The Call of the Canyon
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Zane Grey >> The Call of the Canyon
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What a welcome refuge! She was all right now, and when Glenn came along she
would have added to her already considerable list another feat for which he
would commend her. With aid of her handkerchief, and the tears that flowed
so copiously, Carley presently freed her eyes of the blinding dust. But
when she essayed to remove it from her face she discovered she would need a
towel and soap and hot water.
The cabin appeared to be enveloped in a soft, swishing, hollow sound. It
seeped and rustled. Then the sound lulled, only to rise again. Carley went
to the door, relieved and glad to see that the duststorm was blowing by.
The great sky-high pall of yellow had moved on to the north. Puffs of dust
were whipping along the road, but no longer in one continuous cloud. In the
west, low down the sun was sinking, a dull magenta in hue, quite weird and
remarkable.
"I knew I'd get the jolt all right," soliloquized Carley, wearily, as she
walked to a rude couch of poles and sat down upon it. She had begun to cool
off. And there, feeling dirty and tired, and slowly wearing to the old
depression, she composed herself to wait.
Suddenly she heard the clip-clop of hoofs. "There! that's Glenn," she
cried, gladly, and rising, she ran to the door.
She saw a big bay horse bearing a burly rider. He discovered her at the
same instant, and pulled his horse.
"Ho! Ho! if it ain't Pretty Eyes!" he called out, in gay, coarse voice.
Carley recognized the voice, and then the epithet, before her sight
established the man as Haze Ruff. A singular stultifying shock passed over
her.
"Wal, by all thet's lucky!" he said, dismounting. "I knowed we'd meet some
day. I can't say I just laid fer you, but I kept my eyes open."
Manifestly he knew she was alone, for he did not glance into the cabin.
"I'm waiting for--Glenn," she said, with lips she tried to make stiff.
"Shore I reckoned thet," he replied, genially. "But he won't be along yet
awhile."
He spoke with a cheerful inflection of tone, as if the fact designated was
one that would please her; and his swarthy, seamy face expanded into a
good-humored, meaning smile. Then without any particular rudeness he pushed
her back from the door, into the cabin, and stepped across the threshold.
"How dare--you!" cried Carley. A hot anger that stirred in her seemed to be
beaten down and smothered by a cold shaking internal commotion, threatening
collapse. This man loomed over her, huge, somehow monstrous in his brawny
uncouth presence. And his knowing smile, and the hard, glinting twinkle of
his light eyes, devilishly intelligent and keen, in no wise lessened the
sheer brutal force of him physically. Sight of his bulk was enough to
terrorize Carley.
"Me! Aw, I'm a darin' hombre an' a devil with the wimmin," he said, with a
guffaw.
Carley could not collect her wits. The instant of his pushing her back into
the cabin and following her had shocked her and almost paralyzed her will.
If she saw him now any the less fearful she could not so quickly rally her
reason to any advantage.
"Let me out of here," she demanded.
"Nope. I'm a-goin' to make a little love to you," he said, and he reached
for her with great hairy hands.
Carley saw in them the strength that had so easily swung the sheep. She
saw, too, that they were dirty, greasy hands. And they made her flesh
creep.
"Glenn will kill--you," she panted.
"What fer?" he queried, in real or pretended surprise. "Aw, I know wimmin.
You'll never tell him."
"Yes, I will."
"Wal, mebbe. I reckon you're lyin', Pretty Eyes," he replied, with a grin.
"Anyhow, I'll take a chance."
"I tell you--he'll kill you," repeated Carley, backing away until her weak
knees came against the couch.
"What fer, I ask you?" he demanded.
"For this--this insult."
"Huh! I'd like to know who's insulted you. Can't a man take an invitation
to kiss an' hug a girl--without insultin' her?"
"Invitation! . . . Are you crazy?" queried Carley, bewildered.
"Nope, I'm not crazy, an' I shore said invitation . . . . I meant thet
white shimmy dress you wore the night of Flo's party. Thet's my invitation
to get a little fresh with you, Pretty Eyes!"
Carley could only stare at him. His words seemed to have some peculiar,
unanswerable power.
"Wal, if it wasn't an invitation, what was it?" he asked, with another step
that brought him within reach of her. He waited for her answer, which was
not forthcoming.
"Wal, you're gettin' kinda pale around the gills," he went on, derisively.
"I reckoned you was a real sport. . . . Come here."
