Two warm sunny days in early May inclined Mr. Hutter to the opinion
that pleasant spring weather was at hand and that it would be a
propitious time to climb up on the desert to look after his sheep
interests. Glenn, of course, would accompany him.
“Carley and I will go too,” asserted Flo.
“Reckon that’ll be good,” said Hutter, with approving nod.
His wife also agreed that it would be fine for Carley to see the
beautiful desert country round Sunset Peak. But Glenn looked dubious.
“Carley, it’ll be rather hard,” he said. “You’re soft, and riding and
lying out will stove you up. You ought to break in gradually.”
“I rode ten miles today,” rejoined Carley. “And didn’t mind it—much.”
This was a little deviation from stern veracity.
“Shore Carley’s well and strong,” protested Flo. “She’ll get sore, but
that won’t kill her.”
Glenn eyed Flo with rather penetrating glance. “I might drive Carley
round about in the car,” he said.
“But you can’t drive over those lava flats, or go round, either. We’d
have to send horses in some cases miles to meet you. It’s horseback if
you go at all.”
“Shore we’ll go horseback,” spoke up Flo. “Carley has got it all over
that Spencer girl who was here last summer.”
“I think so, too. I am sure I hope so. Because you remember what the
ride to Long Valley did to Miss Spencer,” rejoined Glenn.
“What?” inquired Carley.
“Bad cold, peeled nose, skinned shin, saddle sores. She was in bed two
days. She didn’t show much pep the rest of her stay here, and she never
got on another horse.”
“Oh, is that all, Glenn?” returned Carley, in feigned surprise. “Why, I
imagined from your tone that Miss Spencer’s ride must have occasioned
her discomfort.... See here, Glenn. I may be a tenderfoot, but I’m no
mollycoddle.”
“My dear, I surrender,” replied Glenn, with a laugh. “Really, I’m
delighted. But if anything happens—don’t you blame me. I’m quite sure
that a long horseback ride, in spring, on the desert, will show you a
good many things about yourself.”
That was how Carley came to find herself, the afternoon of the next
day, astride a self-willed and unmanageable little mustang, riding in
the rear of her friends, on the way through a cedar forest toward a
place called Deep Lake.
Carley had not been able yet, during the several hours of their
journey, to take any pleasure in the scenery or in her mount. For in
the first place there was nothing to see but scrubby little gnarled
cedars and drab-looking rocks; and in the second this Indian pony she
rode had discovered she was not an adept horsewoman and had proceeded
to take advantage of the fact. It did not help Carley’s predicament to
remember that Glenn had decidedly advised her against riding this
particular mustang. To be sure, Flo had approved of Carley’s choice,
and Mr. Hutter, with a hearty laugh, had fallen in line: “Shore. Let
her ride one of the broncs, if she wants.” So this animal she bestrode
must have been a bronc, for it did not take him long to elicit from
Carley a muttered, “I don’t know what bronc means, but it sounds like
this pony acts.”
Carley had inquired the animal’s name from the young herder who had
saddled him for her.
“Wal, I reckon he ain’t got much of a name,” replied the lad, with a
grin, as he scratched his head. “For us boys always called him
Spillbeans.”
“Humph! What a beautiful cognomen!” ejaculated Carley, “But according
to Shakespeare any name will serve. I’ll ride him or—or—”
So far there had not really been any necessity for the completion of
that sentence. But five miles of riding up into the cedar forest had
convinced Carley that she might not have much farther to go. Spillbeans
had ambled along well enough until he reached level ground where a long
bleached grass waved in the wind. Here he manifested hunger, then a
contrary nature, next insubordination, and finally direct hostility.
Carley had urged, pulled, and commanded in vain. Then when she gave
Spillbeans a kick in the flank he jumped stiff legged, propelling her
up out of the saddle, and while she was descending he made the queer
jump again, coming up to meet her. The jolt she got seemed to dislocate
every bone in her body. Likewise it hurt. Moreover, along with her idea
of what a spectacle she must have presented, it quickly decided Carley
that Spillbeans was a horse that was not to be opposed. Whenever he
wanted a mouthful of grass he stopped to get it. Therefore Carley was
always in the rear, a fact which in itself did not displease her.
Despite his contrariness, however, Spillbeans had apparently no
intention of allowing the other horses to get completely out of sight.
