what I was!”

Flo came running back, giggling with joy. “Glenn, she shore took you
for a bear. Why, I felt her go stiff as a post!... Ha! Ha! Ha! Carley,
now how do you like the wild and woolly?”

“Oh! You put up a trick on me!” ejaculated Carley. “Glenn, how could
you? ... Such a terrible trick! I wouldn’t have minded something
reasonable. But that! Oh, I’ll never forgive you!”

Glenn showed remorse, and kissed her before Flo in a way that made some
little amends. “Maybe I overdid it,” he said. “But I thought you’d have
a momentary start, you know, enough to make you yell, and then you’d
see through it. I only had a sheepskin over my shoulders as I crawled
on hands and knees.”

“Glenn, for me you were a prehistoric monster—a dinosaur, or
something,” replied Carley.

It developed, upon their return to the campfire circle, that everybody
had been in the joke; and they all derived hearty enjoyment from it.

“Reckon that makes you one of us,” said Hutter, genially. “We’ve all
had our scares.”

Carley wondered if she were not so constituted that such trickery
alienated her. Deep in her heart she resented being made to show her
cowardice. But then she realized that no one had really seen any
evidence of her state. It was fun to them.

Soon after this incident Hutter sounded what he called the roll-call
for bed. Following Flo’s instructions, Carley sat on their bed, pulled
off her boots, folded coat and sweater at her head, and slid down under
the blankets. How strange and hard a bed! Yet Carley had the most
delicious sense of relief and rest she had ever experienced. She
straightened out on her back with a feeling that she had never before
appreciated the luxury of lying down.

Flo cuddled up to her in quite sisterly fashion, saying: “Now don’t
cover your head. If it rains I’ll wake and pull up the tarp. Good
night, Carley.” And almost immediately she seemed to fall asleep.

For Carley, however, sleep did not soon come. She had too many aches;
the aftermath of her shock of fright abided with her; and the blackness
of night, the cold whip of wind over her face, and the unprotected
helplessness she felt in this novel bed, were too entirely new and
disturbing to be overcome at once. So she lay wide eyed, staring at the
dense gray shadow, at the flickering lights upon the cedar. At length
her mind formed a conclusion that this sort of thing might be worth the
hardship once in a lifetime, anyway. What a concession to Glenn’s West!
In the secret seclusion of her mind she had to confess that if her
vanity had not been so assaulted and humiliated she might have enjoyed
herself more. It seemed impossible, however, to have thrills and
pleasures and exaltations in the face of discomfort, privation, and an
uneasy half-acknowledged fear. No woman could have either a good or a
profitable time when she was at her worst. Carley thought she would not
be averse to getting Flo Hutter to New York, into an atmosphere wholly
strange and difficult, and see how she met situation after situation
unfamiliar to her. And so Carley’s mind drifted on until at last she
succumbed to drowsiness.


A voice pierced her dreams of home, of warmth and comfort. Something
sharp, cold, and fragrant was scratching her eyes. She opened them.
Glenn stood over her, pushing a sprig of cedar into her face.

“Carley, the day is far spent,” he said, gayly. “We want to roll up
your bedding. Will you get out of it?”

“Hello, Glenn! What time is it?” she replied.

“It’s nearly six.”

“What!... Do you expect me to get up at that ungodly hour?”

“We’re all up. Flo’s eating breakfast. It’s going to be a bad day, I’m
afraid. And we want to get packed and moving before it starts to rain.”

“Why do girls leave home?” she asked, tragically.

“To make poor devils happy, of course,” he replied, smiling down upon
her.

That smile made up to Carley for all the clamoring sensations of stiff,
sore muscles. It made her ashamed that she could not fling herself into
this adventure with all her heart. Carley essayed to sit up. “Oh, I’m
afraid my anatomy has become disconnected!... Glenn, do I look a
sight?” She never would have asked him that if she had not known she
could bear inspection at such an inopportune moment.

“You look great,” he asserted, heartily. “You’ve got color. And as for
your hair—I like to see it mussed that way. You were always one to have
it dressed—just so.... Come, Carley, rustle now.”

Thus adjured, Carley did her best under adverse circumstances. And she
was gritting her teeth and complimenting herself when she arrived at
the task of pulling on her boots. They were damp and her feet appeared
to have swollen. Moreover, her ankles were sore. But she accomplished
getting into them at the expense of much pain and sundry utterances
more forcible than elegant. Glenn brought her warm water, a mitigating
circumstance. The morning was cold and thought of that biting desert
water had been trying.

“Shore you’re doing fine,” was Flo’s greeting. “Come and get it before
we throw it out.”

Carley made haste to comply with the Western mandate, and was once
again confronted with the singular fact that appetite did not wait upon
the troubles of a tenderfoot. Glenn remarked that at least she would
not starve to death on the trip.

“Come, climb the ridge with me,” he invited. “I want you to take a look
to the north and east.”

He led her off through the cedars, up a slow red-earth slope, away from
the lake. A green moundlike eminence topped with flat red rock appeared
near at hand and not at all a hard climb. Nevertheless, her eyes
deceived her, as she found to the cost of her breath. It was both far
away and high.

“I like this location,” said Glenn. “If I had the money I’d buy this
section of land—six hundred and forty acres—and make a ranch of it.
Just under this bluff is a fine open flat bench for a cabin. You could
see away across the desert clear to Sunset Peak. There’s a good spring
of granite water. I’d run water from the lake down into the lower
flats, and I’d sure raise some stock.”

“What do you call this place?” asked Carley, curiously.

“Deep Lake. It’s only a watering place for sheep and cattle. But
there’s fine grazing, and it’s a wonder to me no one has ever settled
here.”

Looking down, Carley appreciated his wish to own the place; and
immediately there followed in her a desire to get possession of this
tract of land before anyone else discovered its advantages, and to hold
it for Glenn. But this would surely conflict with her intention of
persuading Glenn to go back East. As quickly as her impulse had been
born it died.

Suddenly the scene gripped Carley. She looked from near to far, trying
to grasp the illusive something. Wild lonely Arizona land! She saw
ragged dumpy cedars of gray and green, lines of red earth, and a round
space of water, gleaming pale under the lowering clouds; and in the
distance isolated hills, strangely curved, wandering away to a black
uplift of earth obscured in the sky.

These appeared to be mere steps leading her sight farther and higher to
the cloud-navigated sky, where rosy and golden effulgence betokened the
sun and the east. Carley held her breath. A transformation was going on
before her eyes.

“Carley, it’s a stormy sunrise,” said Glenn.

His words explained, but they did not convince. Was this
sudden-bursting glory only the sun rising behind storm clouds? She
could see the clouds moving while they were being colored. The
universal gray surrendered under some magic paint brush. The rifts
widened, and the gloom of the pale-gray world seemed to vanish. Beyond
the billowy, rolling, creamy edges of clouds, white and pink, shone the
soft exquisite fresh blue sky. And a blaze of fire, a burst of molten
gold, sheered up from behind the rim of cloud and suddenly poured a sea
of sunlight from east to west. It transfigured the round foothills.
They seemed bathed in ethereal light, and the silver mists that
overhung them faded while Carley gazed, and a rosy flush crowned the
symmetrical domes. Southward along the horizon line, down-dropping
veils of rain, just touched with the sunrise tint, streamed in drifting
slow movement from cloud to earth. To the north the range of foothills
lifted toward the majestic dome of Sunset Peak, a volcanic upheaval of
red and purple cinders, bare as rock, round as the lower hills, and
wonderful in its color. Full in the blaze of the rising sun it flaunted
an unchangeable front. Carley understood now what had been told her
about this peak. Volcanic fires had thrown up a colossal mound of
cinders burned forever to the hues of the setting sun. In every light
and shade of day it held true to its name. Farther north rose the bold
bulk of the San Francisco Peaks, that, half lost in the clouds, still
dominated the desert scene. Then as Carley gazed the rifts began to
close. Another transformation began, the reverse of what she watched.
The golden radiance of sunrise vanished, and under a gray, lowering,
coalescing pall of cloud the round hills returned to their bleak
somberness, and the green desert took again its cold sheen.

“Wasn’t it fine, Carley?” asked Glenn. “But nothing to what you will
experience. I hope you stay till the weather gets warm. I want you to
see a summer dawn on the Painted Desert, and a noon with the great
white clouds rolling up from the horizon, and a sunset of massed purple
and gold. If _they_ do not get you then I’ll give up.”

Carley murmured something of her appreciation of what she had just
seen. Part of his remark hung on her ear, thought-provoking and
disturbing. He hoped she would stay until summer! That was kind of him.
But her visit must be short and she now intended it to end with his
return East with her. If she did not persuade him to go he might not
want to go for a while, as he had written—“just yet.” Carley grew
troubled in mind. Such mental disturbance, however, lasted no longer
than her return with Glenn to camp, where the mustang Spillbeans stood
ready for her to mount. He appeared to put one ear up, the other down,
and to look at her with mild surprise, as if to say:
“What—hello—tenderfoot! Are you going to ride me again?”

Carley recalled that she had avowed she would ride him. There was no
alternative, and her misgivings only made matters worse. Nevertheless,
once in the saddle, she imagined she had the hallucination that to ride
off so, with the long open miles ahead, was really thrilling. This
remarkable state of mind lasted until Spillbeans began to trot, and
then another day of misery beckoned to Carley with gray stretches of
distance.

She was to learn that misery, as well as bliss, can swallow up the
hours. She saw the monotony of cedar trees, but with blurred eyes; she
saw the ground clearly enough, for she was always looking down, hoping
for sandy places or rocky places where her mustang could not trot.

At noon the cavalcade ahead halted near a cabin and corral, which
turned out to be a sheep ranch belonging to Hutter. Here Glenn was so
busy that he had no time to devote to Carley. And Flo, who was more at
home on a horse than on the ground, rode around everywhere with the
men. Most assuredly Carley could not pass by the chance to get off
Spillbeans and to walk a little. She found, however, that what she
wanted most was to rest. The cabin was deserted, a dark, damp place
with a rank odor. She did not stay long inside.

Rain and snow began to fall, adding to what Carley felt to be a
disagreeable prospect. The immediate present, however, was cheered by a
cup of hot soup and some bread and butter which the herder Charley
brought her. By and by Glenn and Hutter returned with Flo, and all
partook of some lunch.

All too soon Carley found herself astride the mustang again. Glenn
helped her don the slicker, an abominable sticky rubber coat that
bundled her up and tangled her feet round the stirrups. She was glad to
find, though, that it served well indeed to protect her from raw wind
and rain.

“Where do we go from here?” Carley inquired, ironically.

Glenn laughed in a way which proved to Carley that he knew perfectly
well how she felt. Again his smile caused her self-reproach. Plain
indeed was it that he had really expected more of her in the way of
complaint and less of fortitude. Carley bit her lips.

Thus began the afternoon ride. As it advanced the sky grew more
threatening, the wind rawer, the cold keener, and the rain cut like
little bits of sharp ice. It blew in Carley’s face. Enough snow fell to
whiten the open patches of ground. In an hour Carley realized that she
had the hardest task of her life to ride to the end of the day’s
journey. No one could have guessed her plight. Glenn complimented her
upon her adaptation to such unpleasant conditions. Flo evidently was on
the lookout for the tenderfoot’s troubles. But as Spillbeans, had taken
to lagging at a walk, Carley was enabled to conceal all outward sign of
her woes. It rained, hailed, sleeted, snowed, and grew colder all the
time. Carley’s feet became lumps of ice. Every step the mustang took
sent acute pains ramifying from bruised and raw places all over her
body.

Once, finding herself behind the others and out of sight in the cedars,
she got off to walk awhile, leading the mustang. This would not do,
however, because she fell too far in the rear. Mounting again, she rode
on, beginning to feel that nothing mattered, that this trip would be
the end of Carley Burch. How she hated that dreary, cold, flat land the
road bisected without end. It felt as if she rode hours to cover a
mile. In open stretches she saw the whole party straggling along,
separated from one another, and each for himself. They certainly could
not be enjoying themselves. Carley shut her eyes, clutched the pommel
of the saddle, trying to support her weight. How could she endure
another mile? Alas! there might be many miles. Suddenly a terrible
shock seemed to rack her. But it was only that Spillbeans had once
again taken to a trot. Frantically she pulled on the bridle. He was not
to be thwarted. Opening her eyes, she saw a cabin far ahead which
probably was the destination for the night. Carley knew she would never
reach it, yet she clung on desperately. What she dreaded was the return
of that stablike pain in her side. It came, and life seemed something
abject and monstrous. She rode stiff legged, with her hands propping
her stiffly above the pommel, but the stabbing pain went right on, and
in deeper. When the mustang halted his trot beside the other horses
Carley was in the last extremity. Yet as Glenn came to her, offering a
hand, she still hid her agony. Then Flo called out gayly: “Carley,
you’ve done twenty-five miles on as rotten a day as I remember. Shore
we all hand it to you. And I’m confessing I didn’t think you’d ever
stay the ride out. Spillbeans is the meanest nag we’ve got and he has
the hardest gait.”




CHAPTER V


Later Carley leaned back in a comfortable seat, before a blazing fire
that happily sent its acrid smoke up the chimney, pondering ideas in
her mind.

There could be a relation to familiar things that was astounding in its
revelation. To get off a horse that had tortured her, to discover an
almost insatiable appetite, to rest weary, aching body before the
genial warmth of a beautiful fire—these were experiences which Carley
found to have been hitherto unknown delights. It struck her suddenly
and strangely that to know the real truth about anything in life might
require infinite experience and understanding. How could one feel
immense gratitude and relief, or the delight of satisfying acute
hunger, or the sweet comfort of rest, unless there had been
circumstances of extreme contrast? She had been compelled to suffer
cruelly on horseback in order to make her appreciate how good it was to
get down on the ground. Otherwise she never would have known. She
wondered, then, how true that principle might be in all experience. It
gave strong food for thought. There were things in the world never
before dreamed of in her philosophy.

Carley was wondering if she were narrow and dense to circumstances of
life differing from her own when a remark of Flo’s gave pause to her
reflections.

“Shore the worst is yet to come.” Flo had drawled.

Carley wondered if this distressing statement had to do in some way
with the rest of the trip. She stifled her curiosity. Painful knowledge
of that sort would come quickly enough.

“Flo, are you girls going to sleep here in the cabin?” inquired Glenn.

“Shore. It’s cold and wet outside,” replied Flo.

“Well, Felix, the Mexican herder, told me some Navajos had been bunking
here.”

“Navajos? You mean Indians?” interposed Carley, with interest.

“Shore do,” said Flo. “I knew that. But don’t mind Glenn. He’s full of
tricks, Carley. He’d give us a hunch to lie out in the wet.”

Hutter burst into his hearty laugh. “Wal, I’d rather get some things
any day than a bad cold.”

“Shore I’ve had both,” replied Flo, in her easy drawl, “and I’d prefer
the cold. But for Carley’s sake—”

“Pray don’t consider me,” said Carley. The rather crude drift of the
conversation affronted her.

“Well, my dear,” put in Glenn, “it’s a bad night outside. We’ll all
make our beds here.”

“Glenn, you shore are a nervy fellow,” drawled Flo.

Long after everybody was in bed Carley lay awake in the blackness of
the cabin, sensitively fidgeting and quivering over imaginative contact
with creeping things. The fire had died out. A cold air passed through
the room. On the roof pattered gusts of rain. Carley heard a rustling
of mice. It did not seem possible that she could keep awake, yet she
strove to do so. But her pangs of body, her extreme fatigue soon
yielded to the quiet and rest of her bed, engendering a drowsiness that
proved irresistible.

Morning brought fair weather and sunshine, which helped to sustain
Carley in her effort to brave out her pains and woes. Another
disagreeable day would have forced her to humiliating defeat.
Fortunately for her, the business of the men was concerned with the
immediate neighborhood, in which they expected to stay all morning.

“Flo, after a while persuade Carley to ride with you to the top of this
first foothill,” said Glenn. “It’s not far, and it’s worth a good deal
to see the Painted Desert from there. The day is clear and the air free
from dust.”

“Shore. Leave it to me. I want to get out of camp, anyhow. That
conceited _hombre_, Lee Stanton, will be riding in here,” answered Flo,
laconically.

The slight knowing smile on Glenn’s face and the grinning disbelief on
Mr. Hutter’s were facts not lost upon Carley. And when Charley, the
herder, deliberately winked at Carley, she conceived the idea that Flo,
like many women, only ran off to be pursued. In some manner Carley did
not seek to analyze, the purported advent of this Lee Stanton pleased
her. But she did admit to her consciousness that women, herself
included, were both as deep and mysterious as the sea, yet as
transparent as an inch of crystal water.

It happened that the expected newcomer rode into camp before anyone
left. Before he dismounted he made a good impression on Carley, and as
he stepped down in lazy, graceful action, a tall lithe figure, she
thought him singularly handsome. He wore black sombrero, flannel shirt,
blue jeans stuffed into high boots, and long, big-roweled spurs.

“How are you-all?” was his greeting.

From the talk that ensued between him and the men, Carley concluded
that he must be overseer of the sheep hands. Carley knew that Hutter
and Glenn were not interested in cattle raising. And in fact they were,
especially Hutter, somewhat inimical to the dominance of the range land
by cattle barons of Flagstaff.

“When’s Ryan goin’ to dip?” asked Hutter.

“Today or tomorrow,” replied Stanton.

“Reckon we ought to ride over,” went on Hutter. “Say, Glenn, do you
reckon Miss Carley could stand a sheep-dip?”

This was spoken in a low tone, scarcely intended for Carley, but she
had keen ears and heard distinctly. Not improbably this sheep-dip was
what Flo meant as the worst to come. Carley adopted a listless posture
to hide her keen desire to hear what Glenn would reply to Hutter.

“I should say not!” whispered Glenn, fiercely.

“Cut out that talk. She’ll hear you and want to go.”

Whereupon Carley felt mount in her breast an intense and rebellious
determination to see a sheep-dip. She would astonish Glenn. What did he
want, anyway? Had she not withstood the torturing trot of the
hardest-gaited horse on the range? Carley realized she was going to
place considerable store upon that feat. It grew on her.

When the consultation of the men ended, Lee Stanton turned to Flo. And
Carley did not need to see the young man look twice to divine what
ailed him. He was caught in the toils of love. But seeing through Flo
Hutter was entirely another matter.

“Howdy, Lee!” she said, coolly, with her clear eyes on him. A tiny
frown knitted her brow. She did not, at the moment, entirely approve of
him.

“Shore am glad to see you, Flo,” he said, with rather a heavy expulsion
of breath. He wore a cheerful grin that in no wise deceived Flo, or
Carley either. The young man had a furtive expression of eye.

“Ahuh!” returned Flo.

“I was shore sorry about—about that—” he floundered, in low voice.

“About what?”

“Aw, you know, Flo.”

Carley strolled out of hearing, sure of two things—that she felt rather
sorry for Stanton, and that his course of love did not augur well for
smooth running. What queer creatures were women! Carley had seen
several million coquettes, she believed; and assuredly Flo Hutter
belonged to the species.

Upon Carley’s return to the cabin she found Stanton and Flo waiting for
her to accompany them on a ride up the foothill. She was so stiff and
sore that she could hardly mount into the saddle; and the first mile of
riding was something like a nightmare. She lagged behind Flo and
Stanton, who apparently forgot her in their quarrel.

The riders soon struck the base of a long incline of rocky ground that
led up to the slope of the foothill. Here rocks and gravel gave place
to black cinders out of which grew a scant bleached grass. This desert
verdure was what lent the soft gray shade to the foothill when seen
from a distance. The slope was gentle, so that the ascent did not
entail any hardship. Carley was amazed at the length of the slope, and
also to see how high over the desert she was getting. She felt lifted
out of a monotonous level. A green-gray league-long cedar forest
extended down toward Oak Creek. Behind her the magnificent bulk of the
mountains reached up into the stormy clouds, showing white slopes of
snow under the gray pall.

The hoofs of the horses sank in the cinders. A fine choking dust
assailed Carley’s nostrils. Presently, when there appeared at least a
third of the ascent still to be accomplished and Flo dismounted to
walk, leading their horses. Carley had no choice but to do likewise. At
first walking was a relief. Soon, however, the soft yielding cinders
began to drag at her feet. At every step she slipped back a few inches,
a very annoying feature of climbing. When her legs seemed to grow dead
Carley paused for a little rest. The last of the ascent, over a few
hundred yards of looser cinders, taxed her remaining strength to the
limit. She grew hot and wet and out of breath. Her heart labored. An
unreasonable antipathy seemed to attend her efforts. Only her
ridiculous vanity held her to this task. She wanted to please Glenn,
but not so earnestly that she would have kept on plodding up this
ghastly bare mound of cinders. Carley did not mind being a tenderfoot,
but she hated the thought of these Westerners considering her a
weakling. So she bore the pain of raw blisters and the miserable
sensation of staggering on under a leaden weight.

Several times she noted that Flo and Stanton halted to face each other
in rather heated argument. At least Stanton’s red face and forceful
gestures attested to heat on his part. Flo evidently was weary of
argument, and in answer to a sharp reproach she retorted, “Shore I was
different after he came.” To which Stanton responded by a quick
passionate shrinking as if he had been stung.

Carley had her own reaction to this speech she could not help hearing;
and inwardly, at least, her feeling must have been similar to
Stanton’s. She forgot the object of this climb and looked off to her
right at the green level without really seeing it. A vague sadness
weighed upon her soul. Was there to be a tangle of fates here, a
conflict of wills, a crossing of loves? Flo’s terse confession could
not be taken lightly. Did she mean that she loved Glenn? Carley began
to fear it. Only another reason why she must persuade Glenn to go back
East! But the closer Carley came to what she divined must be an ordeal
the more she dreaded it. This raw, crude West might have confronted her
with a situation beyond her control. And as she dragged her weighted
feet through the cinders, kicking, up little puffs of black dust, she
felt what she admitted to be an unreasonable resentment toward these
Westerners and their barren, isolated, and boundless world.

“Carley,” called Flo, “come—looksee, as the Indians say. Here is
Glenn’s Painted Desert, and I reckon it’s shore worth seeing.”

To Carley’s surprise, she found herself upon the knob of the foothill.
And when she looked out across a suddenly distinguishable void she
seemed struck by the immensity of something she was unable to grasp.
She dropped her bridle; she gazed slowly, as if drawn, hearing Flo’s
voice.

“That thin green line of cottonwoods down there is the Little Colorado
River,” Flo was saying. “Reckon it’s sixty miles, all down hill. The
Painted Desert begins there and also the Navajo Reservation. You see
the white strips, the red veins, the yellow bars, the black lines. They
are all desert steps leading up and up for miles. That sharp black peak
is called Wildcat. It’s about a hundred miles. You see the desert
stretching away to the right, growing dim—lost in distance? We don’t
know that country. But that north country we know as landmarks, anyway.
Look at that saw-tooth range. The Indians call it Echo Cliffs. At the
far end it drops off into the Colorado River. Lee’s Ferry is
there—about one hundred and sixty miles. That ragged black rent is the
Grand Canyon. Looks like a thread, doesn’t it? But Carley, it’s some
hole, believe me. Away to the left you see the tremendous wall rising
and turning to come this way. That’s the north wall of the Canyon. It
ends at the great bluff—Greenland Point. See the black fringe above the
bar of gold. That’s a belt of pine trees. It’s about eighty miles
across this ragged old stone washboard of a desert. ... Now turn and
look straight and strain your sight over Wildcat. See the rim purple
dome. You must look hard. I’m glad it’s clear and the sun is shining.
We don’t often get this view.... That purple dome is Navajo Mountain,
two hundred miles and more away!”

Carley yielded to some strange drawing power and slowly walked forward
until she stood at the extreme edge of the summit.

What was it that confounded her sight? Desert slope—down and
down—color—distance—space! The wind that blew in her face seemed to
have the openness of the whole world back of it. Cold, sweet, dry,
exhilarating, it breathed of untainted vastness. Carley’s memory
pictures of the Adirondacks faded into pastorals; her vaunted images of
European scenery changed to operetta settings. She had nothing with
which to compare this illimitable space.

“Oh!—America!” was her unconscious tribute.

Stanton and Flo had come on to places beside her. The young man
laughed. “Wal, now Miss Carley, you couldn’t say more. When I was in
camp trainin’ for service overseas I used to remember how this looked.
An’ it seemed one of the things I was goin’ to fight for. Reckon I
didn’t the idea of the Germans havin’ my Painted Desert. I didn’t get
across to fight for it, but I shore was willin’.”

“You see, Carley, this is our America,” said Flo, softly.

Carley had never understood the meaning of the word. The immensity of
the West seemed flung at her. What her vision beheld, so far-reaching
and boundless, was only a dot on the map.

“Does any one live—out there?” she asked, with slow sweep of hand.

“A few white traders and some Indian tribes,” replied Stanton. “But you
can ride all day an’ next day an’ never see a livin’ soul.”

What was the meaning of the gratification in his voice? Did Westerners
court loneliness? Carley wrenched her gaze from the desert void to look
at her companions. Stanton’s eyes were narrowed; his expression had
changed; lean and hard and still, his face resembled bronze. The
careless humor was gone, as was the heated flush of his quarrel with
Flo. The girl, too, had subtly changed, had responded to an influence
that had subdued and softened her. She was mute; her eyes held a light,
comprehensive and all-embracing; she was beautiful then. For Carley,
quick to read emotion, caught a glimpse of a strong, steadfast soul
that spiritualized the brown freckled face.

Carley wheeled to gaze out and down into this incomprehensible abyss,
and on to the far up-flung heights, white and red and yellow, and so on
to the wonderful mystic haze of distance. The significance of Flo’s
designation of miles could not be grasped by Carley. She could not
estimate distance. But she did not need that to realize her perceptions
were swallowed up by magnitude. Hitherto the power of her eyes had been
unknown. How splendid to see afar! She could see—yes—but what did she
see? Space first, annihilating space, dwarfing her preconceived images,
and then wondrous colors! What had she known of color? No wonder
artists failed adequately and truly to paint mountains, let alone the
desert space. The toiling millions of the crowded cities were ignorant
of this terrible beauty and sublimity. Would it have helped them to
see? But just to breathe that untainted air, just to see once the
boundless open of colored sand and rock—to realize what the freedom of
eagles meant would not that have helped anyone?

And with the thought there came to Carley’s quickened and struggling
mind a conception of freedom. She had not yet watched eagles, but she
now gazed out into their domain. What then must be the effect of such
environment on people whom it encompassed? The idea stunned Carley.
Would such people grow in proportion to the nature with which they were
in conflict? Hereditary influence could not be comparable to such
environment in the shaping of character.

“Shore I could stand here all day,” said Flo. “But it’s beginning to
cloud over and this high wind is cold. So we’d better go, Carley.”

“I don’t know what I am, but it’s not cold,” replied Carley.

“Wal, Miss Carley, I reckon you’ll have to come again an’ again before
you get a comfortable feelin’ here,” said Stanton.

It surprised Carley to see that this young Westerner had hit upon the
truth. He understood her. Indeed she was uncomfortable. She was
oppressed, vaguely unhappy. But why? The thing there—the infinitude of
open sand and rock—was beautiful, wonderful, even glorious. She looked
again.

Steep black-cindered slope, with its soft gray patches of grass,
sheered down and down, and out in rolling slope to merge upon a
cedar-dotted level. Nothing moved below, but a red-tailed hawk sailed
across her vision. How still—how gray the desert floor as it reached
away, losing its black dots, and gaining bronze spots of stone! By
plain and prairie it fell away, each inch of gray in her sight
magnifying into its league-long roll. On and on, and down across dark
lines that were steppes, and at last blocked and changed by the
meandering green thread which was the verdure of a desert river. Beyond
stretched the white sand, where whirlwinds of dust sent aloft their
funnel-shaped spouts; and it led up to the horizon-wide ribs and ridges
of red and walls of yellow and mountains of black, to the dim mound of
purple so ethereal and mystic against the deep-blue cloud-curtained
band of sky.

And on the moment the sun was obscured and that world of colorful flame
went out, as if a blaze had died.

Deprived of its fire, the desert seemed to retreat, to fade coldly and
gloomily, to lose its great landmarks in dim obscurity. Closer, around
to the north, the canyon country yawned with innumerable gray jaws,
ragged and hard, and the riven earth took on a different character. It
had no shadows. It grew flat and, like the sea, seemed to mirror the
vast gray cloud expanse. The sublime vanished, but the desolate
remained. No warmth—no movement—no life! Dead stone it was, cut into a
million ruts by ruthless ages. Carley felt that she was gazing down
into chaos.

At this moment, as before, a hawk had crossed her vision, so now a
raven sailed by, black as coal, uttering a hoarse croak.

“Quoth the raven—” murmured Carley, with a half-bitter laugh, as she
turned away shuddering in spite of an effort of self-control. “Maybe he
meant this wonderful and terrible West is never for such as I.... Come,
let us go.”


Carley rode all that afternoon in the rear of the caravan, gradually
succumbing to the cold raw wind and the aches and pains to which she
had subjected her flesh. Nevertheless, she finished the day’s journey,
and, sorely as she needed Glenn’s kindly hand, she got off her horse
without aid.

Camp was made at the edge of the devastated timber zone that Carley had
found so dispiriting. A few melancholy pines were standing, and
everywhere, as far as she could see southward, were blackened fallen
trees and stumps. It was a dreary scene. The few cattle grazing on the
bleached grass appeared as melancholy as the pines. The sun shone
fitfully at sunset, and then sank, leaving the land to twilight and
shadows.

Once in a comfortable seat beside the camp fire, Carley had no further
desire to move. She was so far exhausted and weary that she could no
longer appreciate the blessing of rest. Appetite, too, failed her this
meal time. Darkness soon settled down. The wind moaned through the
pines. She was indeed glad to crawl into bed, and not even the thought
of skunks could keep her awake.

Morning disclosed the fact that gray clouds had been blown away. The
sun shone bright upon a white-frosted land. The air was still. Carley
labored at her task of rising, and brushing her hair, and pulling on
her boots; and it appeared her former sufferings were as naught
compared with the pangs of this morning. How she hated the cold, the
bleak, denuded forest land, the emptiness, the roughness, the
crudeness! If this sort of feeling grew any worse she thought she would
hate Glenn. Yet she was nonetheless set upon going on, and seeing the
sheep-dip, and riding that fiendish mustang until the trip was ended.

Getting in the saddle and on the way this morning was an ordeal that
made Carley actually sick. Glenn and Flo both saw how it was with her,
and they left her to herself. Carley was grateful for this
understanding. It seemed to proclaim their respect. She found further
matter for satisfaction in the astonishing circumstance that after the
first dreadful quarter of an hour in the saddle she began to feel
easier. And at the end of several hours of riding she was not suffering
any particular pain, though she was weaker.

At length the cut-over land ended in a forest of straggling pines,
through which the road wound southward, and eventually down into a wide
shallow canyon. Through the trees Carley saw a stream of water, open
fields of green, log fences and cabins, and blue smoke. She heard the
chug of a gasoline engine and the baa-baa of sheep. Glenn waited for
her to catch up with him, and he said: “Carley, this is one of Hutter’s
sheep camps. It’s not a—a very pleasant place. You won’t care to see
the sheep-dip. So I’m suggesting you wait here—”

“Nothing doing, Glenn,” she interrupted. “I’m going to see what there
is to see.”