He fastened one of his great hands in the front of her coat and gave her a
pull. So powerful was it that Carley came hard against him, almost knocking
her breathless. There he held her a moment and then put his other arm round
her. It seemed to crush both breath and sense out of her. Suddenly limp,
she sank strengthless. She seemed reeling in darkness. Then she felt herself
thrust away from him with violence. She sank on the couch and her head and
shoulders struck the wall.
"Say, if you're a-goin' to keel over like thet I pass," declared Ruff, in
disgust. "Can't you Eastern wimmin stand nothin?"
Carley's eyes opened and beheld this man in an attitude of supremely
derisive protest.
"You look like a sick kitten," he added. "When I get me a sweetheart or
wife I want her to be a wild cat."
His scorn and repudiation of her gave Carley intense relief. She sat up and
endeavored to collect her shattered nerves. Ruff gazed down at her with
great disapproval and even disappointment.
"Say, did you have some fool idee I was a-goin' to kill you?" he queried,
gruffly.
"I'm afraid--I did," faltered Carley. Her relief was a release; it was so
strange that it was gratefulness.
"Wal, I reckon I wouldn't have hurt you. None of these flop-over Janes for
me! . . . An' I'll give you a hunch, Pretty Eyes. You might have run acrost
a fellar thet was no gentleman!"
Of all the amazing statements that had ever been made to Carley, this one
seemed the most remarkable.
"What'd you wear thet onnatural white dress fer?" he demanded, as if he
had a right to be her judge.
"Unnatural?" echoed Carley.
"Shore. Thet's what I said. Any woman's dress without top or bottom is
onnatural. It's not right. Why, you looked like--like"--here he floundered
for adequate expression--"like one of the devil's angels. An' I want to
hear why you wore it."
"For the same reason I'd wear any dress," she felt forced to reply.
"Pretty Eyes, thet's a lie. An' you know it's a lie. You wore thet white
dress to knock the daylights out of men. Only you ain't honest enough to
say so . . . . Even me or my kind! Even us, who're dirt under your little
feet. But all the same we're men, an' mebbe better men than you think. If
you had to put that dress on, why didn't you stay in your room? Naw, you
had to come down an' strut around an' show off your beauty. An' I ask you--
if you're a nice girl like Flo Hutter--what'd you wear it fer?"
Carley not only was mute; she felt rise and burn in her a singular shame
and surprise.
"I'm only a sheep dipper," went on Ruff, "but I ain't no fool. A fellar
doesn't have to live East an' wear swell clothes to have sense. Mebbe
you'll learn thet the West is bigger'n you think. A man's a man East or
West. But if your Eastern men stand for such dresses as thet white one
they'd do well to come out West awhile, like your lover, Glenn Kilbourne.
I've been rustlin' round here ten years, an' I never before seen a dress
like yours--an' I never heerd of a girl bein' insulted, either. Mebbe you
think I insulted you. Wal, I didn't. Fer I reckon nothin' could insult you
in thet dress. . . . An' my last hunch is this, Pretty Eyes. You're not
what a hombre like me calls either square or game. Adios."
His bulky figure darkened the doorway, passed out, and the light of the sky
streamed into the cabin again. Carley sat staring. She heard Ruff's spurs
tinkle, then the ring of steel on stirrup, a sodden leathery sound as he
mounted, and after that a rapid pound of hoofs, quickly dying away.
He was gone. She had escaped something raw and violent. Dazedly she
realized it, with unutterable relief. And she sat there slowly gathering
the nervous force that had been shattered. Every word that he had uttered
was stamped in startling characters upon her consciousness. But she was
still under the deadening influence of shock. This raw experience was the
worst the West had yet dealt her. It brought back former states of
revulsion and formed them in one whole irrefutable and damning judgment
that seemed to blot out the vaguely dawning and growing happy
susceptibilities. It was, perhaps, just as well to have her mind reverted
to realistic fact. The presence of Haze Ruff, the astounding truth of the
contact with his huge sheep-defiled hands, had been profanation and
degradation under which she sickened with fear and shame. Yet hovering back
of her shame and rising anger seemed to be a pale, monstrous, and
indefinable thought, insistent and accusing, with which she must sooner or
later reckon. It might have been the voice of the new side of her nature,
but at that moment of outraged womanhood, and of revolt against the West,
she would not listen. It might, too, have been the still small voice of
conscience. But decision of mind and energy coming to her then, she threw
off the burden of emotion and perplexity, and forced herself into composure
before the arrival of Glenn.
The dust had ceased to blow, although the wind had by no means died away.
Sunset marked the west in old rose and gold, a vast flare. Carley espied a
horseman far down the road, and presently recognized both rider and steed.
