The Call of the Canyon
by
Zane Grey

Part 1 out of 4








This Etext has been prepared by Bill Brewer, billbrewer@ttu.edu





THE CALL OF THE CANYON

By Zane Grey


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

GLEN


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 blase 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 fiancee. 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. flutter.
"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 Phoenix. 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 roughhewn 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 he 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 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 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 took 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 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 tier 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--clear--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, ill 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 world 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


 


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