“But, dear—the men—the way they handle sheep—they’ll—really it’s no
sight for you,” he floundered.

“Why not?” she inquired, eying him.

“Because, Carley—you know how you hate the—the seamy side of things.
And the stench—why, it’ll make you sick!”

“Glenn, be on the level,” she said. “Suppose it does. Wouldn’t you
think more of me if I could stand it?”

“Why, yes,” he replied, reluctantly, smiling at her, “I would. But I
wanted to spare you. This trip has been hard. I’m sure proud of you.
And, Carley—you can overdo it. Spunk is not everything. You simply
couldn’t stand this.”

“Glenn, how little you know a woman!” she exclaimed. “Come along and
show me your old sheep-dip.”

They rode out of the woods into an open valley that might have been
picturesque if it had not been despoiled by the work of man. A log
fence ran along the edge of open ground and a mud dam held back a pool
of stagnant water, slimy and green. As Carley rode on the baa-baa of
sheep became so loud that she could scarcely hear Glenn talking.

Several log cabins, rough hewn and gray with age, stood down inside the
inclosure; and beyond there were large corrals. From the other side of
these corrals came sounds of rough voices of men, a trampling of hoofs,
heavy splashes, the beat of an engine, and the incessant baaing of the
sheep.

At this point the members of Hutter’s party dismounted and tied their
horses to the top log of the fence. When Carley essayed to get off
Glenn tried to stop her, saying she could see well enough from there.
But Carley got down and followed Flo. She heard Hutter call to Glenn:
“Say, Ryan is short of men. We’ll lend a hand for a couple of hours.”

Presently Carley reached Flo’s side and the first corral that contained
sheep. They formed a compact woolly mass, rather white in color, with a
tinge of pink. When Flo climbed up on the fence the flock plunged as
one animal and with a trampling roar ran to the far side of the corral.
Several old rams with wide curling horns faced around; and some of the
ewes climbed up on the densely packed mass. Carley rather enjoyed
watching them. She surely could not see anything amiss in this sight.

The next corral held a like number of sheep, and also several Mexicans
who were evidently driving them into a narrow lane that led farther
down. Carley saw the heads of men above other corral fences, and there
was also a thick yellowish smoke rising from somewhere.

“Carley, are you game to see the dip?” asked Flo, with good nature that
yet had a touch of taunt in it.

“That’s my middle name,” retorted Carley, flippantly.

Both Glenn and this girl seemed to be bent upon bringing out Carley’s
worst side, and they were succeeding. Flo laughed. The ready slang
pleased her.

She led Carley along that log fence, through a huge open gate, and
across a wide pen to another fence, which she scaled. Carley followed
her, not particularly overanxious to look ahead. Some thick odor had
begun to reach Carley’s delicate nostrils. Flo led down a short lane
and climbed another fence, and sat astride the top log. Carley hurried
along to clamber up to her side, but stood erect with her feet on the
second log of the fence.

Then a horrible stench struck Carley almost like a blow in the face,
and before her confused sight there appeared to be drifting smoke and
active men and running sheep, all against a background of mud. But at
first it was the odor that caused Carley to close her eyes and press
her knees hard against the upper log to keep from reeling. Never in her
life had such a sickening nausea assailed her. It appeared to attack
her whole body. The forerunning qualm of seasickness was as nothing to
this. Carley gave a gasp, pinched her nose between her fingers so she
could not smell, and opened her eyes.

Directly beneath her was a small pen open at one end into which sheep
were being driven from the larger corral. The drivers were yelling. The
sheep in the rear plunged into those ahead of them, forcing them on.
Two men worked in this small pen. One was a brawny giant in undershirt
and overalls that appeared filthy. He held a cloth in his hand and
strode toward the nearest sheep. Folding the cloth round the neck of
the sheep, he dragged it forward, with an ease which showed great
strength, and threw it into a pit that yawned at the side. Souse went
the sheep into a murky, muddy pool and disappeared. But suddenly its
head came up and then its shoulders. And it began half to walk and half
swim down what appeared to be a narrow boxlike ditch that contained
other floundering sheep. Then Carley saw men on each side of this ditch
bending over with poles that had crooks at the end, and their work was
to press and pull the sheep along to the end of the ditch, and drive
them up a boarded incline into another corral where many other sheep
huddled, now a dirty muddy color like the liquid into which they had
been emersed. Souse! Splash! In went sheep after sheep. Occasionally
one did not go under. And then a man would press it under with the
crook and quickly lift its head. The work went on with precision and
speed, in spite of the yells and trampling and baa-baas, and the
incessant action that gave an effect of confusion.

Carley saw a pipe leading from a huge boiler to the ditch. The dark
fluid was running out of it. From a rusty old engine with big
smokestack poured the strangling smoke. A man broke open a sack of
yellow powder and dumped it into the ditch. Then he poured an acid-like
liquid after it.

“Sulphur and nicotine,” yelled Flo up at Carley. “The dip’s poison. If
a sheep opens his mouth he’s usually a goner. But sometimes they save
one.”

Carley wanted to tear herself away from this disgusting spectacle. But
it held her by some fascination. She saw Glenn and Hutter fall in line
with the other men, and work like beavers. These two pacemakers in the
small pen kept the sheep coming so fast that every worker below had a
task cut out for him. Suddenly Flo squealed and pointed.

“There! that sheep didn’t come up,” she cried. “Shore he opened his
mouth.”

Then Carley saw Glenn energetically plunge his hooked pole in and out
and around until he had located the submerged sheep. He lifted its head
above the dip. The sheep showed no sign of life. Down on his knees
dropped Glenn, to reach the sheep with strong brown hands, and to haul
it up on the ground, where it flopped inert. Glenn pummeled it and
pressed it, and worked on it much as Carley had seen a life-guard work
over a half-drowned man. But the sheep did not respond to Glenn’s
active administrations.

“No use, Glenn,” yelled Hutter, hoarsely. “That one’s a goner.”

Carley did not fail to note the state of Glenn’s hands and arms and
overalls when he returned to the ditch work. Then back and forth
Carley’s gaze went from one end to the other of that scene. And
suddenly it was arrested and held by the huge fellow who handled the
sheep so brutally. Every time he dragged one and threw it into the pit
he yelled: “Ho! Ho!” Carley was impelled to look at his face, and she
was amazed to meet the rawest and boldest stare from evil eyes that had
ever been her misfortune to incite. She felt herself stiffen with a
shock that was unfamiliar. This man was scarcely many years older than
Glenn, yet he had grizzled hair, a seamed and scarred visage, coarse,
thick lips, and beetling brows, from under which peered gleaming light
eyes. At every turn he flashed them upon Carley’s face, her neck, the
swell of her bosom. It was instinct that caused her hastily to close
her riding coat. She felt as if her flesh had been burned. Like a snake
he fascinated her. The intelligence in his bold gaze made the
beastliness of it all the harder to endure, all the stronger to arouse.

“Come, Carley, let’s rustle out of this stinkin’ mess,” cried Flo.

Indeed, Carley needed Flo’s assistance in clambering down out of the
choking smoke and horrid odor.

“_Adios_, pretty eyes,” called the big man from the pen.

“Well,” ejaculated Flo, when they got out, “I’ll bet I call Glenn good
and hard for letting you go down there.”

“It was—my—fault,” panted Carley. “I said I’d stand it.”

“Oh, you’re game, all right. I didn’t mean the dip.... That
sheep-slinger is Haze Ruff, the toughest _hombre_ on this range. Shore,
now, wouldn’t I like to take a shot at him?... I’m going to tell dad
and Glenn.”

“Please don’t,” returned Carley, appealingly.

“I shore am. Dad needs hands these days. That’s why he’s lenient. But
Glenn will cowhide Ruff and I want to see him do it.”

In Flo Hutter then Carley saw another and a different spirit of the
West, a violence unrestrained and fierce that showed in the girl’s even
voice and in the piercing light of her eyes.

They went back to the horses, got their lunches from the saddlebags,
and, finding comfortable seats in a sunny, protected place, they ate
and talked. Carley had to force herself to swallow. It seemed that the
horrid odor of dip and sheep had permeated everything. Glenn had known
her better than she had known herself, and he had wished to spare her
an unnecessary and disgusting experience. Yet so stubborn was Carley
that she did not regret going through with it.

“Carley, I don’t mind telling you that you’ve stuck it out better than
any tenderfoot we ever had here,” said Flo.

“Thank you. That from a Western girl is a compliment I’ll not soon
forget,” replied Carley.

“I shore mean it. We’ve had rotten weather. And to end the little trip
at this sheep-dip hole! Why, Glenn certainly wanted you to stack up
against the real thing!”

“Flo, he did not want me to come on the trip, and especially here,”
protested Carley.

“Shore I know. But he _let_ you.”

“Neither Glenn nor any other man could prevent me from doing what I
wanted to do.”

“Well, if you’ll excuse me,” drawled Flo, “I’ll differ with you. I
reckon Glenn Kilbourne is not the man you knew before the war.”

“No, he is not. But that does not alter the case.”

“Carley, we’re not well acquainted,” went on Flo, more carefully
feeling her way, “and I’m not your kind. I don’t know your Eastern
ways. But I know what the West does to a man. The war ruined your
friend—both his body and mind.... How sorry mother and I were for
Glenn, those days when it looked he’d sure ‘go west,’ for good!... Did
you know he’d been gassed and that he had five hemorrhages?”

“Oh! I knew his lungs had been weakened by gas. But he never told me
about having hemorrhages.”

“Well, he shore had them. The last one I’ll never forget. Every time
he’d cough it would fetch the blood. I could tell!... Oh, it was awful.
I begged him _not_ to cough. He smiled—like a ghost smiling—and he
whispered, ‘I’ll quit.’... And he did. The doctor came from Flagstaff
and packed him in ice. Glenn sat propped up all night and never moved a
muscle. Never coughed again! And the bleeding stopped. After that we
put him out on the porch where he could breathe fresh air all the time.
There’s something wonderfully healing in Arizona air. It’s from the dry
desert and here it’s full of cedar and pine. Anyway Glenn got well. And
I think the West has cured his mind, too.”

“Of what?” queried Carley, in an intense curiosity she could scarcely
hide.

“Oh, God only knows!” exclaimed Flo, throwing up her gloved hands. “I
never could understand. But I _hated_ what the war did to him.”

Carley leaned back against the log, quite spent. Flo was unwittingly
torturing her. Carley wanted passionately to give in to jealousy of
this Western girl, but she could not do it. Flo Hutter deserved better
than that. And Carley’s baser nature seemed in conflict with all that
was noble in her. The victory did not yet go to either side. This was a
bad hour for Carley. Her strength had about played out, and her spirit
was at low ebb.

“Carley, you’re all in,” declared Flo. “You needn’t deny it. I’m shore
you’ve made good with me as a tenderfoot who stayed the limit. But
there’s no sense in your killing yourself, nor in me letting you. So
I’m going to tell dad we want to go home.”

She left Carley there. The word home had struck strangely into Carley’s
mind and remained there. Suddenly she realized what it was to be
homesick. The comfort, the ease, the luxury, the rest, the sweetness,
the pleasure, the cleanliness, the gratification to eye and ear—to all
the senses—how these thoughts came to haunt her! All of Carley’s will
power had been needed to sustain her on this trip to keep her from
miserably failing. She had not failed. But contact with the West had
affronted, disgusted, shocked, and alienated her. In that moment she
could not be fair minded; she knew it; she did not care.

Carley gazed around her. Only one of the cabins was in sight from this
position. Evidently it was a home for some of these men. On one side
the peaked rough roof had been built out beyond the wall, evidently to
serve as a kind of porch. On that wall hung the motliest assortment of
things Carley had ever seen—utensils, sheep and cow hides, saddles,
harness, leather clothes, ropes, old sombreros, shovels, stove pipe,
and many other articles for which she could find no name. The most
striking characteristic manifest in this collection was that of
service. How they had been used! They had enabled people to live under
primitive conditions. Somehow this fact inhibited Carley’s sense of
repulsion at their rude and uncouth appearance. Had any of her
forefathers ever been pioneers? Carley did not know, but the thought
was disturbing. It was thought-provoking. Many times at home, when she
was dressing for dinner, she had gazed into the mirror at the graceful
lines of her throat and arms, at the proud poise of her head, at the
alabaster whiteness of her skin, and wonderingly she had asked of her
image: “Can it be possible that I am a descendant of cavemen?” She had
never been able to realize it, yet she knew it was true. Perhaps
somewhere not far back along her line there had been a
great-great-grandmother who had lived some kind of a primitive life,
using such implements and necessaries as hung on this cabin wall, and
thereby helped some man to conquer the wilderness, to live in it, and
reproduce his kind. Like flashes Glenn’s words came back to
Carley—“Work and children!”

Some interpretation of his meaning and how it related to this hour held
aloof from Carley. If she would ever be big enough to understand it and
broad enough to accept it the time was far distant. Just now she was
sore and sick physically, and therefore certainly not in a receptive
state of mind. Yet how could she have keener impressions than these she
was receiving? It was all a problem. She grew tired of thinking. But
even then her mind pondered on, a stream of consciousness over which
she had no control. This dreary woods was deserted. No birds, no
squirrels, no creatures such as fancy anticipated! In another
direction, across the canyon, she saw cattle, gaunt, ragged, lumbering,
and stolid. And on the moment the scent of sheep came on the breeze.
Time seemed to stand still here, and what Carley wanted most was for
the hours and days to fly, so that she would be home again.

At last Flo returned with the men. One quick glance at Glenn convinced
Carley that Flo had not yet told him about the sheep dipper, Haze Ruff.

“Carley, you’re a real sport,” declared Glenn, with the rare smile she
loved. “It’s a dreadful mess. And to think you stood it!... Why, old
Fifth Avenue, if you needed to make another hit with me you’ve done
it!”

His warmth amazed and pleased Carley. She could not quite understand
why it would have made any difference to him whether she had stood the
ordeal or not. But then every day she seemed to drift a little farther
from a real understanding of her lover. His praise gladdened her, and
fortified her to face the rest of this ride back to Oak Creek.

Four hours later, in a twilight so shadowy that no one saw her
distress, Carley half slipped and half fell from her horse and managed
somehow to mount the steps and enter the bright living room. A cheerful
red fire blazed on the hearth; Glenn’s hound, Moze, trembled eagerly at
sight of her and looked up with humble dark eyes; the white-clothed
dinner table steamed with savory dishes. Flo stood before the blaze,
warming her hands. Lee Stanton leaned against the mantel, with eyes on
her, and every line of his lean, hard face expressed his devotion to
her. Hutter was taking his seat at the head of the table. “Come an’ get
it—you-all,” he called, heartily. Mrs. Hutter’s face beamed with the
spirit of that home. And lastly, Carley saw Glenn waiting for her,
watching her come, true in this very moment to his stern hope for her
and pride in her, as she dragged her weary, spent body toward him and
the bright fire.

By these signs, or the effect of them, Carley vaguely realized that she
was incalculably changing, that this Carley Burch had become a vastly
bigger person in the sight of her friends, and strangely in her own a
lesser creature.




CHAPTER VI


If spring came at all to Oak Creek Canyon it warmed into summer before
Carley had time to languish with the fever characteristic of early June
in the East.

As if by magic it seemed the green grass sprang up, the green buds
opened into leaves, the bluebells and primroses bloomed, the apple and
peach blossoms burst exquisitely white and pink against the blue sky.
Oak Creek fell to a transparent, beautiful brook, leisurely eddying in
the stone walled nooks, hurrying with murmur and babble over the little
falls. The mornings broke clear and fragrantly cool, the noon hours
seemed to lag under a hot sun, the nights fell like dark mantles from
the melancholy star-sown sky.

Carley had stubbornly kept on riding and climbing until she killed her
secret doubt that she was really a thoroughbred, until she satisfied
her own insistent vanity that she could train to a point where this
outdoor life was not too much for her strength. She lost flesh despite
increase of appetite; she lost her pallor for a complexion of
gold-brown she knew her Eastern friends would admire; she wore out the
blisters and aches and pains; she found herself growing firmer of
muscle, lither of line, deeper of chest. And in addition to these
physical manifestations there were subtle intimations of a delight in a
freedom of body she had never before known, of an exhilaration in
action that made her hot and made her breathe, of a sloughing off of
numberless petty and fussy and luxurious little superficialities which
she had supposed were necessary to her happiness. What she had
undertaken in vain conquest of Glenn’s pride and Flo Hutter’s Western
tolerance she had found to be a boomerang. She had won Glenn’s
admiration; she had won the Western girl’s recognition. But her
passionate, stubborn desire had been ignoble, and was proved so by the
rebound of her achievement, coming home to her with a sweetness she had
not the courage to accept. She forced it from her. This West with its
rawness, its ruggedness, she hated.

Nevertheless, the June days passed, growing dreamily swift, growing
more incomprehensibly full; and still she had not broached to Glenn the
main object of her visit—to take him back East. Yet a little while
longer! She hated his work and had not talked of that. Yet an honest
consciousness told her that as time flew by she feared more and more to
tell him that he was wasting his life there and that she could not bear
it. Still was he wasting it? Once in a while a timid and unfamiliar
Carley Burch voiced a pregnant query. Perhaps what held Carley back
most was the happiness she achieved in her walks and rides with Glenn.
She lingered because of them. Every day she loved him more, and
yet—there was something. Was it in her or in him? She had a woman’s
assurance of his love and sometimes she caught her breath—so sweet and
strong was the tumultuous emotion it stirred. She preferred to enjoy
while she could, to dream instead of think. But it was not possible to
hold a blank, dreamy, lulled consciousness all the time. Thought would
return. And not always could she drive away a feeling that Glenn would
never be her slave. She divined something in his mind that kept him
gentle and kindly, restrained always, sometimes melancholy and aloof,
as if he were an impassive destiny waiting for the iron consequences he
knew inevitably must fall. What was this that he knew which she did not
know? The idea haunted her. Perhaps it was that which compelled her to
use all her woman’s wiles and charms on Glenn. Still, though it
thrilled her to see she made him love her more as the days passed, she
could not blind herself to the truth that no softness or allurement of
hers changed this strange restraint in him. How that baffled her! Was
it resistance or knowledge or nobility or doubt?

Flo Hutter’s twentieth birthday came along the middle of June, and all
the neighbors and range hands for miles around were invited to
celebrate it.

For the second time during her visit Carley put on the white gown that
had made Flo gasp with delight, and had stunned Mrs. Hutter, and had
brought a reluctant compliment from Glenn. Carley liked to create a
sensation. What were exquisite and expensive gowns for, if not that?

It was twilight on this particular June night when she was ready to go
downstairs, and she tarried a while on the long porch. The evening
star, so lonely and radiant, so cold and passionless in the dusky blue,
had become an object she waited for and watched, the same as she had
come to love the dreaming, murmuring melody of the waterfall. She
lingered there. What had the sights and sounds and smells of this wild
canyon come to mean to her? She could not say. But they had changed her
immeasurably.

Her soft slippers made no sound on the porch, and as she turned the
corner of the house, where shadows hovered thick, she heard Lee
Stanton’s voice:

“But, Flo, you loved me before Kilbourne came.”

The content, the pathos, of his voice chained Carley to the spot. Some
situations, like fate, were beyond resisting.

“Shore I did,” replied Flo, dreamily. This was the voice of a girl who
was being confronted by happy and sad thoughts on her birthday.

“Don’t you—love me—still?” he asked, huskily.

“Why, of course, Lee! _I_ don’t change,” she said.

“But then, why—” There for the moment his utterance or courage failed.

“Lee, do you want the honest to God’s truth?”

“I reckon—I do.”

“Well, I love you just as I always did,” replied Flo, earnestly. “But,
Lee, I love—_him_ more than you or anybody.”

“My Heaven! Flo—you’ll ruin us all!” he exclaimed, hoarsely.

“No, I won’t either. You can’t say I’m not level headed. I hated to
tell you this, Lee, but you made me.”

“Flo, you love me an’ him—two men?” queried Stanton, incredulously.

“I shore do,” she drawled, with a soft laugh. “And it’s no fun.”

“Reckon I don’t cut much of a figure alongside Kilbourne,” said
Stanton, disconsolately.

“Lee, you could stand alongside any man,” replied Flo, eloquently.
“You’re Western, and you’re steady and loyal, and you’ll—well, some day
you’ll be like dad. Could I say more?... But, Lee, this man is
_different_. He is wonderful. I can’t explain it, but I feel it. He has
been through hell’s fire. Oh! will I ever forget his ravings when he
lay so ill? He means more to me than just _one_ man. He’s American.
You’re American, too, Lee, and you trained to be a soldier, and you
would have made a grand one—if I know old Arizona. But you were not
called to France.... Glenn Kilbourne went. God only knows what that
means. But he _went_. And there’s the difference. I saw the wreck of
him. I did a little to save his life and his mind. I wouldn’t be an
American girl if I _didn’t_ love him.... Oh, Lee, can’t you
understand?”

“I reckon so. I’m not begrudging Glenn what—what you care. I’m only
afraid I’ll lose you.”

“I never promised to marry you, did I?”

“Not in words. But kisses ought to—?”

“Yes, kisses mean a lot,” she replied. “And so far I stand committed. I
suppose I’ll marry you some day and be blamed lucky. I’ll be happy,
too—don’t you overlook that hunch.... You needn’t worry. Glenn is in
love with Carley. She’s beautiful, rich—and of his class. How could he
ever see me?”

“Flo, you can never tell,” replied Stanton, thoughtfully. “I didn’t
like her at first. But I’m comin’ round. The thing is, Flo, does she
love him as you love him?”

“Oh, I think so—I hope so,” answered Flo, as if in distress.

“I’m not so shore. But then I can’t savvy her. Lord knows I hope so,
too. If she doesn’t—if she goes back East an’ leaves him here—I reckon
my case—”

“Hush! I know she’s out here to take him back. Let’s go downstairs
now.”

“Aw, wait—Flo,” he begged. “What’s your hurry?... Come-give me—”

“There! That’s all you get, birthday or no birthday,” replied Flo,
gayly.

Carley heard the soft kiss and Stanton’s deep breath, and then
footsteps as they walked away in the gloom toward the stairway. Carley
leaned against the log wall. She felt the rough wood—smelled the rusty
pine rosin. Her other hand pressed her bosom where her heart beat with
unwonted vigor. Footsteps and voices sounded beneath her. Twilight had
deepened into night. The low murmur of the waterfall and the babble of
the brook floated to her strained ears.

Listeners never heard good of themselves. But Stanton’s subtle doubt of
any depth to her, though it hurt, was not so conflicting as the ringing
truth of Flo Hutter’s love for Glenn. This unsought knowledge
powerfully affected Carley. She was forewarned and forearmed now. It
saddened her, yet did not lessen her confidence in her hold on Glenn.
But it stirred to perplexing pitch her curiosity in regard to the
mystery that seemed to cling round Glenn’s transformation of character.
This Western girl really knew more about Glenn than his fiancée knew.
Carley suffered a humiliating shock when she realized that she had been
thinking of herself, of her love, her life, her needs, her wants
instead of Glenn’s. It took no keen intelligence or insight into human
nature to see that Glenn needed her more than she needed him.

Thus unwontedly stirred and upset and flung back upon pride of herself,
Carley went downstairs to meet the assembled company. And never had she
shown to greater contrast, never had circumstance and state of mind
contrived to make her so radiant and gay and unbending. She heard many
remarks not intended for her far-reaching ears. An old grizzled
Westerner remarked to Hutter: “Wall, she’s shore an unbroke filly.”
Another of the company—a woman—remarked: “Sweet an’ pretty as a
columbine. But I’d like her better if she was dressed decent.” And a
gaunt range rider, who stood with others at the porch door, looking on,
asked a comrade: “Do you reckon that’s style back East?” To which the
other replied: “Mebbe, but I’d gamble they’re short on silk back East
an’ likewise sheriffs.”

Carley received some meed of gratification out of the sensation she
created, but she did not carry her craving for it to the point of
overshadowing Flo. On the contrary, she contrived to have Flo share the
attention she received. She taught Flo to dance the fox-trot and got
Glenn to dance with her. Then she taught it to Lee Stanton. And when
Lee danced with Flo, to the infinite wonder and delight of the
onlookers, Carley experienced her first sincere enjoyment of the
evening.

Her moment came when she danced with Glenn. It reminded her of days
long past and which she wanted to return again. Despite war tramping
and Western labors Glenn retained something of his old grace and
lightness. But just to dance with him was enough to swell her heart,
and for once she grew oblivious to the spectators.

“Glenn, would you like to go to the Plaza with me again, and dance
between dinner courses, as we used to?” she whispered up to him.

“Sure I would—unless Morrison knew you were to be there,” he replied.

“Glenn!... I would not even see him.”

“Any old time you wouldn’t see Morrison!” he exclaimed, half mockingly.

His doubt, his tone grated upon her. Pressing closer to him, she said,
“Come back and I’ll prove it.”

But he laughed and had no answer for her. At her own daring words
Carley’s heart had leaped to her lips. If he had responded, even
teasingly, she could have burst out with her longing to take him back.
But silence inhibited her, and the moment passed.

At the end of that dance Hutter claimed Glenn in the interest of
neighboring sheep men. And Carley, crossing the big living room alone,
passed close to one of the porch doors. Some one, indistinct in the
shadow, spoke to her in low voice: “Hello, pretty eyes!”

Carley felt a little cold shock go tingling through her. But she gave
no sign that she had heard. She recognized the voice and also the
epithet. Passing to the other side of the room and joining the company
there, Carley presently took a casual glance at the door. Several men
were lounging there. One of them was the sheep dipper, Haze Ruff. His
bold eyes were on her now, and his coarse face wore a slight, meaning
smile, as if he understood something about her that was a secret to
others. Carley dropped her eyes. But she could not shake off the
feeling that wherever she moved this man’s gaze followed her. The
unpleasantness of this incident would have been nothing to Carley had
she at once forgotten it. Most unaccountably, however, she could not
make herself unaware of this ruffian’s attention. It did no good for
her to argue that she was merely the cynosure of all eyes. This Ruff’s
tone and look possessed something heretofore unknown to Carley. Once
she was tempted to tell Glenn. But that would only cause a fight, so
she kept her counsel. She danced again, and helped Flo entertain her
guests, and passed that door often; and once stood before it,
deliberately, with all the strange and contrary impulse so inscrutable
in a woman, and never for a moment wholly lost the sense of the man’s
boldness. It dawned upon her, at length, that the singular thing about
this boldness was its difference from any, which had ever before
affronted her. The fool’s smile meant that he thought she saw his
attention, and, understanding it perfectly, had secret delight in it.
Many and various had been the masculine egotisms which had come under
her observation. But quite beyond Carley was this brawny sheep dipper,
Haze Ruff. Once the party broke up and the guests had departed, she
instantly forgot both man and incident.

Next day, late in the afternoon, when Carley came out on the porch, she
was hailed by Flo, who had just ridden in from down the canyon.

“Hey Carley, come down. I shore have something to tell you,” she
called.

Carley did not use any time pattering down that rude porch stairway.
Flo was dusty and hot, and her chaps carried the unmistakable scent of
sheep-dip.

“Been over to Ryan’s camp an’ shore rode hard to beat Glenn home,”
drawled Flo.

“Why?” queried Carley, eagerly.

“Reckon I wanted to tell you something Glenn swore he wouldn’t let me
tell. ... He makes me tired. He thinks you can’t stand things.”

“Oh! Has he been—hurt?”

“He’s skinned an’ bruised up some, but I reckon he’s not hurt.”

“Flo—what happened?” demanded Carley, anxiously.

“Carley, do you know Glenn can fight like the devil?” asked Flo.

“No, I don’t. But I remember he used to be athletic. Flo, you make me
nervous. Did Glenn fight?”

“I reckon he did,” drawled Flo.

“With whom?”

“Nobody else but that big _hombre_, Haze Ruff.”

“Oh!” gasped Carley, with a violent start. “That—that ruffian! Flo, did
you see—were you there?”

“I shore was, an’ next to a horse race I like a fight,” replied the
Western girl. “Carley, why didn’t you tell me Haze Ruff insulted you
last night?”

“Why, Flo—he only said, ‘Hello, pretty eyes,’ and I let it pass!” said
Carley, lamely.

“You never want to let anything pass, out West. Because next time
you’ll get worse. This turn your other cheek doesn’t go in Arizona. But
we shore thought Ruff said worse than that. Though from him that’s
aplenty.”

“How did you know?”

“Well, Charley told it. He was standing out here by the door last night
an’ he heard Ruff speak to you. Charley thinks a heap of you an’ I
reckon he hates Ruff. Besides, Charley stretches things. He shore riled
Glenn, an’ I want to say, my dear, you missed the best thing that’s
happened since you got here.”

“Hurry—tell me,” begged Carley, feeling the blood come to her face.

“I rode over to Ryan’s place for dad, an’ when I got there I knew
nothing about what Ruff said to you,” began Flo, and she took hold of
Carley’s hand. “Neither did dad. You see, Glenn hadn’t got there yet.
Well, just as the men had finished dipping a bunch of sheep Glenn came
riding down, lickety cut.”

“‘Now what the hell’s wrong with Glenn?’ said dad, getting up from
where we sat.

“Shore I knew Glenn was mad, though I never before saw him that way. He
looked sort of grim an’ black.... Well, he rode right down on us an’
piled off. Dad yelled at him an’ so did I. But Glenn made for the sheep
pen. You know where we watched Haze Ruff an’ Lorenzo slinging the sheep
into the dip. Ruff was just about to climb out over the fence when
Glenn leaped up on it.”

“‘Say, Ruff,’ he said, sort of hard, ‘Charley an’ Ben tell me they
heard you speak disrespectfully to Miss Burch last night.’”

“Dad an’ I ran to the fence, but before we could catch hold of Glenn
he’d jumped down into the pen.”

“‘I’m not carin’ much for what them herders say,’ replied Ruff.

“‘Do you deny it?’ demanded Glenn.

“‘I ain’t denyin’ nothin’, Kilbourne,’ growled Ruff. ‘I might argue
against me bein’ disrespectful. That’s a matter of opinion.’

“‘You’ll apologize for speaking to Miss Burch or I’ll beat you up an’
have Hutter fire you.’

“‘Wal, Kilbourne, I never eat my words,’ replied Ruff.

