The Call of the Canyon

by Zane Grey

  CHAPTER XI

  Carley burst in upon her aunt.

  "Look at me, Aunt Mary!" she cried, radiant and exultant. "I'm goingback out West to marry Glenn and live his life!"

  The keen old eyes of her aunt softened and dimmed. "Dear Carley, I'veknown that for a long time. You've found yourself at last."

  Then Carley breathlessly babbled her hastily formed plans, every word ofwhich seemed to rush her onward.

  "You're going to surprise Glenn again?" queried Aunt Mary.

  "Oh, I must! I want to see his face when I tell him."

  "Well, I hope he won't surprise you," declared the old lady. "When didyou hear from him last?"

  "In January. It seems ages--but--Aunt Mary, you don't imagine Glenn--"

  "I imagine nothing," interposed her aunt. "It will turn out happily andI'll have some peace in my old age. But, Carley, what's to become ofme?"

  "Oh, I never thought!" replied Carley, blankly. "It will be lonely foryou. Auntie, I'll come back in the fall for a few weeks. Glenn will letme."

  "Let you? Ye gods! So you've come to that? Imperious Carley Burch!...Thank Heaven, you'll now be satisfied to be let do things."

  "I'd--I'd crawl for him," breathed Carley.

  "Well, child, as you can't be practical, I'll have to be," replied AuntMary, seriously. "Fortunately for you I am a woman of quick decision.Listen. I'll go West with you. I want to see the Grand Canyon. Then I'llgo on to California, where I have old friends I've not seen for years.When you get your new home all fixed up I'll spend awhile with you. Andif I want to come back to New York now and then I'll go to a hotel. Itis settled. I think the change will benefit me."

  "Auntie, you make me very happy. I could ask no more," said Carley.

  Swiftly as endless tasks could make them the days passed. But those onthe train dragged interminably.

  Carley sent her aunt through to the Canyon while she stopped off atFlagstaff to store innumerable trunks and bags. The first news she heardof Glenn and the Hutters was that they had gone to the Tonto Basin tobuy hogs and would be absent at least a month. This gave birth to a newplan in Carley's mind. She would doubly surprise Glenn. Wherefore shetook council with some Flagstaff business men and engaged them to set aforce of men at work on the Deep Lake property, making the improvementsshe desired, and hauling lumber, cement, bricks, machinery,supplies--all the necessaries for building construction. Also sheinstructed them to throw up a tent house for her to live in during thework, and to engage a reliable Mexican man with his wife for servants.When she left for the Canyon she was happier than ever before in herlife.

  It was near the coming of sunset when Carley first looked down into theGrand Canyon. She had forgotten Glenn's tribute to this place. In herrapturous excitement of preparation and travel the Canyon had beenmerely a name. But now she saw it and she was stunned.

  What a stupendous chasm, gorgeous in sunset color on the heights,purpling into mystic shadows in the depths! There was a wonderfulbrightness of all the millions of red and yellow and gray surfaces stillexposed to the sun. Carley did not feel a thrill, because feeling seemedinhibited. She looked and looked, yet was reluctant to keep on looking.She possessed no image in mind with which to compare this grand andmystic spectacle. A transformation of color and shade appeared to begoing on swiftly, as if gods were changing the scenes of a Titanicstage. As she gazed the dark fringed line of the north rim turned toburnished gold, and she watched that with fascinated eyes. It turnedrose, it lost its fire, it faded to quiet cold gray. The sun had set.

  Then the wind blew cool through the pinyons on the rim. There was asweet tang of cedar and sage on the air and that indefinable fragrancepeculiar to the canyon country of Arizona. How it brought back to Carleyremembrance of Oak Creek! In the west, across the purple notches of theabyss, a dull gold flare showed where the sun had gone down.

  In the morning at eight o'clock there were great irregular black shadowsunder the domes and peaks and escarpments. Bright Angel Canyon was alldark, showing dimly its ragged lines. At noon there were no shadows andall the colossal gorge lay glaring under the sun. In the evening Carleywatched the Canyon as again the sun was setting.

  Deep dark-blue shadows, like purple sails of immense ships, in wonderfulcontrast with the bright sunlit slopes, grew and rose toward the east,down the canyons and up the walls that faced the west. For a longwhile there was no red color, and the first indication of it was a dullbronze. Carley looked down into the void, at the sailing birds, at theprecipitous slopes, and the dwarf spruces and the weathered old yellowcliffs. When she looked up again the shadows out there were no longerdark. They were clear. The slopes and depths and ribs of rock could beseen through them. Then the tips of the highest peaks and domes turnedbright red. Far to the east she discerned a strange shadow, slowlyturning purple. One instant it grew vivid, then began to fade. Soonafter that all the colors darkened and slowly the pale gray stole overall.

  At night Carley gazed over and into the black void. But for the awfulsense of depth she would not have known the Canyon to be there. Asoundless movement of wind passed under her. The chasm seemed a graveof silence. It was as mysterious as the stars and as aloof and asinevitable. It had held her senses of beauty and proportion in abeyance.

  At another sunrise the crown of the rim, a broad belt of bare rock,turned pale gold under its fringed dark line of pines. The tips of thepeak gleamed opal. There was no sunrise red, no fire. The light in theeast was a pale gold under a steely green-blue sky. All the abyss ofthe Canyon was soft, gray, transparent, and the belt of goldbroadened downward, making shadows on the west slopes of the mesas andescarpments. Far down in the shadows she discerned the river, yellow,turgid, palely gleaming. By straining her ears Carley heard a low dullroar as of distant storm. She stood fearfully at the extreme edge of astupendous cliff, where it sheered dark and forbidding, down and down,into what seemed red and boundless depths of Hades. She saw gold spotsof sunlight on the dark shadows, proving that somewhere, impossibleto discover, the sun was shining through wind-worn holes in the sharpridges. Every instant Carley grasped a different effect. Her studiedgaze absorbed an endless changing. And at last she realized that sun andlight and stars and moon and night and shade, all working incessantlyand mutably over shapes and lines and angles and surfaces too numerousand too great for the sight of man to hold, made an ever-changingspectacle of supreme beauty and colorful grandeur.

  She talked very little while at the Canyon. It silenced her. She hadcome to see it at the critical time of her life and in the right mood.The superficialities of the world shrunk to their proper insignificance.Once she asked her aunt: "Why did not Glenn bring me here?" As if thisCanyon proved the nature of all things!