He was coming fast. She went out and, mounting her mustang, she rode out to
meet Glenn. It did not appeal to her to wait for him at the cabin; besides
hoof tracks other than those made by her mustang might have been noticed by
Glenn. Presently he came up to her and pulled his loping horse.
"Hello! I sure was worried," was his greeting, as his gloved hand went out
to her. "Did you run into that sandstorm?"
"It ran into me, Glenn, and buried me," she laughed.
His fine eyes lingered on her face with glad and warm glance, and the keen,
apprehensive penetration of a lover.
"Well, under all that dust you look scared," he said.
"Scared! I was worse than that. When I first ran into the flying dirt I was
only afraid I'd lose my way--and my complexion. But when the worst of the
storm hit me--then I feared I'd lose my breath."
"Did you face that sand and ride through it all?" he queried.
"No, not all. But enough. I went through the worst of it before I reached
the cabin," she replied.
"Wasn't it great?"
"Yes--great bother and annoyance," she said, laconically.
Whereupon he reached with long, arm and wrapped it round her as they
rocked side by side. Demonstrations of this nature were infrequent with Glenn.
Despite losing one foot out of a stirrup and her seat in the saddle Carley
rather encouraged it. He kissed her dusty face, and then set her back.
"By George! Carley, sometimes I think you've changed since you've been
here," he said, with warmth. "To go through that sandstorm without one
kick--one knock at my West!"
"Glenn, I always think of what Flo says--the worst is yet to come," replied
Carley, trying to hide her unreasonable and tumultuous pleasure at words of
praise from him.
"Carley Burch, you don't know yourself," he declared, enigmatically.
"What woman knows herself? But do you know me?"
"Not I. Yet sometimes I see depths in you--wonderful possibilities--
submerged under your poise--under your fixed, complacent idle attitude
toward life."
This seemed for Carley to be dangerously skating near thin ice, but she
could not resist a retort:
"Depths in me? Why I am a shallow, transparent stream like your West Fork!
. . . And as for possibilities--may I ask what of them you imagine you see?"
"As a girl, before you were claimed by the world, you were earnest at
heart. You had big hopes and dreams. And you had intellect, too. But you
have wasted your talents, Carley. Having money, and spending it, living for
pleasure, you have not realized your powers. . . . Now, don't look hurt.
I'm not censuring you, It's just the way of modern life. And most of your
friends have been more careless, thoughtless, useless than you. The aim of
their existence is to be comfortable, free from work, worry, pain. They
want pleasure, luxury. And what a pity it is! The best of you girls regard
marriage as an escape, instead of responsibility. You don't marry to get
your shoulders square against the old wheel of American progress--to help
some man make good--to bring a troop of healthy American kids into the
world. You bare your shoulders to the gaze of the multitude and like it
best if you are strung with pearls."
"Glenn, you distress me when you talk like this," replied Carley, soberly.
"You did not use to talk so. It seems to me you are bitter against women."
"Oh no, Carley! I am only sad," he said. "I only see where once I was
blind. American women are the finest on earth, but as a race, if they don't
change, they're doomed to extinction."
"How can you say such things?" demanded Carley, with spirit.
"I say them because they are true. Carley, on the level now, tell me how
many of your immediate friends have children."
Put to a test, Carley rapidly went over in mind her circle of friends, with
the result that she was somewhat shocked and amazed to realize how few of
them were even married, and how the babies of her acquaintance were limited
to three. It was not easy to admit this to Glenn.
"My dear," replied he, "if that does not show you the handwriting on the
wall, nothing ever will."
"A girl has to find a husband, doesn't she?" asked Carley, roused to
defense of her sex. "And if she's anybody she has to find one in her set.
Well, husbands are not plentiful. Marriage certainly is not the end of
existence these days. We have to get along somehow. The high cost of living
is no inconsderable factor today. Do you know that most of the better-class
apartment houses in New York will not take children? Women are not all to
blame. Take the speed mania. Men must have automobiles. I know one girl who
wanted a baby, but her husband wanted a car. They couldn't afford both."
"Carley, I'm not blaming women more than men," returned Glenn. "I don't
know that I blame them as a class. But in my own mind I have worked it all
out. Every man or woman who is genuinely American should read the signs of
the times, realize the crisis, and meet it in an American way. Otherwise we
are done as a race. Money is God in the older countries. But it should
never become God in America. If it does we will make the fall of Rome pale
into insignificance."
"Glenn, let's put off the argument," appealed Carley. "I'm not--just up to
fighting you today. Oh--you needn't smile. I'm not showing a yellow streak,
as Flo puts it. I'll fight you some other time."