“Then Glenn knocked him flat. You ought to have heard that crack.
Sounded like Charley hitting a steer with a club. Dad yelled: ‘Look
out, Glenn. He packs a gun!’—Ruff got up mad clear through I reckon.
Then they mixed it. Ruff got in some swings, but he couldn’t reach
Glenn’s face. An’ Glenn batted him right an’ left, every time in his
ugly mug. Ruff got all bloody an’ he cussed something awful. Glenn beat
him against the fence an’ then we all saw Ruff reach for a gun or
knife. All the men yelled. An’ shore I screamed. But Glenn saw as much
as we saw. He got fiercer. He beat Ruff down to his knees an’ swung on
him hard. Deliberately knocked Ruff into the dip ditch. What a splash!
It wet all of us. Ruff went out of sight. Then he rolled up like a huge
hog. We were all scared now. That dip’s rank poison, you know. Reckon
Ruff knew that. He floundered along an’ crawled up at the end. Anyone
could see that he had mouth an’ eyes tight shut. He began to grope an’
feel around, trying to find the way to the pond. One of the men led him
out. It was great to see him wade in the water an’ wallow an’ souse his
head under. When he came out the men got in front of him any stopped
him. He shore looked bad.... An’ Glenn called to him, ‘Ruff, that
sheep-dip won’t go through your tough hide, but a bullet will!”


Not long after this incident Carley started out on her usual afternoon
ride, having arranged with Glenn to meet her on his return from work.

Toward the end of June Carley had advanced in her horsemanship to a
point where Flo lent her one of her own mustangs. This change might not
have had all to do with a wonderful difference in riding, but it seemed
so to Carley. There was as much difference in horses as in people. This
mustang she had ridden of late was of Navajo stock, but he had been
born and raised and broken at Oak Creek. Carley had not yet discovered
any objection on his part to do as she wanted him to. He liked what she
liked, and most of all he liked to go. His color resembled a pattern of
calico, and in accordance with Western ways his name was therefore
Calico. Left to choose his own gait, Calico always dropped into a
gentle pace which was so easy and comfortable and swinging that Carley
never tired of it. Moreover, he did not shy at things lying in the road
or rabbits darting from bushes or at the upwhirring of birds. Carley
had grown attached to Calico before she realized she was drifting into
it; and for Carley to care for anything or anybody was a serious
matter, because it did not happen often and it lasted. She was
exceedingly tenacious of affection.

June had almost passed and summer lay upon the lonely land. Such
perfect and wonderful weather had never before been Carley’s
experience. The dawns broke cool, fresh, fragrant, sweet, and rosy,
with a breeze that seemed of heaven rather than earth, and the air
seemed tremulously full of the murmur of falling water and the melody
of mocking birds. At the solemn noontides the great white sun glared
down hot—so hot that it burned the skin, yet strangely was a pleasant
burn. The waning afternoons were Carley’s especial torment, when it
seemed the sounds and winds of the day were tiring, and all things were
seeking repose, and life must soften to an unthinking happiness. These
hours troubled Carley because she wanted them to last, and because she
knew for her this changing and transforming time could not last. So
long as she did not think she was satisfied.

Maples and sycamores and oaks were in full foliage, and their bright
greens contrasted softly with the dark shine of the pines. Through the
spaces between brown tree trunks and the white-spotted holes of the
sycamores gleamed the amber water of the creek. Always there was murmur
of little rills and the musical dash of little rapids. On the surface
of still, shady pools trout broke to make ever-widening ripples. Indian
paintbrush, so brightly carmine in color, lent touch of fire to the
green banks, and under the oaks, in cool dark nooks where mossy
bowlders lined the stream, there were stately nodding yellow
columbines. And high on the rock ledges shot up the wonderful mescal
stalks, beginning to blossom, some with tints of gold and others with
tones of red.

Riding along down the canyon, under its looming walls, Carley wondered
that if unawares to her these physical aspects of Arizona could have
become more significant than she realized. The thought had confronted
her before. Here, as always, she fought it and denied it by the simple
defense of elimination. Yet refusing to think of a thing when it seemed
ever present was not going to do forever. Insensibly and subtly it
might get a hold on her, never to be broken. Yet it was infinitely
easier to dream than to think.

But the thought encroached upon her that it was not a dreamful habit of
mind she had fallen into of late. When she dreamed or mused she lived
vaguely and sweetly over past happy hours or dwelt in enchanted fancy
upon a possible future. Carley had been told by a Columbia professor
that she was a type of the present age—a modern young woman of
materialistic mind. Be that as it might, she knew many things seemed
loosening from the narrowness and tightness of her character, sloughing
away like scales, exposing a new and strange and susceptible softness
of fiber. And this blank habit of mind, when she did not think, and now
realized that she was not dreaming, seemed to be the body of Carley
Burch, and her heart and soul stripped of a shell. Nerve and emotion
and spirit received something from her surroundings. She absorbed her
environment. She felt. It was a delightful state. But when her own
consciousness caused it to elude her, then she both resented and
regretted. Anything that approached permanent attachment to this crude
and untenanted West Carley would not tolerate for a moment. Reluctantly
she admitted it had bettered her health, quickened her blood, and quite
relegated Florida and the Adirondacks, to little consideration.

“Well, as I told Glenn,” soliloquized Carley, “every time I’m almost
won over a little to Arizona she gives me a hard jolt. I’m getting near
being mushy today. Now let’s see what I’ll get. I suppose that’s my
pessimism or materialism. Funny how Glenn keeps saying its the jolts,
the hard knocks, the fights that are best to remember afterward. I
don’t get that at all.”

Five miles below West Fork a road branched off and climbed the left
side of the canyon. It was a rather steep road, long and zigzaging, and
full of rocks and ruts. Carley did not enjoy ascending it, but she
preferred the going up to coming down. It took half an hour to climb.

Once up on the flat cedar-dotted desert she was met, full in the face,
by a hot dusty wind coming from the south. Carley searched her pockets
for her goggles, only to ascertain that she had forgotten them.
Nothing, except a freezing sleety wind, annoyed and punished Carley so
much as a hard puffy wind, full of sand and dust. Somewhere along the
first few miles of this road she was to meet Glenn. If she turned back
for any cause he would be worried, and, what concerned her more
vitally, he would think she had not the courage to face a little dust.
So Carley rode on.

The wind appeared to be gusty. It would blow hard awhile, then lull for
a few moments. On the whole, however, it increased in volume and
persistence until she was riding against a gale. She had now come to a
bare, flat, gravelly region, scant of cedars and brush, and far ahead
she could see a dull yellow pall rising high into the sky. It was a
duststorm and it was sweeping down on the wings of that gale. Carley
remembered that somewhere along this flat there was a log cabin which
had before provided shelter for her and Flo when they were caught in a
rainstorm. It seemed unlikely that she had passed by this cabin.

Resolutely she faced the gale and knew she had a task to find that
refuge. If there had been a big rock or bushy cedar to offer shelter
she would have welcomed it. But there was nothing. When the hard dusty
gusts hit her, she found it absolutely necessary to shut her eyes. At
intervals less windy she opened them, and rode on, peering through the
yellow gloom for the cabin. Thus she got her eyes full of dust—an
alkali dust that made them sting and smart. The fiercer puffs of wind
carried pebbles large enough to hurt severely. Then the dust clogged
her nose and sand got between her teeth. Added to these annoyances was
a heat like a blast from a furnace. Carley perspired freely and that
caked the dust on her face. She rode on, gradually growing more
uncomfortable and miserable. Yet even then she did not utterly lose a
sort of thrilling zest in being thrown upon her own responsibility. She
could hate an obstacle, yet feel something of pride in holding her own
against it.

Another mile of buffeting this increasing gale so exhausted Carley and
wrought upon her nerves that she became nearly panic-stricken. It grew
harder and harder not to turn back. At last she was about to give up
when right at hand through the flying dust she espied the cabin. Riding
behind it, she dismounted and tied the mustang to a post. Then she ran
around to the door and entered.

What a welcome refuge! She was all right now, and when Glenn came along
she would have added to her already considerable list another feat for
which he would commend her. With aid of her handkerchief, and the tears
that flowed so copiously, Carley presently freed her eyes of the
blinding dust. But when she essayed to remove it from her face she
discovered she would need a towel and soap and hot water.

The cabin appeared to be enveloped in a soft, swishing, hollow sound.
It seeped and rustled. Then the sound lulled, only to rise again.
Carley went to the door, relieved and glad to see that the duststorm
was blowing by. The great sky-high pall of yellow had moved on to the
north. Puffs of dust were whipping along the road, but no longer in one
continuous cloud. In the west, low down the sun was sinking, a dull
magenta in hue, quite weird and remarkable.

“I knew I’d get the jolt all right,” soliloquized Carley, wearily, as
she walked to a rude couch of poles and sat down upon it. She had begun
to cool off. And there, feeling dirty and tired, and slowly wearing to
the old depression, she composed herself to wait.

Suddenly she heard the clip-clop of hoofs. “There! that’s Glenn,” she
cried, gladly, and rising, she ran to the door.

She saw a big bay horse bearing a burly rider. He discovered her at the
same instant, and pulled his horse.

“Ho! Ho! if it ain’t Pretty Eyes!” he called out, in gay, coarse voice.

Carley recognized the voice, and then the epithet, before her sight
established the man as Haze Ruff. A singular stultifying shock passed
over her.

“Wal, by all thet’s lucky!” he said, dismounting. “I knowed we’d meet
some day. I can’t say I just laid fer you, but I kept my eyes open.”

Manifestly he knew she was alone, for he did not glance into the cabin.

“I’m waiting for—Glenn,” she said, with lips she tried to make stiff.

“Shore I reckoned thet,” he replied, genially. “But he won’t be along
yet awhile.”

He spoke with a cheerful inflection of tone, as if the fact designated
was one that would please her; and his swarthy, seamy face expanded
into a good-humored, meaning smile. Then without any particular
rudeness he pushed her back from the door, into the cabin, and stepped
across the threshold.

“How dare—you!” cried Carley. A hot anger that stirred in her seemed to
be beaten down and smothered by a cold shaking internal commotion,
threatening collapse. This man loomed over her, huge, somehow monstrous
in his brawny uncouth presence. And his knowing smile, and the hard,
glinting twinkle of his light eyes, devilishly intelligent and keen, in
no wise lessened the sheer brutal force of him physically. Sight of his
bulk was enough to terrorize Carley.

“Me! Aw, I’m a darin’ _hombre_ an’ a devil with the wimmin,” he said,
with a guffaw.

Carley could not collect her wits. The instant of his pushing her back
into the cabin and following her had shocked her and almost paralyzed
her will. If she saw him now any the less fearful she could not so
quickly rally her reason to any advantage.

“Let me out of here,” she demanded.

“Nope. I’m a-goin’ to make a little love to you,” he said, and he
reached for her with great hairy hands.

Carley saw in them the strength that had so easily swung the sheep. She
saw, too, that they were dirty, greasy hands. And they made her flesh
creep.

“Glenn will kill—you,” she panted.

“What fer?” he queried, in real or pretended surprise. “Aw, I know
wimmin. You’ll never tell him.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Wal, mebbe. I reckon you’re lyin’, Pretty Eyes,” he replied, with a
grin. “Anyhow, I’ll take a chance.”

“I tell you—he’ll kill you,” repeated Carley, backing away until her
weak knees came against the couch.

“What fer, I ask you?” he demanded.

“For this—this insult.”

“Huh! I’d like to know who’s insulted you. Can’t a man take an
invitation to kiss an’ hug a girl—without insultin’ her?”

“Invitation!... Are you crazy?” queried Carley, bewildered.

“Nope, I’m not crazy, an’ I shore said invitation.... I meant thet
white shimmy dress you wore the night of Flo’s party. Thet’s my
invitation to get a little fresh with you, Pretty Eyes!”

Carley could only stare at him. His words seemed to have some peculiar,
unanswerable power.

“Wal, if it wasn’t an invitation, what was it?” he asked, with another
step that brought him within reach of her. He waited for her answer,
which was not forthcoming.

“Wal, you’re gettin’ kinda pale around the gills,” he went on,
derisively. “I reckoned you was a real sport.... Come here.”

He fastened one of his great hands in the front of her coat and gave
her a pull. So powerful was it that Carley came hard against him,
almost knocking her breathless. There he held her a moment and then put
his other arm round her. It seemed to crush both breath and sense out
of her. Suddenly limp, she sank strengthless. She seemed reeling in
darkness. Then she felt herself thrust away from him with violence. She
sank on the couch and her head and shoulders struck the wall.

“Say, if you’re a-goin’ to keel over like thet I pass,” declared Ruff,
in disgust. “Can’t you Eastern wimmin stand nothin?”

Carley’s eyes opened and beheld this man in an attitude of supremely
derisive protest.

“You look like a sick kitten,” he added. “When I get me a sweetheart or
wife I want her to be a wild cat.”

His scorn and repudiation of her gave Carley intense relief. She sat up
and endeavored to collect her shattered nerves. Ruff gazed down at her
with great disapproval and even disappointment.

“Say, did you have some fool idee I was a-goin’ to kill you?” he
queried, gruffly.

“I’m afraid—I did,” faltered Carley. Her relief was a release; it was
so strange that it was gratefulness.

“Wal, I reckon I wouldn’t have hurt you. None of these flop-over Janes
for me!... An’ I’ll give you a hunch, Pretty Eyes. You might have run
acrost a fellar thet was no gentleman!”

Of all the amazing statements that had ever been made to Carley, this
one seemed the most remarkable.

“What’d you wear thet onnatural white dress fer?” he demanded, as if he
had a right to be her judge.

“Unnatural?” echoed Carley.

“Shore. Thet’s what I said. Any woman’s dress without top or bottom is
onnatural. It’s not right. Why, you looked like—like”—here he
floundered for adequate expression—“like one of the devil’s angels. An’
I want to hear why you wore it.”

“For the same reason I’d wear any dress,” she felt forced to reply.

“Pretty Eyes, thet’s a lie. An’ you know it’s a lie. You wore thet
white dress to knock the daylights out of men. Only you ain’t honest
enough to say so.... Even me or my kind! Even us, who’re dirt under
your little feet. But all the same we’re men, an’ mebbe better men than
you think. If you had to put that dress on, why didn’t you stay in your
room? Naw, you had to come down an’ strut around an’ show off your
beauty. An’ I ask you—if you’re a nice girl like Flo Hutter—what’d you
wear it fer?”

Carley not only was mute; she felt rise and burn in her a singular
shame and surprise.

“I’m only a sheep dipper,” went on Ruff, “but I ain’t no fool. A fellar
doesn’t have to live East an’ wear swell clothes to have sense. Mebbe
you’ll learn thet the West is bigger’n you think. A man’s a man East or
West. But if your Eastern men stand for such dresses as thet white one
they’d do well to come out West awhile, like your lover, Glenn
Kilbourne. I’ve been rustlin’ round here ten years, an’ I never before
seen a dress like yours—an’ I never heerd of a girl bein’ insulted,
either. Mebbe you think I insulted you. Wal, I didn’t. Fer I reckon
_nothin_’ could insult you in thet dress.... An’ my last hunch is this,
Pretty Eyes. You’re not what a _hombre_ like me calls either square or
game. _Adios_.”

His bulky figure darkened the doorway, passed out, and the light of the
sky streamed into the cabin again. Carley sat staring. She heard Ruff’s
spurs tinkle, then the ring of steel on stirrup, a sodden leathery
sound as he mounted, and after that a rapid pound of hoofs, quickly
dying away.

He was gone. She had escaped something raw and violent. Dazedly she
realized it, with unutterable relief. And she sat there slowly
gathering the nervous force that had been shattered. Every word that he
had uttered was stamped in startling characters upon her consciousness.
But she was still under the deadening influence of shock. This raw
experience was the worst the West had yet dealt her. It brought back
former states of revulsion and formed them in one whole irrefutable and
damning judgment that seemed to blot out the vaguely dawning and
growing happy susceptibilities. It was, perhaps, just as well to have
her mind reverted to realistic fact. The presence of Haze Ruff, the
astounding truth of the contact with his huge sheep-defiled hands, had
been profanation and degradation under which she sickened with fear and
shame. Yet hovering back of her shame and rising anger seemed to be a
pale, monstrous, and indefinable thought, insistent and accusing, with
which she must sooner or later reckon. It might have been the voice of
the new side of her nature, but at that moment of outraged womanhood,
and of revolt against the West, she would not listen. It might, too,
have been the still small voice of conscience. But decision of mind and
energy coming to her then, she threw off the burden of emotion and
perplexity, and forced herself into composure before the arrival of
Glenn.

The dust had ceased to blow, although the wind had by no means died
away. Sunset marked the west in old rose and gold, a vast flare. Carley
espied a horseman far down the road, and presently recognized both
rider and steed. He was coming fast. She went out and, mounting her
mustang, she rode out to meet Glenn. It did not appeal to her to wait
for him at the cabin; besides hoof tracks other than those made by her
mustang might have been noticed by Glenn. Presently he came up to her
and pulled his loping horse.

“Hello! I sure was worried,” was his greeting, as his gloved hand went
out to her. “Did you run into that sandstorm?”

“It ran into me, Glenn, and buried me,” she laughed.

His fine eyes lingered on her face with glad and warm glance, and the
keen, apprehensive penetration of a lover.

“Well, under all that dust you look scared,” he said.

“Scared! I was worse than that. When I first ran into the flying dirt I
was only afraid I’d lose my way—and my complexion. But when the worst
of the storm hit me—then I feared I’d lose my breath.”

“Did you face that sand and ride through it all?” he queried.

“No, not all. But enough. I went through the worst of it before I
reached the cabin,” she replied.

“Wasn’t it great?”

“Yes—great bother and annoyance,” she said, laconically.

Whereupon he reached with long, arm and wrapped it round her as they
rocked side by side. Demonstrations of this nature were infrequent with
Glenn. Despite losing one foot out of a stirrup and her seat in the
saddle Carley rather encouraged it. He kissed her dusty face, and then
set her back.

“By George! Carley, sometimes I think you’ve changed since you’ve been
here,” he said, with warmth. “To go through that sandstorm without one
kick—one knock at my West!”

“Glenn, I always think of what Flo says—the worst is yet to come,”
replied Carley, trying to hide her unreasonable and tumultuous pleasure
at words of praise from him.

“Carley Burch, you don’t know yourself,” he declared, enigmatically.

“What woman knows herself? But do you know me?”

“Not I. Yet sometimes I see depths in you—wonderful
possibilities—submerged under your poise—under your fixed, complacent
idle attitude toward life.”

This seemed for Carley to be dangerously skating near thin ice, but she
could not resist a retort:

“Depths in me? Why I am a shallow, transparent stream like your West
Fork! ... And as for possibilities—may I ask what of them you imagine
you see?”

“As a girl, before you were claimed by the world, you were earnest at
heart. You had big hopes and dreams. And you had intellect, too. But
you have wasted your talents, Carley. Having money, and spending it,
living for pleasure, you have not realized your powers.... Now, don’t
look hurt. I’m not censuring you. It’s just the way of modern life. And
most of your friends have been more careless, thoughtless, useless than
you. The aim of their existence is to be comfortable, free from work,
worry, pain. They want pleasure, luxury. And what a pity it is! The
best of you girls regard marriage as an escape, instead of
responsibility. You don’t marry to get your shoulders square against
the old wheel of American progress—to help some man make good—to bring
a troop of healthy American kids into the world. You bare your
shoulders to the gaze of the multitude and like it best if you are
strung with pearls.”

“Glenn, you distress me when you talk like this,” replied Carley,
soberly. “You did not use to talk so. It seems to me you are bitter
against women.”

“Oh no, Carley! I am only sad,” he said. “I only see where once I was
blind. American women are the finest on earth, but as a race, if they
don’t change, they’re doomed to extinction.”

“How can you say such things?” demanded Carley, with spirit.

“I say them because they are true. Carley, on the level now, tell me
how many of your immediate friends have children.”

Put to a test, Carley rapidly went over in mind her circle of friends,
with the result that she was somewhat shocked and amazed to realize how
few of them were even married, and how the babies of her acquaintance
were limited to three. It was not easy to admit this to Glenn.

“My dear,” replied he, “if that does not show you the handwriting on
the wall, nothing ever will.”

“A girl has to find a husband, doesn’t she?” asked Carley, roused to
defense of her sex. “And if she’s anybody she has to find one in her
set. Well, husbands are not plentiful. Marriage certainly is not the
end of existence these days. We have to get along somehow. The high
cost of living is no inconsderable factor today. Do you know that most
of the better-class apartment houses in New York will not take
children? Women are not all to blame. Take the speed mania. Men must
have automobiles. I know one girl who wanted a baby, but her husband
wanted a car. They couldn’t afford both.”

“Carley, I’m not blaming women more than men,” returned Glenn. “I don’t
know that I blame them as a class. But in my own mind I have worked it
all out. Every man or woman who is genuinely American should read the
signs of the times, realize the crisis, and meet it in an American way.
Otherwise we are done as a race. Money is God in the older countries.
But it should never become God in America. If it does we will make the
fall of Rome pale into insignificance.”

“Glenn, let’s put off the argument,” appealed Carley. “I’m not—just up
to fighting you today. Oh—you needn’t smile. I’m not showing a yellow
streak, as Flo puts it. I’ll fight you some other time.”

“You’re right, Carley,” he assented. “Here we are loafing six or seven
miles from home. Let’s rustle along.”

Riding fast with Glenn was something Carley had only of late added to
her achievements. She had greatest pride in it. So she urged her
mustang to keep pace with Glenn’s horse and gave herself up to the
thrill of the motion and feel of wind and sense of flying along. At a
good swinging lope Calico covered ground swiftly and did not tire.
Carley rode the two miles to the rim of the canyon, keeping alongside
of Glenn all the way. Indeed, for one long level stretch she and Glenn
held hands. When they arrived at the descent, which necessitated slow
and careful riding, she was hot and tingling and breathless, worked by
the action into an exuberance of pleasure. Glenn complimented her
riding as well as her rosy cheeks. There was indeed a sweetness in
working at a task as she had worked to learn to ride in Western
fashion. Every turn of her mind seemed to confront her with sobering
antitheses of thought. Why had she come to love to ride down a lonely
desert road, through ragged cedars where the wind whipped her face with
fragrant wild breath, if at the same time she hated the West? Could she
hate a country, however barren and rough, if it had saved the health
and happiness of her future husband? Verily there were problems for
Carley to solve.

Early twilight purple lay low in the hollows and clefts of the canyon.
Over the western rim a pale ghost of the evening star seemed to smile
at Carley, to bid her look and look. Like a strain of distant music,
the dreamy hum of falling water, the murmur and melody of the stream,
came again to Carley’s sensitive ear.

“Do you love this?” asked Glenn, when they reached the green-forested
canyon floor, with the yellow road winding away into the purple
shadows.

“Yes, both the ride—and you,” flashed Carley, contrarily. She knew he
had meant the deep-walled canyon with its brooding solitude.

“But I want you to love Arizona,” he said.

“Glenn, I’m a faithful creature. You should be glad of that. I love New
York.”

“Very well, then. Arizona to New York,” he said, lightly brushing her
cheek with his lips. And swerving back into his saddle, he spurred his
horse and called back over his shoulder: “That mustang and Flo have
beaten me many a time. Come on.”

It was not so much his words as his tone and look that roused Carley.
Had he resented her loyalty to the city of her nativity? Always there
was a little rift in the lute. Had his tone and look meant that Flo
might catch him if Carley could not? Absurd as the idea was, it spurred
her to recklessness. Her mustang did not need any more than to know she
wanted him to run. The road was of soft yellow earth flanked with green
foliage and overspread by pines. In a moment she was racing at a speed
she had never before half attained on a horse. Down the winding road
Glenn’s big steed sped, his head low, his stride tremendous, his action
beautiful. But Carley saw the distance between them diminishing. Calico
was overtaking the bay. She cried out in the thrilling excitement of
the moment. Glenn saw her gaining and pressed his mount to greater
speed. Still he could not draw away from Calico. Slowly the little
mustang gained. It seemed to Carley that riding him required no effort
at all. And at such fast pace, with the wind roaring in her ears, the
walls of green vague and continuous in her sight, the sting of pine
tips on cheek and neck, the yellow road streaming toward her, under
her, there rose out of the depths of her, out of the tumult of her
breast, a sense of glorious exultation. She closed in on Glenn. From
the flying hoofs of his horse shot up showers of damp sand and gravel
that covered Carley’s riding habit and spattered in her face. She had
to hold up a hand before her eyes. Perhaps this caused her to lose
something of her confidence, or her swing in the saddle, for suddenly
she realized she was not riding well. The pace was too fast for her
inexperience. But nothing could have stopped her then. No fear or
awkwardness of hers should be allowed to hamper that thoroughbred
mustang. Carley felt that Calico understood the situation; or at least
he knew he could catch and pass this big bay horse, and he intended to
do it. Carley was hard put to it to hang on and keep the flying sand
from blinding her.

When Calico drew alongside the bay horse and brought Carley breast to
breast with Glenn, and then inch by inch forged ahead of him, Carley
pealed out an exultant cry. Either it frightened Calico or inspired
him, for he shot right ahead of Glenn’s horse. Then he lost the smooth,
wonderful action. He seemed hurtling through space at the expense of
tremendous muscular action. Carley could feel it. She lost her
equilibrium. She seemed rushing through a blurred green and black aisle
of the forest with a gale in her face. Then, with a sharp jolt, a
break, Calico plunged to the sand. Carley felt herself propelled
forward out of the saddle into the air, and down to strike with a
sliding, stunning force that ended in sudden dark oblivion.

Upon recovering consciousness she first felt a sensation of oppression
in her chest and a dull numbness of her whole body. When she opened her
eyes she saw Glenn bending over her, holding her head on his knee. A
wet, cold, reviving sensation evidently came from the handkerchief with
which he was mopping her face.

“Carley, you can’t be hurt—really!” he was ejaculating, in eager hope.
“It was some spill. But you lit on the sand and slid. You can’t be
hurt.”

The look of his eyes, the tone of his voice, the feel of his hands were
such that Carley chose for a moment to pretend to be very badly hurt
indeed. It was worth taking a header to get so much from Glenn
Kilbourne. But she believed she had suffered no more than a severe
bruising and scraping.

“Glenn—dear,” she whispered, very low and very eloquently. “I think—my
back—is broken.... You’ll be free—soon.”

Glenn gave a terrible start and his face turned a deathly white. He
burst out with quavering, inarticulate speech.

Carley gazed up at him and then closed her eyes. She could not look at
him while carrying on such deceit. Yet the sight of him and the feel of
him then were inexpressibly blissful to her. What she needed most was
assurance of his love. She had it. Beyond doubt, beyond morbid fancy,
the truth had proclaimed itself, filling her heart with joy.

Suddenly she flung her arms up around his neck. “Oh—Glenn! It was too
good a chance to miss!... I’m not hurt a bit.”




CHAPTER VII


The day came when Carley asked Mrs. Hutter: “Will you please put up a
nice lunch for Glenn and me? I’m going to walk down to his farm where
he’s working, and surprise him.”

“That’s a downright fine idea,” declared Mrs. Hutter, and forthwith
bustled away to comply with Carley’s request.

So presently Carley found herself carrying a bountiful basket on her
arm, faring forth on an adventure that both thrilled and depressed her.
Long before this hour something about Glenn’s work had quickened her
pulse and given rise to an inexplicable admiration. That he was big and
strong enough to do such labor made her proud; that he might want to go
on doing it made her ponder and brood.

The morning resembled one of the rare Eastern days in June, when the
air appeared flooded by rich thick amber light. Only the sun here was
hotter and the shade cooler.

Carley took to the trail below where West Fork emptied its golden-green
waters into Oak Creek. The red walls seemed to dream and wait under the
blaze of the sun; the heat lay like a blanket over the still foliage;
the birds were quiet; only the murmuring stream broke the silence of
the canyon. Never had Carley felt more the isolation and solitude of
Oak Creek Canyon. Far indeed from the madding crowd! Only Carley’s
stubbornness kept her from acknowledging the sense of peace that
enveloped her—that and the consciousness of her own discontent. What
would it be like to come to this canyon—to give up to its enchantments?
That, like many another disturbing thought, had to go unanswered, to be
driven into the closed chambers of Carley’s mind, there to germinate
subconsciously, and stalk forth some day to overwhelm her.

The trail led along the creek, threading a maze of bowlders, passing
into the shade of cottonwoods, and crossing sun-flecked patches of
sand. Carley’s every step seemed to become slower. Regrets were
assailing her. Long indeed had she overstayed her visit to the West.
She must not linger there indefinitely. And mingled with misgiving was
a surprise that she had not tired of Oak Creek. In spite of all, and of
the dislike she vaunted to herself, the truth stared at her—she was not
tired.

The long-delayed visit to see Glenn working on his own farm must result
in her talking to him about his work; and in a way not quite clear she
regretted the necessity for it. To disapprove of Glenn! She received
faint intimations of wavering, of uncertainty, of vague doubt. But
these were cried down by the dominant and habitable voice of her
personality.

Presently through the shaded and shadowed breadth of the belt of forest
she saw gleams of a sunlit clearing. And crossing this space to the
border of trees she peered forth, hoping to espy Glenn at his labors.
She saw an old shack, and irregular lines of rude fence built of poles
of all sizes and shapes, and several plots of bare yellow ground,
leading up toward the west side of the canyon wall. Could this clearing
be Glenn’s farm? Surely she had missed it or had not gone far enough.
This was not a farm, but a slash in the forested level of the canyon
floor, bare and somehow hideous. Dead trees were standing in the lots.
They had been ringed deeply at the base by an ax, to kill them, and so
prevent their foliage from shading the soil. Carley saw a long pile of
rocks that evidently had been carried from the plowed ground. There was
no neatness, no regularity, although there was abundant evidence of
toil. To clear that rugged space, to fence it, and plow it, appeared at
once to Carley an extremely strenuous and useless task. Carley
persuaded herself that this must be the plot of ground belonging to the
herder Charley, and she was about to turn on down the creek when far up
under the bluff she espied a man. He was stalking along and bending
down, stalking along and bending down. She recognized Glenn. He was
planting something in the yellow soil.

Curiously Carley watched him, and did not allow her mind to become
concerned with a somewhat painful swell of her heart. What a stride he
had! How vigorous he looked, and earnest! He was as intent upon this
job as if he had been a rustic. He might have been failing to do it
well, but he most certainly was doing it conscientiously. Once he had
said to her that a man should never be judged by the result of his
labors, but by the nature of his effort. A man might strive with all
his heart and strength, yet fail. Carley watched him striding along and
bending down, absorbed in his task, unmindful of the glaring hot sun,
and somehow to her singularly detached from the life wherein he had
once moved and to which she yearned to take him back. Suddenly an
unaccountable flashing query assailed her conscience: How dare she want
to take him back? She seemed as shocked as if some stranger had
accosted her. What was this dimming of her eye, this inward
tremulousness; this dammed tide beating at an unknown and riveted gate
of her intelligence? She felt more then than she dared to face. She
struggled against something in herself. The old habit of mind
instinctively resisted the new, the strange. But she did not come off
wholly victorious. The Carley Burch whom she recognized as of old,
passionately hated this life and work of Glenn Kilbourne’s, but the
rebel self, an unaccountable and defiant Carley, loved him all the
better for them.

Carley drew a long deep breath before she called Glenn. This meeting
would be momentous and she felt no absolute surety of herself.

