The Call of the Canyon

Z >> Zane Grey >> The Call of the Canyon

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

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. Hutter.
"Tom--that's Flo's father--took a likin' to Glenn Kilbourne when he first
came to Oak Creek over a year ago. I wonder if you all know how sick that
soldier boy was. . . . Well, he lay on his back for two solid weeks--in the
room we're givin' you. An' I for one didn't think he'd ever get up. But he
did. An' he got better. An' after a while he went to work for Tom. Then six
months an' more ago he invested in the sheep business with Tom. He lived
with us until he built his cabin up West Fork. He an' Flo have run together
a good deal, an' naturally he told her about you. So you see you're not a
stranger. An' we want you to feel you're with friends."

"I thank you, Mrs. Hutter," replied Carley, feelingly. "I never could thank
you enough for being good to Glenn. I did not know he was so--so sick. At
first he wrote but seldom."

"Reckon he never wrote you or told you what he did in the war," declared
Mrs. Hutter.

"Indeed he never did!"

"Well, I'll tell you some day. For Tom found out all about him. Got some of
it from a soldier who came to Flagstaff for lung trouble. He'd been in the
same company with Glenn. We didn't know this boy's name while he was in
Flagstaff. But later Tom found out. John Henderson. He was only twenty-two,
a fine lad. An' he died in 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 be made unhappy
now. . . . Glenn nearly died here. Mother or I never left his side--for a
while there--when life was so bad."

She showed Carley how to open the little stove and put the short billets of
wood inside and work the damper; and cautioning her to keep an eye on it so
that it would not get too hot, she left Carley to herself.

Carley found herself in an unfamiliar mood. There came a leap of her heart
every time she thought of the meeting with Glenn, so soon now to be, but it
was not that which was unfamiliar. She seemed to have a difficult approach
to undefined and unusual thoughts. All this was so different from her regular
life. Besides she was tired. But these explanations did not suffice. There
was a pang in her breast which must owe its origin to the fact that Glenn
Kilbourne had been ill in this little room and some other girl than Carley
Burch had nursed him. "Am I jealous?" she whispered. "No!" But she knew in
her heart that she lied. A woman could no more help being jealous, under
such circumstances, than she could help the beat and throb of her blood.
Nevertheless, Carley was glad Flo Hutter had been there, and always she
would be grateful to her for that kindness.

Carley disrobed and, donning her dressing gown, she unpacked her bags and
hung her things upon pegs under the curtained shelves. Then she lay down to
rest, with no intention of slumber. But there was a strange magic in the
fragrance of the room, like the piny tang outdoors, and in the feel of the
bed, and especially in the low, dreamy hum and murmur of the waterfall. She
fell asleep. When she awakened it was five o'clock. The fire in the stove
was out, but the water was still warm. She bathed and dressed, not without
care, yet as swiftly as was her habit at home; and she wore white because
Glenn had always liked her best in white. But it was assuredly not a gown
to wear in a country house where draughts of cold air filled the unheated
rooms and halls. So she threw round her a warm sweater-shawl, with colorful
bars becoming to her dark eyes and hair.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17