The Call of the Canyon

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"Carley, the day is far spent," he said, gayly. "We want to roll up your
bedding. Will you get out of it?"

"Hello, Glenn! What time is it?" she replied.

"It's nearly six."

"What! . . . Do you expect me to get up at that ungodly hour?"

"We're all up. Flo's eating breakfast. It's going to be a bad day, I'm
afraid. And we want to get packed and moving before it starts to rain."

"Why do girls leave home?" she asked, tragically.

"To make poor devils happy, of course," he replied, smiling down upon her.

That smile made up to Carley for all the clamoring sensations of stiff,
sore muscles. It made her ashamed that she could not fling herself into
this adventure with all her heart. Carley essayed to sit up. "Oh, I'm
afraid my anatomy has become disconnected! . . . Glenn, do I look a
sight?" She never would have asked him that if she had not known she could
bear inspection at such an inopportune moment.

"You look great," he asserted, heartily. "You've got color. And as for your
hair--I like to see it mussed that way. You were always one to have it
dressed--just so. . . . Come, Carley, rustle now."

Thus adjured, Carley did her best under adverse circumstances. And she was
gritting her teeth and complimenting herself when she arrived at the task
of pulling on her boots. They were damp and her feet appeared to have
swollen. Moreover, her ankles were sore. But she accomplished getting into
them at the expense of much pain and sundry utterances more forcible than
elegant. Glenn brought her warm water, a mitigating circumstance. The
morning was cold and thought of that biting desert water had been trying.

"Shore you're doing fine," was Flo's greeting. "Come and get it before we
throw it out."

Carley made haste to comply with the Western mandate, and was once again
confronted with the singular fact that appetite did not wait upon the
troubles of a tenderfoot. Glenn remarked that at least she would not starve
to death on the trip.

"Come, climb the ridge with me," he invited. "I want you to take a look to
the north and east."

He led her off through the cedars, up a slow red-earth slope, away from the
lake. A green moundlike eminence topped with flat red rock appeared near at
hand and not at all a hard climb. Nevertheless, her eyes deceived her, as
she found to the cost of her breath. It was both far away and high.

"I like this location," said Glenn. "If I had the money I'd buy this
section of land--six hundred and forty acres--and make a ranch of it. Just
under this bluff is a fine open flat bench for a cabin. You could see away
across the desert clear to Sunset Peak. There's a good spring of granite
water. I'd run water from the lake down into the lower flats, and I'd sure
raise some stock."

"What do you call this place?" asked Carley, curiously.

"Deep Lake. It's only a watering place for sheep and cattle. But there's
fine grazing, and it's a wonder to me no one has ever settled here."

Looking down, Carley appreciated his wish to own the place; and immediately
there followed in her a desire to get possession of this tract of land
before anyone else discovered its advantages, and to hold it for Glenn. But
this would surely conflict with her intention of persuading Glenn to go
back East. As quickly as her impulse had been born it died.

Suddenly the scene gripped Carley. She looked from near to far, trying to
grasp the illusive something. Wild lonely Arizona land! She saw ragged
dumpy cedars of gray and green, lines of red earth, and a round space of
water, gleaming pale under the lowering clouds; and in the distance
isolated hills, strangely curved, wandering away to a black uplift of earth
obscured in the sky.

These appeared to be mere steps leading her sight farther and higher to the
cloud-navigated sky, where rosy and golden effulgence betokened the sun and
the east. Carley held her breath. A transformation was going on before her
eyes.

"Carley, it's a stormy sunrise," said Glenn.

His words explained, but they did not convince. Was this sudden-bursting
glory only the sun rising behind storm clouds? She could see the clouds
moving while they were being colored. The universal gray surrendered under
some magic paint brush. The rifts widened, and the gloom of the pale-gray
world seemed to vanish. Beyond the billowy, rolling, creamy edges of
clouds, white and pink, shone the soft exquisite fresh blue sky. And a
blaze of fire, a burst of molten gold, sheered up from behind the rim of
cloud and suddenly poured a sea of sunlight from east to west. It trans-
figured the round foothills. They seemed bathed in ethereal light, and the
silver mists that overhung them faded while Carley gazed, and a rosy flush
crowned the symmetrical domes. Southward along the horizon line,
down-dropping veils of rain, just touched with the sunrise tint, streamed
in drifting slow movement from cloud to earth. To the north the range of
foothills lifted toward the majestic dome of Sunset Peak, a volcanic
upheaval of red and purple cinders, bare as rock, round as the lower hills,
and wonderful in its color. Full in the blaze of the rising sun it flaunted
an unchangeable front. Carley understood now what had been told her about
this peak. Volcanic fires had thrown up a colossal mound of cinders burned
forever to the hues of the setting sun. In every light and shade of day it
held true to its name. Farther north rose the bold bulk of the San
Francisco Peaks, that, half lost in the clouds, still dominated the desert
scene. Then as Carley gazed the rifts began to close. Another
transformation began, the reverse of what she watched. The golden radiance
of sunrise vanished, and under a gray, lowering, coalescing pall of cloud
the round hills returned to their bleak somberness, and the green desert
took again its cold sheen.