  But in the end Carley found that the rending strife of thetransformation of her attitude toward life had insensibly ceased. It hadceased during the long watching of this cataclysm of nature, this canyonof gold-banded black-fringed ramparts, and red-walled mountains whichsloped down to be lost in purple depths. That was final proof of thestrength of nature to soothe, to clarify, to stabilize the tried andweary and upward-gazing soul. Stronger than the recorded deeds ofsaints, stronger than the eloquence of the gifted uplifters ofmen, stronger than any words ever written, was the grand, brooding,sculptured aspect of nature. And it must have been so because thousandsof years before the age of saints or preachers--before the fretand symbol and figure were cut in stone--man must have watched withthought-developing sight the wonders of the earth, the monuments oftime, the glooming of the dark-blue sea, the handiwork of God.

  In May, Carley returned to Flagstaff to take up with earnest inspirationthe labors of homebuilding in a primitive land.

  It required two trucks to transport her baggage and purchases out toDeep Lake. The road was good for eighteen miles of the distance, untilit branched off to reach her land, and from there it was desert rockand sand. But eventually they made it; and Carley found herself andbelongings dumped out into the windy and sunny open. The moment wassin
gularly thrilling and full of transport. She was free. She had shakenoff the shackles. She faced lonely, wild, barren desert that must bemade habitable by the genius of her direction and the labor of herhands. Always a thought of Glenn hovered tenderly, dreamily in the backof her consciousness, but she welcomed the opportunity to have a fewweeks of work and activity and solitude before taking up her life withhim. She wanted to adapt herself to the metamorphosis that had beenwrought in her.

  To her amazement and delight, a very considerable progress had been madewith her plans. Under a sheltered red cliff among the cedars hadbeen erected the tents where she expected to live until the housewas completed. These tents were large, with broad floors high off theground, and there were four of them. Her living tent had a porch undera wide canvas awning. The bed was a boxlike affair, raised off the floortwo feet, and it contained a great, fragrant mass of cedar boughs uponwhich the blankets were to be spread. At one end was a dresser withlarge mirror, and a chiffonier. There were table and lamp, a low rockingchair, a shelf for books, a row of hooks upon which to hang things,a washstand with its necessary accessories, a little stove and aneat stack of cedar chips and sticks. Navajo rugs on the floor lentbrightness and comfort.

  Carley heard the rustling of cedar branches over her head, and sawwhere they brushed against the tent roof. It appeared warm and fragrantinside, and protected from the wind, and a subdued white light filteredthrough the canvas. Almost she felt like reproving herself for thecomfort surrounding her. For she had come West to welcome the hardknocks of primitive life.

  It took less than an hour to have her trunks stored in one of the sparetents, and to unpack clothes and necessaries for immediate use. Carleydonned the comfortable and somewhat shabby outdoor garb she had worn atOak Creek the year before; and it seemed to be the last thing needed tomake her fully realize the glorious truth of the present.

  "I'm here," she said to her pale, yet happy face in the mirror. "Theimpossible has happened. I have accepted Glenn's life. I have answeredthat strange call out of the West."

  She wanted to throw herself on the sunlit woolly blankets of her bed andhug them, to think and think of the bewildering present happiness, todream of the future, but she could not lie or sit still, nor keep hermind from grasping at actualities and possibilities of this place, norher hands from itching to do things.

  It developed, presently, that she could not have idled away the timeeven if she had wanted to, for the Mexican woman came for her, withsmiling gesticulation and jabber that manifestly meant dinner. Carleycould not understand many Mexican words, and herein she saw anothertask. This swarthy woman and her sloe-eyed husband favorably impressedCarley.

  Next to claim her was Hoyle, the superintendent. "Miss Burch," he said,"in the early days we could run up a log cabin in a jiffy. Axes, horses,strong arms, and a few pegs--that was all we needed. But this houseyou've planned is different. It's good you've come to take theresponsibility."

  Carley had chosen the site for her home on top of the knoll where Glennhad taken her to show her the magnificent view of mountains and desert.Carley climbed it now with beating heart and mingled emotions. Athousand times already that day, it seemed, she had turned to gaze upat the noble white-clad peaks. They were closer now, apparently loomingover her, and she felt a great sense of peace and protection in thethought that they would always be there. But she had not yet seen thedesert that had haunted her for a year. When she reached the summit ofthe knoll and gazed out across the open space it seemed that she muststand spellbound. How green the cedared foreground--how gray and barrenthe downward slope--how wonderful the painted steppes! The vision thathad lived in her memory shrank to nothingness. The reality was immense,more than beautiful, appalling in its isolation, beyond comprehensionwith its lure and strength to uplift.

  But the superintendent drew her attention to the business at hand.

  Carley had planned an L-shaped house of one story. Some of her ideasappeared to be impractical, and these she abandoned. The framework wasup and half a dozen carpenters were lustily at work with saw and hammer.

  "We'd made better progress if this house was in an ordinary place,"explained Hoyle. "But you see the wind blows here, so the framework hadto be made as solid and strong as possible. In fact, it's bolted to thesills."

  Both living room and sleeping room were arranged so that the PaintedDesert could be seen from one window, and on the other side the wholeof the San Francisco Mountains. Both rooms were to have open fireplaces.Carley's idea was for service and durability. She thought of comfort inthe severe winters of that high latitude, but elegance and luxury had nomore significance in her life.

  Hoyle made his suggestions as to changes and adaptations, and, receivingher approval, he went on to show her what had been already accomplished.Back on higher ground a reservoir of concrete was being constructednear an ever-flowing spring of snow water from the peaks. This waterwas being piped by gravity to the house, and was a matter of greatestsatisfaction to Hoyle, for he claimed that it would never freeze inwinter, and would be cold and abundant during the hottest and driest ofsummers. This assurance solved the most difficult and serious problem ofranch life in the desert.

  Next Hoyle led Carley down off the knoll to the wide cedar valleyadjacent to the lake. He was enthusiastic over its possibilities. Twosmall corrals and a large one had been erected, the latter having a lowflat barn connected with it. Ground was already being cleared along thelake where alfalfa and hay were to be raised. Carley saw the blue andyellow smoke from burning brush, and the fragrant odor thrilled her.Mexicans were chopping the cleared cedars into firewood for winter use.

  The day was spent before she realized it. At sunset the carpenters andmechanics left in two old Ford cars for town. The Mexicans had a campin the cedars, and the Hoyles had theirs at the spring under the knollwhere Carley had camped with Glenn and the Hutters. Carley watched thegolden rosy sunset, and as the day ended she breathed deeply as if inunutterable relief. Supper found her with appetite she had long sincelost. Twilight brought cold wind, the staccato bark of coyotes, theflicker of camp fires through the cedars. She tried to embrace all hersensations, but they were so rapid and many that she failed.