Manifestly he was surprised to hear her call, and, dropping his sack
and implement, he hurried across the tilled ground, sending up puffs of
dust. He vaulted the rude fence of poles, and upon sight of her called
out lustily. How big and virile he looked! Yet he was gaunt and
strained. It struck Carley that he had not looked so upon her arrival
at Oak Creek. Had she worried him? The query gave her a pang.

“Sir Tiller of the Fields,” said Carley, gayly, “see, your dinner! _I_
brought it and _I_ am going to share it.”

“You old darling!” he replied, and gave her an embrace that left her
cheek moist with the sweat of his. He smelled of dust and earth and his
body was hot. “I wish to God it could be true for always!”

His loving, bearish onslaught and his words quite silenced Carley. How
at critical moments he always said the thing that hurt her or inhibited
her! She essayed a smile as she drew back from him.

“It’s sure good of you,” he said, taking the basket. “I was thinking
I’d be through work sooner today, and was sorry I had not made a date
with you. Come, we’ll find a place to sit.”

Whereupon he led her back under the trees to a half-sunny, half-shady
bench of rock overhanging the stream. Great pines overshadowed a still,
eddying pool. A number of brown butterflies hovered over the water, and
small trout floated like spotted feathers just under the surface.
Drowsy summer enfolded the sylvan scene.

Glenn knelt at the edge of the brook, and, plunging his hands in, he
splashed like a huge dog and bathed his hot face and head, and then
turned to Carley with gay words and laughter, while he wiped himself
dry with a large red scarf. Carley was not proof against the virility
of him then, and at the moment, no matter what it was that had made him
the man he looked, she loved it.

“I’ll sit in the sun,” he said, designating a place. “When you’re hot
you mustn’t rest in the shade, unless you’ve coat or sweater. But you
sit here in the shade.”

“Glenn, that’ll put us too far apart,” complained Carley. “I’ll sit in
the sun with you.”

The delightful simplicity and happiness of the ensuing hour was
something Carley believed she would never forget.

“There! we’ve licked the platter clean,” she said. “What starved bears
we were!.... I wonder if I shall enjoy eating—when I get home. I used
to be so finnicky and picky.”

“Carley, don’t talk about home,” said Glenn, appealingly.

“You dear old farmer, I’d love to stay here and just dream—forever,”
replied Carley, earnestly. “But I came on purpose to talk seriously.”

“Oh, you did! About what?” he returned, with some quick, indefinable
change of tone and expression.

“Well, first about your work. I know I hurt your feelings when I
wouldn’t listen. But I wasn’t ready. I wanted to—to just be gay with
you for a while. Don’t think I wasn’t interested. I was. And now, I’m
ready to hear all about it—and everything.”

She smiled at him bravely, and she knew that unless some unforeseen
shock upset her composure, she would be able to conceal from him
anything which might hurt his feelings.

“You do look serious,” he said, with keen eyes on her.

“Just what are your business relations with Hutter?” she inquired.

“I’m simply working for him,” replied Glenn. “My aim is to get an
interest in his sheep, and I expect to, some day. We have some plans.
And one of them is the development of that Deep Lake section. You
remember—you were with us. The day Spillbeans spilled you?”

“Yes, I remember. It was a pretty place,” she replied.

Carley did not tell him that for a month past she had owned the Deep
Lake section of six hundred and forty acres. She had, in fact,
instructed Hutter to purchase it, and to keep the transaction a secret
for the present. Carley had never been able to understand the impulse
that prompted her to do it. But as Hutter had assured her it was a
remarkably good investment on very little capital, she had tried to
persuade herself of its advantages. Back of it all had been an
irresistible desire to be able some day to present to Glenn this ranch
site he loved. She had concluded he would never wholly dissociate
himself from this West; and as he would visit it now and then, she had
already begun forming plans of her own. She could stand a month in
Arizona at long intervals.

“Hutter and I will go into cattle raising some day,” went on Glenn.
“And that Deep Lake place is what I want for myself.”

“What work are you doing for Hutter?” asked Carley.

“Anything from building fence to cutting timber,” laughed Glenn. “I’ve
not yet the experience to be a foreman like Lee Stanton. Besides, I
have a little business all my own. I put all my money in that.”

“You mean here—this—this farm?”

“Yes. And the stock I’m raisin’. You see I have to feed corn. And
believe me, Carley, those cornfields represent some job.”

“I can well believe that,” replied Carley. “You—you looked it.”

“Oh, the hard work is over. All I have to do now it to plant and keep
the weeds out.”

“Glenn, do sheep eat corn?”

“I plant corn to feed my hogs.”

“Hogs?” she echoed, vaguely.

“Yes, hogs,” he said, with quiet gravity. “The first day you visited my
cabin I told you I raised hogs, and I fried my own ham for your
dinner.”

“Is that what you—put your money in?”

“Yes. And Hutter says I’ve done well.”

“_Hogs!_” ejaculated Carley, aghast.

“My dear, are you growin’ dull of comprehension?” retorted Glenn.
“H-o-g-s.” He spelled the word out. “I’m in the hog-raising business,
and pretty blamed well pleased over my success so far.”

Carley caught herself in time to quell outwardly a shock of amaze and
revulsion. She laughed, and exclaimed against her stupidity. The look
of Glenn was no less astounding than the content of his words. He was
actually proud of his work. Moreover, he showed not the least sign that
he had any idea such information might be startlingly obnoxious to his
fiancée.

“Glenn! It’s so—so queer,” she ejaculated. “That you—Glenn
Kilbourne-should ever go in for—for hogs!... It’s unbelievable. How’d
you ever—ever happen to do it?”

“By Heaven! you’re hard on me!” he burst out, in sudden dark, fierce
passion. “How’d I ever happen to do it?... _What_ was there left for
me? I gave my soul and heart and body to the government—to fight for my
country. I came home a wreck. _What_ did my government do for me?
_What_ did my employers do for me? _What_ did the people I fought for
do for me?... Nothing—so help me God—_nothing!_... I got a ribbon and a
bouquet—a little applause for an hour—and then the sight of me sickened
my countrymen. I was broken and used. I was absolutely forgotten....
But my body, my life, my soul meant _all_ to me. My future was ruined,
but I wanted to live. I had killed men who never harmed me—I was not
fit to die.... I _tried_ to live. So I fought out my battle alone.
Alone!... No one understood. No one cared. I came West to keep from
dying of consumption in sight of the indifferent mob for whom I had
sacrificed myself. I chose to die on my feet away off alone
somewhere.... But I got well. And what _made_ me well—and _saved_ my
soul—was the first work that offered. _Raising and tending hogs!_”

The dead whiteness of Glenn’s face, the lightning scorn of his eyes,
the grim, stark strangeness of him then had for Carley a terrible
harmony with this passionate denunciation of her, of her kind, of the
America for whom he had lost all.

“Oh, Glenn!—forgive—me!” she faltered. “I was only—talking. What do I
know? Oh, I am blind—blind and little!”

She could not bear to face him for a moment, and she hung her head. Her
intelligence seemed concentrating swift, wild thoughts round the shock
to her consciousness. By that terrible expression of his face, by those
thundering words of scorn, would she come to realize the mighty truth
of his descent into the abyss and his rise to the heights. Vaguely she
began to see. An awful sense of her deadness, of her soul-blighting
selfishness, began to dawn upon her as something monstrous out of dim,
gray obscurity. She trembled under the reality of thoughts that were
not new. How she had babbled about Glenn and the crippled soldiers! How
she had imagined she sympathized! But she had only been a vain,
worldly, complacent, effusive little fool. She had here the shock of
her life, and she sensed a greater one, impossible to grasp.

“Carley, that was coming to you,” said Glenn, presently, with deep,
heavy expulsion of breath.

“I only know I love you—more—more,” she cried, wildly, looking up and
wanting desperately to throw herself in his arms.

“I guess you do—a little,” he replied. “Sometimes I feel you are a kid.
Then again you represent the world—your world with its age-old
custom—its unalterable.... But, Carley, let’s get back to my work.”

“Yes—yes,” exclaimed Carley, gladly. “I’m ready to—to go pet your
hogs—anything.”

“By George! I’ll take you up,” he declared. “I’ll bet you won’t go near
one of my hogpens.”

“Lead me to it!” she replied, with a hilarity that was only a nervous
reversion of her state.

“Well, maybe I’d better hedge on the bet,” he said, laughing again.
“You have more in you than I suspect. You sure fooled me when you stood
for the sheep-dip. But, come on, I’ll take you anyway.”

So that was how Carley found herself walking arm in arm with Glenn down
the canyon trail. A few moments of action gave her at least an
appearance of outward composure. And the state of her emotion was so
strained and intense that her slightest show of interest must deceive
Glenn into thinking her eager, responsive, enthusiastic. It certainly
appeared to loosen his tongue. But Carley knew she was farther from
normal than ever before in her life, and that the subtle, inscrutable
woman’s intuition of her presaged another shock. Just as she had seemed
to change, so had the aspects of the canyon undergone some illusive
transformation. The beauty of green foliage and amber stream and brown
tree trunks and gray rocks and red walls was there; and the summer
drowsiness and languor lay as deep; and the loneliness and solitude
brooded with its same eternal significance. But some nameless
enchantment, perhaps of hope, seemed no longer to encompass her. A blow
had fallen upon her, the nature of which only time could divulge.

Glenn led her around the clearing and up to the base of the west wall,
where against a shelving portion of the cliff had been constructed a
rude fence of poles. It formed three sides of a pen, and the fourth
side was solid rock. A bushy cedar tree stood in the center. Water
flowed from under the cliff, which accounted for the boggy condition of
the red earth. This pen was occupied by a huge sow and a litter of
pigs.

Carley climbed on the fence and sat there while Glenn leaned over the
top pole and began to wax eloquent on a subject evidently dear to his
heart. Today of all days Carley made an inspiring listener. Even the
shiny, muddy, suspicious old sow in no wise daunted her fictitious
courage. That filthy pen of mud a foot deep, and of odor rancid, had no
terrors for her. With an arm round Glenn’s shoulder she watched the
rooting and squealing little pigs, and was amused and interested, as if
they were far removed from the vital issue of the hour. But all the
time as she looked and laughed, and encouraged Glenn to talk, there
seemed to be a strange, solemn, oppressive knocking at her heart. Was
it only the beat-beat-beat of blood?

“There were twelve pigs in that litter,” Glenn was saying, “and now you
see there are only nine. I’ve lost three. Mountain lions, bears,
coyotes, wild cats are all likely to steal a pig. And at first I was
sure one of these varmints had been robbing me. But as I could not find
any tracks, I knew I had to lay the blame on something else. So I kept
watch pretty closely in daytime, and at night I shut the pigs up in the
corner there, where you see I’ve built a pen. Yesterday I heard
squealing—and, by George! I saw an eagle flying off with one of my
pigs. Say, I was mad. A great old bald-headed eagle—the regal bird you
see with America’s stars and stripes had degraded himself to the level
of a coyote. I ran for my rifle, and I took some quick shots at him as
he flew up. Tried to hit him, too, but I failed. And the old rascal
hung on to my pig. I watched him carry it to that sharp crag way up
there on the rim.”

“Poor little piggy!” exclaimed Carley. “To think of our American
emblem—our stately bird of noble warlike mien—our symbol of lonely
grandeur and freedom of the heights—think of him being a robber of
pigpens!—Glenn, I begin to appreciate the many-sidedness of things.
Even my hide-bound narrowness is susceptible to change. It’s never too
late to learn. This should apply to the Society for the Preservation of
the American Eagle.”

Glenn led her along the base of the wall to three other pens, in each
of which was a fat old sow with a litter. And at the last enclosure,
that owing to dry soil was not so dirty, Glenn picked up a little pig
and held it squealing out to Carley as she leaned over the fence. It
was fairly white and clean, a little pink and fuzzy, and certainly cute
with its curled tall.

“Carley Burch, take it in your hands,” commanded Glenn.

The feat seemed monstrous and impossible of accomplishment for Carley.
Yet such was her temper at the moment that she would have undertaken
anything.

“Why, shore I will, as Flo says,” replied Carley, extending her
ungloved hands. “Come here, piggy. I christen you Pinky.” And hiding an
almost insupportable squeamishness from Glenn, she took the pig in her
hands and fondled it.

“By George!” exclaimed Glenn, in huge delight. “I wouldn’t have
believed it. Carley, I hope you tell your fastidious and immaculate
Morrison that you held one of my pigs in your beautiful hands.”

“Wouldn’t it please you more to tell him yourself?” asked Carley.

“Yes, it would,” declared Glenn, grimly.

This incident inspired Glenn to a Homeric narration of his hog-raising
experience. In spite of herself the content of his talk interested her.
And as for the effect upon her of his singular enthusiasm, it was deep
and compelling. The little-boned Berkshire razorback hogs grew so large
and fat and heavy that their bones broke under their weight. The Duroc
jerseys were the best breed in that latitude, owing to their larger and
stronger bones, that enabled them to stand up under the greatest
accumulation of fat.

Glenn told of his droves of pigs running wild in the canyon below. In
summertime they fed upon vegetation, and at other seasons on acorns,
roots, bugs, and grubs. Acorns, particularly, were good and fattening
feed. They ate cedar and juniper berries, and pinyon nuts. And
therefore they lived off the land, at little or no expense to the
owner. The only loss was from beasts and birds of prey. Glenn showed
Carley how a profitable business could soon be established. He meant to
fence off side canyons and to segregate droves of his hogs, and to
raise abundance of corn for winter feed. At that time there was a
splendid market for hogs, a condition Hutter claimed would continue
indefinitely in a growing country. In conclusion Glenn eloquently told
how in his necessity he had accepted gratefully the humblest of labors,
to find in the hard pursuit of it a rejuvenation of body and mind, and
a promise of independence and prosperity.

When he had finished, and excused himself to go repair a weak place in
the corral fence, Carley sat silent, wrapped in strange meditation.

Whither had faded the vulgarity and ignominy she had attached to
Glenn’s raising of hogs? Gone—like other miasmas of her narrow mind!
Partly she understood him now. She shirked consideration of his
sacrifice to his country. That must wait. But she thought of his work,
and the more she thought the less she wondered.

First he had labored with his hands. What infinite meaning lay
unfolding to her vision! Somewhere out of it all came the conception
that man was intended to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. But
there was more to it than that. By that toil and sweat, by the friction
of horny palms, by the expansion and contraction of muscle, by the
acceleration of blood, something great and enduring, something physical
and spiritual, came to a man. She understood then why she would have
wanted to surrender herself to a man made manly by toil; she understood
how a woman instinctively leaned toward the protection of a man who had
used his hands—who had strength and red blood and virility who could
fight like the progenitors of the race. Any toil was splendid that
served this end for any man. It all went back to the survival of the
fittest. And suddenly Carley thought of Morrison. He could dance and
dangle attendance upon her, and amuse her—but how would he have
acquitted himself in a moment of peril? She had her doubts. Most
assuredly he could not have beaten down for her a ruffian like Haze
Ruff. What then should be the significance of a man for a woman?

Carley’s querying and answering mind reverted to Glenn. He had found a
secret in this seeking for something through the labor of hands. All
development of body must come through exercise of muscles. The virility
of cell in tissue and bone depended upon that. Thus he had found in
toil the pleasure and reward athletes had in their desultory training.
But when a man learned this secret the need of work must become
permanent. Did this explain the law of the Persians that every man was
required to sweat every day?

Carley tried to picture to herself Glenn’s attitude of mind when he had
first gone to work here in the West. Resolutely she now denied her
shrinking, cowardly sensitiveness. She would go to the root of this
matter, if she had intelligence enough. Crippled, ruined in health,
wrecked and broken by an inexplicable war, soul-blighted by the
heartless, callous neglect of government and public, on the verge of
madness at the insupportable facts, he had yet been wonderful enough,
true enough to himself and God, to fight for life with the instinct of
a man, to fight for his mind with a noble and unquenchable faith. Alone
indeed he had been alone! And by some miracle beyond the power of
understanding he had found day by day in his painful efforts some hope
and strength to go on. He could not have had any illusions. For Glenn
Kilbourne the health and happiness and success most men held so dear
must have seemed impossible. His slow, daily, tragic, and terrible task
must have been something he owed himself. Not for Carley Burch! She
like all the others had failed him. How Carley shuddered in confession
of that! Not for the country which had used him and cast him off!
Carley divined now, as if by a flash of lightning, the meaning of
Glenn’s strange, cold, scornful, and aloof manner when he had
encountered young men of his station, as capable and as strong as he,
who had escaped the service of the army. For him these men did not
exist. They were less than nothing. They had waxed fat on lucrative
jobs; they had basked in the presence of girls whose brothers and
lovers were in the trenches or on the turbulent sea, exposed to the
ceaseless dread and almost ceaseless toil of war. If Glenn’s spirit had
lifted him to endurance of war for the sake of others, how then could
it fail him in a precious duty of fidelity to himself? Carley could see
him day by day toiling in his lonely canyon—plodding to his lonely
cabin. He had been playing the game—fighting it out alone as surely he
knew his brothers of like misfortune were fighting.

So Glenn Kilbourne loomed heroically in Carley’s transfigured sight. He
was one of Carley’s battle-scarred warriors. Out of his travail he had
climbed on stepping-stones of his dead self. _Resurgam!_ That had been
his unquenchable cry. Who had heard it? Only the solitude of his lonely
canyon, only the waiting, dreaming, watching walls, only the silent
midnight shadows, only the white, blinking, passionless stars, only the
wild creatures of his haunts, only the moaning wind in the pines—only
these had been with him in his agony. How near were these things to
God?

Carley’s heart seemed full to bursting. Not another single moment could
her mounting love abide in a heart that held a double purpose. How
bitter the assurance that she had not come West to help him! It was
self, self, all self that had actuated her. Unworthy indeed was she of
the love of this man. Only a lifetime of devotion to him could acquit
her in the eyes of her better self. Sweetly and madly raced the thrill
and tumult of her blood. There must be only one outcome to her romance.
Yet the next instant there came a dull throbbing—an oppression which
was pain—an impondering vague thought of catastrophe. Only the
fearfulness of love perhaps!

She saw him complete his task and wipe his brown moist face and stride
toward her, coming nearer, tall and erect with something added to his
soldierly bearing, with a light in his eyes she could no longer bear.

The moment for which she had waited more than two months had come at
last.

“Glenn—when will you go back East?” she asked, tensely and low.

The instant the words were spent upon her lips she realized that he had
always been waiting and prepared for this question that had been so
terrible for her to ask.

“Carley,” he replied gently, though his voice rang, “I am never going
back East.”

An inward quivering hindered her articulation.

“_Never?_” she whispered.

“Never to live, or stay any while,” he went on. “I might go some time
for a little visit.... But never to live.”

“Oh—Glenn!” she gasped, and her hands fluttered out to him. The shock
was driving home. No amaze, no incredulity succeeded her reception of
the fact. It was a slow stab. Carley felt the cold blanch of her skin.
“Then—this is it—the something I felt strange between us?”

“Yes, I knew—and you never asked me,” he replied.

“That was it? All the time you knew,” she whispered, huskily. “You
knew. ... _I’d never—marry you—never live out here?_”

“Yes, Carley, I knew you’d never be woman enough—_American enough_—to
help me reconstruct my broken life out here in the West,” he replied,
with a sad and bitter smile.

That flayed her. An insupportable shame and wounded vanity and
clamoring love contended for dominance of her emotions. Love beat down
all else.

“Dearest—I beg of you—don’t break my heart,” she implored.

“I love you, Carley,” he answered, steadily, with piercing eyes on
hers.

“Then come back—home—home with me.”

“No. If you love me you will be my wife.”

“Love you! Glenn, I worship you,” she broke out, passionately. “But I
could not live here—_I could not_.”

“Carley, did you ever read of the woman who said, ‘Whither thou goest,
there will I go’...”

“Oh, don’t be ruthless! Don’t judge me.... I never dreamed of this. I
came West to take you back.”

“My dear, it was a mistake,” he said, gently, softening to her
distress. “I’m sorry I did not write you more plainly. But, Carley, I
could not ask you to share this—this wilderness home with me. I don’t
ask it now. I always knew you couldn’t do it. Yet you’ve changed
so—that I hoped against hope. Love makes us blind even to what we see.”

“Don’t try to spare me. I’m slight and miserable. I stand abased in my
own eyes. I thought I loved you. But I must love best the
crowd—people—luxury—fashion—the damned round of things I was born to.”

“Carley, you will realize their insufficiency too late,” he replied,
earnestly. “The things you were born to are love, work, children,
happiness.”

“Don’t! don’t!... they are hollow mockery for me,” she cried,
passionately. “Glenn, it is the end. It must come—quickly.... You are
free.”

“I do not ask to be free. Wait. Go home and look at it again with
different eyes. Think things over. Remember what came to me out of the
West. I will always love you—and I will be here—hoping—”

“I—I cannot listen,” she returned, brokenly, and she clenched her hands
tightly to keep from wringing them. “I—I cannot face you.... Here
is—your ring.... You—are—free.... Don’t stop me—don’t come.... Oh,
Glenn, good-by!”

With breaking heart she whirled away from him and hurried down the
slope toward the trail. The shade of the forest enveloped her. Peering
back through the trees, she saw Glenn standing where she had left him,
as if already stricken by the loneliness that must be his lot. A sob
broke from Carley’s throat. She hated herself. She was in a terrible
state of conflict. Decision had been wrenched from her, but she sensed
unending strife. She dared not look back again. Stumbling and
breathless, she hurried on. How changed the atmosphere and sunlight and
shadow of the canyon! The looming walls had pitiless eyes for her
flight. When she crossed the mouth of West Fork an almost irresistible
force breathed to her from under the stately pines.

An hour later she had bidden farewell to the weeping Mrs. Hutter, and
to the white-faced Flo, and Lolomi Lodge, and the murmuring waterfall,
and the haunting loneliness of Oak Creek Canyon.




CHAPTER VIII


At Flagstaff, where Carley arrived a few minutes before train time, she
was too busily engaged with tickets and baggage to think of herself or
of the significance of leaving Arizona. But as she walked into the
Pullman she overheard a passenger remark, “Regular old Arizona sunset,”
and that shook her heart. Suddenly she realized she had come to love
the colorful sunsets, to watch and wait for them. And bitterly she
thought how that was her way to learn the value of something when it
was gone.

The jerk and start of the train affected her with singular depressing
shock. She had burned her last bridge behind her. Had she unconsciously
hoped for some incredible reversion of Glenn’s mind or of her own? A
sense of irreparable loss flooded over her—the first check to shame and
humiliation.

From her window she looked out to the southwest. Somewhere across the
cedar and pine-greened uplands lay Oak Creek Canyon, going to sleep in
its purple and gold shadows of sunset. Banks of broken clouds hung to
the horizon, like continents and islands and reefs set in a turquoise
sea. Shafts of sunlight streaked down through creamy-edged and
purple-centered clouds. Vast flare of gold dominated the sunset
background.

When the train rounded a curve Carley’s strained vision became filled
with the upheaved bulk of the San Francisco Mountains. Ragged gray
grass slopes and green forests on end, and black fringed sky lines, all
pointed to the sharp clear peaks spearing the sky. And as she watched,
the peaks slowly flushed with sunset hues, and the sky flared golden,
and the strength of the eternal mountains stood out in sculptured
sublimity. Every day for two months and more Carley had watched these
peaks, at all hours, in every mood; and they had unconsciously become a
part of her thought. The train was relentlessly whirling her eastward.
Soon they must become a memory. Tears blurred her sight. Poignant
regret seemed added to the anguish she was suffering. Why had she not
learned sooner to see the glory of the mountains, to appreciate the
beauty and solitude? Why had she not understood herself?

The next day through New Mexico she followed magnificent ranges and
valleys—so different from the country she had seen coming West—so
supremely beautiful that she wondered if she had only acquired the
harvest of a seeing eye.

But it was at sunset of the following day, when the train was speeding
down the continental slope of prairie land beyond the Rockies, that the
West took its ruthless revenge.

Masses of strange cloud and singular light upon the green prairie, and
a luminosity in the sky, drew Carley to the platform of her car, which
was the last of the train. There she stood, gripping the iron gate,
feeling the wind whip her hair and the iron-tracked ground speed from
under her, spellbound and stricken at the sheer wonder and glory of the
firmament, and the mountain range that it canopied so exquisitely.

A rich and mellow light, singularly clear, seemed to flood out of some
unknown source. For the sun was hidden. The clouds just above Carley
hung low, and they were like thick, heavy smoke, mushrooming,
coalescing, forming and massing, of strange yellow cast of nature. It
shaded westward into heliotrope and this into a purple so royal, so
matchless and rare that Carley understood why the purple of the heavens
could never be reproduced in paint. Here the cloud mass thinned and
paled, and a tint of rose began to flush the billowy, flowery, creamy
white. Then came the surpassing splendor of this cloud pageant—a vast
canopy of shell pink, a sun-fired surface like an opal sea, rippled and
webbed, with the exquisite texture of an Oriental fabric, pure,
delicate, lovely—as no work of human hands could be. It mirrored all
the warm, pearly tints of the inside whorl of the tropic nautilus. And
it ended abruptly, a rounded depth of bank, on a broad stream of clear
sky, intensely blue, transparently blue, as if through the lambent
depths shone the infinite firmament. The lower edge of this stream took
the golden lightning of the sunset and was notched for all its
horizon-long length by the wondrous white glistening-peaked range of
the Rockies. Far to the north, standing aloof from the range, loomed up
the grand black bulk and noble white dome of Pikes Peak.

Carley watched the sunset transfiguration of cloud and sky and mountain
until all were cold and gray. And then she returned to her seat,
thoughtful and sad, feeling that the West had mockingly flung at her
one of its transient moments of loveliness.

Nor had the West wholly finished with her. Next day the mellow gold of
the Kansas wheat fields, endless and boundless as a sunny sea, rich,
waving in the wind, stretched away before her aching eyes for hours and
hours. Here was the promise fulfilled, the bountiful harvest of the
land, the strength of the West. The great middle state had a heart of
gold.

East of Chicago Carley began to feel that the long days and nights of
riding, the ceaseless turning of the wheels, the constant and wearing
stress of emotion, had removed her an immeasurable distance of miles
and time and feeling from the scene of her catastrophe. Many days
seemed to have passed. Many had been the hours of her bitter regret and
anguish.

Indiana and Ohio, with their green pastoral farms, and numberless
villages, and thriving cities, denoted a country far removed and
different from the West, and an approach to the populous East. Carley
felt like a wanderer coming home. She was restlessly and impatiently
glad. But her weariness of body and mind, and the close atmosphere of
the car, rendered her extreme discomfort. Summer had laid its hot hand
on the low country east of the Mississippi.

Carley had wired her aunt and two of her intimate friends to meet her
at the Grand Central Station. This reunion soon to come affected Carley
in recurrent emotions of relief, gladness, and shame. She did not sleep
well, and arose early, and when the train reached Albany she felt that
she could hardly endure the tedious hours. The majestic Hudson and the
palatial mansions on the wooded bluffs proclaimed to Carley that she
was back in the East. How long a time seemed to have passed! Either she
was not the same or the aspect of everything had changed. But she
believed that as soon as she got over the ordeal of meeting her
friends, and was home again, she would soon see things rationally.

At last the train sheered away from the broad Hudson and entered the
environs of New York. Carley sat perfectly still, to all outward
appearances a calm, superbly-poised New York woman returning home, but
inwardly raging with contending tides. In her own sight she was a
disgraceful failure, a prodigal sneaking back to the ease and
protection of loyal friends who did not know her truly. Every familiar
landmark in the approach to the city gave her a thrill, yet a vague
unsatisfied something lingered after each sensation.

Then the train with rush and roar crossed the Harlem River to enter New
York City. As one waking from a dream Carley saw the blocks and squares
of gray apartment houses and red buildings, the miles of roofs and
chimneys, the long hot glaring streets full of playing children and
cars. Then above the roar of the train sounded the high notes of a
hurdy-gurdy. Indeed she was home. Next to startle her was the dark
tunnel, and then the slowing of the train to a stop. As she walked
behind a porter up the long incline toward the station gate her legs
seemed to be dead.

In the circle of expectant faces beyond the gate she saw her aunt’s,
eager and agitated, then the handsome pale face of Eleanor Harmon, and
beside her the sweet thin one of Beatrice Lovell. As they saw her how
quick the change from expectancy to joy! It seemed they all rushed upon
her, and embraced her, and exclaimed over her together. Carley never
recalled what she said. But her heart was full.

“Oh, how perfectly stunning you look!” cried Eleanor, backing away from
Carley and gazing with glad, surprised eyes.

“Carley!” gasped Beatrice. “You wonderful golden-skinned goddess!...
You’re _young_ again, like you were in our school days.”

It was before Aunt Mary’s shrewd, penetrating, loving gaze that Carley
quailed.

“Yes, Carley, you look well—better than I ever saw you, but—but—”

“But I don’t look happy,” interrupted Carley. “I am happy to get
home—to see you all... But—my—my heart is broken!”

A little shocked silence ensued, then Carley found herself being led
across the lower level and up the wide stairway. As she mounted to the
vast-domed cathedral-like chamber of the station a strange sensation
pierced her with a pang. Not the old thrill of leaving New York or
returning! Nor was it the welcome sight of the hurrying, well-dressed
throng of travelers and commuters, nor the stately beauty of the
station. Carley shut her eyes, and then she knew. The dim light of vast
space above, the looming gray walls, shadowy with tracery of figures,
the lofty dome like the blue sky, brought back to her the walls of Oak
Creek Canyon and the great caverns under the ramparts. As suddenly as
she had shut her eyes Carley opened them to face her friends.

“Let me get it over—quickly,” she burst out, with hot blood surging to
her face. “I—I hated the West. It was so raw—so violent—so big. I think
I hate it more—now.... But it changed me—made me over physically—and
did something to my soul—God knows what.... And it has saved Glenn. Oh!
he is wonderful! You would never know him.... For long I had not the
courage to tell him I came to bring him back East. I kept putting it
off. And I rode, I climbed, I camped, I lived outdoors. At first it
nearly killed me. Then it grew bearable, and easier, until I forgot. I
wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit now that somehow I had a wonderful
time, in spite of all.... Glenn’s business is raising hogs. He has a
hog ranch. Doesn’t it sound sordid? But things are not always what they
sound—or seem. Glenn is absorbed in his work. I hated it—I expected to
ridicule it. But I ended by infinitely respecting him. I learned
through his hog-raising the real nobility of work.... Well, at last I
found courage to ask him when he was coming back to New York. He said
‘_never!_’... I realized then my blindness, my selfishness. I could not
be his wife and live there. I could not. I was too small, too
miserable, too comfort-loving—too spoiled. And all the time he knew
this—_knew_ I’d never be big enough to marry him.... That broke my
heart. I left him free—and here I am.... I beg you—don’t ask me any
more—and never to mention it to me—so I can forget.”

The tender unspoken sympathy of women who loved her proved comforting
in that trying hour. With the confession ruthlessly made the hard
compression in Carley’s breast subsided, and her eyes cleared of a
hateful dimness. When they reached the taxi stand outside the station
Carley felt a rush of hot devitalized air from the street. She seemed
not to be able to get air into her lungs.