Several times Flo waited for Carley to catch up. “He’s loafing on you,
Carley. You ought to have on a spur. Break off a switch and beat him
some.” Then she whipped the mustang across the flank with her bridle
rein, which punishment caused Spillbeans meekly to trot on with
alacrity. Carley had a positive belief that he would not do it for her.
And after Flo’s repeated efforts, assisted by chastisement from Glenn,
had kept Spillbeans in a trot for a couple of miles Carley began to
discover that the trotting of a horse was the most uncomfortable motion
possible to imagine. It grew worse. It became painful. It gradually got
unendurable. But pride made Carley endure it until suddenly she thought
she had been stabbed in the side. This strange piercing pain must be
what Glenn had called a “stitch” in the side, something common to
novices on horseback. Carley could have screamed. She pulled the
mustang to a walk and sagged in her saddle until the pain subsided.
What a blessed relief! Carley had keen sense of the difference between
riding in Central Park and in Arizona. She regretted her choice of
horses. Spillbeans was attractive to look at, but the pleasure of
riding him was a delusion. Flo had said his gait resembled the motion
of a rocking chair. This Western girl, according to Charley, the sheep
herder, was not above playing Arizona jokes. Be that as it might,
Spillbeans now manifested a desire to remain with the other horses, and
he broke out of a walk into a trot. Carley could not keep him from
trotting. Hence her state soon wore into acute distress.
Her left ankle seemed broken. The stirrup was heavy, and as soon as she
was tired she could no longer keep its weight from drawing her foot in.
The inside of her right knee was as sore as a boil. Besides, she had
other pains, just as severe, and she stood momentarily in mortal dread
of that terrible stitch in her side. If it returned she knew she would
fall off. But, fortunately, just when she was growing weak and dizzy,
the horses ahead slowed to a walk on a descent. The road wound down
into a wide deep canyon. Carley had a respite from her severest pains.
Never before had she known what it meant to be so grateful for relief
from anything.
The afternoon grew far advanced and the sunset was hazily shrouded in
gray. Hutter did not like the looks of those clouds. “Reckon we’re in
for weather,” he said. Carley did not care what happened. Weather or
anything else that might make it possible to get off her horse! Glenn
rode beside her, inquiring solicitously as to her pleasure. “Ride of my
life!” she lied heroically. And it helped some to see that she both
fooled and pleased him.
Beyond the canyon the cedared desert heaved higher and changed its
aspect. The trees grew larger, bushier, greener, and closer together,
with patches of bleached grass between, and russet-lichened rocks
everywhere. Small cactus plants bristled sparsely in open places; and
here and there bright red flowers—Indian paintbrush, Flo called
them—added a touch of color to the gray. Glenn pointed to where dark
banks of cloud had massed around the mountain peaks. The scene to the
west was somber and compelling.
At last the men and the pack-horses ahead came to a halt in a level
green forestland with no high trees. Far ahead a chain of soft gray
round hills led up to the dark heaved mass of mountains. Carley saw the
gleam of water through the trees. Probably her mustang saw or scented
it, because he started to trot. Carley had reached a limit of strength,
endurance, and patience. She hauled him up short. When Spillbeans
evinced a stubborn intention to go on Carley gave him a kick. Then it
happened.
She felt the reins jerked out of her hands and the saddle propel her
upward. When she descended it was to meet that before-experienced jolt.
“Look!” cried Flo. “That bronc is going to pitch.”
“Hold on, Carley!” yelled Glenn.
Desperately Carley essayed to do just that. But Spillbeans jolted her
out of the saddle. She came down on his rump and began to slide back
and down. Frightened and furious, Carley tried to hang to the saddle
with her hands and to squeeze the mustang with her knees. But another
jolt broke her hold, and then, helpless and bewildered, with her heart
in her throat and a terrible sensation of weakness, she slid back at
each upheave of the muscular rump until she slid off and to the ground
in a heap. Whereupon Spillbeans trotted off toward the water.
Carley sat up before Glenn and Flo reached her. Manifestly they were
concerned about her, but both were ready to burst with laughter. Carley
knew she was not hurt and she was so glad to be off the mustang that,
on the moment, she could almost have laughed herself.
“That beast is well named,” she said. “He spilled me, all right. And I
presume I resembled a sack of beans.”
“Carley—you’re—not hurt?” asked Glenn, choking, as he helped her up.
“Not physically. But my feelings are.”