"You're right, Carley," he assented. "Here we are loafing six or seven
miles from home. Let's rustle along."
Riding fast with Glenn was something Carley had only of late added to her
achievements. She had greatest pride in it. So she urged her mustang to
keep pace with Glenn's horse and gave herself up to the thrill of the
motion and feel of wind and sense of flying along. At a good swinging lope
Calico covered ground swiftly and did not tire. Carley rode the two miles
to the rim of the canyon, keeping alongside of Glenn all the way. Indeed,
for one long level stretch she and Glenn held hands. When they arrived at
the descent, which necessitated slow and careful riding, she was hot and
tingling and breathless, worked by the action into an exuberance of
pleasure. Glenn complimented her riding as well as her rosy cheeks. There
was indeed a sweetness in working at a task as she had worked to learn to
ride in Western fashion. Every turn of her mind seemed to confront her with
sobering antitheses of thought. Why had she come to love to ride down a
lonely desert road, through ragged cedars where the wind whipped her face
with fragrant wild breath, if at the same time she hated the West? Could
she hate a country, however barren and rough, if it had saved the health
and happiness of her future husband? Verily there were problems for Carley
to solve.
Early twilight purple lay low in the hollows and clefts of the canyon. Over
the western rim a pale ghost of the evening star seemed to smile at Carley,
to bid her look and look. Like a strain of distant music, the dreamy hum of
falling water, the murmur and melody of the stream, came again to Carley's
sensitive ear.
"Do you love this?" asked Glenn, when they reached the green-forested
canyon floor, with the yellow road winding away into the purple shadows.
"Yes, both the ride--and you," flashed Carley, contrarily. She knew he had
meant the deep-walled canyon with its brooding solitude.
"But I want you to love Arizona," he said.
"Glenn, I'm a faithful creature. You should be glad of that. I love New
York."
"Very well, then. Arizona to New York," he said, lightly brushing her cheek
with his lips. And swerving back into his saddle, he spurred his horse and
called back over his shoulder: "That mustang and Flo have beaten me many a
time. Come on."
It was not so much his words as his tone and look that roused Carley. Had
he resented her loyalty to the city of her nativity? Always there was a
little rift in the lute. Had his tone and look meant that Flo might catch
him if Carley could not? Absurd as the idea was, it spurred her to
recklessness. Her mustang did not need any more than to know she wanted him
to run. The road was of soft yellow earth flanked with green foliage and
overspread by pines. In a moment she was racing at a speed she had never
before half attained on a horse. Down the winding road Glenn's big steed
sped, his head low, his stride tremendous, his action beautiful. But Carley
saw the distance between them diminishing. Calico was overtaking the bay.
She cried out in the thrilling excitement of the moment. Glenn saw her
gaining and pressed his mount to greater speed. Still he could not draw
away from Calico. Slowly the little mustang gained. It seemed to Carley
that riding him required no effort at all. And at such fast pace, with the
wind roaring in her ears, the walls of green vague and continuous in her
sight, the sting of pine tips on cheek and neck, the yellow road streaming
toward her, under her, there rose out of the depths of her, out of the
tumult of her breast, a sense of glorious exultation. She closed in on
Glenn. From the flying hoofs of his horse shot up showers of damp sand and
gravel that covered Carley's riding habit and spattered in her face. She
had to hold up a hand before her eyes. Perhaps this caused her to lose
something of her confidence, or her swing in the saddle, for suddenly she
realized she was not riding well. The pace was too fast for her
inexperience. But nothing could have stopped her then. No fear or
awkwardness of hers should be allowed to hamper that thoroughbred mustang.
Carley felt that Calico understood the situation; or at least he knew he
could catch and pass this big bay horse, and he intended to do it. Carley
was hard put to it to hang on and keep the flying sand from blinding her.
When Calico drew alongside the bay horse and brought Carley breast to
breast with Glenn, and then inch by inch forged ahead of him, Carley pealed
out an exultant cry. Either it frightened Calico or inspired him, for he
shot right ahead of Glenn's horse. Then he lost the smooth, wonderful
action. He seemed hurtling through space at the expense of tremendous
muscular action. Carley could feel it. She lost her equilibrium. She seemed
rushing through a blurred green and black aisle of the forest with a gale
in her face. Then, with a sharp jolt, a break, Calico plunged to the sand.
Carley felt herself propelled forward out of the saddle into the air, and
down to strike with a sliding, stunning force that ended in sudden dark
oblivion.
Upon recovering consciousness she first felt a sensation of oppression in
her chest and a dull numbness of her whole body. When she opened her eyes
she saw Glenn bending over her, holding her head on his knee. A wet, cold,
reviving sensation evidently came from the handkerchief with which he was
mopping her face.