“Isn’t it dreadfully hot?” she asked.

“This is a cool spell to what we had last week,” replied Eleanor.

“Cool!” exclaimed Carley, as she wiped her moist face. “I wonder if you
Easterners know the real significance of words.”

Then they entered a taxi, to be whisked away apparently through a
labyrinthine maze of cars and streets, where pedestrians had to run and
jump for their lives. A congestion of traffic at Fifth Avenue and
Forty-second Street halted their taxi for a few moments, and here in
the thick of it Carley had full assurance that she was back in the
metropolis. Her sore heart eased somewhat at sight of the streams of
people passing to and fro. How they rushed! Where were they going? What
was their story? And all the while her aunt held her hand, and Beatrice
and Eleanor talked as fast as their tongues could wag. Then the taxi
clattered on up the Avenue, to turn down a side street and presently
stop at Carley’s home. It was a modest three-story brown-stone house.
Carley had been so benumbed by sensations that she did not imagine she
could experience a new one. But peering out of the taxi, she gazed
dubiously at the brownish-red stone steps and front of her home.

“I’m going to have it painted,” she muttered, as if to herself.

Her aunt and her friends laughed, glad and relieved to hear such a
practical remark from Carley. How were they to divine that this
brownish-red stone was the color of desert rocks and canyon walls?

In a few more moments Carley was inside the house, feeling a sense of
protection in the familiar rooms that had been her home for seventeen
years. Once in the sanctity of her room, which was exactly as she had
left it, her first action was to look in the mirror at her weary,
dusty, heated face. Neither the brownness of it nor the shadow appeared
to harmonize with the image of her that haunted the mirror.

“Now!” she whispered low. “It’s done. I’m home. The old life—or a new
life? How to meet either. Now!”

Thus she challenged her spirit. And her intelligence rang at her the
imperative necessity for action, for excitement, for effort that left
no time for rest or memory or wakefulness. She accepted the issue. She
was glad of the stern fight ahead of her. She set her will and steeled
her heart with all the pride and vanity and fury of a woman who had
been defeated but who scorned defeat. She was what birth and breeding
and circumstance had made her. She would seek what the old life held.

What with unpacking and chatting and telephoning and lunching, the day
soon passed. Carley went to dinner with friends and later to a roof
garden. The color and light, the gayety and music, the news of
acquaintances, the humor of the actors—all, in fact, except the
unaccustomed heat and noise, were most welcome and diverting. That
night she slept the sleep of weariness.

Awakening early, she inaugurated a habit of getting up at once, instead
of lolling in bed, and breakfasting there, and reading her mail, as had
been her wont before going West. Then she went over business matters
with her aunt, called on her lawyer and banker, took lunch with Rose
Maynard, and spent the afternoon shopping. Strong as she was, the
unaccustomed heat and the hard pavements and the jostle of shoppers and
the continual rush of sensations wore her out so completely that she
did not want any dinner. She talked to her aunt a while, then went to
bed.

Next day Carley motored through Central Park, and out of town into
Westchester County, finding some relief from the stiffing heat. But she
seemed to look at the dusty trees and the worn greens without really
seeing them. In the afternoon she called on friends, and had dinner at
home with her aunt, and then went to a theatre. The musical comedy was
good, but the almost unbearable heat and the vitiated air spoiled her
enjoyment. That night upon arriving home at midnight she stepped out of
the taxi, and involuntarily, without thought, looked up to see the
stars. But there were no stars. A murky yellow-tinged blackness hung
low over the city. Carley recollected that stars, and sunrises and
sunsets, and untainted air, and silence were not for city dwellers. She
checked any continuation of the thought.

A few days sufficed to swing her into the old life. Many of Carley’s
friends had neither the leisure nor the means to go away from the city
during the summer. Some there were who might have afforded that if they
had seen fit to live in less showy apartments, or to dispense with
cars. Other of her best friends were on their summer outings in the
Adirondacks. Carley decided to go with her aunt to Lake Placid about
the first of August. Meanwhile she would keep going and doing.

She had been a week in town before Morrison telephoned her and added
his welcome. Despite the gay gladness of his voice, it irritated her.
Really, she scarcely wanted to see him. But a meeting was inevitable,
and besides, going out with him was in accordance with the plan she had
adopted. So she made an engagement to meet him at the Plaza for dinner.
When with slow and pondering action she hung up the receiver it
occurred to her that she resented the idea of going to the Plaza. She
did not dwell on the reason why.

When Carley went into the reception room of the Plaza that night
Morrison was waiting for her—the same slim, fastidious, elegant,
sallow-faced Morrison whose image she had in mind, yet somehow
different. He had what Carley called the New York masculine face, blasé
and lined, with eyes that gleamed, yet had no fire. But at sight of her
his face lighted up.

“By Jove! but you’ve come back a peach!” he exclaimed, clasping her
extended hand. “Eleanor told me you looked great. It’s worth missing
you to see you like this.”

“Thanks, Larry,” she replied. “I must look pretty well to win that
compliment from you. And how are you feeling? You don’t seem robust for
a golfer and horseman. But then I’m used to husky Westerners.”

“Oh, I’m fagged with the daily grind,” he said. “I’ll be glad to get up
in the mountains next month. Let’s go down to dinner.”

They descended the spiral stairway to the grillroom, where an orchestra
was playing jazz, and dancers gyrated on a polished floor, and diners
in evening dress looked on over their cigarettes.

“Well, Carley, are you still finicky about the eats?” he queried,
consulting the menu.

“No. But I prefer plain food,” she replied.

“Have a cigarette,” he said, holding out his silver monogrammed case.

“Thanks, Larry. I—I guess I’ll not take up smoking again. You see,
while I was West I got out of the habit.”

“Yes, they told me you had changed,” he returned. “How about drinking?”

“Why, I thought New York had gone dry!” she said, forcing a laugh.

“Only on the surface. Underneath it’s wetter than ever.”

“Well, I’ll obey the law.”

He ordered a rather elaborate dinner, and then turning his attention to
Carley, gave her closer scrutiny. Carley knew then that he had become
acquainted with the fact of her broken engagement. It was a relief not
to need to tell him.

“How’s that big stiff, Kilbourne?” asked Morrison, suddenly. “Is it
true he got well?”

“Oh—yes! He’s fine,” replied Carley with eyes cast down. A hot knot
seemed to form deep within her and threatened to break and steal along
her veins. “But if you please—I do not care to talk of him.”

“Naturally. But I must tell you that one man’s loss is another’s gain.”

Carley had rather expected renewed courtship from Morrison. She had
not, however, been prepared for the beat of her pulse, the quiver of
her nerves, the uprising of hot resentment at the mere mention of
Kilbourne. It was only natural that Glenn’s former rivals should speak
of him, and perhaps disparagingly. But from this man Carley could not
bear even a casual reference. Morrison had escaped the army service. He
had been given a high-salaried post at the ship-yards—the duties of
which, if there had been any, he performed wherever he happened to be.
Morrison’s father had made a fortune in leather during the war. And
Carley remembered Glenn telling her he had seen two whole blocks in
Paris piled twenty feet deep with leather army goods that were never
used and probably had never been intended to be used. Morrison
represented the not inconsiderable number of young men in New York who
had gained at the expense of the valiant legion who had lost. But what
had Morrison gained? Carley raised her eyes to gaze steadily at him. He
looked well-fed, indolent, rich, effete, and supremely self-satisfied.
She could not see that he had gained anything. She would rather have
been a crippled ruined soldier.

“Larry, I fear gain and loss are mere words,” she said. “The thing that
counts with me is what you _are_.”

He stared in well-bred surprise, and presently talked of a new dance
which had lately come into vogue. And from that he passed on to gossip
of the theatres. Once between courses of the dinner he asked Carley to
dance, and she complied. The music would have stimulated an Egyptian
mummy, Carley thought, and the subdued rose lights, the murmur of gay
voices, the glide and grace and distortion of the dancers, were
exciting and pleasurable. Morrison had the suppleness and skill of a
dancing-master. But he held Carley too tightly, and so she told him,
and added, “I imbibed some fresh pure air while I was out
West—something you haven’t here—and I don’t want it all squeezed out of
me.”


The latter days of July Carley made busy—so busy that she lost her tan
and appetite, and something of her splendid resistance to the dragging
heat and late hours. Seldom was she without some of her friends. She
accepted almost any kind of an invitation, and went even to Coney
Island, to baseball games, to the motion pictures, which were three
forms of amusement not customary with her. At Coney Island, which she
visited with two of her younger girl friends, she had the best time
since her arrival home. What had put her in accord with ordinary
people? The baseball games, likewise pleased her. The running of the
players and the screaming of the spectators amused and excited her. But
she hated the motion pictures with their salacious and absurd
misrepresentations of life, in some cases capably acted by skillful
actors, and in others a silly series of scenes featuring some
doll-faced girl.

But she refused to go horseback riding in Central Park. She refused to
go to the Plaza. And these refusals she made deliberately, without
asking herself why.

On August 1st she accompanied her aunt and several friends to Lake
Placid, where they established themselves at a hotel. How welcome to
Carley’s strained eyes were the green of mountains, the soft gleam of
amber water! How sweet and refreshing a breath of cool pure air! The
change from New York’s glare and heat and dirt, and iron-red insulating
walls, and thronging millions of people, and ceaseless roar and rush,
was tremendously relieving to Carley. She had burned the candle at both
ends. But the beauty of the hills and vales, the quiet of the forest,
the sight of the stars, made it harder to forget. She had to rest. And
when she rested she could not always converse, or read, or write.

For the most part her days held variety and pleasure. The place was
beautiful, the weather pleasant, the people congenial. She motored over
the forest roads, she canoed along the margin of the lake, she played
golf and tennis. She wore exquisite gowns to dinner and danced during
the evenings. But she seldom walked anywhere on the trails and, never
alone, and she never climbed the mountains and never rode a horse.

Morrison arrived and added his attentions to those of other men. Carley
neither accepted nor repelled them. She favored the association with
married couples and older people, and rather shunned the pairing off
peculiar to vacationists at summer hotels. She had always loved to play
and romp with children, but here she found herself growing to avoid
them, somehow hurt by sound of pattering feet and joyous laughter. She
filled the days as best she could, and usually earned quick slumber at
night. She staked all on present occupation and the truth of flying
time.




CHAPTER IX


The latter part of September Carley returned to New York.

Soon after her arrival she received by letter a formal proposal of
marriage from Elbert Harrington, who had been quietly attentive to her
during her sojourn at Lake Placid. He was a lawyer of distinction,
somewhat older than most of her friends, and a man of means and fine
family. Carley was quite surprised. Harrington was really one of the
few of her acquaintances whom she regarded as somewhat behind the
times, and liked him the better for that. But she could not marry him,
and replied to his letter in as kindly a manner as possible. Then he
called personally.

“Carley, I’ve come to ask you to reconsider,” he said, with a smile in
his gray eyes. He was not a tall or handsome man, but he had what women
called a nice strong face.

“Elbert, you embarrass me,” she replied, trying to laugh it out.
“Indeed I feel honored, and I thank you. But I can’t marry you.”

“Why not?” he asked, quietly.

“Because I don’t love you,” she replied.

“I did not expect you to,” he said. “I hoped in time you might come to
care. I’ve known you a good many years, Carley. Forgive me if I tell
you I see you are breaking—wearing yourself down. Maybe it is not a
husband you need so much now, but you do need a home and children. You
are wasting your life.”

“All you say may be true, my friend,” replied Carley, with a helpless
little upflinging of hands. “Yet it does not alter my feelings.”

“But you will marry sooner or later?” he queried, persistently.

This straightforward question struck Carley as singularly as if it was
one she might never have encountered. It forced her to think of things
she had buried.

“I don’t believe I ever will,” she answered, thoughtfully.

“That is nonsense, Carley,” he went on. “You’ll have to marry. What
else can you do? With all due respect to your feelings—that affair with
Kilbourne is ended—and you’re not the wishy-washy heartbreak kind of a
girl.”

“You can never tell what a woman will do,” she said, somewhat coldly.

“Certainly not. That’s why I refuse to take no. Carley, be reasonable.
You like me—respect me, do you not?”

“Why, of course I do!”

“I’m only thirty-five, and I could give you all any sensible woman
wants,” he said. “Let’s make a real American home. Have you thought at
all about that, Carley? Something is wrong today. Men are not marrying.
Wives are not having children. Of all the friends I have, not one has a
real American home. Why, it is a terrible fact! But, Carley, you are
not a sentimentalist, or a melancholiac. Nor are you a waster. You have
fine qualities. You need something to do, some one to care for.”

“Pray do not think me ungrateful, Elbert,” she replied, “nor insensible
to the truth of what you say. But my answer is no!”

When Harrington had gone Carley went to her room, and precisely as upon
her return from Arizona she faced her mirror skeptically and
relentlessly. “I am such a liar that I’ll do well to look at myself,”
she meditated. “Here I am again. Now! The world expects me to marry.
But _what_ do I expect?”

There was a raw unheated wound in Carley’s heart. Seldom had she
permitted herself to think about it, let alone to probe it with hard
materialistic queries. But custom to her was as inexorable as life. If
she chose to live in the world she must conform to its customs. For a
woman marriage was the aim and the end and the all of existence.
Nevertheless, for Carley it could not be without love. Before she had
gone West she might have had many of the conventional modern ideas
about women and marriage. But because out there in the wilds her love
and perception had broadened, now her arraignment of herself and her
sex was bigger, sterner, more exacting. The months she had been home
seemed fuller than all the months of her life. She had tried to forget
and enjoy; she had not succeeded; but she had looked with far-seeing
eyes at her world. Glenn Kilbourne’s tragic fate had opened her eyes.

Either the world was all wrong or the people in it were. But if that
were an extravagant and erroneous supposition, there certainly was
proof positive that her own small individual world was wrong. The women
did not do any real work; they did not bear children; they lived on
excitement and luxury. They had no ideals. How greatly were men to
blame? Carley doubted her judgment here. But as men could not live
without the smiles and comradeship and love of women, it was only
natural that they should give the women what they wanted. Indeed, they
had no choice. It was give or go without. How much of real love entered
into the marriages among her acquaintances? Before marriage Carley
wanted a girl to be sweet, proud, aloof, with a heart of golden fire.
Not attainable except through love! It would be better that no children
be born at all unless born of such beautiful love. Perhaps that was why
so few children were born. Nature’s balance and revenge! In Arizona
Carley had learned something of the ruthlessness and inevitableness of
nature. She was finding out she had learned this with many other
staggering facts.

“I love Glenn still,” she whispered, passionately, with trembling lips,
as she faced the tragic-eyed image of herself in the mirror. “I love
him more—more. Oh, my God! If I were honest I’d cry out the truth! It
is terrible. ... I will always love him. How then could I marry any
other man? I would be a lie, a cheat. If I could only forget him—only
kill that love. Then I might love another man—and if I did love him—no
matter what I had felt or done before, I would be worthy. I could feel
worthy. I could give him just as much. But without such love I’d give
only a husk—a body without soul.”

Love, then, was the sacred and holy flame of life that sanctioned the
begetting of children. Marriage might be a necessity of modern time,
but it was not the vital issue. Carley’s anguish revealed strange and
hidden truths. In some inexplicable way Nature struck a terrible
balance—revenged herself upon a people who had no children, or who
brought into the world children not created by the divinity of love,
unyearned for, and therefore somehow doomed to carry on the blunders
and burdens of life.

Carley realized how right and true it might be for her to throw herself
away upon an inferior man, even a fool or a knave, if she loved him
with that great and natural love of woman; likewise it dawned upon her
how false and wrong and sinful it would be to marry the greatest or the
richest or the noblest man unless she had that supreme love to give
him, and knew it was reciprocated.

“What am I going to do with my life?” she asked, bitterly and aghast.
“I have been—I am a waster. I’ve lived for nothing but pleasurable
sensation. I’m utterly useless. I do absolutely no good on earth.”

Thus she saw how Harrington’s words rang true—how they had precipitated
a crisis for which her unconscious brooding had long made preparation.

“Why not give up ideals and be like the rest of my kind?” she
soliloquized.

That was one of the things which seemed wrong with modern life. She
thrust the thought from her with passionate scorn. If poor, broken,
ruined Glenn Kilbourne could cling to an ideal and fight for it, could
not she, who had all the world esteemed worth while, be woman enough to
do the same? The direction of her thought seemed to have changed. She
had been ready for rebellion. Three months of the old life had shown
her that for her it was empty, vain, farcical, without one redeeming
feature. The naked truth was brutal, but it cut clean to wholesome
consciousness. Such so-called social life as she had plunged into
deliberately to forget her unhappiness had failed her utterly. If she
had been shallow and frivolous it might have done otherwise. Stripped
of all guise, her actions must have been construed by a penetrating and
impartial judge as a mere parading of her decorated person before a
number of males with the purpose of ultimate selection.

“I’ve got to find some work,” she muttered, soberly.

At the moment she heard the postman’s whistle outside; and a little
later the servant brought up her mail. The first letter, large, soiled,
thick, bore the postmark Flagstaff, and her address in Glenn
Kilbourne’s writing.

Carley stared at it. Her heart gave a great leap. Her hand shook. She
sat down suddenly as if the strength of her legs was inadequate to
uphold her.

“Glenn has—written me!” she whispered, in slow, halting realization.
“For what? Oh, why?”

The other letters fell off her lap, to lie unnoticed. This big thick
envelope fascinated her. It was one of the stamped envelopes she had
seen in his cabin. It contained a letter that had been written on his
rude table, before the open fire, in the light of the doorway, in that
little log-cabin under the spreading pines of West Ford Canyon. Dared
she read it? The shock to her heart passed; and with mounting swell,
seemingly too full for her breast, it began to beat and throb a wild
gladness through all her being. She tore the envelope apart and read:


DEAR CARLEY:

I’m surely glad for a good excuse to write you.

Once in a blue moon I get a letter, and today Hutter brought me one
from a soldier pard of mine who was with me in the Argonne. His name is
Virgil Rust—queer name, don’t you think?—and he’s from Wisconsin. Just
a rough-diamond sort of chap, but fairly well educated. He and I were
in some pretty hot places, and it was he who pulled me out of a shell
crater. I’d “gone west” sure then if it hadn’t been for Rust.

Well, he did all sorts of big things during the war. Was down several
times with wounds. He liked to fight and he was a holy terror. We all
thought he’d get medals and promotion. But he didn’t get either. These
much-desired things did not always go where they were best deserved.

Rust is now lying in a hospital in Bedford Park. His letter is pretty
blue. All he says about why he’s there is that he’s knocked out. But he
wrote a heap about his girl. It seems he was in love with a girl in his
home town—a pretty, big-eyed lass whose picture I’ve seen—and while he
was overseas she married one of the chaps who got out of fighting.
Evidently Rust is deeply hurt. He wrote: “I’d not care so... if she’d
thrown me down to marry an old man or a boy who couldn’t have gone to
war.” You see, Carley, service men feel queer about that sort of thing.
It’s something we got over there, and none of us will ever outlive it.
Now, the point of this is that I am asking you to go see Rust, and
cheer him up, and do what you can for the poor devil. It’s a good deal
to ask of you, I know, especially as Rust saw _your_ picture many a
time and knows you were my girl. But you needn’t tell him that you—we
couldn’t make a go of it.

And, as I am writing this to you, I see no reason why I shouldn’t go on
in behalf of myself.

The fact is, Carley, I miss writing to you more than I miss anything of
my old life. I’ll bet you have a trunkful of letters from me—unless
you’ve destroyed them. I’m not going to say how I miss _your_ letters.
But I will say you wrote the most charming and fascinating letters of
anyone I ever knew, quite aside from any sentiment. You knew, of
course, that I had no other girl correspondent. Well, I got along
fairly well before you came West, but I’d be an awful liar if I denied
I didn’t get lonely for you and your letters. It’s different now that
you’ve been to Oak Creek. I’m alone most of the time and I dream a lot,
and I’m afraid I see you here in my cabin, and along the brook, and
under the pines, and riding Calico—which you came to do well—and on my
hogpen fence—and, oh, everywhere! I don’t want you to think I’m down in
the mouth, for I’m not. I’ll take my medicine. But, Carley, you spoiled
me, and I miss hearing from you, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be all
right for you to send me a friendly letter occasionally.

It is autumn now. I wish you could see Arizona canyons in their
gorgeous colors. We have had frost right along and the mornings are
great. There’s a broad zigzag belt of gold halfway up the San Francisco
peaks, and that is the aspen thickets taking on their fall coat. Here
in the canyon you’d think there was blazing fire everywhere. The vines
and the maples are red, scarlet, carmine, cerise, magenta, all the hues
of flame. The oak leaves are turning russet gold, and the sycamores are
yellow green. Up on the desert the other day I rode across a patch of
asters, lilac and lavender, almost purple. I had to get off and pluck a
handful. And then what do you think? I dug up the whole bunch, roots
and all, and planted them on the sunny side of my cabin. I rather guess
your love of flowers engendered this remarkable susceptibility in me.

I’m home early most every afternoon now, and I like the couple of hours
loafing around. Guess it’s bad for me, though. You know I seldom hunt,
and the trout in the pool here are so tame now they’ll almost eat out
of my hand. I haven’t the heart to fish for them. The squirrels, too,
have grown tame and friendly. There’s a red squirrel that climbs up on
my table. And there’s a chipmunk who lives in my cabin and runs over my
bed. I’ve a new pet—the little pig you christened Pinky. After he had
the wonderful good fortune to be caressed and named by you I couldn’t
think of letting him grow up in an ordinary piglike manner. So I
fetched him home. My dog, Moze, was jealous at first and did not like
this intrusion, but now they are good friends and sleep together. Flo
has a kitten she’s going to give me, and then, as Hutter says, I’ll be
“Jake.”

My occupation during these leisure hours perhaps would strike my old
friends East as idle, silly, mawkish. But I believe you will understand
me.

I have the pleasure of doing nothing, and of catching now and then a
glimpse of supreme joy in the strange state of _thinking_ nothing.
Tennyson came close to this in his “Lotus Eaters.” Only to see—only to
feel is enough!

Sprawled on the warm sweet pine needles, I breathe through them the
breath of the earth and am somehow no longer lonely. I cannot, of
course, see the sunset, but I watch for its coming on the eastern wall
of the canyon. I see the shadow slowly creep up, driving the gold
before it, until at last the canyon rim and pines are turned to golden
fire. I watch the sailing eagles as they streak across the gold, and
swoop up into the blue, and pass out of sight. I watch the golden flush
fade to gray, and then, the canyon slowly fills with purple shadows.
This hour of twilight is the silent and melancholy one. Seldom is there
any sound save the soft rush of the water over the stones, and that
seems to die away. For a moment, perhaps, I am Hiawatha alone in his
forest home, or a more primitive savage, feeling the great, silent
pulse of nature, happy in unconsciousness, like a beast of the wild.
But only for an instant do I ever catch this fleeting state. Next I am
Glenn Kilbourne of West Fork, doomed and haunted by memories of the
past. The great looming walls then become no longer blank. They are
vast pages of the history of my life, with its past and present, and,
alas! its future. Everything time does is written on the stones. And my
stream seems to murmur the sad and ceaseless flow of human life, with
its music and its misery.

Then, descending from the sublime to the humdrum and necessary, I heave
a sigh, and pull myself together, and go in to make biscuits and fry
ham. But I should not forget to tell you that before I do go in, very
often my looming, wonderful walls and crags weave in strange shadowy
characters the beautiful and unforgettable face of Carley Burch!


I append what little news Oak Creek affords.

That blamed old bald eagle stole another of my pigs.

I am doing so well with my hog-raising that Hutter wants to come in
with me, giving me an interest in his sheep.

It is rumored some one has bought the Deep Lake section I wanted for a
ranch. I don’t know who. Hutter was rather noncommittal.

Charley, the herder, had one of his queer spells the other day, and
swore to me he had a letter from you. He told the blamed lie with a
sincere and placid eye, and even a smile of pride. Queer guy, that
Charley!

Flo and Lee Stanton had another quarrel—the worst yet, Lee tells me.
Flo asked a girl friend out from Flag and threw her in Lee’s way, so to
speak, and when Lee retaliated by making love to the girl Flo got mad.
Funny creatures, you girls! Flo rode with me from High Falls to West
Fork, and never showed the slightest sign of trouble. In fact she was
delightfully gay. She rode Calico, and beat me bad in a race.


_Adios_, Carley. Won’t you write me?
GLENN.


No sooner had Carley read the letter through to the end than she began
it all over again, and on this second perusal she lingered over
passages—only to reread them. That suggestion of her face sculptured by
shadows on the canyon walls seemed to thrill her very soul.

She leaped up from the reading to cry out something that was
unutterable. All the intervening weeks of shame and anguish and fury
and strife and pathos, and the endless striving to forget, were as if
by the magic of a letter made nothing but vain oblations.

“He loves me still!” she whispered, and pressed her breast with
clenching hands, and laughed in wild exultance, and paced her room like
a caged lioness. It was as if she had just awakened to the assurance
she was beloved. That was the shibboleth—the cry by which she sounded
the closed depths of her love and called to the stricken life of a
woman’s insatiate vanity.

Then she snatched up the letter, to scan it again, and, suddenly
grasping the import of Glenn’s request, she hurried to the telephone to
find the number of the hospital in Bedford Park. A nurse informed her
that visitors were received at certain hours and that any attention to
disabled soldiers was most welcome.

Carley motored out there to find the hospital merely a long one-story
frame structure, a barracks hastily thrown up for the care of invalided
men of the service. The chauffeur informed her that it had been used
for that purpose during the training period of the army, and later when
injured soldiers began to arrive from France.

A nurse admitted Carley into a small bare anteroom. Carley made known
her errand.

“I’m glad it’s Rust you want to see,” replied the nurse. “Some of these
boys are going to die. And some will be worse off if they live. But
Rust may get well if he’ll only behave. You are a relative—or friend?”

“I don’t know him,” answered Carley. “But I have a friend who was with
him in France.”

The nurse led Carley into a long narrow room with a line of single beds
down each side, a stove at each end, and a few chairs. Each bed
appeared to have an occupant and those nearest Carley lay singularly
quiet. At the far end of the room were soldiers on crutches, wearing
bandages on their beads, carrying their arms in slings. Their merry
voices contrasted discordantly with their sad appearance.

Presently Carley stood beside a bed and looked down upon a gaunt,
haggard young man who lay propped up on pillows.

“Rust—a lady to see you,” announced the nurse.

Carley had difficulty in introducing herself. Had Glenn ever looked
like this? What a face! It’s healed scar only emphasized the pallor and
furrows of pain that assuredly came from present wounds. He had
unnaturally bright dark eyes, and a flush of fever in his hollow
cheeks.

“How do!” he said, with a wan smile. “Who’re you?”

“I’m Glenn Kilbourne’s fiancée,” she replied, holding out her hand.

“Say, I ought to’ve known you,” he said, eagerly, and a warmth of light
changed the gray shade of his face. “You’re the girl Carley! You’re
almost like my—my own girl. By golly! You’re some looker! It was good
of you to come. Tell me about Glenn.”

Carley took the chair brought by the nurse, and pulling it close to the
bed, she smiled down upon him and said: “I’ll be glad to tell you all I
know—presently. But first you tell me about yourself. Are you in pain?
What is your trouble? You must let me do everything I can for you, and
these other men.”

Carley spent a poignant and depth-stirring hour at the bedside of
Glenn’s comrade. At last she learned from loyal lips the nature of
Glenn Kilbourne’s service to his country. How Carley clasped to her
sore heart the praise of the man she loved—the simple proofs of his
noble disregard of self! Rust said little about his own service to
country or to comrade. But Carley saw enough in his face. He had been
like Glenn. By these two Carley grasped the compelling truth of the
spirit and sacrifice of the legion of boys who had upheld American
traditions. Their children and their children’s children, as the years
rolled by into the future, would hold their heads higher and prouder.
Some things could never die in the hearts and the blood of a race.
These boys, and the girls who had the supreme glory of being loved by
them, must be the ones to revive the Americanism of their forefathers.
Nature and God would take care of the slackers, the cowards who cloaked
their shame with bland excuses of home service, of disability, and of
dependence.

Carley saw two forces in life—the destructive and constructive. On the
one side greed, selfishness, materialism: on the other generosity,
sacrifice, and idealism. Which of them builded for the future? She saw
men as wolves, sharks, snakes, vermin, and opposed to them men as lions
and eagles. She saw women who did not inspire men to fare forth to
seek, to imagine, to dream, to hope, to work, to fight. She began to
have a glimmering of what a woman might be.


That night she wrote swiftly and feverishly, page after page, to Glenn,
only to destroy what she had written. She could not keep her heart out
of her words, nor a hint of what was becoming a sleepless and eternal
regret. She wrote until a late hour, and at last composed a letter she
knew did not ring true, so stilted and restrained was it in all
passages save those concerning news of Glenn’s comrade and of her own
friends. “I’ll never—never write him again,” she averred with stiff
lips, and next moment could have laughed in mockery at the bitter
truth. If she had ever had any courage, Glenn’s letter had destroyed
it. But had it not been a kind of selfish, false courage, roused to
hide her hurt, to save her own future? Courage should have a thought of
others. Yet shamed one moment at the consciousness she would write
Glenn again and again, and exultant the next with the clamouring love,
she seemed to have climbed beyond the self that had striven to forget.
She would remember and think though she died of longing.

Carley, like a drowning woman, caught at straws. What a relief and joy
to give up that endless nagging at her mind! For months she had kept
ceaselessly active, by associations which were of no help to her and
which did not make her happy, in her determination to forget. Suddenly
then she gave up to remembrance. She would cease trying to get over her
love for Glenn, and think of him and dream about him as much as memory
dictated. This must constitute the only happiness she could have.

The change from strife to surrender was so novel and sweet that for
days she felt renewed. It was augmented by her visits to the hospital
in Bedford Park. Through her bountiful presence Virgil Rust and his
comrades had many dull hours of pain and weariness alleviated and
brightened. Interesting herself in the condition of the seriously
disabled soldiers and possibility of their future took time and work
Carley gave willingly and gladly. At first she endeavored to get
acquaintances with means and leisure to help the boys, but these
overtures met with such little success that she quit wasting valuable
time she could herself devote to their interests.

Thus several weeks swiftly passed by. Several soldiers who had been
more seriously injured than Rust improved to the extent that they were
discharged. But Rust gained little or nothing. The nurse and doctor
both informed Carley that Rust brightened for her, but when she was
gone he lapsed into somber indifference. He did not care whether he ate
or not, or whether he got well or died.

“If I do pull out, where’ll I go and what’ll I do?” he once asked the
nurse.

Carley knew that Rust’s hurt was more than loss of a leg, and she
decided to talk earnestly to him and try to win him to hope and effort.
He had come to have a sort of reverence for her. So, biding her time,
she at length found opportunity to approach his bed while his comrades
were asleep or out of hearing. He endeavored to laugh her off, and then
tried subterfuge, and lastly he cast off his mask and let her see his
naked soul.