"Wasn't it fine, Carley?" asked Glenn. "But nothing to what you will
experience. I hope you stay till the weather gets warm. I want you to see a
summer dawn on the Painted Desert, and a noon with the great white clouds
rolling up from the horizon, and a sunset of massed purple and gold. If
they do not get you then I'll give up."

Carley murmured something of her appreciation of what she had just seen.
Part of his remark hung on her ear, thought-provoking and disturbing. He
hoped she would stay until summer! That was kind of him. But her visit must
be short and she now intended it to end with his return East with her. If
she did not persuade him to go he might not want to go for a while, as he
had written--"just yet." Carley grew troubled in mind. Such mental
disturbance, however, lasted no longer than her return with Glenn to camp,
where the mustang Spillbeans stood ready for her to mount. He appeared to
put one ear up, the other down, and to look at her with mild surprise, as
if to say: "What--hello--tenderfoot! Are you going to ride me again?"

Carley recalled that she had avowed she would ride him. There was no
alternative, and her misgivings only made matters worse. Nevertheless, once
in the saddle, she imagined she had the hallucination that to ride off so,
with the long open miles ahead, was really thrilling. This remarkable state
of mind lasted until Spillbeans began to trot, and then another day of
misery beckoned to Carley with gray stretches of distance.

She was to learn that misery, as well as bliss, can swallow up the hours.
She saw the monotony of cedar trees, but with blurred eyes; she saw the
ground clearly enough, for she was always looking down, hoping for sandy
places or rocky places where her mustang could not trot.

At noon the cavalcade ahead halted near a cabin and corral, which turned
out to be a sheep ranch belonging to Hutter. Here Glenn was so busy that he
had no time to devote to Carley. And Flo, who was more at home on a horse
than on the ground, rode around everywhere with the men. Most assuredly
Carley could not pass by the chance to get off Spillbeans and to walk a
little. She found, however, that what she wanted most was to rest. The
cabin was deserted, a dark, damp place with a rank odor. She did not stay
long inside.

Rain and snow began to fall, adding to what Carley felt to be a
disagreeable prospect. The immediate present, however, was cheered by a cup
of hot soup and some bread and butter which the herder Charley brought her.
By and by Glenn and Hutter returned with Flo, and all partook of some
lunch.

All too soon Carley found herself astride the mustang again. Glenn helped
her don the slicker, an abominable sticky rubber coat that bundled her up
and tangled her feet round the stirrups. She was glad to find, though, that
it served well indeed to protect her from raw wind and rain.

"Where do we go from here?" Carley inquired, ironically.

Glenn laughed in a way which proved to Carley that he knew perfectly well
how she felt. Again his smile caused her self-reproach. Plain indeed was it
that he had really expected more of her in the way of complaint and less of
fortitude. Carley bit her lips.

Thus began the afternoon ride. As it advanced the sky grew more
threatening, the wind rawer, the cold keener, and the rain cut like little
bits of sharp ice. It blew in Carley's face. Enough snow fell to whiten the
open patches of ground. In an hour Carley realized that she had the hardest
task of her life to ride to the end of the day's journey. No one could have
guessed her plight. Glenn complimented her upon her adaptation to such
unpleasant conditions. Flo evidently was on the lookout for the
tenderfoot's troubles. But as Spillbeans, had taken to lagging at a walk,
Carley was enabled to conceal all outward sign of her woes. It rained,
hailed, sleeted, snowed, and grew colder all the time. Carley's feet became
lumps of ice. Every step the mustang took sent acute pains ramifying from
bruised and raw places all over her body.