Then Glenn let out a hearty howl of mirth, which was seconded by a loud
guffaw from Hutter. Flo, however, appeared to be able to restrain
whatever she felt. To Carley she looked queer.
“Pitch! You called it that,” said Carley.
“Oh, he didn’t really pitch. He just humped up a few times,” replied
Flo, and then when she saw how Carley was going to take it she burst
into a merry peal of laughter. Charley, the sheep herder was grinning,
and some of the other men turned away with shaking shoulders.
“Laugh, you wild and woolly Westerners!” ejaculated Carley. “It must
have been funny. I hope I can be a good sport.... But I bet you I ride
him tomorrow.”
“Shore you will,” replied Flo.
Evidently the little incident drew the party closer together. Carley
felt a warmth of good nature that overcame her first feeling of
humiliation. They expected such things from her, and she should expect
them, too, and take them, if not fearlessly or painlessly, at least
without resentment.
Carley walked about to ease her swollen and sore joints, and while
doing so she took stock of the camp ground and what was going on. At
second glance the place had a certain attraction difficult for her to
define. She could see far, and the view north toward those strange
gray-colored symmetrical hills was one that fascinated while it
repelled her. Near at hand the ground sloped down to a large rock-bound
lake, perhaps a mile in circumference. In the distance, along the shore
she saw a white conical tent, and blue smoke, and moving gray objects
she took for sheep.
The men unpacked and unsaddled the horses, and, hobbling their forefeet
together, turned them loose. Twilight had fallen and each man appeared
to be briskly set upon his own task. Glenn was cutting around the foot
of a thickly branched cedar where, he told Carley, he would make a bed
for her and Flo. All that Carley could see that could be used for such
purpose was a canvas-covered roll. Presently Glenn untied a rope from
round this, unrolled it, and dragged it under the cedar. Then he spread
down the outer layer of canvas, disclosing a considerable thickness of
blankets. From under the top of these he pulled out two flat little
pillows. These he placed in position, and turned back some of the
blankets.
“Carley, you crawl in here, pile the blankets up, and the tarp over
them,” directed Glenn. “If it rains pull the tarp up over your head—and
let it rain.”
This direction sounded in Glenn’s cheery voice a good deal more
pleasurable than the possibilities suggested. Surely that cedar tree
could not keep off rain or snow.
“Glenn, how about—about animals—and crawling things, you know?” queried
Carley.
“Oh, there are a few tarantulas and centipedes, and sometimes a
scorpion. But these don’t crawl around much at night. The only thing to
worry about are the hydrophobia skunks.”
“What on earth are they?” asked Carley, quite aghast.
“Skunks are polecats, you know,” replied Glenn, cheerfully. “Sometimes
one gets bitten by a coyote that has rabies, and then he’s a dangerous
customer. He has no fear and he may run across you and bite you in the
face. Queer how they generally bite your nose. Two men have been bitten
since I’ve been here. One of them died, and the other had to go to the
Pasteur Institute with a well-developed case of hydrophobia.”
“Good heavens!” cried Carley, horrified.
“You needn’t be afraid,” said Glenn. “I’ll tie one of the dogs near
your bed.”
Carley wondered whether Glenn’s casual, easy tone had been adopted for
her benefit or was merely an assimilation from this Western life. Not
improbably Glenn himself might be capable of playing a trick on her.
Carley endeavored to fortify herself against disaster, so that when it
befell she might not be wholly ludicrous.
With the coming of twilight a cold, keen wind moaned through the
cedars. Carley would have hovered close to the fire even if she had not
been too tired to exert herself. Despite her aches, she did justice to
the supper. It amazed her that appetite consumed her to the extent of
overcoming a distaste for this strong, coarse cooking. Before the meal
ended darkness had fallen, a windy raw darkness that enveloped heavily
like a blanket. Presently Carley edged closer to the fire, and there
she stayed, alternately turning back and front to the welcome heat. She
seemingly roasted hands, face, and knees while her back froze. The wind
blew the smoke in all directions. When she groped around with blurred,
smarting eyes to escape the hot smoke, it followed her. The other
members of the party sat comfortably on sacks or rocks, without much
notice of the smoke that so exasperated Carley. Twice Glenn insisted
that she take a seat he had fixed for her, but she preferred to stand
and move around a little.