“Carley, I don’t want your money or that of your kind friends—whoever
they are—you say will help me to get into business,” he said. “God
knows I thank you and it warms me inside to find _some one_ who
appreciates what I’ve given. But I don’t want charity.... And I guess
I’m pretty sick of the game. I’m sorry the Boches didn’t do the job
right.”

“Rust, that is morbid talk,” replied Carley. “You’re ill and you just
can’t see any hope. You must cheer up—fight _yourself;_ and look at the
brighter side. It’s a horrible pity you must be a cripple, but Rust,
indeed life can be worth living if you make it so.”

“How could there be a brighter side when a man’s only half a man—” he
queried, bitterly.

“You can be just as much a man as ever,” persisted Carley, trying to
smile when she wanted to cry.

“Could you care for a man with only one leg?” he asked, deliberately.

“What a question! Why, of course I could!”

“Well, maybe you are different. Glenn always swore even if he was
killed no slacker or no rich guy left at home could ever get you. Maybe
you haven’t any idea how much it means to us fellows to know there
_are_ true and faithful girls. But I’ll tell you, Carley, we fellows
who went across got to see things strange when we came home. The good
old U. S. needs a lot of faithful girls just now, believe me.”

“Indeed that’s true,” replied Carley. “It’s a hard time for everybody,
and particularly you boys who have lost so—so much.”

“I lost _all_, except my life—and I wish to God I’d lost that,” he
replied, gloomily.

“Oh, don’t talk so!” implored Carley in distress. “Forgive me, Rust, if
I hurt you. But I must tell you—that—that Glenn wrote me—you’d lost
your girl. Oh, I’m sorry! It is dreadful for you now. But if you got
well—and went to work—and took up life where you left it—why soon your
pain would grow easier. And you’d find some happiness yet.”

“Never for me in this world.”

“But why, Rust, _why?_ You’re no—no—Oh! I mean you have intelligence
and courage. Why isn’t there anything left for you?”

“Because something here’s been killed,” he replied, and put his hand to
his heart.

“Your faith? Your love of—of everything? Did the war kill it?”

“I’d gotten over that, maybe,” he said, drearily, with his somber eyes
on space that seemed lettered for him. “But _she_ half murdered it—and
_they_ did the rest.”

“They? Whom do you mean, Rust?”

“Why, Carley, I mean the people I lost my leg for!” he replied, with
terrible softness.

“The British? The French?” she queried, in bewilderment.

“_No!_” he cried, and turned his face to the wall.

Carley dared not ask him more. She was shocked. How helplessly impotent
all her earnest sympathy! No longer could she feel an impersonal,
however kindly, interest in this man. His last ringing word had linked
her also to his misfortune and his suffering. Suddenly he turned away
from the wall. She saw him swallow laboriously. How tragic that thin,
shadowed face of agony! Carley saw it differently. But for the
beautiful softness of light in his eyes, she would have been unable to
endure gazing longer.

“Carley, I’m bitter,” he said, “but I’m not rancorous and callous, like
some of the boys. I know if you’d been my girl you’d have stuck to me.”

“Yes,” Carley whispered.

“That makes a difference,” he went on, with a sad smile. “You see, we
soldiers all had feelings. And in one thing we all felt alike. That was
we were going to fight for our homes and our women. I should say women
first. No matter what we read or heard about standing by our allies,
fighting for liberty or civilization, the truth was we all felt the
same, even if we never breathed it.... Glenn fought for you. I fought
for Nell.... We were not going to let the Huns treat you as they
treated French and Belgian girls.... And think! Nell was engaged to
me—she _loved_ me—and, by God! She married a slacker when I lay half
dead on the battlefield!”

“She was not worth loving or fighting for,” said Carley, with
agitation.

“Ah! now you’ve said something,” he declared. “If I can only hold to
that truth! What does one girl amount to? _I_ do not count. It is the
sum that counts. We love America—our homes—our women!... Carley, I’ve
had comfort and strength come to me through you. Glenn will have his
reward in your love. Somehow I seem to share it, a little. Poor Glenn!
He got his, too. Why, Carley, that guy wouldn’t _let_ you do what he
could do _for you_. He was cut to pieces—”

“Please—Rust—don’t say any more. I am unstrung,” she pleaded.

“Why not? It’s due you to know how splendid Glenn was.... I tell you,
Carley, all the boys here love you for the way you’ve stuck to Glenn.
Some of them knew him, and I’ve told the rest. We thought he’d never
pull through. But he has, and we know how you helped. Going West to see
him! He didn’t write it to me, but I know.... I’m wise. I’m happy for
him—the lucky dog. Next time you go West—”

“Hush!” cried Carley. She could endure no more. She could no longer be
a lie.

“You’re white—you’re shaking,” exclaimed Rust, in concern. “Oh, I—what
did I say? Forgive me—”

“Rust, I am no more worth loving and fighting for than your Nell.”

“What!” he ejaculated.

“I have not told you the truth,” she said, swiftly. “I have let you
believe a lie.... I shall never marry Glenn. I broke my engagement to
him.”

Slowly Rust sank back upon the pillow, his large luminous eyes
piercingly fixed upon her, as if he would read her soul.

“I went West—yes—” continued Carley. “But it was selfishly. I wanted
Glenn to come back here.... He had suffered as you have. He nearly
died. But he fought—he fought—Oh! he went through hell! And after a
long, slow, horrible struggle he began to mend. He worked. He went to
raising hogs. He lived alone. He worked harder and harder.... The West
and his work saved him, body and soul.... He had learned to love both
the West and his work. I did not blame him. But I could not live out
there. He needed me. But I was too little—too selfish. I could not
marry him. I gave him up. ... I left—him—alone!”

Carley shrank under the scorn in Rust’s eyes.

“And there’s another man,” he said, “a clean, straight, unscarred
fellow who wouldn’t fight!”

“Oh, no—I—I swear there’s not,” whispered Carley.

“You, too,” he replied, thickly. Then slowly he turned that worn dark
face to the wall. His frail breast heaved. And his lean hand made her a
slight gesture of dismissal, significant and imperious.

Carley fled. She could scarcely see to find the car. All her internal
being seemed convulsed, and a deadly faintness made her sick and cold.




CHAPTER X


Carley’s edifice of hopes, dreams, aspirations, and struggles fell in
ruins about her. It had been built upon false sands. It had no ideal
for foundation. It had to fall.

Something inevitable had forced her confession to Rust. Dissimulation
had been a habit of her mind; it was more a habit of her class than
sincerity. But she had reached a point in her mental strife where she
could not stand before Rust and let him believe she was noble and
faithful when she knew she was neither. Would not the next step in this
painful metamorphosis of her character be a fierce and passionate
repudiation of herself and all she represented?

She went home and locked herself in her room, deaf to telephone and
servants. There she gave up to her shame. Scorned—despised—dismissed by
that poor crippled flame-spirited Virgil Rust! He had reverenced her,
and the truth had earned his hate. Would she ever forget his
look—incredulous—shocked—bitter—and blazing with unutterable contempt?
Carley Burch was only another Nell—a jilt—a mocker of the manhood of
soldiers! Would she ever cease to shudder at memory of Rust’s slight
movement of hand? Go! Get out of my sight! Leave me to my agony as you
left Glenn Kilbourne alone to fight his! Men such as I am do not want
the smile of your face, the touch of your hand! We gave for womanhood!
Pass on to lesser men who loved the fleshpots and who would buy your
charms! So Carley interpreted that slight gesture, and writhed in her
abasement.

Rust threw a white, illuminating light upon her desertion of Glenn. She
had betrayed him. She had left him alone. Dwarfed and stunted was her
narrow soul! To a man who had given all for her she had returned
nothing. Stone for bread! Betrayal for love! Cowardice for courage!

The hours of contending passions gave birth to vague, slow-forming
revolt.

She became haunted by memory pictures and sounds and smells of Oak
Creek Canyon. As from afar she saw the great sculptured rent in the
earth, green and red and brown, with its shining, flashing ribbons of
waterfalls and streams. The mighty pines stood up magnificent and
stately. The walls loomed high, shadowed under the shelves, gleaming in
the sunlight, and they seemed dreaming, waiting, watching. For what?
For her return to their serene fastnesses—to the little gray log cabin.
The thought stormed Carley’s soul.

Vivid and intense shone the images before her shut eyes. She saw the
winding forest floor, green with grass and fern, colorful with flower
and rock. A thousand aisles, glades, nooks, and caverns called her to
come. Nature was every woman’s mother. The populated city was a
delusion. Disease and death and corruption stalked in the shadows of
the streets. But her canyon promised hard work, playful hours, dreaming
idleness, beauty, health, fragrance, loneliness, peace, wisdom, love,
children, and long life. In the hateful shut-in isolation of her room
Carley stretched forth her arms as if to embrace the vision. Pale close
walls, gleaming placid stretches of brook, churning amber and white
rapids, mossy banks and pine-matted ledges, the towers and turrets and
ramparts where the eagles wheeled—she saw them all as beloved images
lost to her save in anguished memory.

She heard the murmur of flowing water, soft, low, now loud, and again
lulling, hollow and eager, tinkling over rocks, bellowing into the deep
pools, washing with silky seep of wind-swept waves the hanging willows.
Shrill and piercing and far-aloft pealed the scream of the eagle. And
she seemed to listen to a mocking bird while he mocked her with his
melody of many birds. The bees hummed, the wind moaned, the leaves
rustled, the waterfall murmured. Then came the sharp rare note of a
canyon swift, most mysterious of birds, significant of the heights.

A breath of fragrance seemed to blow with her shifting senses. The dry,
sweet, tangy canyon smells returned to her—of fresh-cut timber, of wood
smoke, of the cabin fire with its steaming pots, of flowers and earth,
and of the wet stones, of the redolent pines and the pungent cedars.

And suddenly, clearly, amazingly, Carley beheld in her mind’s sight the
hard features, the bold eyes, the slight smile, the coarse face of Haze
Ruff. She had forgotten him. But he now returned. And with memory of
him flashed a revelation as to his meaning in her life. He had appeared
merely a clout, a ruffian, an animal with man’s shape and intelligence.
But he was the embodiment of the raw, crude violence of the West. He
was the eyes of the natural primitive man, believing what he saw. He
had seen in Carley Burch the paraded charm, the unashamed and serene
front, the woman seeking man. Haze Ruff had been neither vile nor base
nor unnatural. It had been her subjection to the decadence of feminine
dress that had been unnatural. But Ruff had found her a lie. She
invited what she did not want. And his scorn had been commensurate with
the falsehood of her. So might any man have been justified in his
insult to her, in his rejection of her. Haze Ruff had found her unfit
for his idea of dalliance. Virgil Rust had found her false to the
ideals of womanhood for which he had sacrificed all but life itself.
What then had Glenn Kilbourne found her? He possessed the greatness of
noble love. He had loved her before the dark and changeful tide of war
had come between them. How had he judged her? That last sight of him
standing alone, leaning with head bowed, a solitary figure trenchant
with suggestion of tragic resignation and strength, returned to flay
Carley. He had loved, trusted, and hoped. She saw now what his hope had
been—that she would have instilled into her blood the subtle, red, and
revivifying essence of calling life in the open, the strength of the
wives of earlier years, an emanation from canyon, desert, mountain,
forest, of health, of spirit, of forward-gazing natural love, of the
mysterious saving instinct he had gotten out of the West. And she had
been too little too steeped in the indulgence of luxurious life too
slight-natured and pale-blooded! And suddenly there pierced into the
black storm of Carley’s mind a blazing, white-streaked thought—she had
left Glenn to the Western girl, Flo Hutter. Humiliated, and abased in
her own sight, Carley fell prey to a fury of jealousy.


She went back to the old life. But it was in a bitter, restless,
critical spirit, conscious of the fact that she could derive neither
forgetfulness nor pleasure from it, nor see any release from the habit
of years.

One afternoon, late in the fall, she motored out to a Long Island club
where the last of the season’s golf was being enjoyed by some of her
most intimate friends. Carley did not play. Aimlessly she walked around
the grounds, finding the autumn colors subdued and drab, like her mind.
The air held a promise of early winter. She thought that she would go
South before the cold came. Always trying to escape anything rigorous,
hard, painful, or disagreeable! Later she returned to the clubhouse to
find her party assembled on an inclosed porch, chatting and partaking
of refreshment. Morrison was there. He had not taken kindly to her late
habit of denying herself to him.

During a lull in the idle conversation Morrison addressed Carley
pointedly. “Well, Carley, how’s your Arizona hog-raiser?” he queried,
with a little gleam in his usually lusterless eyes.

“I have not heard lately,” she replied, coldly.

The assembled company suddenly quieted with a portent inimical to their
leisurely content of the moment. Carley felt them all looking at her,
and underneath the exterior she preserved with extreme difficulty,
there burned so fierce an anger that she seemed to have swelling veins
of fire.

“Queer how Kilbourne went into raising hogs,” observed Morrison. “Such
a low-down sort of work, you know.”

“He had no choice,” replied Carley. “Glenn didn’t have a father who
made tainted millions out of the war. He had to work. And I must differ
with you about its being low-down. No honest work is that. It is
idleness that is low down.”

“But so foolish of Glenn when he might have married money,” rejoined
Morrison, sarcastcally.

“The honor of soldiers is beyond your ken, Mr. Morrison.”

He flushed darkly and bit his lip.

“You women make a man sick with this rot about soldiers,” he said, the
gleam in his eye growing ugly. “A uniform goes to a woman’s head no
matter what’s inside it. I don’t see where your vaunted honor of
soldiers comes in considering how they accepted the let-down of women
during and after the war.”

“How could you see when you stayed comfortably at home?” retorted
Carley.

“All I could see was women falling into soldiers’ arms,” he said,
sullenly.

“Certainly. Could an American girl desire any greater happiness—or
opportunity to prove her gratitude?” flashed Carley, with proud uplift
of head.

“It didn’t look like gratitude to me,” returned Morrison.

“Well, it _was_ gratitude,” declared Carley, ringingly. “If women of
America did throw themselves at soldiers it was not owing to the moral
lapse of the day. It was woman’s instinct to save the race! Always, in
every war, women have sacrificed themselves to the future. Not vile,
but noble!... You insult both soldiers and women, Mr. Morrison. I
wonder—did any American girls throw themselves at _you?_”

Morrison turned a dead white, and his mouth twisted to a distorted
checking of speech, disagreeable to see.

“No, you were a slacker,” went on Carley, with scathing scorn. “You let
the other men go fight for American girls. Do you imagine one of them
will ever _marry_ you?... All your life, Mr. Morrison, you will be a
marked man—outside the pale of friendship with real American men and
the respect of real American girls.”

Morrison leaped up, almost knocking the table over, and he glared at
Carley as he gathered up his hat and cane. She turned her back upon
him. From that moment he ceased to exist for Carley. She never spoke to
him again.


Next day Carley called upon her dearest friend, whom she had not seen
for some time.

“Carley dear, you don’t look so very well,” said Eleanor, after
greetings had been exchanged.

“Oh, what does it matter how I look?” queried Carley, impatiently.

“You were so wonderful when you got home from Arizona.”

“If I was wonderful and am now commonplace you can thank your old New
York for it.”

“Carley, don’t you care for New York any more?” asked Eleanor.

“Oh, New York is all right, I suppose. It’s I who am wrong.”

“My dear, you puzzle me these days. You’ve changed. I’m sorry. I’m
afraid you’re unhappy.”

“Me? Oh, impossible! I’m in a seventh heaven,” replied Carley, with a
hard little laugh. “What ’re you doing this afternoon? Let’s go
out—riding—or somewhere.”

“I’m expecting the dressmaker.”

“Where are you going to-night?”

“Dinner and theater. It’s a party, or I’d ask you.”

“What did you do yesterday and the day before, and the days before
that?”

Eleanor laughed indulgently, and acquainted Carley with a record of her
social wanderings during the last few days.

“The same old things—over and over again! Eleanor don’t you get sick of
it?” queried Carley.

“Oh yes, to tell the truth,” returned Eleanor, thoughtfully. “But
there’s nothing else to do.”

“Eleanor, I’m no better than you,” said Carley, with disdain. “I’m as
useless and idle. But I’m beginning to see myself—and you—and all this
rotten crowd of ours. We’re no good. But you’re married, Eleanor.
You’re settled in life. You ought to _do something_. I’m single and at
loose ends. Oh, I’m in revolt!... Think, Eleanor, just think. Your
husband works hard to keep you in this expensive apartment. You have a
car. He dresses you in silks and satins. You wear diamonds. You eat
your breakfast in bed. You loll around in a pink dressing gown all
morning. You dress for lunch or tea. You ride or golf or worse than
waste your time on some lounge lizard, dancing till time to come home
to dress for dinner. You let other men make love to you. Oh, don’t get
sore. You do.... And so goes the round of your life. What good on earth
are you, anyhow? You’re just a—a gratification to the senses of your
husband. And at that you don’t see much of _him_.”

“Carley, how you rave!” exclaimed her friend. “What has gotten into you
lately? Why, everybody tells me you’re—you’re queer! The way you
insulted Morrison—how unlike you, Carley!”

“I’m glad I found the nerve to do it. What do you think, Eleanor?”

“Oh, I despise him. But you can’t say the things you feel.”

“You’d be bigger and truer if you did. Some day I’ll break out and flay
you and your friends alive.”

“But, Carley, you’re my friend and you’re just exactly like we are. Or
you were, quite recently.”

“Of course, I’m your friend. I’ve always loved you, Eleanor,” went on
Carley, earnestly. “I’m as deep in this—this damned stagnant muck as
you, or anyone. But I’m no longer _blind_. There’s something terribly
wrong with us women, and it’s not what Morrison hinted.”

“Carley, the only thing wrong with you is that you jilted poor
Glenn—and are breaking your heart over him still.”

“Don’t—don’t!” cried Carley, shrinking. “God knows that is true. But
there’s more wrong with me than a blighted love affair.”

“Yes, you mean the modern feminine unrest?”

“Eleanor, I positively hate that phrase ‘modern feminine unrest!’ It
smacks of ultra—ultra—Oh! I don’t know what. That phrase ought to be
translated by a Western acquaintance of mine—one Haze Ruff. I’d not
like to hurt your sensitive feelings with what he’d say. But this
unrest means speed-mad, excitement-mad, fad-mad, dress-mad, or I should
say _un_dress-mad, culture-mad, and Heaven only knows what else. The
women of our set are idle, luxurious, selfish, pleasure-craving, lazy,
useless, work-and-children shirking, absolutely no good.”

“Well, if we are, who’s to blame?” rejoined Eleanor, spiritedly. “Now,
Carley Burch, you listen to me. I think the twentieth-century girl in
America is the most wonderful female creation of all the ages of the
universe. I admit it. That is why we are a prey to the evils attending
greatness. Listen. Here is a crying sin—an infernal paradox. Take this
twentieth-century girl, this American girl who is the finest creation
of the ages. A young and healthy girl, the most perfect type of culture
possible to the freest and greatest city on earth—New York! She holds
absolutely an unreal, untrue position in the scheme of existence.
Surrounded by parents, relatives, friends, suitors, and instructive
schools of every kind, colleges, institutions, is she really happy, is
she really living?”

“Eleanor,” interrupted Carley, earnestly, “she is _not_.... And I’ve
been trying to tell you why.”

“My dear, let me get a word in, will you,” complained Eleanor. “You
don’t know it all. There are as many different points of view as there
are people.... Well, if this girl happened to have a new frock, and a
new beau to show it to, she’d say, ‘I’m the happiest girl in the
world.’ But she is nothing of the kind. Only she doesn’t know that. She
approaches marriage, or, for that matter, a more matured life, having
had too much, having been too well taken care of, _knowing too much_.
Her masculine satellites—father, brothers, uncles, friends, lovers—all
utterly spoil her. Mind you, I mean, girls like us, of the middle
class—which is to say the largest and best class of Americans. We are
spoiled.... This girl marries. And life goes on smoothly, as if its aim
was to exclude friction and effort. Her husband makes it too easy for
her. She is an ornament, or a toy, to be kept in a luxurious cage. To
soil her pretty hands would be disgraceful! Even if she can’t afford a
maid, the modern devices of science make the care of her four-room
apartment a farce. Electric dish-washer, clothes-washer,
vacuum-cleaner, and the near-by delicatessen and the caterer simply rob
a young wife of her housewifely heritage. If she has a baby—which
happens occasionally, Carley, in spite of your assertion—it very soon
goes to the kindergarten. Then what does she find to do with hours and
hours? If she is not married, what on earth _can_ she find to do?”

“She can work,” replied Carley, bluntly.

“Oh yes, she can, but she doesn’t,” went on Eleanor. “_You_ don’t work.
I never did. We both hated the idea. You’re calling spades spades,
Carley, but you seem to be riding a morbid, impractical thesis. Well,
our young American girl or bride goes in for being rushed or she goes
in for fads, the ultra stuff you mentioned. New York City gets all the
great artists, lecturers, and surely the great fakirs. The New York
women support them. The men laugh, but they furnish the money. They
take the women to the theaters, but they cut out the reception to a
Polish princess, a lecture by an Indian magician and mystic, or a
benefit luncheon for a Home for Friendless Cats. The truth is most of
our young girls or brides have a wonderful enthusiasm worthy of a
better cause. What is to become of their surplus energy, the
bottled-lightning spirit so characteristic of modern girls? Where is
the outlet for intense feelings? What use can they make of education or
of gifts? They just can’t, that’s all. I’m not taking into
consideration the new-woman species, the faddist or the reformer. I
mean normal girls like you and me. Just think, Carley. A girl’s every
wish, every need, is almost instantly satisfied without the slightest
effort on her part to obtain it. No struggle, let alone work! If women
crave to achieve something outside of the arts, you know, something
universal and helpful which will make men acknowledge her worth, if not
the equality, where is the opportunity?”

“Opportunities should be _made_,” replied Carley.

“There are a million sides to this question of the modern young
woman—the _fin-de-siècle_ girl. I’m for her!”

“How about the extreme of style in dress for this
remarkably-to-be-pitied American girl you champion so eloquently?”
queried Carley, sarcastically.

“Immoral!” exclaimed Eleanor with frank disgust.

“You admit it?”

“To my shame, I do.”

“Why do women wear extreme clothes? Why do you and I wear open-work
silk stockings, skirts to our knees, gowns without sleeves or bodices?”

“We’re slaves to fashion,” replied Eleanor, “That’s the popular
excuse.”

“Bah!” exclaimed Carley.

Eleanor laughed in spite of being half nettled. “Are you going to stop
wearing what all the other women wear—and be looked at askance? Are you
going to be dowdy and frumpy and old-fashioned?”

“No. But I’ll never wear anything again that can be called immoral. I
want to be able to say _why_ I wear a dress. You haven’t answered my
question yet. Why do you wear what you frankly admit is disgusting?”

“I don’t know, Carley,” replied Eleanor, helplessly. “How you harp on
things! We must dress to make other women jealous and to attract men.
To be a sensation! Perhaps the word ‘immoral’ is not what I mean. A
woman will be shocking in her obsession to attract, but hardly more
than that, if she knows it.”

“Ah! So few women realize how they actually do look. Haze Ruff could
tell them.”

“Haze Ruff. Who in the world is he or she?” asked Eleanor.

“Haze Ruff is a he, all right,” replied Carley, grimly.

“Well, who is he?”

“A sheep-dipper in Arizona,” answered Carley, dreamily.

“Humph! And what can Mr. Ruff tell us?”

“He told _me_ I looked like one of the devil’s angels—and that I
dressed to knock the daylights out of men.”

“Well, Carley Burch, if that isn’t rich!” exclaimed Eleanor, with a
peal of laughter. “I dare say you appreciate that as an original
compliment.”

“No.... I wonder what Ruff would say about jazz—I just wonder,”
murmured Carley.

“Well, I wouldn’t care what he said, and I don’t care what _you_ say,”
returned Eleanor. “The preachers and reformers and bishops and rabbis
make me sick. They rave about jazz. Jazz—the discordant note of our
decadence! Jazz—the harmonious expression of our musicless, mindless,
soulless materialism!—The idiots! If they could be women for a while
they would realize the error of their ways. But they will never, never
abolish jazz—_never_, for it is the grandest, the most wonderful, the
most absolutely necessary thing for women in this terrible age of
smotheration.”

“All right, Eleanor, we understand each other, even if we do not
agree,” said Carley. “You leave the future of women to chance, to life,
to materialism, not to their own conscious efforts. I want to leave it
to free will and idealism.”

“Carley, you are getting a little beyond me,” declared Eleanor,
dubiously.

“What are you going to _do?_ It all comes home to each individual
woman. Her attitude toward life.”

“I’ll drift along with the current, Carley, and be a good sport,”
replied Eleanor, smiling.

“You don’t care about the women and children of the future? You’ll not
deny yourself now, and think and work, and suffer a little, in the
interest of future humanity?”

“How you put things, Carley!” exclaimed Eleanor, wearily. “Of course I
care—when you make me think of such things. But what have _I_ to do
with the lives of people in the years to come?”

“Everything. America for Americans! While you dawdle, the life blood is
being sucked out of our great nation. It is a man’s job to fight; it is
a woman’s to save.... I think you’ve made your choice, though you don’t
realize it. I’m praying to God that I’ll rise to mine.”


Carley had a visitor one morning earlier than the usual or conventional
time for calls.

“He wouldn’t give no name,” said the maid. “He wears soldier clothes,
ma’am, and he’s pale, and walks with a cane.”

“Tell him I’ll be right down,” replied Carley.

Her hands trembled while she hurriedly dressed. Could this caller be
Virgil Rust? She hoped so, but she doubted.

As she entered the parlor a tall young man in worn khaki rose to meet
her. At first glance she could not name him, though she recognized the
pale face and light-blue eyes, direct and steady.

“Good morning, Miss Burch,” he said. “I hope you’ll excuse so early a
call. You remember me, don’t you? I’m George Burton, who had the bunk
next to Rust’s.”

“Surely I remember you, Mr. Burton, and I’m glad to see you,” replied
Carley, shaking hands with him. “Please sit down. Your being here must
mean you’re discharged from the hospital.”

“Yes, I was discharged, all right,” he said.

“Which means you’re well again. That is fine. I’m very glad.”

“I was put out to make room for a fellow in bad shape. I’m still shaky
and weak,” he replied. “But I’m glad to go. I’ve pulled through pretty
good, and it’ll not be long until I’m strong again. It was the ‘flu’
that kept me down.”

“You must be careful. May I ask where you’re going and what you expect
to do?”

“Yes, that’s what I came to tell you,” he replied, frankly. “I want you
to help me a little. I’m from Illinois and my people aren’t so badly
off. But I don’t want to go back to my home town down and out, you
know. Besides, the winters are cold there. The doctor advises me to go
to a little milder climate. You see, I was gassed, and got the ‘flu’
afterward. But I know I’ll be all right if I’m careful.... Well, I’ve
always had a leaning toward agriculture, and I want to go to Kansas.
Southern Kansas. I want to travel around till I find a place I like,
and there I’ll get a job. Not too hard a job at first—that’s why I’ll
need a little money. I know what to do. I want to lose myself in the
wheat country and forget the—the war. I’ll not be afraid of work,
presently.... Now, Miss Burch, you’ve been so kind—I’m going to ask you
to lend me a little money. I’ll pay it back. I can’t promise just when.
But some day. Will you?”

“Assuredly I will,” she replied, heartily. “I’m happy to have the
opportunity to help you. How much will you need for immediate use? Five
hundred dollars?”

“Oh no, not so much as that,” he replied. “Just railroad fare home, and
then to Kansas, and to pay board while I get well, you know, and look
around.”

“We’ll make it five hundred, anyway,” she replied, and, rising, she
went toward the library. “Excuse me a moment.” She wrote the check and,
returning, gave it to him.

“You’re very good,” he said, rather low.

“Not at all,” replied Carley. “You have no idea how much it means to me
to be permitted to help you. Before I forget, I must ask you, can you
cash that check here in New York?”

“Not unless you identify me,” he said, ruefully, “I don’t know anyone I
could ask.”

“Well, when you leave here go at once to my bank—it’s on Thirty-fourth
Street—and I’ll telephone the cashier. So you’ll not have any
difficulty. Will you leave New York at once?”

“I surely will. It’s an awful place. Two years ago when I came here
with my company I thought it was grand. But I guess I lost something
over there. ... I want to be where it’s quiet. Where I won’t see many
people.”

“I think I understand,” returned Carley. “Then I suppose you’re in a
hurry to get home? Of course you have a girl you’re just dying to see?”

“No, I’m sorry to say I haven’t,” he replied, simply. “I was glad I
didn’t have to leave a sweetheart behind, when I went to France. But it
wouldn’t be so bad to have one to go back to now.”

“Don’t you worry!” exclaimed Carley. “You can take your choice
presently. You have the open sesame to every real American girl’s
heart.”

“And what is that?” he asked, with a blush.

“Your service to your country,” she said, gravely.

“Well,” he said, with a singular bluntness, “considering I didn’t get
any medals or bonuses, I’d like to draw a nice girl.”

“You will,” replied Carley, and made haste to change the subject. “By
the way, did you meet Glenn Kilbourne in France?”

“Not that I remember,” rejoined Burton, as he got up, rising rather
stiffly by aid of his cane. “I must go, Miss Burch. Really I can’t
thank you enough. And I’ll never forget it.”

“Will you write me how you are getting along?” asked Carley, offering
her hand.

“Yes.”

Carley moved with him out into the hall and to the door. There was a
question she wanted to ask, but found it strangely difficult of
utterance. At the door Burton fixed a rather penetrating gaze upon her.

“You didn’t ask me about Rust,” he said.

“No, I—I didn’t think of him—until now, in fact,” Carley lied.

“Of course then you couldn’t have heard about him. I was wondering.”

“I have heard nothing.”

“It was Rust who told me to come to you,” said Burton. “We were talking
one day, and he—well, he thought you were true blue. He said he knew
you’d trust me and lend me money. I couldn’t have asked you but for
him.”

“True blue! He believed that. I’m glad.... Has he spoken of me to you
since I was last at the hospital?”

“Hardly,” replied Burton, with the straight, strange glance on her
again.

Carley met this glance and suddenly a coldness seemed to envelop her.
It did not seem to come from within though her heart stopped beating.
Burton had not changed—the warmth, the gratitude still lingered about
him. But the light of his eyes! Carley had seen it in Glenn’s, in
Rust’s—a strange, questioning, far-off light, infinitely aloof and
unutterably sad. Then there came a lift of her heart that released a
pang. She whispered with dread, with a tremor, with an instinct of
calamity.

“How about—Rust?”

“He’s dead.”


The winter came, with its bleak sea winds and cold rains and blizzards
of snow. Carley did not go South. She read and brooded, and gradually
avoided all save those true friends who tolerated her.

She went to the theater a good deal, showing preference for the drama
of strife, and she did not go anywhere for amusement. Distraction and
amusement seemed to be dead issues for her. But she could become
absorbed in any argument on the good or evil of the present day.
Socialism reached into her mind, to be rejected. She had never
understood it clearly, but it seemed to her a state of mind where
dissatisfied men and women wanted to share what harder working or more
gifted people possessed. There were a few who had too much of the
world’s goods and many who had too little. A readjustment of such
inequality and injustice must come, but Carley did not see the remedy
in Socialism.