  The cold, clear, silent night brought back the charm of the desert.How flaming white the stars! The great spire-pointed peaks lifted coldpale-gray outlines up into the deep star-studded sky. Carley walked alittle to and fro, loath to go to her tent, though tired. She wantedcalm. But instead of achieving calmness she grew more and more towards astrange state of exultation.

  Westward, only a matter of twenty or thirty miles, lay the deep rent inthe level desert--Oak Creek Canyon. If Glenn had been there this nightwould have been perfect, yet almost unendurable. She was again gratefulfor his absence. What a surprise she had in store for him! And sheimagined his face in its change of expression when she met him. If onlyhe never learned of her presence in Arizona until she made it known inperson! That she most longed for. Chances were against it, but then herluck had changed. She looked to the eastward where a pale luminosityof afterglow shone in the heavens. Far distant seemed the home ofher childhood, the friends she had scorned and forsaken, the city ofcomplaining and striving millions. If only some miracle might illuminethe minds of her friends, as she felt that hers was to be illumined herein the solitude. But she well realized that not all problems could besolved by a call out of the West. Any open and lonely land that mighthave saved Glenn Kilbourne would have sufficed for her. It was thespirit of the thing and not the letter. It was work of any kind and notonly that of ranch life. Not only the raising of hogs!

  Carley directed stumbling steps toward the light of her tent. Her eyeshad not been used to such black shadow along the ground. She had, too,squeamish feminine fears of hydrophobia skunks, and nameless animalsor reptiles that were imagined denizens of the darkness. She gained hertent and entered. The Mexican, Gino, as he called himself, had lightedher lamp and fire. Carley was chilled through, and the tent felt so warmand cozy that she could
scarcely believe it. She fastened the screendoor, laced the flaps across it, except at the top, and then gaveherself up to the lulling and comforting heat.

  There were plans to perfect; innumerable things to remember; a car andaccessories, horses, saddles, outfits to buy. Carley knew she should sitdown at her table and write and figure, but she could not do it then.

  For a long time she sat over the little stove, toasting her knees andhands, adding some chips now and then to the red coals. And her mindseemed a kaleidoscope of changing visions, thoughts, feelings. At lastshe undressed and blew out the lamp and went to bed.

  Instantly a thick blackness seemed to enfold her and silence as of adead world settled down upon her. Drowsy as she was, she could not closeher eyes nor refrain from listening. Darkness and silence were tangiblethings. She felt them. And they seemed suddenly potent with magic charmto still the tumult of her, to soothe and rest, to create thoughtsshe had never thought before. Rest was more than selfish indulgence.Loneliness was necessary to gain consciousness of the soul. Already farback in the past seemed Carley's other life.

  By and by the dead stillness awoke to faint sounds not beforeperceptible to her--a low, mournful sough of the wind in the cedars,then the faint far-distant note of a coyote, sad as the night andinfinitely wild.

  Days passed. Carley worked in the mornings with her hands and herbrains. In the afternoons she rode and walked and climbed with a doubleobject, to work herself into fit physical condition and to explore everynook and corner of her six hundred and forty acres.

  Then what she had expected and deliberately induced by her effortsquickly came to pass. Just as the year before she had sufferedexcruciating pain from aching muscles, and saddle blisters, and walkingblisters, and a very rending of her bones, so now she fell victim tothem again. In sunshine and rain she faced the desert. Sunburn and stingof sleet were equally to be endured. And that abomination, the hatefulblinding sandstorm, did not daunt her. But the weary hours of abnegationto this physical torture at least held one consoling recompense ascompared with her experience of last year, and it was that there was noone interested to watch for her weaknesses and failures and blunders.She could fight it out alone.

  Three weeks of this self-imposed strenuous training wore by beforeCarley was free enough from weariness and pain to experience othersensations. Her general health, evidently, had not been so good as whenshe had first visited Arizona. She caught cold and suffered other illsattendant upon an abrupt change of climate and condition. But doggedlyshe kept at her task. She rode when she should have been in bed; shewalked when she should have ridden; she climbed when she should havekept to level ground. And finally by degrees so gradual as not to benoticed except in the sum of them she began to mend.

  Meanwhile the construction of her house went on with uninterruptedrapidity. When the low, slanting, wide-eaved roof was completed Carleylost further concern about rainstorms. Let them come. When the plumbingwas all in and Carley saw verification of Hoyle's assurance that itwould mean a gravity supply of water ample and continual, she lost herlast concern as to the practicability of the work. That, and the earningof her endurance, seemed to bring closer a wonderful reward, stillnameless and spiritual, that had been unattainable, but now breathed toher on the fragrant desert wind and in the brooding silence.

  The time came when each afternoon's ride or climb called to Carley withincreasing delight. But the fact that she must soon reveal to Glenn herpresence and transformation did not seem to be all the cause. Shecould ride without pain, walk without losing her breath, work withoutblistering her hands; and in this there was compensation. The buildingof the house that was to become a home, the development of waterresources and land that meant the making of a ranch--these did notaltogether constitute the anticipation of content. To be active, toaccomplish things, to recall to mind her knowledge of manual training,of domestic science, of designing and painting, to learn to cook--thesewere indeed measures full of reward, but they were not all. In herwondering, pondering meditation she arrived at the point where shetried to assign to her love the growing fullness of her life. This,too, splendid and all-pervading as it was, she had to reject. Someexceedingly illusive and vital significance of life had insidiously cometo Carley.

  One afternoon, with the sky full of white and black rolling clouds and acold wind sweeping through the cedars, she halted to rest and escape thechilling gale for a while. In a sunny place, under the lee of a gravelbank, she sought refuge. It was warm here because of the reflectedsunlight and the absence of wind. The sand at the bottom of the bankheld a heat that felt good to her cold hands. All about her and over herswept the keen wind, rustling the sage, seeping the sand, swishing thecedars, but she was out of it, protected and insulated. The sky aboveshowed blue between the threatening clouds. There were no birds orliving creatures in sight. Certainly the place had little of coloror beauty or grace, nor could she see beyond a few rods. Lying there,without any particular reason that she was conscious of, she suddenlyfelt shot through and through with exhilaration.