Once, finding herself behind the others and out of sight in the cedars, she
got off to walk awhile, leading the mustang. This would not do, however,
because she fell too far in the rear. Mounting again, she rode on,
beginning to feel that nothing mattered, that this trip would be the end of
Carley Burch. How she hated that dreary, cold, flat land the road bisected
without end. It felt as if she rode hours to cover a mile. In open
stretches she saw the whole party straggling along, separated from one
another, and each for himself. They certainly could not be enjoying
themselves. Carley shut her eyes, clutched the pommel of the saddle, trying
to support her weight. How could she endure another mile? Alas! there might
be many miles. Suddenly a terrible shock seemed to rack her. But it was
only that Spillbeans had once again taken to a trot. Frantically she pulled
on the bridle. He was not to be thwarted. Opening her eyes, she saw a cabin
far ahead which probably was the destination for the night. Carley knew she
would never reach it, yet she clung on desperately. What she dreaded was
the return of that stablike pain in her side. It came, and life seemed
something abject and monstrous. She rode stiff legged, with her hands
propping her stiffly above the pommel, but the stabbing pain went right on,
and in deeper. When the mustang halted his trot beside the other horses
Carley was in the last extremity. Yet as Glenn came to her, offering a
hand, she still hid her agony. Then Flo called out gayly: "Carley, you've
done twenty-five miles on as rotten a day as I remember. Shore we all hand
it to you. And I'm confessing I didn't think you'd ever stay the ride out.
Spillbeans is the meanest nag we've got and he has the hardest gait."

CHAPTER V

Later Carley leaned back in a comfortable seat, before a blazing fire that
happily sent its acrid smoke up the chimney, pondering ideas in her mind.

There could be a relation to familiar things that was astounding in its
revelation. To get off a horse that had tortured her, to discover an almost
insatiable appetite, to rest weary, aching body before the genial warmth of
a beautiful fire--these were experiences which Carley found to have been
hitherto unknown delights. It struck her suddenly and strangely that to
know the real truth about anything in life might require infinite
experience and understanding. How could one feel immense gratitude and
relief, or the delight of satisfying acute hunger, or the sweet comfort of
rest, unless there had been circumstances of extreme contrast? She had been
compelled to suffer cruelly on horseback in order to make her appreciate
how good it was to get down on the ground. Otherwise she never would have
known. She wondered, then, how true that principle might be in all
experience. It gave strong food for thought. There were things in the world
never before dreamed of in her philosophy.

Carley was wondering if she were narrow and dense to circumstances of life
differing from her own when a remark of Flo's gave pause to her
reflections.

"Shore the worst is yet to come." Flo had drawled.

Carley wondered if this distressing statement had to do in some way with
the rest of the trip. She stifled her curiosity. Painful knowledge of that
sort would come quickly enough.

"Flo, are you girls going to sleep here in the cabin?" inquired Glenn.

"Shore. It's cold and wet outside," replied Flo.

"Well, Felix, the Mexican herder, told me some Navajos had been bunking
here."

"Navajos? You mean Indians?" interposed Carley, with interest.

"Shore do," said Flo. "I knew that. But don't mind Glenn. He's full of
tricks, Carley. He'd give us a hunch to lie out in the wet."

Hutter burst into his hearty laugh. "Wal, I'd rather get some things anyday
than a bad cold."

"Shore I've had both," replied Flo, in her easy drawl, "and I'd prefer the
cold. But for Carley's sake--"

"Pray don't consider me," said Carley. The rather crude drift of the
conversation affronted her.

"Well, my dear," put in Glenn, "it's a bad night outside. We'll all make
our beds here."

"Glenn, you shore are a nervy fellow," drawled Flo.

Long after everybody was in bed Carley lay awake in the blackness of the
cabin, sensitively fidgeting and quivering over imaginative contact with
creeping things. The fire had died out. A cold air passed through the room.
On the roof pattered gusts of rain. Carley heard a rustling of mice. It did
not seem possible that she could keep awake, yet she strove to do so. But
her pangs of body, her extreme fatigue soon yielded to the quiet and rest
of her bed, engendering a drowsiness that proved irresistible.

Morning brought fair weather and sunshine, which helped to sustain Carley
in her effort to brave out her pains and woes. Another disagreeable day
would have forced her to humiliating defeat. Fortunately for her, the
business of the men was concerned with the immediate neighborhood, in which
they expected to stay all morning.

"Flo, after a while persuade Carley to ride with you to the top of this
first foothill," said Glenn. "It's not far, and it's worth a good deal to
see the Painted Desert from there. The day is clear and the air free from
dust."

