The Call of the Canyon

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Carley had stubbornly kept on riding and climbing until she killed her
secret doubt that she was really a thoroughbred, until she satisfied her
own insistent vanity that she could train to a point where this outdoor
life was not too much for her strength. She lost flesh despite increase of
appetite; she lost her pallor for a complexion of gold-brown she knew her
Eastern friends would admire; she wore out the blisters and aches and
pains; she found herself growing firmer of muscle, lither of line, deeper
of chest. And in addition to these physical manifestations there were
subtle intimations of a delight in a freedom of body she had never before
known, of an exhilaration in action that made her hot and made her breathe,
of a sloughing off of numberless petty and fussy and luxurious little
superficialities which she had supposed were necessary to her happiness.
What she had undertaken in vain conquest of Glenn's pride and Flo Hutter's
Western tolerance she had found to be a boomerang. She had won Glenn's
admiration; she had won the Western girl's recognition. But her passionate,
stubborn desire had been ignoble, and was proved so by the rebound of her
achievement, coming home to her with a sweetness she had not the courage to
accept. She forced it from her. This West with its rawness, its ruggedness,
she hated.

Nevertheless, the June days passed, growing dreamily swift, growing more
incomprehensibly full; and still she had not broached to Glenn the main
object of her visit--to take him back East. Yet a little while longer! She
hated his work and had not talked of that. Yet an honest consciousness told
her that as time flew by she feared more and more to tell him that he was
wasting his life there and that she could not bear it. Still was he wasting
it? Once in a while a timid and unfamiliar Carley Burch voiced a pregnant
query. Perhaps what held Carley back most was the happiness she achieved in
her walks and rides with Glenn. She lingered because of them. Every day she
loved him more, and yet--there was something. Was it in her or in him? She
had a woman's assurance of his love and sometimes she caught her breath--so
sweet and strong was the tumultuous emotion it stirred. She preferred to
enjoy while she could, to dream instead of think. But it was not possible
to hold a blank, dreamy, lulled consciousness all the time. Thought would
return. And not always could she drive away a feeling that Glenn would
never be her slave. She divined something in his mind that kept him gentle
and kindly, restrained always, sometimes melancholy and aloof, as if he
were an impassive destiny waiting for the iron consequences he knew
inevitably must fall. What was this that he knew which she did not know?
The idea haunted her. Perhaps it was that which compelled her to use all
her woman's wiles and charms on Glenn. Still, though it thrilled her to see
she made him love her more as the days passed, she could not blind herself
to the truth that no softness or allurement of hers changed this strange
restraint in him. How that baffled her! Was it resistance or knowledge or
nobility or doubt?

Flo Hutter's twentieth birthday came along the middle of June, and all the
neighbors and range hands for miles around were invited to celebrate it.

For the second time during her visit Carley put on the white gown that had
made Flo gasp with delight, and had stunned Mrs. Hutter, and had brought a
reluctant compliment from Glenn. Carley liked to create a sensation. What
were exquisite and expensive gowns for, if not that?

It was twilight on this particular June night when she was ready to go
downstairs, and she tarried a while on the long porch. The evening star, so
lonely and radiant, so cold and passionless in the dusky blue, had become
an object she waited for and watched, the same as she had come to love the
dreaming, murmuring melody of the waterfall. She lingered there. What had
the sights and sounds and smells of this wild canyon come to mean to her?
She could not say. But they had changed her immeasurably.

Her soft slippers made no sound on the porch, and as she turned the corner
of the house, where shadows hovered thick, she heard Lee Stanton's voice:

"But, Flo, you loved me before Kilbourne came."

The content, the pathos, of his voice chained Carley to the spot. Some
situations, like fate, were beyond resisting.

"Shore I did," replied Flo, dreamily. This was the voice of a girl who was
being confronted by happy and sad thoughts on her birthday.

"Don't you--love me--still?" he asked, huskily.

"Why, of course, Lee! I don't change," she said.

"But then, why--" There for the moment his utterance or courage failed.

"Lee, do you want the honest to God's truth?"

"I reckon--I do."

"Well, I love you just as I always did," replied Flo, earnestly. "But, Lee,
I love him more than you or anybody."

"My Heaven! Flo--you'll ruin us all!" he exclaimed, hoarsely.

"No, I won't either. You can't say I'm not level headed. I hated to tell
you this, Lee, but you made me."

"Flo, you love me an' him--two men?" queried Stanton, incredulously.

"I shore do," she drawled, with a soft laugh. "And it's no fun."

"Reckon I don't cut much of a figure alongside Kilbourne," said Stanton,
disconsolately.