  Another day, the warmest of the spring so far, she rode a Navajo mustangshe had recently bought from a passing trader; and at the farthest endof her section, in rough wooded and ridged ground she had not explored,she found a canyon with red walls and pine trees and gleaming streamletand glades of grass and jumbles of rock. It was a miniature canyon, tobe sure, only a quarter of a mile long, and as deep as the height of alofty pine, and so narrow that it seemed only the width of a lane, butit had all the features of Oak Creek Canyon, and so sufficed for theexultant joy of possession. She explored it. The willow brakes and oakthickets harbored rabbits and birds. She saw the white flags of deerrunning away down the open. Up at the head where the canyon boxed sheflushed a flock of wild turkeys. They ran like ostriches and flew likegreat brown chickens. In a cavern Carley found the den of a bear, and inanother place the bleached bones of a steer.

  She lingered here in the shaded depths with a feeling as if she wereindeed lost to the world. These big brown and seamy-barked pines withtheir spreading gnarled arms and webs of green needles belonged to her,as also the tiny brook, the blue bells smiling out of the ferns, thesingle stalk of mescal on a rocky ledge.

  Never had sun and earth, tree and rock, seemed a part of her being untilthen. She would become a sun-worshiper and a lover of the earth. Thatcanyon had opened there to sky and light for millions of years; anddoubtless it had harbored sheep herders, Indians, cliff dwellers,barbarians. She was a woman with white skin and a cultivated mind,but the affinity for them existed in her. She felt it, and that anunderstanding of it would be good for body and soul.

  Another day she found a little grove of jack pines growing on a flatmesa-like bluff, the highest point on her land. The trees were smalland close together, mingling their green needles overhead and theirdiscarded brown ones on the ground. From here Carley could see afar toall points of the compass--the slow green descent to the south and theclimb to the black-timbered distance; the ridged and canyoned country tothe west, red vents choked with green and rimmed with gray; to the norththe grand upflung mountain kingdom crowned with snow; and to the eastthe vastness of illimitable space, the openness and wildness, the chasedand beaten mosaic of colored sands and rocks.

  Again and again she visited this lookout and came to love its isolation,its command of wondrous prospects, its power of suggestion to herthoughts. She became a creative being, in harmony with the live thingsaround her. The great life-dispensing sun poured its rays down upon her,as if to ripen her; and the earth seemed warm, motherly, immense withits all-embracing arms. She no longer plucked the bluebells to pressto her face, but leaned to them. Every blade of gramma grass, with itsshining bronze-tufted seed head, had significance for her. The scentsof the desert began to have meaning for her. She sensed within her theworking of a great leveling process through which supreme happinesswould come.

  June! The rich, thick, amber light, like a transparent reflection fromsome intense golden medium, seemed to float
in the warm air. The skybecame an azure blue. In the still noontides, when the bees hummeddrowsily and the flies buzzed, vast creamy-white columnar clouds rolledup from the horizon, like colossal ships with bulging sails. And summerwith its rush of growing things was at hand.

  Carley rode afar, seeking in strange places the secret that eluded her.Only a few days now until she would ride down to Oak Creek Canyon! Therewas a low, singing melody of wind in the cedars. The earth becametoo beautiful in her magnified sight. A great truth was dawning uponher--that the sacrifice of what she had held as necessary to theenjoyment of life--that the strain of conflict, the labor of hands,the forcing of weary body, the enduring of pain, the contact with theearth--had served somehow to rejuvenate her blood, quicken her pulse,intensify her sensorial faculties, thrill her very soul, lead her intothe realm of enchantment.

  One afternoon a dull, lead-black-colored cinder knoll tempted her toexplore its bare heights. She rode up until her mustang sank to hisknees and could climb no farther. From there she essayed the ascenton foot. It took labor. But at last she gained the summit, burning,sweating, panting.

  The cinder hill was an extinct crater of a volcano. In the center of itlay a deep bowl, wondrously symmetrical, and of a dark lusterless hue.Not a blade of grass was there, nor a plant. Carley conceived a desireto go to the bottom of this pit. She tried the cinders of the edge ofthe slope. They had the same consistency as those of the ascent shehad overcome. But here there was a steeper incline. A tingling rush ofdaring seemed to drive her over the rounded rim, and, once starteddown, it was as if she wore seven-league boots. Fear left her. Only anexhilarating emotion consumed her. If there were danger, it matterednot. She strode down with giant steps, she plunged, she startedavalanches to ride them until they stopped, she leaped, and lastly shefell, to roll over the soft cinders to the pit.

  There she lay. It seemed a comfortable resting place. The pit wasscarcely six feet across. She gazed upward and was astounded. Howsteep was the rounded slope on all sides! There were no sides; it wasa circle. She looked up at a round lake of deep translucent sky. Suchdepth of blue, such exquisite rare color! Carley imagined she could gazethrough it to the infinite beyond.

  She closed her eyes and rested. Soon the laboring of heart and breathcalmed to normal, so that she could not hear them. Then she layperfectly motionless. With eyes shut she seemed still to look, and whatshe saw was the sunlight through the blood and flesh of her eyelids. Itwas red, as rare a hue as the blue of sky. So piercing did it grow thatshe had to shade her eyes with her arm.

  Again the strange, rapt glow suffused her body. Never in all her lifehad she been so absolutely alone. She might as well have been in hergrave. She might have been dead to all earthy things and reveling inspirit in the glory of the physical that had escaped her in life. Andshe abandoned herself to this influence.

  She loved these dry, dusty cinders; she loved the crater here hiddenfrom all save birds; she loved the desert, the earth--above all, thesun. She was a product of the earth--a creation of the sun. She hadbeen an infinitesimal atom of inert something that had quickened to lifeunder the blazing magic of the sun. Soon her spirit would abandon herbody and go on, while her flesh and bone returned to dust. This frame ofhers, that carried the divine spark, belonged to the earth. She had onlybeen ignorant, mindless, feelingless, absorbed in the seeking of gain,blind to the truth. She had to give. She had been created a woman; shebelonged to nature; she was nothing save a mother of the future. She hadloved neither Glenn Kilbourne nor life itself. False education, falsestandards, false environment had developed her into a woman who imaginedshe must feed her body on the milk and honey of indulgence.

  She was abased now--woman as animal, though saved and uplifted by herpower of immortality. Transcendental was her female power to link lifewith the future. The power of the plant seed, the power of the earth,the heat of the sun, the inscrutable creation-spirit of nature, almostthe divinity of God--these were all hers because she was a woman. Thatwas the great secret, aloof so long. That was what had been wrong withlife--the woman blind to her meaning, her power, her mastery.

