Etext » books

I understand, agree to and accept the "Small Print!" statement.

The Project Gutenberg Etext The Call of the Canyon, by Zane Grey

#9 in our series by Zane Grey

the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!

Please take a look at the important information in this header.

We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an

electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.

**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*

Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and

further information is included below. We need your donations.

The Call of the Canyon

by Zane Grey

September, 1999 [Etext #1881]

The Project Gutenberg Etext The Call of the Canyon, by Zane Grey

******This file should be named tcotc10.txt or 1tcotc0.zip******

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, tcotc11.txt

VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, tcotc10a.txt

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

Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,

all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a

of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance

of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.

Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till

midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.

The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at

Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A

preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment

and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an

up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes

in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has

a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a

look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a

new copy has at least one byte more or less.

Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The

time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours

to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright

searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This

projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value

per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2

million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text

files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+

If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the

total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext

Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]

This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,

which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.

At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third

of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we

manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly

from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an

assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few

more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we

don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.

We need your donations more than ever!

All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are

tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie-

Mellon University).

For these and other matters, please mail to:

Project Gutenberg

P. O. Box 2782

Champaign, IL 61825

When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director:

Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org

if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if

it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .

We would prefer to send you this information by email.

To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser

to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by

author and by title, and includes information about how

to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also

download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This

is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,

for a more complete list of our various sites.

To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any

Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror

sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed

at http://promo.net/pg).

Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.

Example FTP session:

ftp sunsite.unc.edu

password: your@login

cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg

cd etext90 through etext99

dir [to see files]

get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]

GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]

GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]

***

**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**

(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***

Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.

They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with

your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from

someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our

fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement

disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how

you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT

By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm

etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept

this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive

a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by

sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person

you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical

medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS

This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-

tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor

Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at

Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other

things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright

on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and

distribute it in the United States without permission and

without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth

below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext

under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable

efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain

works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any

medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other

things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or

corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other

intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged

disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer

codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES

But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,

[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this

etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all

liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including

legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR

UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,

INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE

OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE

POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of

receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)

you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that

time to the person you received it from. If you received it

on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and

such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement

copy. If you received it electronically, such person may

choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to

receive it electronically.

THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER

WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS

TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT

LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A

PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or

the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the

above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you

may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY

You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,

officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost

and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or

indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:

[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,

or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"

You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by

disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this

"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,

or:

[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this

requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the

etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,

if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable

binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,

including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-

cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as

*EITHER*:

[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and

does *not* contain characters other than those

intended by the author of the work, although tilde

(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may

be used to convey punctuation intended by the

author, and additional characters may be used to

indicate hypertext links; OR

[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at

no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent

form by the program that displays the etext (as is

the case, for instance, with most word processors);

[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at

no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the

etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC

or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this

"Small Print!" statement.

[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the

net profits you derive calculated using the method you

already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you

don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are

payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon

University" within the 60 days following each

date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)

your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?

The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,

scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty

free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution

you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg

Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".

*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

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

of you. That you could come West weak and sick, and fight your way to

health, and learn to be self-sufficient! It is a splendid achievement. It

amazes me. I don't grasp it. I want to think. Nevertheless I--"

"What?" he queried, as she hesitated.

"Oh, never mind now," she replied, hastily, averting her eyes.

The day was far spent when Carley returned to the Lodge-and in spite of the

discomfort of cold and sleet, and the bitter wind that beat in her face as

she struggled up the trail--it was a day never to be forgotten. Nothing had

been wanting in Glenn's attention or affection. He had been comrade, lover,

all she craved for. And but for his few singular words about work and

children there had been no serious talk. Only a play day in his canyon and

his cabin! Yet had she appeared at her best? Something vague and perplexing

knocked at the gate of her consciousness.

CHAPTER IV

Two warm sunny days in early May inclined Mr. Hutter to the opinion that

pleasant spring weather was at hand and that it would be a propitious time

to climb up on the desert to look after his sheep interests. Glenn, of

course, would accompany him.

"Carley and I will go too," asserted Flo.

"Reckon that'll be good,"