She devoured books on the war with a morbid curiosity and hope that she
would find some illuminating truth as to the uselessness of sacrificing
young men in the glory and prime of their lives. To her war appeared a
matter of human nature rather than politics. Hate really was an effect
of war. In her judgment future wars could be avoided only in two
ways—by men becoming honest and just or by women refusing to have
children to be sacrificed. As there seemed no indication whatever of
the former, she wondered how soon all women of all races would meet on
a common height, with the mounting spirit that consumed her own heart.
Such time must come. She granted every argument for war and flung
against it one ringing passionate truth—agony of mangled soldiers and
agony of women and children. There was no justification for offensive
war. It was monstrous and hideous. If nature and evolution proved the
absolute need of strife, war, blood, and death in the progress of
animal and man toward perfection, then it would be better to abandon
this Christless code and let the race of man die out.

All through these weeks she longed for a letter from Glenn. But it did
not come. Had he finally roused to the sweetness and worth and love of
the western girl, Flo Hutter? Carley knew absolutely, through both
intelligence and intuition, that Glenn Kilbourne would never love Flo.
Yet such was her intensity and stress at times, especially in the
darkness of waking hours, that jealousy overcame her and insidiously
worked its havoc. Peace and a strange kind of joy came to her in dreams
of her walks and rides and climbs in Arizona, of the lonely canyon
where it always seemed afternoon, of the tremendous colored vastness of
that Painted Desert. But she resisted these dreams now because when she
awoke from them she suffered such a yearning that it became unbearable.
Then she knew the feeling of the loneliness and solitude of the hills.
Then she knew the sweetness of the murmur of falling water, the wind in
the pines, the song of birds, the white radiance of the stars, the
break of day and its gold-flushed close. But she had not yet divined
their meaning. It was not all love for Glenn Kilbourne. Had city life
palled upon her solely because of the absence of her lover? So Carley
plodded on, like one groping in the night, fighting shadows.

One day she received a card from an old schoolmate, a girl who had
married out of Carley’s set, and had been ostracized. She was living
down on Long Island, at a little country place named Wading River. Her
husband was an electrician—something of an inventor. He worked hard. A
baby boy had just come to them. Would not Carley run down on the train
to see the youngster?

That was a strong and trenchant call. Carley went. She found indeed a
country village, and on the outskirts of it a little cottage that must
have been pretty in summer, when the green was on vines and trees. Her
old schoolmate was rosy, plump, bright-eyed, and happy. She saw in
Carley no change—a fact that somehow rebounded sweetly on Carley’s
consciousness. Elsie prattled of herself and her husband and how they
had worked to earn this little home, and then the baby.

When Carley saw the adorable dark-eyed, pink-toed, curly-fisted baby
she understood Elsie’s happiness and reveled in it. When she felt the
soft, warm, living little body in her arms, against her breast, then
she absorbed some incalculable and mysterious strength. What were the
trivial, sordid, and selfish feelings that kept her in tumult compared
to this welling emotion? Had she the secret in her arms? Babies and
Carley had never become closely acquainted in those infrequent meetings
that were usually the result of chance. But Elsie’s baby nestled to her
breast and cooed to her and clung to her finger. When at length the
youngster was laid in his crib it seemed to Carley that the fragrance
and the soul of him remained with her.

“A real American boy!” she murmured.

“You can just bet he is,” replied Elsie. “Carley, you ought to see his
dad.”

“I’d like to meet him,” said Carley, thoughtfully. “Elsie, was he in
the service?”

“Yes. He was on one of the navy transports that took munitions to
France. Think of me, carrying this baby, with my husband on a boat full
of explosives and with German submarines roaming the ocean! Oh, it was
horrible!”

“But he came back, and now all’s well with you,” said Carley, with a
smile of earnestness. “I’m very glad, Elsie.”

“Yes—but I shudder when I think of a possible war in the future. I’m
going to raise boys, and girls, too, I hope—and the thought of war is
torturing.”

Carley found her return train somewhat late, and she took advantage of
the delay to walk out to the wooded headlands above the Sound.

It was a raw March day, with a steely sun going down in a pale-gray
sky. Patches of snow lingered in sheltered brushy places. This bit of
woodland had a floor of soft sand that dragged at Carley’s feet. There
were sere and brown leaves still fluttering on the scrub-oaks. At
length Carley came out on the edge of the bluff with the gray expanse
of sea beneath her, and a long wandering shore line, ragged with
wreckage or driftwood. The surge of water rolled in—a long, low, white,
creeping line that softly roared on the beach and dragged the pebbles
gratingly back. There was neither boat nor living creature in sight.

Carley felt the scene ease a clutching hand within her breast. Here was
loneliness and solitude vastly different from that of Oak Creek Canyon,
yet it held the same intangible power to soothe. The swish of the surf,
the moan of the wind in the evergreens, were voices that called to her.
How many more miles of lonely land than peopled cities! Then the
sea—how vast! And over that the illimitable and infinite sky, and
beyond, the endless realms of space. It helped her somehow to see and
hear and feel the eternal presence of nature. In communion with nature
the significance of life might be realized. She remembered Glenn
quoting: “The world is too much with us. ... Getting and spending, we
lay waste our powers.” What were our powers? What did God intend men to
do with hands and bodies and gifts and souls? She gazed back over the
bleak land and then out across the broad sea. Only a millionth part of
the surface of the unsubmerged earth knew the populous abodes of man.
And the lonely sea, inhospitable to stable homes of men, was thrice the
area of the land. Were men intended, then, to congregate in few places,
to squabble and to bicker and breed the discontents that led to
injustice, hatred, and war? What a mystery it all was! But Nature was
neither false nor little, however cruel she might be.


Once again Carley fell under the fury of her ordeal. Wavering now,
restless and sleepless, given to violent starts and slow spells of
apathy, she was wearing to defeat.

That spring day, one year from the day she had left New York for
Arizona, she wished to spend alone. But her thoughts grew unbearable.
She summed up the endless year. Could she live another like it?
Something must break within her.

She went out. The air was warm and balmy, carrying that subtle current
which caused the mild madness of spring fever. In the Park the greening
of the grass, the opening of buds, the singing of birds, the gladness
of children, the light on the water, the warm sun—all seemed to
reproach her. Carley fled from the Park to the home of Beatrice Lovell;
and there, unhappily, she encountered those of her acquaintance with
whom she had least patience. They forced her to think too keenly of
herself. They appeared carefree while she was miserable.

Over teacups there were waging gossip and argument and criticism. When
Carley entered with Beatrice there was a sudden hush and then a murmur.

“Hello, Carley! Now say it to our faces,” called out Geralda Conners, a
fair, handsome young woman of thirty, exquisitely gowned in the latest
mode, and whose brilliantly tinted complexion was not the natural one
of health.

“Say what, Geralda?” asked Carley. “I certainly would not say anything
behind your backs that I wouldn’t repeat here.”

“Eleanor has been telling us how you simply burned us up.”

“We did have an argument. And I’m not sure I said all I wanted to.”

“Say the rest here,” drawled a lazy, mellow voice. “For Heaven’s sake,
stir us up. If I could get a kick out of _anything_ I’d bless it.”

“Carley, go on the stage,” advised another. “You’ve got Elsie Ferguson
tied to the mast for looks. And lately you’re surely tragic enough.”

“I wish you’d go somewhere far off!” observed a third. “My husband is
dippy about you.”

“Girls, do you know that you actually have not one sensible idea in
your heads?” retorted Carley.

“Sensible? I should hope not. Who wants to be sensible?”

Geralda battered her teacup on a saucer. “Listen,” she called. “I
wasn’t kidding Carley. I am good and sore. She goes around knocking
everybody and saying New York backs Sodom off the boards. I want her to
come out with it right here.”

“I dare say I’ve talked too much,” returned Carley. “It’s been a rather
hard winter on me. Perhaps, indeed, I’ve tried the patience of my
friends.”

“See here, Carley,” said Geralda, deliberately, “just because you’ve
had life turn to bitter ashes in your mouth you’ve no right to poison
it for us. We all find it pretty sweet. You’re an _un_satisfied woman
and if you don’t marry somebody you’ll end by being a reformer or
fanatic.”

“I’d rather end that way than rot in a shell,” retorted Carley.

“I declare, you make me see red, Carley,” flashed Geralda, angrily. “No
wonder Morrison roasts you to everybody. He says Glenn Kilbourne threw
you down for some Western girl. If that’s true it’s pretty small of you
to vent your spleen on us.”

Carley felt the gathering of a mighty resistless force, But Geralda
Conners was nothing to her except the target for a thunderbolt.

“I have no spleen,” she replied, with a dignity of passion. “I have
only pity. I was as blind as you. If heartbreak tore the scales from my
eyes, perhaps that is well for me. For I see something terribly wrong
in myself, in you, in all of us, in the life of today.”

“You keep your pity to yourself. You need it,” answered Geralda, with
heat. “There’s nothing wrong with me or my friends or life in good old
New York.”

“Nothing wrong!” cried Carley. “Listen. Nothing wrong in you or life
today—nothing for you women to make right? You are blind as bats—as
dead to living truth as if you were buried. Nothing wrong when
thousands of crippled soldiers have no homes—no money—no friends—no
work—in many cases no food or bed?... Splendid young men who went away
in their prime to fight for _you_ and came back ruined, suffering!
Nothing wrong when sane women with the vote might rid politics of
partisanship, greed, crookedness? Nothing wrong when prohibition is
mocked by women—when the greatest boon ever granted this country is
derided and beaten down and cheated? Nothing wrong when there are half
a million defective children in this city? Nothing wrong when there are
not enough schools and teachers to educate our boys and girls, when
those teachers are shamefully underpaid? Nothing wrong when the mothers
of this great country let their youngsters go to the dark motion
picture halls and night after night in thousands of towns over all this
broad land see pictures that the juvenile court and the educators and
keepers of reform schools say make burglars, crooks, and murderers of
our boys and vampires of our girls? Nothing wrong when these young
adolescent girls ape _you_ and wear stockings rolled under their knees
below their skirts and use a lip stick and paint their faces and darken
their eyes and pluck their eyebrows and absolutely do not know what
shame is? Nothing wrong when you may find in any city women standing at
street corners distributing booklets on birth control? Nothing wrong
when great magazines print no page or picture without its sex appeal?
Nothing wrong when the automobile, so convenient for the innocent
little run out of town, presents the greatest evil that ever menaced
American girls! Nothing wrong when money is god—when luxury, pleasure,
excitement, speed are the striven for? Nothing wrong when some of your
husbands spend more of their time with other women than with you?
Nothing wrong with jazz—where the lights go out in the dance hall and
the dancers jiggle and toddle and wiggle in a frenzy? Nothing wrong in
a country where the greatest college cannot report birth of one child
to each graduate in ten years? Nothing wrong with race suicide and the
incoming horde of foreigners?... Nothing wrong with you women who
cannot or will not stand childbirth? Nothing wrong with most of you,
when if you _did_ have a child, you could not nurse it?... Oh, my God,
there’s nothing wrong with America except that she staggers under a
Titanic burden that only mothers of sons can remove!... You doll women,
you parasites, you toys of men, you silken-wrapped geisha girls, you
painted, idle, purring cats, you parody of the females of your
species—find brains enough if you can to see the doom hanging over you
and revolt before it is too late!”




CHAPTER XI


Carley burst in upon her aunt.

“Look at me, Aunt Mary!” she cried, radiant and exultant. “I’m going
back out West to marry Glenn and live his life!”

The keen old eyes of her aunt softened and dimmed. “Dear Carley, I’ve
known that for a long time. You’ve found yourself at last.”

Then Carley breathlessly babbled her hastily formed plans, every word
of which seemed to rush her onward.

“You’re going to surprise Glenn again?” queried Aunt Mary.

“Oh, I must! I want to see his face when I tell him.”

“Well, I hope he won’t surprise _you_,” declared the old lady. “When
did you hear from him last?”

“In January. It seems ages—but—Aunt Mary, you don’t imagine Glenn—”

“I imagine nothing,” interposed her aunt. “It will turn out happily and
I’ll have some peace in my old age. But, Carley, what’s to become of
me?”

“Oh, I never thought!” replied Carley, blankly. “It will be lonely for
you. Auntie, I’ll come back in the fall for a few weeks. Glenn will let
me.”

“_Let_ you? Ye gods! So you’ve come to that? Imperious Carley Burch!...
Thank Heaven, you’ll now be satisfied to be let do things.”

“I’d—I’d crawl for him,” breathed Carley.

“Well, child, as you can’t be practical, I’ll have to be,” replied Aunt
Mary, seriously. “Fortunately for you I am a woman of quick decision.
Listen. I’ll go West with you. I want to see the Grand Canyon. Then
I’ll go on to California, where I have old friends I’ve not seen for
years. When you get your new home all fixed up I’ll spend awhile with
you. And if I want to come back to New York now and then I’ll go to a
hotel. It is settled. I think the change will benefit me.”

“Auntie, you make me very happy. I could ask no more,” said Carley.


Swiftly as endless tasks could make them the days passed. But those on
the train dragged interminably.

Carley sent her aunt through to the Canyon while she stopped off at
Flagstaff to store innumerable trunks and bags. The first news she
heard of Glenn and the Hutters was that they had gone to the Tonto
Basin to buy hogs and would be absent at least a month. This gave birth
to a new plan in Carley’s mind. She would doubly surprise Glenn.
Wherefore she took council with some Flagstaff business men and engaged
them to set a force of men at work on the Deep Lake property, making
the improvements she desired, and hauling lumber, cement, bricks,
machinery, supplies—all the necessaries for building construction. Also
she instructed them to throw up a tent house for her to live in during
the work, and to engage a reliable Mexican man with his wife for
servants. When she left for the Canyon she was happier than ever before
in her life.


It was near the coming of sunset when Carley first looked down into the
Grand Canyon. She had forgotten Glenn’s tribute to this place. In her
rapturous excitement of preparation and travel the Canyon had been
merely a name. But now she saw it and she was stunned.

What a stupendous chasm, gorgeous in sunset color on the heights,
purpling into mystic shadows in the depths! There was a wonderful
brightness of all the millions of red and yellow and gray surfaces
still exposed to the sun. Carley did not feel a thrill, because feeling
seemed inhibited. She looked and looked, yet was reluctant to keep on
looking. She possessed no image in mind with which to compare this
grand and mystic spectacle. A transformation of color and shade
appeared to be going on swiftly, as if gods were changing the scenes of
a Titanic stage. As she gazed the dark fringed line of the north rim
turned to burnished gold, and she watched that with fascinated eyes. It
turned rose, it lost its fire, it faded to quiet cold gray. The sun had
set.

Then the wind blew cool through the pinyons on the rim. There was a
sweet tang of cedar and sage on the air and that indefinable fragrance
peculiar to the canyon country of Arizona. How it brought back to
Carley remembrance of Oak Creek! In the west, across the purple notches
of the abyss, a dull gold flare showed where the sun had gone down.

In the morning at eight o’clock there were great irregular black
shadows under the domes and peaks and escarpments. Bright Angel Canyon
was all dark, showing dimly its ragged lines. At noon there were no
shadows and all the colossal gorge lay glaring under the sun. In the
evening Carley watched the Canyon as again the sun was setting.

Deep dark-blue shadows, like purple sails of immense ships, in
wonderful contrast with the bright sunlit slopes, grew and rose toward
the east, down the canyons and up the walls that faced the west. For a
long while there was no red color, and the first indication of it was a
dull bronze. Carley looked down into the void, at the sailing birds, at
the precipitous slopes, and the dwarf spruces and the weathered old
yellow cliffs. When she looked up again the shadows out there were no
longer dark. They were clear. The slopes and depths and ribs of rock
could be seen through them. Then the tips of the highest peaks and
domes turned bright red. Far to the east she discerned a strange
shadow, slowly turning purple. One instant it grew vivid, then began to
fade. Soon after that all the colors darkened and slowly the pale gray
stole over all.

At night Carley gazed over and into the black void. But for the awful
sense of depth she would not have known the Canyon to be there. A
soundless movement of wind passed under her. The chasm seemed a grave
of silence. It was as mysterious as the stars and as aloof and as
inevitable. It had held her senses of beauty and proportion in
abeyance.

At another sunrise the crown of the rim, a broad belt of bare rock,
turned pale gold under its fringed dark line of pines. The tips of the
peak gleamed opal. There was no sunrise red, no fire. The light in the
east was a pale gold under a steely green-blue sky. All the abyss of
the Canyon was soft, gray, transparent, and the belt of gold broadened
downward, making shadows on the west slopes of the mesas and
escarpments. Far down in the shadows she discerned the river, yellow,
turgid, palely gleaming. By straining her ears Carley heard a low dull
roar as of distant storm. She stood fearfully at the extreme edge of a
stupendous cliff, where it sheered dark and forbidding, down and down,
into what seemed red and boundless depths of Hades. She saw gold spots
of sunlight on the dark shadows, proving that somewhere, impossible to
discover, the sun was shining through wind-worn holes in the sharp
ridges. Every instant Carley grasped a different effect. Her studied
gaze absorbed an endless changing. And at last she realized that sun
and light and stars and moon and night and shade, all working
incessantly and mutably over shapes and lines and angles and surfaces
too numerous and too great for the sight of man to hold, made an
ever-changing spectacle of supreme beauty and colorful grandeur.

She talked very little while at the Canyon. It silenced her. She had
come to see it at the critical time of her life and in the right mood.
The superficialities of the world shrunk to their proper
insignificance. Once she asked her aunt: “Why did not Glenn bring me
here?” As if this Canyon proved the nature of all things!

But in the end Carley found that the rending strife of the
transformation of her attitude toward life had insensibly ceased. It
had ceased during the long watching of this cataclysm of nature, this
canyon of gold-banded black-fringed ramparts, and red-walled mountains
which sloped down to be lost in purple depths. That was final proof of
the strength of nature to soothe, to clarify, to stabilize the tried
and weary and upward-gazing soul. Stronger than the recorded deeds of
saints, stronger than the eloquence of the gifted uplifters of men,
stronger than any words ever written, was the grand, brooding,
sculptured aspect of nature. And it must have been so because thousands
of years before the age of saints or preachers—before the fret and
symbol and figure were cut in stone—man must have watched with
thought-developing sight the wonders of the earth, the monuments of
time, the glooming of the dark-blue sea, the handiwork of God.


In May, Carley returned to Flagstaff to take up with earnest
inspiration the labors of homebuilding in a primitive land.

It required two trucks to transport her baggage and purchases out to
Deep Lake. The road was good for eighteen miles of the distance, until
it branched off to reach her land, and from there it was desert rock
and sand. But eventually they made it; and Carley found herself and
belongings dumped out into the windy and sunny open. The moment was
singularly thrilling and full of transport. She was free. She had
shaken off the shackles. She faced lonely, wild, barren desert that
must be made habitable by the genius of her direction and the labor of
her hands. Always a thought of Glenn hovered tenderly, dreamily in the
back of her consciousness, but she welcomed the opportunity to have a
few weeks of work and activity and solitude before taking up her life
with him. She wanted to adapt herself to the metamorphosis that had
been wrought in her.

To her amazement and delight, a very considerable progress had been
made with her plans. Under a sheltered red cliff among the cedars had
been erected the tents where she expected to live until the house was
completed. These tents were large, with broad floors high off the
ground, and there were four of them. Her living tent had a porch under
a wide canvas awning. The bed was a boxlike affair, raised off the
floor two feet, and it contained a great, fragrant mass of cedar boughs
upon which the blankets were to be spread. At one end was a dresser
with large mirror, and a chiffonier. There were table and lamp, a low
rocking chair, a shelf for books, a row of hooks upon which to hang
things, a washstand with its necessary accessories, a little stove and
a neat stack of cedar chips and sticks. Navajo rugs on the floor lent
brightness and comfort.

Carley heard the rustling of cedar branches over her head, and saw
where they brushed against the tent roof. It appeared warm and fragrant
inside, and protected from the wind, and a subdued white light filtered
through the canvas. Almost she felt like reproving herself for the
comfort surrounding her. For she had come West to welcome the hard
knocks of primitive life.

It took less than an hour to have her trunks stored in one of the spare
tents, and to unpack clothes and necessaries for immediate use. Carley
donned the comfortable and somewhat shabby outdoor garb she had worn at
Oak Creek the year before; and it seemed to be the last thing needed to
make her fully realize the glorious truth of the present.

“I’m here,” she said to her pale, yet happy face in the mirror. “The
impossible has happened. I have accepted Glenn’s life. I have answered
that strange call out of the West.”

She wanted to throw herself on the sunlit woolly blankets of her bed
and hug them, to think and think of the bewildering present happiness,
to dream of the future, but she could not lie or sit still, nor keep
her mind from grasping at actualities and possibilities of this place,
nor her hands from itching to do things.

It developed, presently, that she could not have idled away the time
even if she had wanted to, for the Mexican woman came for her, with
smiling gesticulation and jabber that manifestly meant dinner. Carley
could not understand many Mexican words, and herein she saw another
task. This swarthy woman and her sloe-eyed husband favorably impressed
Carley.

Next to claim her was Hoyle, the superintendent. “Miss Burch,” he said,
“in the early days we could run up a log cabin in a jiffy. Axes,
horses, strong arms, and a few pegs—that was all we needed. But this
house you’ve planned is different. It’s good you’ve come to take the
responsibility.”

Carley had chosen the site for her home on top of the knoll where Glenn
had taken her to show her the magnificent view of mountains and desert.
Carley climbed it now with beating heart and mingled emotions. A
thousand times already that day, it seemed, she had turned to gaze up
at the noble white-clad peaks. They were closer now, apparently looming
over her, and she felt a great sense of peace and protection in the
thought that they would always be there. But she had not yet seen the
desert that had haunted her for a year. When she reached the summit of
the knoll and gazed out across the open space it seemed that she must
stand spellbound. How green the cedared foreground—how gray and barren
the downward slope—how wonderful the painted steppes! The vision that
had lived in her memory shrank to nothingness. The reality was immense,
more than beautiful, appalling in its isolation, beyond comprehension
with its lure and strength to uplift.

But the superintendent drew her attention to the business at hand.

Carley had planned an L-shaped house of one story. Some of her ideas
appeared to be impractical, and these she abandoned. The framework was
up and half a dozen carpenters were lustily at work with saw and
hammer.

“We’d made better progress if this house was in an ordinary place,”
explained Hoyle. “But you see the wind blows here, so the framework had
to be made as solid and strong as possible. In fact, it’s bolted to the
sills.”

Both living room and sleeping room were arranged so that the Painted
Desert could be seen from one window, and on the other side the whole
of the San Francisco Mountains. Both rooms were to have open
fireplaces. Carley’s idea was for service and durability. She thought
of comfort in the severe winters of that high latitude, but elegance
and luxury had no more significance in her life.

Hoyle made his suggestions as to changes and adaptations, and,
receiving her approval, he went on to show her what had been already
accomplished. Back on higher ground a reservoir of concrete was being
constructed near an ever-flowing spring of snow water from the peaks.
This water was being piped by gravity to the house, and was a matter of
greatest satisfaction to Hoyle, for he claimed that it would never
freeze in winter, and would be cold and abundant during the hottest and
driest of summers. This assurance solved the most difficult and serious
problem of ranch life in the desert.

Next Hoyle led Carley down off the knoll to the wide cedar valley
adjacent to the lake. He was enthusiastic over its possibilities. Two
small corrals and a large one had been erected, the latter having a low
flat barn connected with it. Ground was already being cleared along the
lake where alfalfa and hay were to be raised. Carley saw the blue and
yellow smoke from burning brush, and the fragrant odor thrilled her.
Mexicans were chopping the cleared cedars into firewood for winter use.

The day was spent before she realized it. At sunset the carpenters and
mechanics left in two old Ford cars for town. The Mexicans had a camp
in the cedars, and the Hoyles had theirs at the spring under the knoll
where Carley had camped with Glenn and the Hutters. Carley watched the
golden rosy sunset, and as the day ended she breathed deeply as if in
unutterable relief. Supper found her with appetite she had long since
lost. Twilight brought cold wind, the staccato bark of coyotes, the
flicker of camp fires through the cedars. She tried to embrace all her
sensations, but they were so rapid and many that she failed.

The cold, clear, silent night brought back the charm of the desert. How
flaming white the stars! The great spire-pointed peaks lifted cold
pale-gray outlines up into the deep star-studded sky. Carley walked a
little to and fro, loath to go to her tent, though tired. She wanted
calm. But instead of achieving calmness she grew more and more towards
a strange state of exultation.

Westward, only a matter of twenty or thirty miles, lay the deep rent in
the level desert—Oak Creek Canyon. If Glenn had been there this night
would have been perfect, yet almost unendurable. She was again grateful
for his absence. What a surprise she had in store for him! And she
imagined his face in its change of expression when she met him. If only
he never learned of her presence in Arizona until she made it known in
person! That she most longed for. Chances were against it, but then her
luck had changed. She looked to the eastward where a pale luminosity of
afterglow shone in the heavens. Far distant seemed the home of her
childhood, the friends she had scorned and forsaken, the city of
complaining and striving millions. If only some miracle might illumine
the minds of her friends, as she felt that hers was to be illumined
here in the solitude. But she well realized that not all problems could
be solved by a call out of the West. Any open and lonely land that
might have saved Glenn Kilbourne would have sufficed for her. It was
the spirit of the thing and not the letter. It was work of any kind and
not only that of ranch life. Not only the raising of hogs!

Carley directed stumbling steps toward the light of her tent. Her eyes
had not been used to such black shadow along the ground. She had, too,
squeamish feminine fears of hydrophobia skunks, and nameless animals or
reptiles that were imagined denizens of the darkness. She gained her
tent and entered. The Mexican, Gino, as he called himself, had lighted
her lamp and fire. Carley was chilled through, and the tent felt so
warm and cozy that she could scarcely believe it. She fastened the
screen door, laced the flaps across it, except at the top, and then
gave herself up to the lulling and comforting heat.

There were plans to perfect; innumerable things to remember; a car and
accessories, horses, saddles, outfits to buy. Carley knew she should
sit down at her table and write and figure, but she could not do it
then.

For a long time she sat over the little stove, toasting her knees and
hands, adding some chips now and then to the red coals. And her mind
seemed a kaleidoscope of changing visions, thoughts, feelings. At last
she undressed and blew out the lamp and went to bed.

Instantly a thick blackness seemed to enfold her and silence as of a
dead world settled down upon her. Drowsy as she was, she could not
close her eyes nor refrain from listening. Darkness and silence were
tangible things. She felt them. And they seemed suddenly potent with
magic charm to still the tumult of her, to soothe and rest, to create
thoughts she had never thought before. Rest was more than selfish
indulgence. Loneliness was necessary to gain consciousness of the soul.
Already far back in the past seemed Carley’s other life.

By and by the dead stillness awoke to faint sounds not before
perceptible to her—a low, mournful sough of the wind in the cedars,
then the faint far-distant note of a coyote, sad as the night and
infinitely wild.


Days passed. Carley worked in the mornings with her hands and her
brains. In the afternoons she rode and walked and climbed with a double
object, to work herself into fit physical condition and to explore
every nook and corner of her six hundred and forty acres.

Then what she had expected and deliberately induced by her efforts
quickly came to pass. Just as the year before she had suffered
excruciating pain from aching muscles, and saddle blisters, and walking
blisters, and a very rending of her bones, so now she fell victim to
them again. In sunshine and rain she faced the desert. Sunburn and
sting of sleet were equally to be endured. And that abomination, the
hateful blinding sandstorm, did not daunt her. But the weary hours of
abnegation to this physical torture at least held one consoling
recompense as compared with her experience of last year, and it was
that there was no one interested to watch for her weaknesses and
failures and blunders. She could fight it out alone.

Three weeks of this self-imposed strenuous training wore by before
Carley was free enough from weariness and pain to experience other
sensations. Her general health, evidently, had not been so good as when
she had first visited Arizona. She caught cold and suffered other ills
attendant upon an abrupt change of climate and condition. But doggedly
she kept at her task. She rode when she should have been in bed; she
walked when she should have ridden; she climbed when she should have
kept to level ground. And finally by degrees so gradual as not to be
noticed except in the sum of them she began to mend.

Meanwhile the construction of her house went on with uninterrupted
rapidity. When the low, slanting, wide-eaved roof was completed Carley
lost further concern about rainstorms. Let them come. When the plumbing
was all in and Carley saw verification of Hoyle’s assurance that it
would mean a gravity supply of water ample and continual, she lost her
last concern as to the practicability of the work. That, and the
earning of her endurance, seemed to bring closer a wonderful reward,
still nameless and spiritual, that had been unattainable, but now
breathed to her on the fragrant desert wind and in the brooding
silence.


The time came when each afternoon’s ride or climb called to Carley with
increasing delight. But the fact that she must soon reveal to Glenn her
presence and transformation did not seem to be all the cause. She could
ride without pain, walk without losing her breath, work without
blistering her hands; and in this there was compensation. The building
of the house that was to become a home, the development of water
resources and land that meant the making of a ranch—these did not
altogether constitute the anticipation of content. To be active, to
accomplish things, to recall to mind her knowledge of manual training,
of domestic science, of designing and painting, to learn to cook—these
were indeed measures full of reward, but they were not all. In her
wondering, pondering meditation she arrived at the point where she
tried to assign to her love the growing fullness of her life. This,
too, splendid and all-pervading as it was, she had to reject. Some
exceedingly illusive and vital significance of life had insidiously
come to Carley.

One afternoon, with the sky full of white and black rolling clouds and
a cold wind sweeping through the cedars, she halted to rest and escape
the chilling gale for a while. In a sunny place, under the lee of a
gravel bank, she sought refuge. It was warm here because of the
reflected sunlight and the absence of wind. The sand at the bottom of
the bank held a heat that felt good to her cold hands. All about her
and over her swept the keen wind, rustling the sage, seeping the sand,
swishing the cedars, but she was out of it, protected and insulated.
The sky above showed blue between the threatening clouds. There were no
birds or living creatures in sight. Certainly the place had little of
color or beauty or grace, nor could she see beyond a few rods. Lying
there, without any particular reason that she was conscious of, she
suddenly felt shot through and through with exhilaration.

Another day, the warmest of the spring so far, she rode a Navajo
mustang she had recently bought from a passing trader; and at the
farthest end of her section, in rough wooded and ridged ground she had
not explored, she found a canyon with red walls and pine trees and
gleaming streamlet and glades of grass and jumbles of rock. It was a
miniature canyon, to be sure, only a quarter of a mile long, and as
deep as the height of a lofty pine, and so narrow that it seemed only
the width of a lane, but it had all the features of Oak Creek Canyon,
and so sufficed for the exultant joy of possession. She explored it.
The willow brakes and oak thickets harbored rabbits and birds. She saw
the white flags of deer running away down the open. Up at the head
where the canyon boxed she flushed a flock of wild turkeys. They ran
like ostriches and flew like great brown chickens. In a cavern Carley
found the den of a bear, and in another place the bleached bones of a
steer.