"Lee, you could stand alongside any man," replied Flo, eloquently. "You're
Western, and you're steady and loyal, and you'll--well, some day you'll be
like dad. Could I say more? . . . But, Lee, this man is different. He is
wonderful. I can't explain it, but I feel it. He has been through hell's
fire. Oh! will I ever forget his ravings when he lay so ill? He means more
to me than just one man. He's American. You're American, too, Lee, and you
trained to be a soldier, and you would have made a grand one--if I know old
Arizona. But you were not called to France. . . . Glenn Kilbourne went. God
only knows what that means. But he went. And there's the difference. I saw
the wreck of him. I did a little to save his life and his mind. I wouldn't
be an American girl if I didn't love him. . . . Oh, Lee, can't you
understand?"

"I reckon so. I'm not begrudging Glenn what--what you care. I'm only afraid
I'll lose you."

"I never promised to marry you, did I?"

"Not in words. But kisses ought to--?"

"Yes, kisses mean a lot," she replied. "And so far I stand committed. I
suppose I'll marry you some day and be blamed lucky. I'll be happy, too--
don't you overlook that hunch. . . . You needn't worry. Glenn is in love
with Carley. She's beautiful, rich--and of his class. How could he ever see
me?"

"Flo, you can never tell," replied Stanton, thoughtfully. "I didn't like
her at first. But I'm comin' round. The thing is, Flo, does she love him as
you love him?"

"Oh, I think so--I hope so," answered Flo, as if in distress.

"I'm not so shore. But then I can't savvy her. Lord knows I hope so, too.
If she doesn't--if she goes back East an' leaves him here--I reckon my
case--"

"Hush! I know she's out here to take him back. Let's go downstairs now."

"Aw, wait--Flo," he begged. "What's your hurry? . . . Come-give me--"

"There! That's all you get, birthday or no birthday," replied Flo, gayly.

Carley heard the soft kiss and Stanton's deep breath, and then footsteps as
they walked away in the gloom toward the stairway. Carley leaned against
the log wall. She felt the rough wood--smelled the rusty pine rosin. Her
other hand pressed her bosom where her heart beat with unwonted vigor.
Footsteps and voices sounded beneath her. Twilight had deepened into night.
The low murmur of the waterfall and the babble of the brook floated to her
strained ears.

Listeners never heard good of themselves. But Stanton's subtle doubt of any
depth to her, though it hurt, was not so conflicting as the ringing truth
of Flo Hutter's love for Glenn. This unsought knowledge powerfully affected
Carley. She was forewarned and forearmed now. It saddened her, yet did not
lessen her confidence in her hold on Glenn. But it stirred to perplexing
pitch her curiosity in regard to the mystery that seemed to cling round
Glenn's transformation of character. This Western girl really knew more
about Glenn than his fiancee knew. Carley suffered a humiliating shock when
she realized that she had been thinking of herself, of her love, her life,
her needs, her wants instead of Glenn's. It took no keen intelligence or
insight into human nature to see that Glenn needed her more than she needed
him.

Thus unwontedly stirred and upset and flung back upon pride of herself,
Carley went downstairs to meet the assembled company. And never had she
shown to greater contrast, never had circumstance and state of mind
contrived to make her so radiant and gay and unbending. She heard many
remarks not intended for her far-reaching ears. An old grizzled Westerner
remarked to Hutter: "Wall, she's shore an unbroke filly." Another of the
company--a woman--remarked: "Sweet an' pretty as a columbine. But I'd like
her better if she was dressed decent." And a gaunt range rider, who stood
with others at the porch door, looking on, asked a comrade: "Do you reckon
that's style back East?" To which the other replied: "Mebbe, but I'd gamble
they're short on silk back East an' likewise sheriffs."

Carley received some meed of gratification out of the sensation she
created, but she did not carry her craving for it to the point of
overshadowing Flo. On the contrary, she contrived to have Flo share the
attention she received. She taught Flo to dance the fox-trot and got Glenn
to dance with her. Then she taught it to Lee Stanton. And when Lee danced
with Flo, to the infinite wonder and delight of the onlookers, Carley
experienced her first sincere enjoyment of the evening.

Her moment came when she danced with Glenn. It reminded her of days long
past and which she wanted to return again. Despite war tramping and Western
labors Glenn retained something of his old grace and lightness. But just to
dance with him was enough to swell her heart, and for once she grew
oblivious to the spectators.

"Glenn, would you like to go to the Plaza with me again, and dance between
dinner courses, as we used to?" she whispered up to him.