"Shore. Leave it to me. I want to get out of camp, anyhow. That conceited
hombre, Lee Stanton, will be riding in here," answered Flo, laconically.

The slight knowing smile on Glenn's face and the grinning disbelief on Mr.
Hutter's were facts not lost upon Carley. And when Charley, the herder,
deliberately winked at Carley, she conceived the idea that Flo, like many
women, only ran off to be pursued. In some manner Carley did not seek to
analyze, the purported advent of this Lee Stanton pleased her. But she did
admit to her consciousness that women, herself included, were both as deep
and mysterious as the sea, yet as transparent as an inch of crystal water.

It happened that the expected newcomer rode into camp before anyone left.
Before he dismounted he made a good impression on Carley, and as he stepped
down in lazy, graceful action, a tall lithe figure, she thought him
singularly handsome. He wore black sombrero, flannel shirt, blue jeans
stuffed into high boots, and long, big-roweled spurs.

"How are you-all?" was his greeting.

From the talk that ensued between him and the men, Carley concluded that he
must be overseer of the sheep hands. Carley knew that Hutter and Glenn were
not interested in cattle raising. And in fact they were, especially Hutter,
somewhat inimical to the dominance of the range land by cattle barons of
Flagstaff.

"When's Ryan goin' to dip?" asked Hutter.

"Today or tomorrow," replied Stanton.

"Reckon we ought to ride over," went on Hutter. "Say, Glenn, do you reckon
Miss Carley could stand a sheep-dip?"

This was spoken in a low tone, scarcely intended for Carley, but she had
keen ears and heard distinctly. Not improbably this sheep-dip was what Flo
meant as the worst to come. Carley adopted a listless posture to hide her
keen desire to hear what Glenn would reply to Hutter.

"I should say not!" whispered Glenn, fiercely.

"Cut out that talk. She'll hear you and want to go."

Whereupon Carley felt mount in her breast an intense and rebellious
determination to see a sheep-dip. She would astonish Glenn. What did he
want, anyway? Had she not withstood the torturing trot of the
hardest-gaited horse on the range? Carley realized she was going to place
considerable store upon that feat. It grew on her.

When the consultation of the men ended, Lee Stanton turned to Flo. And
Carley did not need to see the young man look twice to divine what ailed
him. He was caught in the toils of love. But seeing through Flo Hutter was
entirely another matter.

"Howdy, Lee!" she said, coolly, with her clear eyes on him. A tiny frown
knitted her brow. She did not, at the moment, entirely approve of him.

"Shore am glad to see you, Flo," he said, with rather a heavy expulsion of
breath. He wore a cheerful grin that in no wise deceived Flo, or Carley
either. The young man had a furtive expression of eye.

"Ahuh!" returned Flo.

"I was shore sorry about--about that--" he floundered, in low voice.

"About what?"

"Aw, you know, Flo."

Carley strolled out of hearing, sure of two things--that she felt rather
sorry for Stanton, and that his course of love did not augur well for
smooth running. What queer creatures were women! Carley had seen several
million coquettes, she believed; and assuredly Flo Hutter belonged to the
species.

Upon Carley's return to the cabin she found Stanton and Flo waiting for her
to accompany them on a ride up the foothill. She was so stiff and sore that
she could hardly mount into the saddle; and the first mile of riding was
something like a nightmare. She lagged behind Flo and Stanton, who
apparently forgot her in their quarrel.

The riders soon struck the base of a long incline of rocky ground that led
up to the slope of the foothill. Here rocks and gravel gave place to black
cinders out of which grew a scant bleached grass. This desert verdure was
what lent the soft gray shade to the foothill when seen from a distance.
The slope was gentle, so that the ascent did not entail any hardship.
Carley was amazed at the length of the slope, and also to see how high over
the desert she was getting. She felt lifted out of a monotonous level. A
green-gray league-long cedar forest extended down toward Oak Creek. Behind
her the magnificent bulk of the mountains reached up into the stormy
clouds, showing white slopes of snow under the gray pall.

The hoofs of the horses sank in the cinders. A fine choking dust assailed
Carley's nostrils. Presently, when there appeared at least a third of the
ascent still to be accomplished and Flo dismounted to walk, leading their
horses. Carley had no choice but to do likewise. At first walking was a
relief. Soon, however, the soft yielding cinders began to drag at her feet.
At every step she slipped back a few inches, a very annoying feature of
climbing. When her legs seemed to grow dead Carley paused for a little
rest. The last of the ascent, over a few hundred yards of looser cinders,
taxed her remaining strength to the limit. She grew hot and wet and out of
breath. Her heart labored. An unreasonable antipathy seemed to attend her
efforts. Only her ridiculous vanity held her to this task. She wanted to
please Glenn, but not so earnestly that she would have kept on plodding up
this ghastly bare mound of cinders. Carley did not mind being a tenderfoot,
but she hated the thought of these Westerners considering her a weakling.
So she bore the pain of raw blisters and the miserable sensation of
staggering on under a leaden weight.