  So she abandoned herself to the woman within her. She held out herarms to the blue abyss of heaven as if to embrace the universe. She wasNature. She kissed the dusty cinders and pressed her breast againstthe warm slope. Her heart swelled to bursting with a glorious andunutterable happiness.

  That afternoon as the sun was setting under a gold-white scroll of cloudCarley got back to Deep Lake.

  A familiar lounging figure crossed her sight. It approached to where shehad dismounted. Charley, the sheep herder of Oak Creek!

  "Howdy!" he drawled, with his queer smile. "So it was you-all who hadthis Deep Lake section?"

  "Yes. And how are you, Charley?" she replied, shaking hands with him.

  "Me? Aw, I'm tip-top. I'm shore glad you got this ranch. Reckon I'll hityou for a job."

  "I'd give it to you. But aren't you working for the Hutters?"

  "Nope. Not any more. Me an' Stanton had a row with them."

  How droll and dry he was! His lean, olive-brown face, with its guilelessclear eyes and his lanky figure in blue jeans vividly recalled Oak Creekto Carley.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," returned she haltingly, somehow checked in her warmrush of thought. "Stanton?... Did he quit too?"

  "Yep. He sure did."

  "What was the trouble?"

  "Reckon because Flo made up to Kilbourne," replied Charley, with a grin.

  "Ah! I--I see," murmured Carley. A blankness seemed to wave over her.It extended to the air without, to the sense of the golden sunset. Itpassed. What should she ask--what out of a thousand sudden flashingqueries? "Are--are the Hutters back?"

  "Sure. Been back several days. I reckoned Hoyle told you. Mebbe hedidn't know, though. For nobody's been to town."

  "How is--how are they all?" faltered Carley. There was a strange wallhere between her thought and her utterance.

  "Everybody satisfied, I reckon," replied Charley.

  "Flo--how is she?" burst out Carley.

  "Aw, Flo's loony over her husband," drawled Charley, his clear eyes onCarley's.

  "Husband!" she gasped.

  "Sure. Flo's gone an' went an' done what I swore on."

  "Who?" whispered Carley, and the query was a terrible blade piercing herheart.

  "Now who'd you reckon on?" asked Charley, with his slow grin.

  Carley's lips were mute.

  "Wal, it was your old beau thet you wouldn't have," returned Charley,as he gathered up his long frame, evidently to leave. "Kilbourne! He an'Flo came back from the Tonto all hitched up."

  CHAPTER XII

  Vague sense of movement, of darkness, and of cold attended Carley'sconsciousness for what seemed endless time.

  A fall over rocks and a severe thrust from a sharp branch brought anacute appreciation of her position, if not of her mental state. Nighthad fallen. The stars were out. She had stumbled over a low ledge.Evidently she had wandered around, dazedly and aimlessly, until broughtto her senses by pain. But for a gleam of campfires through the cedarsshe would have been lost. It did not matter. She was lost, anyhow. Whatwas it that had happened?

  Charley, the sheep herder! Then the thunderbolt of his words burst uponher, and she collapsed to the cold stones. She lay quivering from headto toe. She dug her fingers into the moss and lichen. "Oh, God, tothink--after all--it happened!" she moaned. There had been a rendingwithin her breast, as of physical violence, from which she now sufferedanguish. There were a thousand stinging nerves. There was a mortalsickness of horror, of insupportable heartbreaking loss. She could notendure it. She could not live under it.

  She lay there until energy supplanted shock. Then she rose to rush intothe darkest shadows of the cedars, to grope here and there, hanging herhead, wringing her hands, beating her breast. "It can't be true," shecried. "Not after my struggle--my victory--not now!" But there had beenno victory. And now it was too late. She was betrayed, ruined, lost.That wonderful love had wrou
ght transformation in her--and now havoc.Once she fell against the branches of a thick cedar that upheld her. Thefragrance which had been sweet was now bitter. Life that had been blisswas now hateful! She could not keep still for a single moment.

  Black night, cedars, brush, rocks, washes, seemed not to obstruct her.In a frenzy she rushed on, tearing her dress, her hands, her hair.Violence of some kind was imperative. All at once a pale gleaming openspace, shimmering under the stars, lay before her. It was water. DeepLake! And instantly a hideous terrible longing to destroy herselfobsessed her. She had no fear. She could have welcomed the cold, slimydepths that meant oblivion. But could they really bring oblivion? A yearago she would have believed so, and would no longer have endured suchagony. She had changed. A cursed strength had come to her, and it wasthis strength that now augmented her torture. She flung wide her arms tothe pitiless white stars and looked up at them. "My hope, my faith,my love have failed me," she whispered. "They have been a lie. I wentthrough hell for them. And now I've nothing to live for.... Oh, let meend it all!"

  If she prayed to the stars for mercy, it was denied her. Passionlesslythey blazed on. But she could not kill herself. In that hour death wouldhave been the only relief and peace left to her. Stricken by the crueltyof her fate, she fell back against the stones and gave up to grief.Nothing was left but fierce pain. The youth and vitality and intensityof her then locked arms with anguish and torment and a cheated,unsatisfied love. Strength of mind and body involuntarily resisted theravages of this catastrophe. Will power seemed nothing, but the fleshof her, that medium of exquisite sensation, so full of life, so prone tojoy, refused to surrender. The part of her that felt fought terribly forits heritage.

  All night long Carley lay there. The crescent moon went down, the starsmoved on their course, the coyotes ceased to wail, the wind died away,the lapping of the waves along the lake shore wore to gentle splash, thewhispering of the insects stopped as the cold of dawn approached. Thedarkest hour fell--hour of silence, solitude, and melancholy, when thedesert lay tranced, cold, waiting, mournful without light of moon orstars or sun.

  In the gray dawn Carley dragged her bruised and aching body back to hertent, and, fastening the door, she threw off wet clothes and boots andfell upon her bed. Slumber of exhaustion came to her.

  When she awoke the tent was light and the moving shadows of cedar boughson the white canvas told that the sun was straight above. Carley achedas never before. A deep pang seemed invested in every bone. Her heartfelt swollen out of proportion to its space in her breast. Her breathingcame slow and it hurt. Her blood was sluggish. Suddenly she shut hereyes. She loathed the light of day. What was it that had happened?

  Then the brutal truth flashed over her again, in aspect new, withall the old bitterness. For an instant she experienced a suffocatingsensation as if the canvas had sagged under the burden of heavy air andwas crushing her breast and heart. Then wave after wave of emotion sweptover her. The storm winds of grief and passion were loosened again. Andshe writhed in her misery.