"Sure I would--unless Morrison knew you were to be there," he replied.

"Glenn! . . . I would not even see him."

"Any old time you wouldn't see Morrison!" he exclaimed, half mockingly.

His doubt, his tone grated upon her. Pressing closer to him, she said,
"Come back and I'll prove it."

But he laughed and had no answer for her. At her own daring words Carley's
heart had leaped to her lips. If he had responded, even teasingly, she
could have burst out with her longing to take him back. But silence
inhibited her, and the moment passed.

At the end of that dance Hutter claimed Glenn in the interest of
neighboring sheep men. And Carley, crossing the big living room alone,
passed close to one of the porch doors. Some one, indistinct in the shadow,
spoke to her in low voice: "Hello, pretty eyes!"

Carley felt a little cold shock go tingling through her. But she gave no
sign that she had heard. She recognized the voice and also the epithet.
Passing to the other side of the room and joining the company there, Carley
presently took a casual glance at the door. Several men were lounging
there. One of them was the sheep dipper, Haze Ruff. His bold eyes were on
her now, and his coarse face wore a slight, meaning smile, as if he
understood something about her that was a secret to others. Carley dropped
her eyes. But she could not shake off the feeling that wherever she moved
this man's gaze followed her. The unpleasantness of this incident would
have been nothing to Carley had she at once forgotten it. Most
unaccountably, however, she could not make herself unaware of this
ruffian's attention. It did no good for her to argue that she was merely
the cynosure of all eyes. This Ruff's tone and look possessed something
heretofore unknown to Carley. Once she was tempted to tell Glenn. But that
would only cause a fight, so she kept her counsel. She danced again, and
helped Flo entertain her guests, and passed that door often; and once stood
before it, deliberately, with all the strange and contrary impulse so
inscrutable in a woman, and never for a moment wholly lost the sense of the
man's boldness. It dawned upon her, at length, that the singular thing
about this boldness was its difference from any, which had ever before
affronted her. The fool's smile meant that he thought she saw his
attention, and, understanding it perfectly, had secret delight in it. Many
and various had been the masculine egotisms which had come under her
observation. But quite beyond Carley was this brawny sheep dipper, Haze
Ruff. Once the party broke up and the guests had departed, she instantly
forgot both man and incident.

Next day, late in the afternoon, when Carley came out on the porch, she was
hailed by Flo, who had just ridden in from down the canyon.

"Hey Carley, come down. I shore have something to tell you," she called.

Carley did not use any time pattering down that rude porch stairway. Flo
was dusty and hot, and her chaps carried the unmistakable scent of
sheep-dip.

"Been over to Ryan's camp an' shore rode hard to beat Glenn home," drawled
Flo.

"Why?" queried Carley, eagerly.

"Reckon I wanted to tell you something Glenn swore he wouldn't let me tell.
. . . He makes me tired. He thinks you can't stand things."

"Oh! Has he been--hurt?"

"He's skinned an' bruised up some, but I reckon he's not hurt."

"Flo--what happened?" demanded Carley, anxiously.

"Carley, do you know Glenn can fight like the devil?" asked Flo.

"No, I don't. But I remember he used to be athletic. Flo, you make me
nervous. Did Glenn fight?"

"I reckon he did," drawled Flo.

"With whom?"

"Nobody else but that big hombre, Haze Ruff."

"Oh!" gasped Carley, with a violent start. "That--that ruffian! Flo, did
you see--were you there?"

"I shore was, an' next to a horse race I like a fight," replied the Western
girl. "Carley, why didn't you tell me Haze Ruff insulted you last night?"

"Why, Flo--he only said, 'Hello, pretty eyes,' and I let it pass!" said
Carley, lamely.

"You never want to let anything pass, out West. Because next time you'll
get worse. This turn your other cheek doesn't go in Arizona. But we shore
thought Ruff said worse than that. Though from him that's aplenty."

"How did you know?"

"Well, Charley told it. He was standing out here by the door last night an'
he heard Ruff speak to you. Charley thinks a heap of you an' I reckon he
hates Ruff. Besides, Charley stretches things. He shore riled Glenn, an' I
want to say, my dear, you missed the best thing that's happened since you
got here."

"Hurry--tell me," begged Carley, feeling the blood come to her face.

"I rode over to Ryan's place for dad, an' when I got there I knew nothing
about what Ruff said to you," began Flo, and she took hold of Carley's
hand. "Neither did dad. You see, Glenn hadn't got there yet. Well, just as
the men had finished dipping a bunch of sheep Glenn came riding down,
lickety cut."