She lingered here in the shaded depths with a feeling as if she were
indeed lost to the world. These big brown and seamy-barked pines with
their spreading gnarled arms and webs of green needles belonged to her,
as also the tiny brook, the blue bells smiling out of the ferns, the
single stalk of mescal on a rocky ledge.

Never had sun and earth, tree and rock, seemed a part of her being
until then. She would become a sun-worshiper and a lover of the earth.
That canyon had opened there to sky and light for millions of years;
and doubtless it had harbored sheep herders, Indians, cliff dwellers,
barbarians. She was a woman with white skin and a cultivated mind, but
the affinity for them existed in her. She felt it, and that an
understanding of it would be good for body and soul.

Another day she found a little grove of jack pines growing on a flat
mesa-like bluff, the highest point on her land. The trees were small
and close together, mingling their green needles overhead and their
discarded brown ones on the ground. From here Carley could see afar to
all points of the compass—the slow green descent to the south and the
climb to the black-timbered distance; the ridged and canyoned country
to the west, red vents choked with green and rimmed with gray; to the
north the grand upflung mountain kingdom crowned with snow; and to the
east the vastness of illimitable space, the openness and wildness, the
chased and beaten mosaic of colored sands and rocks.

Again and again she visited this lookout and came to love its
isolation, its command of wondrous prospects, its power of suggestion
to her thoughts. She became a creative being, in harmony with the live
things around her. The great life-dispensing sun poured its rays down
upon her, as if to ripen her; and the earth seemed warm, motherly,
immense with its all-embracing arms. She no longer plucked the
bluebells to press to her face, but leaned to them. Every blade of
gramma grass, with its shining bronze-tufted seed head, had
significance for her. The scents of the desert began to have meaning
for her. She sensed within her the working of a great leveling process
through which supreme happiness would come.

June! The rich, thick, amber light, like a transparent reflection from
some intense golden medium, seemed to float in the warm air. The sky
became an azure blue. In the still noontides, when the bees hummed
drowsily and the flies buzzed, vast creamy-white columnar clouds rolled
up from the horizon, like colossal ships with bulging sails. And summer
with its rush of growing things was at hand.

Carley rode afar, seeking in strange places the secret that eluded her.
Only a few days now until she would ride down to Oak Creek Canyon!
There was a low, singing melody of wind in the cedars. The earth became
too beautiful in her magnified sight. A great truth was dawning upon
her—that the sacrifice of what she had held as necessary to the
enjoyment of life—that the strain of conflict, the labor of hands, the
forcing of weary body, the enduring of pain, the contact with the
earth—had served somehow to rejuvenate her blood, quicken her pulse,
intensify her sensorial faculties, thrill her very soul, lead her into
the realm of enchantment.

One afternoon a dull, lead-black-colored cinder knoll tempted her to
explore its bare heights. She rode up until her mustang sank to his
knees and could climb no farther. From there she essayed the ascent on
foot. It took labor. But at last she gained the summit, burning,
sweating, panting.

The cinder hill was an extinct crater of a volcano. In the center of it
lay a deep bowl, wondrously symmetrical, and of a dark lusterless hue.
Not a blade of grass was there, nor a plant. Carley conceived a desire
to go to the bottom of this pit. She tried the cinders of the edge of
the slope. They had the same consistency as those of the ascent she had
overcome. But here there was a steeper incline. A tingling rush of
daring seemed to drive her over the rounded rim, and, once started
down, it was as if she wore seven-league boots. Fear left her. Only an
exhilarating emotion consumed her. If there were danger, it mattered
not. She strode down with giant steps, she plunged, she started
avalanches to ride them until they stopped, she leaped, and lastly she
fell, to roll over the soft cinders to the pit.

There she lay. It seemed a comfortable resting place. The pit was
scarcely six feet across. She gazed upward and was astounded. How steep
was the rounded slope on all sides! There were no sides; it was a
circle. She looked up at a round lake of deep translucent sky. Such
depth of blue, such exquisite rare color! Carley imagined she could
gaze through it to the infinite beyond.

She closed her eyes and rested. Soon the laboring of heart and breath
calmed to normal, so that she could not hear them. Then she lay
perfectly motionless. With eyes shut she seemed still to look, and what
she saw was the sunlight through the blood and flesh of her eyelids. It
was red, as rare a hue as the blue of sky. So piercing did it grow that
she had to shade her eyes with her arm.

Again the strange, rapt glow suffused her body. Never in all her life
had she been so absolutely alone. She might as well have been in her
grave. She might have been dead to all earthy things and reveling in
spirit in the glory of the physical that had escaped her in life. And
she abandoned herself to this influence.

She loved these dry, dusty cinders; she loved the crater here hidden
from all save birds; she loved the desert, the earth—above all, the
sun. She was a product of the earth—a creation of the sun. She had been
an infinitesimal atom of inert something that had quickened to life
under the blazing magic of the sun. Soon her spirit would abandon her
body and go on, while her flesh and bone returned to dust. This frame
of hers, that carried the divine spark, belonged to the earth. She had
only been ignorant, mindless, feelingless, absorbed in the seeking of
gain, blind to the truth. She had to give. She had been created a
woman; she belonged to nature; she was nothing save a mother of the
future. She had loved neither Glenn Kilbourne nor life itself. False
education, false standards, false environment had developed her into a
woman who imagined she must feed her body on the milk and honey of
indulgence.

She was abased now—woman as animal, though saved and uplifted by her
power of immortality. Transcendental was her female power to link life
with the future. The power of the plant seed, the power of the earth,
the heat of the sun, the inscrutable creation-spirit of nature, almost
the divinity of God—these were all hers because she was a woman. That
was the great secret, aloof so long. That was what had been wrong with
life—the woman blind to her meaning, her power, her mastery.

So she abandoned herself to the woman within her. She held out her arms
to the blue abyss of heaven as if to embrace the universe. She was
Nature. She kissed the dusty cinders and pressed her breast against the
warm slope. Her heart swelled to bursting with a glorious and
unutterable happiness.


That afternoon as the sun was setting under a gold-white scroll of
cloud Carley got back to Deep Lake.

A familiar lounging figure crossed her sight. It approached to where
she had dismounted. Charley, the sheep herder of Oak Creek!

“Howdy!” he drawled, with his queer smile. “So it was you-all who had
this Deep Lake section?”

“Yes. And how are you, Charley?” she replied, shaking hands with him.

“Me? Aw, I’m tip-top. I’m shore glad you got this ranch. Reckon I’ll
hit you for a job.”

“I’d give it to you. But aren’t you working for the Hutters?”

“Nope. Not any more. Me an’ Stanton had a row with them.”

How droll and dry he was! His lean, olive-brown face, with its
guileless clear eyes and his lanky figure in blue jeans vividly
recalled Oak Creek to Carley.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” returned she haltingly, somehow checked in her warm
rush of thought. “Stanton?... Did he quit too?”

“Yep. He sure did.”

“What was the trouble?”

“Reckon because Flo made up to Kilbourne,” replied Charley, with a
grin.

“Ah! I—I see,” murmured Carley. A blankness seemed to wave over her. It
extended to the air without, to the sense of the golden sunset. It
passed. What should she ask—what out of a thousand sudden flashing
queries? “Are—are the Hutters back?”

“Sure. Been back several days. I reckoned Hoyle told you. Mebbe he
didn’t know, though. For nobody’s been to town.”

“How is—how are they all?” faltered Carley. There was a strange wall
here between her thought and her utterance.

“Everybody satisfied, I reckon,” replied Charley.

“Flo—how is she?” burst out Carley.

“Aw, Flo’s loony over her husband,” drawled Charley, his clear eyes on
Carley’s.

“Husband!” she gasped.

“Sure. Flo’s gone an’ went an’ done what I swore on.”

“_Who?_” whispered Carley, and the query was a terrible blade piercing
her heart.

“Now who’d you reckon on?” asked Charley, with his slow grin.

Carley’s lips were mute.

“Wal, it was your old beau thet you wouldn’t have,” returned Charley,
as he gathered up his long frame, evidently to leave. “Kilbourne! He
an’ Flo came back from the Tonto all hitched up.”




CHAPTER XII


Vague sense of movement, of darkness, and of cold attended Carley’s
consciousness for what seemed endless time.

A fall over rocks and a severe thrust from a sharp branch brought an
acute appreciation of her position, if not of her mental state. Night
had fallen. The stars were out. She had stumbled over a low ledge.
Evidently she had wandered around, dazedly and aimlessly, until brought
to her senses by pain. But for a gleam of campfires through the cedars
she would have been lost. It did not matter. She was lost, anyhow. What
was it that had happened?

Charley, the sheep herder! Then the thunderbolt of his words burst upon
her, and she collapsed to the cold stones. She lay quivering from head
to toe. She dug her fingers into the moss and lichen. “Oh, God, to
think—after all—it happened!” she moaned. There had been a rending
within her breast, as of physical violence, from which she now suffered
anguish. There were a thousand stinging nerves. There was a mortal
sickness of horror, of insupportable heartbreaking loss. She could not
endure it. She could not live under it.

She lay there until energy supplanted shock. Then she rose to rush into
the darkest shadows of the cedars, to grope here and there, hanging her
head, wringing her hands, beating her breast. “It can’t be true,” she
cried. “Not after my struggle—my victory—not _now!_” But there had been
no victory. And now it was too late. She was betrayed, ruined, lost.
That wonderful love had wrought transformation in her—and now havoc.
Once she fell against the branches of a thick cedar that upheld her.
The fragrance which had been sweet was now bitter. Life that had been
bliss was now hateful! She could not keep still for a single moment.

Black night, cedars, brush, rocks, washes, seemed not to obstruct her.
In a frenzy she rushed on, tearing her dress, her hands, her hair.
Violence of some kind was imperative. All at once a pale gleaming open
space, shimmering under the stars, lay before her. It was water. Deep
Lake! And instantly a hideous terrible longing to destroy herself
obsessed her. She had no fear. She could have welcomed the cold, slimy
depths that meant oblivion. But could they really bring oblivion? A
year ago she would have believed so, and would no longer have endured
such agony. She had changed. A cursed strength had come to her, and it
was this strength that now augmented her torture. She flung wide her
arms to the pitiless white stars and looked up at them. “My hope, my
faith, my love have failed me,” she whispered. “They have been a lie. I
went through hell for them. And now I’ve nothing to live for.... Oh,
let me end it all!”

If she prayed to the stars for mercy, it was denied her. Passionlessly
they blazed on. But she could not kill herself. In that hour death
would have been the only relief and peace left to her. Stricken by the
cruelty of her fate, she fell back against the stones and gave up to
grief. Nothing was left but fierce pain. The youth and vitality and
intensity of her then locked arms with anguish and torment and a
cheated, unsatisfied love. Strength of mind and body involuntarily
resisted the ravages of this catastrophe. Will power seemed nothing,
but the flesh of her, that medium of exquisite sensation, so full of
life, so prone to joy, refused to surrender. The part of her that felt
fought terribly for its heritage.

All night long Carley lay there. The crescent moon went down, the stars
moved on their course, the coyotes ceased to wail, the wind died away,
the lapping of the waves along the lake shore wore to gentle splash,
the whispering of the insects stopped as the cold of dawn approached.
The darkest hour fell—hour of silence, solitude, and melancholy, when
the desert lay tranced, cold, waiting, mournful without light of moon
or stars or sun.

In the gray dawn Carley dragged her bruised and aching body back to her
tent, and, fastening the door, she threw off wet clothes and boots and
fell upon her bed. Slumber of exhaustion came to her.

When she awoke the tent was light and the moving shadows of cedar
boughs on the white canvas told that the sun was straight above. Carley
ached as never before. A deep pang seemed invested in every bone. Her
heart felt swollen out of proportion to its space in her breast. Her
breathing came slow and it hurt. Her blood was sluggish. Suddenly she
shut her eyes. She loathed the light of day. What was it that had
happened?

Then the brutal truth flashed over her again, in aspect new, with all
the old bitterness. For an instant she experienced a suffocating
sensation as if the canvas had sagged under the burden of heavy air and
was crushing her breast and heart. Then wave after wave of emotion
swept over her. The storm winds of grief and passion were loosened
again. And she writhed in her misery.

Some one knocked on her door. The Mexican woman called anxiously.
Carley awoke to the fact that her presence was not solitary on the
physical earth, even if her soul seemed stricken to eternal loneliness.
Even in the desert there was a world to consider. Vanity that had bled
to death, pride that had been crushed, availed her not here. But
something else came to her support. The lesson of the West had been to
endure, not to shirk—to face an issue, not to hide. Carley got up,
bathed, dressed, brushed and arranged her dishevelled hair. The face
she saw in the mirror excited her amaze and pity. Then she went out in
answer to the call for dinner. But she could not eat. The ordinary
functions of life appeared to be deadened.

The day happened to be Sunday, and therefore the workmen were absent.
Carley had the place to herself. How the half-completed house mocked
her! She could not bear to look at it. What use could she make of it
now? Flo Hutter had become the working comrade of Glenn Kilbourne, the
mistress of his cabin. She was his wife and she would be the mother of
his children.

That thought gave birth to the darkest hour of Carley Burch’s life. She
became possessed as by a thousand devils. She became merely a female
robbed of her mate. Reason was not in her, nor charity, nor justice.
All that was abnormal in human nature seemed coalesced in her,
dominant, passionate, savage, terrible. She hated with an incredible
and insane ferocity. In the seclusion of her tent, crouched on her bed,
silent, locked, motionless, she yet was the embodiment of all terrible
strife and storm in nature. Her heart was a maelstrom and would have
whirled and sucked down to hell all the beings that were men. Her soul
was a bottomless gulf, filled with the gales and the fires of jealousy,
superhuman to destroy.

That fury consumed all her remaining strength, and from the relapse she
sank to sleep.

Morning brought the inevitable reaction. However long her other
struggles, this monumental and final one would be brief. She realized
that, yet was unable to understand how it could be possible, unless
shock or death or mental aberration ended the fight. An eternity of
emotion lay back between this awakening of intelligence and the hour of
her fall into the clutches of primitive passion.

That morning she faced herself in the mirror and asked, “Now—what do I
owe _you?_” It was not her voice that answered. It was beyond her. But
it said: “Go on! You are cut adrift. You are alone. You owe none but
yourself!... Go on! Not backward—not to the depths—but up—upward!”

She shuddered at such a decree. How impossible for her! All animal, all
woman, all emotion, how could she live on the cold, pure heights? Yet
she owed something intangible and inscrutable to herself. Was it the
thing that woman lacked physically, yet contained hidden in her soul?
An element of eternal spirit to rise! Because of heartbreak and ruin
and irreparable loss must she fall? Was loss of love and husband and
children only a test? The present hour would be swallowed in the sum of
life’s trials. She could not go back. She would not go down. There was
wrenched from her tried and sore heart an unalterable and unquenchable
decision—to make her own soul prove the evolution of woman. Vessel of
blood and flesh she might be, doomed by nature to the reproduction of
her kind, but she had in her the supreme spirit and power to carry on
the progress of the ages—the climb of woman out of the darkness.

Carley went out to the workmen. The house should be completed and she
would live in it. Always there was the stretching and illimitable
desert to look at, and the grand heave upward of the mountains. Hoyle
was full of zest for the practical details of the building. He saw
nothing of the havoc wrought in her. Nor did the other workmen glance
more than casually at her. In this Carley lost something of a shirking
fear that her loss and grief were patent to all eyes.

That afternoon she mounted the most spirited of the mustangs she had
purchased from the Indians. To govern him and stick on him required all
her energy. And she rode him hard and far, out across the desert,
across mile after mile of cedar forest, clear to the foothills. She
rested there, absorbed in gazing desertward, and upon turning back
again, she ran him over the level stretches. Wind and branch threshed
her seemingly to ribbons. Violence seemed good for her. A fall had no
fear for her now. She reached camp at dusk, hot as fire, breathless and
strengthless. But she had earned something. Such action required
constant use of muscle and mind. If need be she could drive both to the
very furthermost limit. She could ride and ride—until the future, like
the immensity of the desert there, might swallow her. She changed her
clothes and rested a while. The call to supper found her hungry. In
this fact she discovered mockery of her grief. Love was not the food of
life. Exhausted nature’s need of rest and sleep was no respecter of a
woman’s emotion.

Next day Carley rode northward, wildly and fearlessly, as if this
conscious activity was the initiative of an endless number of rides
that were to save her. As before the foothills called her, and she went
on until she came to a very high one.

Carley dismounted from her panting horse, answering the familiar
impulse to attain heights by her own effort.

“Am I only a weakling?” she asked herself. “Only a creature mined by
the fever of the soul!... Thrown from one emotion to another? Never the
same. Yearning, suffering, sacrificing, hoping, and changing—forever
the same! What is it that drives _me?_ A great city with all its
attractions has failed to help me realize my life. So have friends
failed. So has the world. What can solitude and grandeur do?... All
this obsession of mine—all this strange feeling for simple elemental
earthly things likewise will fail me. Yet I am driven. They would call
me a mad woman.”

It took Carley a full hour of slow body-bending labor to climb to the
summit of that hill. High, steep, and rugged, it resisted ascension.
But at last she surmounted it and sat alone on the heights, with naked
eyes, and an unconscious prayer on her lips.

What was it that had happened? Could there be here a different answer
from that which always mocked her?

She had been a girl, not accountable for loss of mother, for choice of
home and education. She had belonged to a class. She had grown to
womanhood in it. She had loved, and in loving had escaped the evil of
her day, if not its taint. She had lived only for herself. Conscience
had awakened—but, alas! too late. She had overthrown the sordid,
self-seeking habit of life; she had awakened to real womanhood; she had
fought the insidious spell of modernity and she had defeated it; she
had learned the thrill of taking root in new soil, the pain and joy of
labor, the bliss of solitude, the promise of home and love and
motherhood. But she had gathered all these marvelous things to her soul
too late for happiness.

“_Now_ it is answered,” she declared aloud. “That is what has
happened?... And all that is _past_.... Is there anything left? If so
_what?_”

She flung her query out to the winds of the desert. But the desert
seemed too gray, too vast, too remote, too aloof, too measureless. It
was not concerned with her little life. Then she turned to the mountain
kingdom.

It seemed overpoweringly near at hand. It loomed above her to pierce
the fleecy clouds. It was only a stupendous upheaval of earth-crust,
grown over at the base by leagues and leagues of pine forest, belted
along the middle by vast slanting zigzag slopes of aspen, rent and
riven toward the heights into canyon and gorge, bared above to cliffs
and corners of craggy rock, whitened at the sky-piercing peaks by snow.
Its beauty and sublimity were lost upon Carley now; she was concerned
with its travail, its age, its endurance, its strength. And she studied
it with magnified sight.

What incomprehensible subterranean force had swelled those immense
slopes and lifted the huge bulk aloft to the clouds? Cataclysm of
nature—the expanding or shrinking of the earth—vast volcanic action
under the surface! Whatever it had been, it had left its expression of
the travail of the universe. This mountain mass had been hot gas when
flung from the parent sun, and now it was solid granite. What had it
endured in the making? What indeed had been its dimensions before the
millions of years of its struggle?

Eruption, earthquake, avalanche, the attrition of glacier, the erosion
of water, the cracking of frost, the weathering of rain and wind and
snow—these it had eternally fought and resisted in vain, yet still it
stood magnificent, frowning, battle-scarred and undefeated. Its
sky-piercing peaks were as cries for mercy to the Infinite. This old
mountain realized its doom. It had to go, perhaps to make room for a
newer and better kingdom. But it endured because of the spirit of
nature. The great notched circular line of rock below and between the
peaks, in the body of the mountains, showed where in ages past the
heart of living granite had blown out, to let loose on all the near
surrounding desert the streams of black lava and the hills of black
cinders. Despite its fringe of green it was hoary with age. Every
looming gray-faced wall, massive and sublime, seemed a monument of its
mastery over time. Every deep-cut canyon, showing the skeleton ribs,
the caverns and caves, its avalanche-carved slides, its long,
fan-shaped, spreading taluses, carried conviction to the spectator that
it was but a frail bit of rock, that its life was little and brief,
that upon it had been laid the merciless curse of nature. Change!
Change must unknit the very knots of the center of the earth. So its
strength lay in the sublimity of its defiance. It meant to endure to
the last rolling grain of sand. It was a dead mountain of rock, without
spirit, yet it taught a grand lesson to the seeing eye.

Life was only a part, perhaps an infinitely small part of nature’s
plan. Death and decay were just as important to her inscrutable design.
The universe had not been created for life, ease, pleasure, and
happiness of a man creature developed from lower organisms. If nature’s
secret was the developing of a spirit through all time, Carley divined
that she had it within her. So the present meant little.

“I have no right to be unhappy,” concluded Carley. “I had no right to
Glenn Kilbourne. I failed him. In that I failed myself. Neither life
nor nature failed me—nor love. It is no longer a mystery. Unhappiness
is only a change. Happiness itself is only change. So what does it
matter? The great thing is to see life—to understand—to feel—to work—to
fight—to endure. It is not my fault I am here. But it is my fault if I
leave this strange old earth the poorer for my failure.... I will no
longer be little. I will find strength. I will endure.... I still have
eyes, ears, nose, taste. I can feel the sun, the wind, the nip of
frost. Must I slink like a craven because I’ve lost the love of _one_
man? Must I hate Flo Hutter because she will make Glenn happy?
Never!... All of this seems better so, because through it I am changed.
I might have lived on, a selfish clod!”

Carley turned from the mountain kingdom and faced her future with the
profound and sad and far-seeing look that had come with her lesson. She
knew what to give. Sometime and somewhere there would be recompense.
She would hide her wound in the faith that time would heal it. And the
ordeal she set herself, to prove her sincerity and strength, was to
ride down to Oak Creek Canyon.

Carley did not wait many days. Strange how the old vanity held her back
until something of the havoc in her face should be gone!

One morning she set out early, riding her best horse, and she took a
sheep trail across country. The distance by road was much farther. The
June morning was cool, sparkling, fragrant. Mocking birds sang from the
topmost twig of cedars; doves cooed in the pines; sparrow hawks sailed
low over the open grassy patches. Desert primroses showed their rounded
pink clusters in sunny places, and here and there burned the carmine of
Indian paintbrush. Jack rabbits and cotton-tails bounded and scampered
away through the sage. The desert had life and color and movement this
June day. And as always there was the dry fragrance on the air.

Her mustang had been inured to long and consistent travel over the
desert. Her weight was nothing to him and he kept to the swinging lope
for miles. As she approached Oak Creek Canyon, however, she drew him to
a trot, and then a walk. Sight of the deep red-walled and green-floored
canyon was a shock to her.

The trail came out on the road that led to Ryan’s sheep camp, at a
point several miles west of the cabin where Carley had encountered Haze
Ruff. She remembered the curves and stretches, and especially the steep
jump-off where the road led down off the rim into the canyon. Here she
dismounted and walked. From the foot of this descent she knew every rod
of the way would be familiar to her, and, womanlike, she wanted to turn
away and fly from them. But she kept on and mounted again at level
ground.

The murmur of the creek suddenly assailed her ears—sweet, sad,
memorable, strangely powerful to hurt. Yet the sound seemed of long
ago. Down here summer had advanced. Rich thick foliage overspread the
winding road of sand. Then out of the shade she passed into the sunnier
regions of isolated pines. Along here she had raced Calico with Glenn’s
bay; and here she had caught him, and there was the place she had
fallen. She halted a moment under the pine tree where Glenn had held
her in his arms. Tears dimmed her eyes. If only she had known then the
truth, the reality! But regrets were useless.

By and by a craggy red wall loomed above the trees, and its pipe-organ
conformation was familiar to Carley. She left the road and turned to go
down to the creek. Sycamores and maples and great bowlders, and mossy
ledges overhanging the water, and a huge sentinel pine marked the spot
where she and Glenn had eaten their lunch that last day. Her mustang
splashed into the clear water and halted to drink. Beyond, through the
trees, Carley saw the sunny red-earthed clearing that was Glenn’s farm.
She looked, and fought herself, and bit her quivering lip until she
tasted blood. Then she rode out into the open.

The whole west side of the canyon had been cleared and cultivated and
plowed. But she gazed no farther. She did not want to see the spot
where she had given Glenn his ring and had parted from him. She rode
on. If she could pass West Fork she believed her courage would rise to
the completion of this ordeal. Places were what she feared. Places that
she had loved while blindly believing she hated! There the narrow gap
of green and blue split the looming red wall. She was looking into West
Fork. Up there stood the cabin. How fierce a pang rent her breast! She
faltered at the crossing of the branch stream, and almost surrendered.
The water murmured, the leaves rustled, the bees hummed, the birds
sang—all with some sad sweetness that seemed of the past.

Then the trail leading up West Fork was like a barrier. She saw horse
tracks in it. Next she descried boot tracks the shape of which was so
well-remembered that it shook her heart. There were fresh tracks in the
sand, pointing in the direction of the Lodge. Ah! that was where Glenn
lived now. Carley strained at her will to keep it fighting her memory.
The glory and the dream were gone!

A touch of spur urged her mustang into a gallop. The splashing ford of
the creek—the still, eddying pool beyond—the green orchards—the white
lacy waterfall—and Lolomi Lodge!

Nothing had altered. But Carley seemed returning after many years.
Slowly she dismounted—slowly she climbed the porch steps. Was there no
one at home? Yet the vacant doorway, the silence—something attested to
the knowledge of Carley’s presence. Then suddenly Mrs. Hutter fluttered
out with Flo behind her.

“You dear girl—I’m so glad!” cried Mrs. Hutter, her voice trembling.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” said Carley, bending to receive Mrs.
Hutter’s embrace. Carley saw dim eyes—the stress of agitation, but no
surprise.

“_Oh, Carley!_” burst out the Western girl, with voice rich and full,
yet tremulous.

“Flo, I’ve come to wish you happiness,” replied Carley, very low.

Was it the same Flo? This seemed more of a woman—strange now—white and
strained—beautiful, eager, questioning. A cry of gladness burst from
her. Carley felt herself enveloped in strong close clasp—and then a
warm, quick kiss of joy. It shocked her, yet somehow thrilled. Sure was
the welcome here. Sure was the strained situation, also, but the voice
rang too glad a note for Carley. It touched her deeply, yet she could
not understand. She had not measured the depth of Western friendship.

“Have you—seen Glenn?” queried Flo, breathlessly.

“Oh no, indeed not,” replied Carley, slowly gaining composure. The
nervous agitation of these women had stilled her own. “I just rode up
the trail. Where is he?”

“He was here—a moment ago,” panted Flo. “Oh, Carley, we sure are
locoed. ... Why, we only heard an hour ago—that _you_ were at Deep
Lake.... Charley rode in. He told us.... I thought my heart would
break. Poor Glenn! When he heard it.... But never mind _me_. Jump your
horse and run to West Fork!”

The spirit of her was like the strength of her arms as she hurried
Carley across the porch and shoved her down the steps.

“Climb on and run, Carley,” cried Flo. “If you only knew how glad he’ll
be that you came!”

Carley leaped into the saddle and wheeled the mustang. But she had no
answer for the girl’s singular, almost wild exultance. Then like a shot
the spirited mustang was off down the lane. Carley wondered with
swelling heart. Was her coming such a wondrous surprise—so unexpected
and big in generosity—something that would make Kilbourne as glad as it
had seemed to make Flo? Carley thrilled to this assurance.

Down the lane she flew. The red walls blurred and the sweet wind
whipped her face. At the trail she swerved the mustang, but did not
check his gait. Under the great pines he sped and round the bulging
wall. At the rocky incline leading to the creek she pulled the fiery
animal to a trot. How low and clear the water! As Carley forded it
fresh cool drops splashed into her face. Again she spurred her mount
and again trees and walls rushed by. Up and down the yellow bits of
trail—on over the brown mats of pine needles—until there in the
sunlight shone the little gray log cabin with a tall form standing in
the door. One instant the canyon tilted on end for Carley and she was
riding into the blue sky. Then some magic of soul sustained her, so
that she saw clearly. Reaching the cabin she reined in her mustang.

“Hello, Glenn! Look who’s here!” she cried, not wholly failing of
gayety.

He threw up his sombrero.

“Whoopee!” he yelled, in stentorian voice that rolled across the canyon
and bellowed in hollow echo and then clapped from wall to wall. The
unexpected Western yell, so strange from Glenn, disconcerted Carley.
Had he only answered her spirit of greeting? Had hers rung false?

But he was coming to her. She had seen the bronze of his face turn to
white. How gaunt and worn he looked. Older he appeared, with deeper
lines and whiter hair. His jaw quivered.

“Carley Burch, so it was _you?_” he queried, hoarsely.

“Glenn, I reckon it was,” she replied. “I bought your Deep Lake ranch
site. I came back too late.... But it is never too late for some
things.... I’ve come to wish you and Flo all the happiness in the
world—and to say we must be friends.”

The way he looked at her made her tremble. He strode up beside the
mustang, and he was so tall that his shoulder came abreast of her. He
placed a big warm hand on hers, as it rested, ungloved, on the pommel
of the saddle.

“Have you seen Flo?” he asked.

“I just left her. It was funny—the way she rushed me off after you. As
if there weren’t two—”

Was it Glenn’s eyes or the movement of his hand that checked her
utterance? His gaze pierced her soul. His hand slid along her arm to
her waist—around it. Her heart seemed to burst.

“Kick your feet out of the stirrups,” he ordered.

Instinctively she obeyed. Then with a strong pull he hauled her half
out of the saddle, pellmell into his arms. Carley had no resistance.
She sank limp, in an agony of amaze. Was this a dream? Swift and hard
his lips met hers—and again—and again....

“Oh, my God!—Glenn, are—you—mad?” she whispered, almost swooning.

“Sure—I reckon I am,” he replied, huskily, and pulled her all the way
out of the saddle.

Carley would have fallen but for his support. She could not think. She
was all instinct. Only the amaze—the sudden horror—drifted—faded as
before fires of her heart!

“Kiss me!” he commanded.

She would have kissed him if death were the penalty. How his face
blurred in her dimmed sight! Was that a strange smile? Then he held her
back from him.

“Carley—you came to wish Flo and me happiness?” he asked.

“Oh, yes—yes.... Pity me, Glenn—let me go. I meant well.... I
should—never have come.”

“Do you love me?” he went on, with passionate, shaking clasp.

“God help me—I do—I do!... And now it will kill me!”

“What did that damned fool Charley tell you?”

The strange content of his query, the trenchant force of it, brought
her upright, with sight suddenly cleared. Was this giant the tragic
Glenn who had strode to her from the cabin door?

“Charley told me—you and Flo—were married,” she whispered.

“You didn’t _believe_ him!” returned Glenn.

She could no longer speak. She could only see her lover, as if
transfigured, limned dark against the looming red wall.

“That was one of Charley’s queer jokes. I told you to beware of him.
Flo is married, yes—and very happy.... I’m unutterably happy, too—but
I’m _not_ married. Lee Stanton was the lucky bridegroom.... Carley, the
moment I saw you I knew you had come back to me.”




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