  Some one knocked on her door. The Mexican woman called anxiously. Carleyawoke to the fact that her presence was not solitary on the physicalearth, even if her soul seemed stricken to eternal loneliness. Even inthe desert there was a world to consider. Vanity that had bled to death,pride that had been crushed, availed her not here. But something elsecame to her support. The lesson of the West had been to endure, not toshirk--to face an issue, not to hide. Carley got up, bathed, dressed,brushed and arranged her dishevelled hair. The face she saw in themirror excited her amaze and pity. Then she went out in answer to thecall for dinner. But she could not eat. The ordinary functions of lifeappeared to be deadened.

  The day happened to be Sunday, and therefore the workmen were absent.Carley had the place to herself. How the half-completed house mockedher! She could not bear to look at it. What use could she make of itnow? Flo Hutter had become the working comrade of Glenn Kilbourne, themistress of his cabin. She was his wife and she would be the mother ofhis children.

  That thought gave birth to the darkest hour of Carley Burch's life. Shebecame possessed as by a thousand devils. She became merely a femalerobbed of her mate. Reason was not in her, nor charity, nor justice.All that was abnormal in human nature seemed coalesced in her, dominant,passionate, savage, terrible. She hated with an incredible and insaneferocity. In the seclusion of her tent, crouched on her bed, silent,locked, motionless, she yet was the embodiment of all terrible strifeand storm in nature. Her heart was a maelstrom and would have whirledand sucked down to hell all the beings that were men. Her soul wasa bottomless gulf, filled with the gales and the fires of jealousy,superhuman to destroy.

  That fury consumed all her remaining strength, and from the relapse shesank to sleep.

  Morning brought the inevitable reaction. However long her otherstruggles, this monumental and final one would be brief. She realizedthat, yet was unable to understand how it could be possible, unlessshock or death or mental aberration ended the fight. An eternity ofemotion lay back between this awakening of intelligence and the hour ofher fall into the clutches of primitive passion.

  That morning she faced herself in the mirror and asked, "Now--what do Iowe you?" It was not her voice that answered. It was beyond her. Butit said: "Go on! You are cut adrift. You are alone. You owe none butyourself!... Go on! Not backward--not to the depths--but up--upward!"

  She shuddered at such a decree. How impossible for her! All animal, allwoman, all emotion, how could she live on the cold, pure heights? Yetshe owed something intangible and inscrutable to herself. Was it thething that woman lacked physically, yet contained hidden in her soul?An element of eternal spirit to rise! Because of heartbreak and ruinand irreparable loss must she fall? Was loss of love and husband andchildren only a test? The present hour would be swallowed in the sum oflife's trials. She could not go back. She would not go down. There waswrenched from her tried and sore heart an unalterable and unquenchabledecision--to make her own soul prove the evolution of woman. Vessel ofblood and flesh she might be, doomed by nature to the reproduction ofher kind, but she had in her the supreme spirit and power to carry onthe progress of the ages--the climb of woman out of the darkness.

  Carley went out to the workmen. The house should be completed and shewould live in it. Always there was the stretching and illimitable desertto look at, and the grand heave upward of the mountains. Hoyle was fullof zest for the practical details of the building. He saw nothing ofthe havoc wrought in her. Nor did the other workmen glance more thancasually at her. In this Carley lost something of a shirking fear thather loss and grief were patent to all eyes.

  That afternoon she mounted the most spirited of the mustangs she hadpurchased from the Indians. To govern him and stick on him required allher energy. And she rode him hard and far, out across the desert, acrossmile after mile of cedar forest, clear to the foothills. She restedthere, absorbed in gazing desertward, and upon turning back again, sheran him over the level stretches. Wind and branch threshed her seeminglyto ribbons. Violence seemed good for her. A fall had no fear for hernow. She reached camp at dusk, hot as fire, breathless and strengthless.But she had earned something. Such action required constant use ofmuscle and mind. If need be she could drive both to the very furthermostlimit. She could ride and ride--until the future, like the immensity ofthe desert there, might swallow her. She changed her clothes andrested a while. The call to supper found her hungry. In this factshe discovered mockery of her grief. Love was not the food of life.Exhausted nature's need of rest and sleep was no respecter of a woman'semotion.

  Next day Carley rode northward, wildly and fearlessly, as if thisconscious activity was the initiative of an endless number of rides thatwere to save her. As before the foothills called her, and she went onuntil she came to a very high one.

  Carley dismounted from her panting horse, answering the familiar impulseto attain heights by her own effort.

  "Am I only a weakling?" she asked herself. "Only a creature mined bythe fev
er of the soul!... Thrown from one emotion to another? Never thesame. Yearning, suffering, sacrificing, hoping, and changing--foreverthe same! What is it that drives me? A great city with all itsattractions has failed to help me realize my life. So have friendsfailed. So has the world. What can solitude and grandeur do?... All thisobsession of mine--all this strange feeling for simple elemental earthlythings likewise will fail me. Yet I am driven. They would call me a madwoman."

  It took Carley a full hour of slow body-bending labor to climb to thesummit of that hill. High, steep, and rugged, it resisted ascension. Butat last she surmounted it and sat alone on the heights, with naked eyes,and an unconscious prayer on her lips.

  What was it that had happened? Could there be here a different answerfrom that which always mocked her?

  She had been a girl, not accountable for loss of mother, for choiceof home and education. She had belonged to a class. She had grown towomanhood in it. She had loved, and in loving had escaped the evil ofher day, if not its taint. She had lived only for herself. Consciencehad awakened--but, alas! too late. She had overthrown the sordid,self-seeking habit of life; she had awakened to real womanhood; she hadfought the insidious spell of modernity and she had defeated it; shehad learned the thrill of taking root in new soil, the pain and joyof labor, the bliss of solitude, the promise of home and love andmotherhood. But she had gathered all these marvelous things to her soultoo late for happiness.

  "Now it is answered," she declared aloud. "That is what has happened?...And all that is past.... Is there anything left? If so what?"

  She flung her query out to the winds of the desert. But the desertseemed too gray, too vast, too remote, too aloof, too measureless. Itwas not concerned with her little life. Then she turned to the mountainkingdom.