"'Now what the hell's wrong with Glenn?' said dad, getting up from where
we sat.

"Shore I knew Glenn was mad, though I never before saw him that way. He
looked sort of grim an' black. . . . Well, he rode right down on us an'
piled off. Dad yelled at him an' so did I. But Glenn made for the sheep
pen. You know where we watched Haze Ruff an' Lorenzo slinging the sheep
into the dip. Ruff was just about to climb out over the fence when Glenn
leaped up on it."

"'Say, Ruff,' he said, sort of hard, 'Charley an' Ben tell me they heard
you speak disrespectfully to Miss Burch last night.'"

"Dad an' I ran to the fence, but before we could catch hold of Glenn he'd
jumped down into the pen."

"'I'm not carin' much for what them herders say,' replied Ruff.

"'Do you deny it?' demanded Glenn.

"'I ain't denyin' nothin', Kilbourne,' growled Ruff. 'I might argue against
me bein' disrespectful. That's a matter of opinion.'

"'You'll apologize for speaking to Miss Burch or I'll beat you up an' have
Hutter fire you.'

"'Wal, Kilbourne, I never eat my words,' replied Ruff.

"Then Glenn knocked him flat. You ought to have heard that crack. Sounded
like Charley hitting a steer with a club. Dad yelled: 'Look out, Glenn. He
packs a gun!'--Ruff got up mad clear through I reckon. Then they mixed it.
Ruff got in some swings, but he couldn't reach Glenn's face. An' Glenn
batted him right an' left, every time in his ugly mug. Ruff got all bloody
an' he cussed something awful. Glenn beat him against the fence an' then we
all saw Ruff reach for a gun or knife. All the men yelled. An' shore I
screamed. But Glenn saw as much as we saw. He got fiercer. He beat Ruff
down to his knees an' swung on him hard. Deliberately knocked Ruff into the
dip ditch. What a splash! It wet all of us. Ruff went out of sight. Then he
rolled up like a huge hog. We were all scared now. That dip's rank poison,
you know. Reckon Ruff knew that. He floundered along an' crawled up at the
end. Anyone could see that he had mouth an' eyes tight shut. He began to
grope an' feel around, trying to find the way to the pond. One of the men
led him out. It was great to see him wade in the water an' wallow an' souse
his head under. When he came out the men got in front of him any stopped
him. He shore looked bad. . . . An' Glenn called to him, 'Ruff, that
sheep-dip won't go through your tough hide, but a bullet will!"

Not long after this incident Carley started out on her usual afternoon
ride, having arranged with Glenn to meet her on his return from work.

Toward the end of June Carley had advanced in her horsemanship to a point
where Flo lent her one of her own mustangs. This change might not have had
all to do with a wonderful difference in riding, but it seemed so to
Carley. There was as much difference in horses as in people. This mustang
she had ridden of late was of Navajo stock, but he had been born and raised
and broken at Oak Creek. Carley had not yet discovered any objection on his
part to do as she wanted him to. He liked what she liked, and most of all
he liked to go. His color resembled a pattern of calico, and in accordance
with Western ways his name was therefore Calico. Left to choose his own
gait, Calico always dropped into a gentle pace which was so easy and
comfortable and swinging that Carley never tired of it. Moreover, he did
not shy at things lying in the road or rabbits darting from bushes or at
the upwhirring of birds. Carley had grown attached to Calico before she
realized she was drifting into it; and for Carley to care for anything or
anybody was a serious matter, because it did not happen often and it
lasted. She was exceedingly tenacious of affection.

June had almost passed and summer lay upon the lonely land. Such perfect
and wonderful weather had never before been Carley's experience. The dawns
broke cool, fresh, fragrant, sweet, and rosy, with a breeze that seemed of
heaven rather than earth, and the air seemed tremulously full of the murmur
of falling water and the melody of mocking birds. At the solemn noontides
the great white sun glared down hot--so hot that t burned the skin, yet
strangely was a pleasant burn. The waning afternoons were Carley's especial
torment, when it seemed the sounds and winds of the day were tiring, and
all things were seeking repose, and life must soften to an unthinking
happiness. These hours troubled Carley because she wanted them to last, and
because she knew for her this changing and transforming time could not
last. So long as she did not think she was satisfied.

Maples and sycamores and oaks were in full foliage, and their bright greens
contrasted softly with the dark shine of the pines. Through the spaces
between brown tree trunks and the white-spotted holes of the sycamores
gleamed the amber water of the creek. Always there was murmur of little
rills and the musical dash of little rapids. On the surface of still, shady
pools trout broke to make ever-widening ripples. Indian paintbrush, so
brightly carmine in color, lent touch of fire to the green banks, and under
the oaks, in cool dark nooks where mossy bowlders lined the stream, there
were stately nodding yellow columbines. And high on the rock ledges shot up
the wonderful mescal stalks, beginning to blossom, some with tints of gold
and others with tones of red.