Several times she noted that Flo and Stanton halted to face each other in
rather heated argument. At least Stanton's red face and forceful gestures
attested to heat on his part. Flo evidently was weary of argument, and in
answer to a sharp reproach she retorted, "Shore I was different after he
came." To which Stanton responded by a quick passionate shrinking as if he
had been stung.

Carley had her own reaction to this speech she could not help hearing; and
inwardly, at least, her feeling must have been similar to Stanton's. She
forgot the object of this climb and looked off to her right at the green
level without really seeing it. A vague sadness weighed upon her soul. Was
there to be a tangle of fates here, a conflict of wills, a crossing of
loves? Flo's terse confession could not be taken lightly. Did she mean that
she loved Glenn? Carley began to fear it. Only another reason why she must
persuade Glenn to go back East! But the closer Carley came to what she
divined must be an ordeal the more she dreaded it. This raw, crude West
might have confronted her with a situation beyond her control. And as she
dragged her weighted feet through the cinders, kicking, up little puffs of
black dust, she felt what she admitted to be an unreasonable resentment
toward these Westerners and their barren, isolated, and boundless world.

"Carley," called Flo, "come--looksee, as the Indians say. Here is Glenn's
Painted Desert, and I reckon it's shore worth seeing."

To Carley's surprise, she found herself upon the knob of the foothill. And
when she looked out across a suddenly distinguishable void she seemed
struck by the immensity of something she was unable to grasp. She dropped
her bridle; she gazed slowly, as if drawn, hearing Flo's voice.

"That thin green line of cottonwoods down there is the Little Colorado
River," Flo was saying. "Reckon it's sixty miles, all down hill. The
Painted Desert begins there and also the Navajo Reservation. You see the
white strips, the red veins, the yellow bars, the black lines. They are all
desert steps leading up and up for miles. That sharp black peak is called
Wildcat. It's about a hundred miles. You see the desert stretching away to
the right, growing dim--lost in distance? We don't know that country. But
that north country we know as landmarks, anyway. Look at that saw-tooth
range. The Indians call it Echo Cliffs. At the far end it drops off into
the Colorado River. Lee's Ferry is there--about one hundred and sixty
miles. That ragged black rent is the Grand Canyon. Looks like a thread,
doesn't it? But Carley, it's some hole, believe me. Away to the left you
see the tremendous wall rising and turning to come this way. That's the
north wall of the Canyon. It ends at the great bluff--Greenland Point. See
the black fringe above the bar of gold. That's a belt of pine trees. It's
about eighty miles across this ragged old stone washboard of a desert.
. . . Now turn and look straight and strain your sight over Wildcat. See
the rim purple dome. You must look hard. I'm glad it's clear and the sun is
shining. We don't often get this view. . . . That purple dome is Navajo
Mountain, two hundred miles and more away!"

Carley yielded to some strange drawing power and slowly walked forward
until she stood at the extreme edge of the summit.

What was it that confounded her sight? Desert slope--down and down--color--
distance--space! The wind that blew in her face seemed to have the openness
of the whole world back of it. Cold, sweet, dry, exhilarating, it breathed
of untainted vastness. Carley's memory pictures of the Adirondacks faded
into pastorals; her vaunted images of European scenery changed to operetta
settings. She had nothing with which to compare this illimitable space.

"Oh!--America!" was her unconscious tribute.

Stanton and Flo had come on to places beside her. The young man laughed.
"Wal, now Miss Carley, you couldn't say more. When I was in camp trainin'
for service overseas I used to remember how this looked. An' it seemed one
of the things I was goin' to fight for. Reckon I didn't the idea of the
Germans havin' my Painted Desert. I didn't get across to fight for it, but
I shore was willin'."

"You see, Carley, this is our America," said Flo, softly.

Carley had never understood the meaning of the word. The immensity of the
West seemed flung at her. What her vision beheld, so far-reaching and
boundless, was only a dot on the map.

"Does any one live--out there?" she asked, with slow sweep of hand.

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