  It seemed overpoweringly near at hand. It loomed above her to pierce thefleecy clouds. It was only a stupendous upheaval of earth-crust, grownover at the base by leagues and leagues of pine forest, belted along themiddle by vast slanting zigzag slopes of aspen, rent and riven towardthe heights into canyon and gorge, bared above to cliffs and corners ofcraggy rock, whitened at the sky-piercing peaks by snow. Its beauty andsublimity were lost upon Carley now; she was concerned with its travail,its age, its endurance, its strength. And she studied it with magnifiedsight.

  What incomprehensible subterranean force had swelled those immenseslopes and lifted the huge bulk aloft to the clouds? Cataclysm ofnature--the expanding or shrinking of the earth--vast volcanic actionunder the surface! Whatever it had been, it had left its expression ofthe travail of the universe. This mountain mass had been hot gas whenflung from the parent sun, and now it was solid granite. What had itendured in the making? What indeed had been its dimensions before themillions of years of its struggle?

  Eruption, earthquake, avalanche, the attrition of glacier, the erosionof water, the cracking of frost, the weathering of rain and wind andsnow--these it had eternally fought and resisted in vain, yet stillit stood magnificent, frowning, battle-scarred and undefeated. Itssky-piercing peaks were as cries for mercy to the Infinite. This oldmountain realized its doom. It had to go, perhaps to make room fora newer and better kingdom. But it endured because of the spirit ofnature. The great notched circular line of rock below and between thepeaks, in the body of the mountains, showed where in ages past theheart of living granite had blown out, to let loose on all the nearsurrounding desert the streams of black lava and the hills of blackcinders. Despite its fringe of green it was hoary with age. Everylooming gray-faced wall, massive and sublime, seemed a monument of itsmastery over time. Every deep-cut canyon, showing the skeleton ribs, thecaverns and caves, its avalanche-carved slides, its long, fan-shaped,spreading taluses, carried conviction to the spectator that it was but afrail bit of rock, that its life was little and brief, that upon it hadbeen laid the merciless curse of nature. Change! Change must unknitthe very knots of the center of the earth. So its strength lay in thesublimity of its defiance. It meant to endure to the last rolling grainof sand. It was a dead mountain of rock, without spirit, yet it taught agrand lesson to the seeing eye.

  Life was only a part, perhaps an infinitely small part of nature's plan.Death and decay were just as important to her inscrutable design. Theuniverse had not been created for life, ease, pleasure, and happinessof a man creature developed from lower organisms. If nature's secret wasthe developing of a spirit through all time, Carley divined that she hadit within her. So the present meant little.

  "I have no right to be unhappy," concluded Carley. "I had no right toGlenn Kilbourne. I failed him. In that I failed myself. Neither life nornature failed me--nor love. It is no longer a mystery. Unhappiness isonly a change. Happiness itself is only change. So what does it matter?The great thing is to see life--to understand--to feel--to work--tofight--to endure. It is not my fault I am here. But it is my fault ifI leave this strange old earth the poorer for my failure.... I will nolonger be little. I will find strength. I will endure.... I still haveeyes, ears, nose, taste. I can feel the sun, the wind, the nip of frost.Must I slink like a craven because I've lost the love of one man? Must Ihate Flo Hutter because she will make Glenn happy? Never!... All of thisseems better so, because through it I am changed. I might have lived on,a selfish clod!"

  Carley turned from the mountain kingdom and faced her future with theprofound and sad and far-seeing look that had come with her lesson. Sheknew what to give. Sometime and somewhere there would be recompense.She would hide her wound in the faith that time would heal it. And theordeal she set herself, to prove her sincerity and strength, was to ridedown to Oak Creek Canyon.

  Carley did not wait many days. Strange how the old vanity held her backuntil something of the havoc in her face should be gone!

  One morning she set out early, riding her best horse, and she took asheep trail across country. The distance by road was much farther. TheJune morning was cool, sparkling, fragrant. Mocking birds sang from thetopmost twig of cedars; doves cooed in the pines; sparrow hawks sailedlow over the open grassy patches. Desert primroses showed their roundedpink clusters in sunny places, and here and there burned the carmine ofIndian paintbrush. Jack rabbits and cotton-tails bounded and scamperedaway through the sage. The desert had life and color and movement thisJune day. And as always there was the dry fragrance on the air.

  Her mustang had been inured to long and consistent travel over thedesert. Her weight was nothing to him and he kept to the swinging lopefor miles. As she approached Oak Creek Canyon, however, she drew him toa trot, and then a walk. Sight of the deep red-walled and green-flooredcanyon was a shock to her.

  The trail came out on the road that led to Ryan's sheep camp, at a pointseveral miles west of the cabin where Carley had encountered HazeRuff. She remembered the curves and stretches, and especially the steepjump-off where the road led down off the rim into the canyon. Here shedismounted and walked. From the foot of this descent she knew every rodof the way would be familiar to her, and, womanlike, she wanted toturn away and fly from them. But she kept on and mounted again at levelground.

  The murmur of the creek suddenly assailed her ears--sweet, sad,memorable, strangely powerful to hurt. Yet the sound seemed of long ago.Down here summer had advanced. Rich thick foliage overspread the windingroad of sand. Then out of the shade she passed into the sunnier regionsof isolated pines. Along here she had raced Calico with Glenn's bay;and here she had caught him, and there was the place she had fallen.She halted a moment under the pine tree where Glenn had held her in hisarms. Tears dimmed her eyes. If only she had known then the truth, thereality! But regrets were useless.

  By and by a craggy red wall loomed above the trees, and its pipe-organconformation was familiar to Carley. She left the road and turned to godown to the creek. Sycamores and maples and great bowlders, and mossyledges overhanging the water, and a huge sentinel pine marked the spotwhere she and Glenn had eaten their lunch that last day. Her mustangsplashed into the clear water and halted to drink. Beyond, through thetrees, Carley saw the sunny red
-earthed clearing that was Glenn's farm.She looked, and fought herself, and bit her quivering lip until shetasted blood. Then she rode out into the open.

  The whole west side of the canyon had been cleared and cultivated andplowed. But she gazed no farther. She did not want to see the spot whereshe had given Glenn his ring and had parted from him. She rode on. Ifshe could pass West Fork she believed her courage would rise to thecompletion of this ordeal. Places were what she feared. Places that shehad loved while blindly believing she hated! There the narrow gap ofgreen and blue split the looming red wall. She was looking into WestFork. Up there stood the cabin. How fierce a pang rent her breast! Shefaltered at the crossing of the branch stream, and almost surrendered.The water murmured, the leaves rustled, the bees hummed, the birdssang--all with some sad sweetness that seemed of the past.