"Carley, you can't be hurt--really!" he was ejaculating, in eager hope. "It
was some spill. But you lit on the sand and slid. You can't be hurt."
The look of his eyes, the tone of his voice, the feel of his hands were
such that Carley chose for a moment to pretend to be very badly hurt
indeed. It was worth taking a header to get so much from Glenn Kilbourne.
But she believed she had suffered no more than a severe bruising and
scraping.
"Glenn--dear," she whispered, very low and very eloquently. "I think--my
back--is broken. . . . You'll be free--soon."
Glenn gave a terrible start and his face turned a deathly white. He burst
out with quavering, inarticulate speech.
Carley gazed up at him and then closed her eyes. She could not look at him
while carrying on such deceit. Yet the sight of him and the feel of him
then were inexpressibly blissful to her. What she needed most was assurance
of his love. She had it. Beyond doubt, beyond morbid fancy, the truth had
proclaimed itself, filling her heart with joy.
Suddenly she flung her arms up around his neck. "Oh--Glenn! It was too good
a chance to miss! . . . I'm not hurt a bit."
CHAPTER VII
The day came when Carley asked Mrs. Hutter: "Will you please put up a nice
lunch for Glenn and me? I'm going to walk down to his farm where he's
working, and surprise him."
"That's a downright fine idea," declared Mrs. Hutter, and forthwith bustled
away to comply with Carley's request.
So presently Carley found herself carrying a bountiful basket on her arm,
faring forth on an adventure that both thrilled and depressed her. Long
before this hour something about Glenn's work had quickened her pulse and
given rise to an inexplicable admiration. That he was big and strong enough
to do such labor made her proud; that he might want to go on doing it made
her ponder and brood.
The morning resembled one of the rare Eastern days in June, when the air
appeared flooded by rich thick amber light. Only the sun here was hotter
and the shade cooler.
Carley took to the trail below where West Fork emptied its golden-green
waters into Oak Creek. The red walls seemed to dream and wait under the
blaze of the sun; the heat lay like a blanket over the still foliage; the
birds were quiet; only the murmuring stream broke the silence of the
canyon. Never had Carley felt more the isolation and solitude of Oak Creek
Canyon. Far indeed from the madding crowd! Only Carley's stubbornness kept
her from acknowledging the sense of peace that enveloped her--that and the
consciousness of her own discontent. What would it be like to come to this
canyon--to give up to its enchantments? That, like many another disturbing
thought, had to go unanswered, to be driven into the closed chambers of
Carley's mind, there to germinate subconsciously, and stalk forth some day
to overwhelm her.
The trail led along the creek, threading a maze of bowlders, passing into
the shade of cottonwoods, and crossing sun-flecked patches of sand.
Carley's every step seemed to become slower. Regrets were assailing her.
Long indeed had she overstayed her visit to the West. She must not linger
there indefinitely. And mingled with misgiving was a surprise that she had
not tired of Oak Creek. In spite of all, and of the dislike she vaunted to
herself, the truth stared at her--she was not tired.
The long-delayed visit to see Glenn working on his own farm must result in
her talking to him about his work; and in a way not quite clear she
regretted the necessity for it. To disapprove of Glenn! She received faint
intimations of wavering, of uncertainty, of vague doubt. But these were
cried down by the dominant and habitable voice of her personality.
Presently through the shaded and shadowed breadth of the belt of forest she
saw gleams of a sunlit clearing. And crossing this space to the border of
trees she peered forth, hoping to espy Glenn at his labors. She saw an old
shack, and irregular lines of rude fence built of poles of all sizes and
shapes, and several plots of bare yellow ground, leading up toward the west
side of the canyon wall. Could this clearing be Glenn's farm? Surely she
had missed it or had not gone far enough. This was not a farm, but a slash
in the forested level of the canyon floor, bare and somehow hideous. Dead
trees were standing in the lots. They had been ringed deeply at the base by
an ax, to kill them, and so prevent their foliage from shading the soil.
Carley saw a long pile of rocks that evidently had been carried from the
plowed ground. There was no neatness, no regularity, although there was
abundant evidence of toil. To clear that rugged space, to fence it, and
plow it, appeared at once to Carley an extremely strenuous and useless
task. Carley persuaded herself that this must be the plot of ground belonging
to the herder Charley, and she was about to turn on down the creek when
far up under the bluff she espied a man. He was stalking along and bending
down, stalking along and bending down. She recognized Glenn. He was planting
something in the yellow soil.
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