Riding along down the canyon, under its looming walls, Carley wondered that
if unawares to her these physical aspects of Arizona could have become more
significant than she realized. The thought had confronted her before. Here,
as always, she fought it and denied it by the simple defense of
elimination. Yet refusing to think of a thing when it seemed ever present
was not going to do forever. Insensibly and subtly it might get a hold on
her, never to be broken. Yet it was infinitely easier to dream than to
think.

But the thought encroached upon her that it was not a dreamful habit of
mind she had fallen into of late. When she dreamed or mused she lived
vaguely and sweetly over past happy hours or dwelt in enchanted fancy upon
a possible future. Carley had been told by a Columbia professor that she
was a type of the present age--a modern young woman of materialistic mind.
Be that as it might, she knew many things seemed loosening from the
narrowness and tightness of her character, sloughing away like scales,
exposing a new and strange and susceptible softness of fiber. And this
blank habit of mind, when she did not think, and now realized that she was
not dreaming, seemed to be the body of Carley Burch, and her heart and soul
stripped of a shell. Nerve and emotion and spirit received something from
her surroundings. She absorbed her environment. She felt. It was a
delightful state. But when her own consciousness caused it to elude her,
then she both resented and regretted. Anything that approached permanent
attachment to this crude and untenanted West Carley would not tolerate for
a moment. Reluctantly she admitted it had bettered her health, quickened
her blood, and quite relegated Florida and the Adirondacks, to little
consideration.

"Well, as I told Glenn," soliloquized Carley, "every time I'm almost won
over a little to Arizona she gives me a hard jolt. I'm getting near being
mushy today. Now let's see what I'll get. I suppose that's my pessimism or
materialism. Funny how Glenn keeps saying its the jolts, the hard knocks,
the fights that are best to remember afterward. I don't get that at all."

Five miles below West Fork a road branched off and climbed the left side of
the canyon. It was a rather steep road, long and zigzaging, and full of
rocks and ruts. Carley did not enjoy ascending it, but she preferred the
going up to coming down. It took half an hour to climb.

Once up on the flat cedar-dotted desert she was met, full in the face, by a
hot dusty wind coming from the south. Carley searched her pockets for her
goggles, only to ascertain that she had forgotten them. Nothing, except a
freezing sleety wind, annoyed and punished Carley so much as a hard puffy
wind, full of sand and dust. Somewhere along the first few miles of this
road she was to meet Glenn. If she turned back for any cause he would be
worried, and, what concerned her more vitally, he would think she had not
the courage to face a little dust. So Carley rode on.

The wind appeared to be gusty. It would blow hard awhile, then lull for a
few moments. On the whole, however, it increased in volume and persistence
until she was riding against a gale. She had now come to a bare, flat,
gravelly region, scant of cedars and brush, and far ahead she could see a
dull yellow pall rising high into the sky. It was a duststorm and it was
sweeping down on the wings of that gale. Carley remembered that somewhere
along this flat there was a log cabin which had before provided shelter for
her and Flo when they were caught in a rainstorm. It seemed unlikely that
she had passed by this cabin.

Resolutely she faced the gale and knew she had a task to find that refuge.
If there had been a big rock or bushy cedar to offer shelter she would have
welcomed it. But there was nothing. When the hard dusty gusts hit her, she
found it absolutely necessary to shut her eyes. At intervals less windy she
opened them, and rode on, peering through the yellow gloom for the cabin.
Thus she got her eyes full of dust--an alkali dust that made them sting and
smart. The fiercer puffs of wind carried pebbles large enough to hurt
severely. Then the dust clogged her nose and sand got between her teeth.
Added to these annoyances was a heat like a blast from a furnace. Carley
perspired freely and that caked the dust on her face. She rode on,
gradually growing more uncomfortable and miserable. Yet even then she did
not utterly lose a sort of thrilling zest in being thrown upon her own
responsibility. She could hate an obstacle, yet feel something of pride in
holding her own against it.

Another mile of buffeting this increasing gale so exhausted Carley and
wrought upon her nerves that she became nearly panic-stricken. It grew
harder and harder not to turn back. At last she was about to give up when
right at hand through the flying dust she espied the cabin. Riding behind
it, she dismounted and tied the mustang to a post. Then she ran around to
the door and entered.

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