  Then the trail leading up West Fork was like a barrier. She saw horsetracks in it. Next she descried boot tracks the shape of which was sowell-remembered that it shook her heart. There were fresh tracks in thesand, pointing in the direction of the Lodge. Ah! that was where Glennlived now. Carley strained at her will to keep it fighting her memory.The glory and the dream were gone!

  A touch of spur urged her mustang into a gallop. The splashing ford ofthe creek--the still, eddying pool beyond--the green orchards--the whitelacy waterfall--and Lolomi Lodge!

  Nothing had altered. But Carley seemed returning after many years.Slowly she dismounted--slowly she climbed the porch steps. Was there noone at home? Yet the vacant doorway, the silence--something attested tothe knowledge of Carley's presence. Then suddenly Mrs. Hutter flutteredout with Flo behind her.

  "You dear girl--I'm so glad!" cried Mrs. Hutter, her voice trembling.

  "I'm glad to see you, too," said Carley, bending to receive Mrs.Hutter's embrace. Carley saw dim eyes--the stress of agitation, but nosurprise.

  "Oh, Carley!" burst out the Western girl, with voice rich and full, yettremulous.

  "Flo, I've come to wish you happiness," replied Carley, very low.

  Was it the same Flo? This seemed more of a woman--strange now--white andstrained--beautiful, eager, questioning. A cry of gladness burst fromher. Carley felt herself enveloped in strong close clasp--and then awarm, quick kiss of joy. It shocked her, yet somehow thrilled. Sure wasthe welcome here. Sure was the strained situation, also, but the voicerang too glad a note for Carley. It touched her deeply, yet she couldnot understand. She had not measured the depth of Western friendship.

  "Have you--seen Glenn?" queried Flo, breathlessly.

  "Oh no, indeed not," replied Carley, slowly gaining composure. Thenervous agitation of these women had stilled her own. "I just rode upthe trail. Where is he?"

  "He was here--a moment ago," panted Flo. "Oh, Carley, we sure arelocoed. ... Why, we only heard an hour ago--that you were at DeepLake.... Charley rode in. He told us.... I thought my heart would break.Poor Glenn! When he heard it.... But never mind me. Jump your horse andrun to West Fork!"

  The spirit of her was like the strength of her arms as she hurriedCarley across the porch and shoved her down the steps.

  "Climb on and run, Carley," cried Flo. "If you only knew how glad he'llbe that you came!"

  Carley leaped into the saddle and wheeled the mustang. But she had noanswer for the girl's singular, almost wild exultance. Then like ashot the spirited mustang was off down the lane. Carley wondered withswelling heart. Was her coming such a wondrous surprise--so unexpectedand big in generosity--something that would make Kilbourne as glad as ithad seemed to make Flo? Carley thrilled to this assurance.

  Down the lane she flew. The red walls blurred and the sweet wind whippedher face. At the trail she swerved the mustang, but did not check hisgait. Under the great pines he sped and round the bulging wall. At therocky incline leading to the creek she pulled the fiery animal to atrot. How low and clear the water! As Carley forded it fresh cool dropssplashed into her face. Again she spurred her mount and again trees andwalls rushed by. Up and down the yellow bits of trail--on over the brownmats of pine needles--until there in the sunlight shone the little graylog cabin with a tall form standing in the door. One instant the canyontilted on end for Carley and she was riding into the blue sky. Then somemagic of soul sustained her, so that she saw clearly. Reaching the cabinshe reined in her mustang.

  "Hello, Glenn! Look who's here!" she cried, not wholly failing ofgayety.

  He threw up his sombrero.

  "Whoopee!" he yelled, in stentorian voice that rolled across the canyonand bellowed in hollow echo and then clapped from wall to wall. Theunexpected Western yell, so strange from Glenn, disconcerted Carley. Hadhe only answered her spirit of greeting? Had hers rung false?

  But he was coming to her. She had seen the bronze of his face turn towhite. How gaunt and worn he looked. Older he appeared, with deeperlines and whiter hair. His jaw quivered.

  "Carley Burch, so it was you?" he queried, hoarsely.

  "Glenn, I reckon it was," she replied. "I bought your Deep Lake ranchsite. I came back too late.... But it is never too late for somethings.... I've come to wish you and Flo all the happiness in theworld--and to say we must be friends."

  The way he looked at her made her tremble. He strode up beside themustang, and he was so tall that his shoulder came abreast of her. Heplaced a big warm hand on hers, as it rested, ungloved, on the pommel ofthe saddle.

  "Have you seen Flo?" he asked.

  "I just left her. It was funny--the way she rushed me off after you. Asif there weren't two--"

  Was it Glenn's eyes or the movement of his hand that checked herutterance? His gaze pierced her soul. His hand slid along her arm to herwaist--around it. Her heart seemed to burst.

  "Kick your feet out of the stirrups," he ordered.

  Instinctively she obeyed. Then with a strong pull he hauled her halfout of the saddle, pellmell into his arms. Carley had no resistance. Shesank limp, in an agony of amaze. Was this a dream? Swift and hard hislips met hers--and again--and again....

  "Oh, my God!--Glenn, are--you--mad?" she whispered, almost swooning.

  "Sure--I reckon I am," he replied, huskily, and pulled her all the wayout of the saddle.

  Carley would have fallen but for his support. She could not think. Shewas all instinct. Only the amaze--the sudden horror--drifted--faded asbefore fires of her heart!

  "Kiss me!" he commanded.

  She would have kissed him if death were the penalty. How his faceblurred in her dimmed sight! Was that a strange smile? Then he held herback from him.

  "Carley--you came to wish Flo and me happiness?" he asked.

  "Oh, yes--yes.... Pity me, Glenn--let me go. I meant well.... Ishould--never have come."

  "Do you love me?" he went on, with passionate, shaking clasp.

  "God help me--I do--I do!... And now it will kill me!"

  "What did that damned fool Charley tell you?"

  The strange content of his query, the trenchant force of it, brought herupright, with sight suddenly cleared. Was this giant the tragic Glennwho had strode to her from the cabin door?

  "Charley told me--you and Flo--were married," she whispered.

  "You didn't believe him!" returned Glenn.

  She could no longer speak. She could only see her lover, as iftransfigured, limned dark against the looming red wall.

  "That was one of Charley's queer jokes. I told you to beware of him. Flois married, yes--and very happy.... I'm unutterably happy, too--but I'mnot married. Lee Stanton was the lucky bridegroom.... Carley, the momentI saw you I knew you had come back to me."