The Call of the Canyon

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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.

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