By and by the camp tasks of the men appeared to be ended, and all
gathered near the fire to lounge and smoke and talk. Glenn and Hutter
engaged in interested conversation with two Mexicans, evidently sheep
herders. If the wind and cold had not made Carley so uncomfortable she
might have found the scene picturesque. How black the night! She could
scarcely distinguish the sky at all. The cedar branches swished in the
wind, and from the gloom came a low sound of waves lapping a rocky
shore. Presently Glenn held up a hand.
“Listen, Carley!” he said.
Then she heard strange wild yelps, staccato, piercing, somehow
infinitely lonely. They made her shudder.
“Coyotes,” said Glenn. “You’ll come to love that chorus. Hear the dogs
bark back.”
Carley listened with interest, but she was inclined to doubt that she
would ever become enamoured of such wild cries.
“Do coyotes come near camp?” she queried.
“Shore. Sometimes they pull your pillow out from under your head,”
replied Flo, laconically.
Carley did not ask any more questions. Natural history was not her
favorite study and she was sure she could dispense with any first-hand
knowledge of desert beasts. She thought, however, she heard one of the
men say, “Big varmint prowlin’ round the sheep.” To which Hutter
replied, “Reckon it was a bear.” And Glenn said, “I saw his fresh track
by the lake. Some bear!”
The heat from the fire made Carley so drowsy that she could scarcely
hold up her head. She longed for bed even if it was out there in the
open. Presently Flo called her: “Come. Let’s walk a little before
turning in.”
So Carley permitted herself to be led to and fro down an open aisle
between some cedars. The far end of that aisle, dark, gloomy, with the
bushy secretive cedars all around, caused Carley apprehension she was
ashamed to admit. Flo talked eloquently about the joys of camp life,
and how the harder any outdoor task was and the more endurance and pain
it required, the more pride and pleasure one had in remembering it.
Carley was weighing the import of these words when suddenly Flo
clutched her arm. “What’s that?” she whispered, tensely.
Carley stood stockstill. They had reached the furthermost end of that
aisle, but had turned to go back. The flare of the camp fire threw a
wan light into the shadows before them. There came a rustling in the
brush, a snapping of twigs. Cold tremors chased up and down Carley’s
back.
“Shore it’s a varmint, all right. Let’s hurry,” whispered Flo.
Carley needed no urging. It appeared that Flo was not going to run. She
walked fast, peering back over her shoulder, and, hanging to Carley’s
arm, she rounded a large cedar that had obstructed some of the
firelight. The gloom was not so thick here. And on the instant Carley
espied a low, moving object, somehow furry, and gray in color. She
gasped. She could not speak. Her heart gave a mighty throb and seemed
to stop.
“What—do you see?” cried Flo, sharply, peering ahead. “Oh!... Come,
Carley. _Run!_”
Flo’s cry showed she must nearly be strangled with terror. But Carley
was frozen in her tracks. Her eyes were riveted upon the gray furry
object. It stopped. Then it came faster. It magnified. It was a huge
beast. Carley had no control over mind, heart, voice, or muscle. Her
legs gave way. She was sinking. A terrible panic, icy, sickening,
rending, possessed her whole body.
The huge gray thing came at her. Into the rushing of her ears broke
thudding sounds. The thing leaped up. A horrible petrifaction suddenly
made stone of Carley. Then she saw a gray mantlelike object cast aside
to disclose the dark form of a man. Glenn!
“Carley, dog-gone it! You don’t scare worth a cent,” he laughingly
complained.
She collapsed into his arms. The liberating shock was as great as had
been her terror. She began to tremble violently. Her hands got back a
sense of strength to clutch. Heart and blood seemed released from that
ice-banded vise.
“Say, I believe you were scared,” went on Glenn, bending over her.
“Scar-ed!” she gasped. “Oh—there’s no word—to tell—what I was!”
Flo came running back, giggling with joy. “Glenn, she shore took you
for a bear. Why, I felt her go stiff as a post!... Ha! Ha! Ha! Carley,
now how do you like the wild and woolly?”
“Oh! You put up a trick on me!” ejaculated Carley. “Glenn, how could
you? ... Such a terrible trick! I wouldn’t have minded something
reasonable. But that! Oh, I’ll never forgive you!”
Glenn showed remorse, and kissed her before Flo in a way that made some
little amends. “Maybe I overdid it,” he said. “But I thought you’d have
a momentary start, you know, enough to make you yell, and then you’d
see through it. I only had a sheepskin over my shoulders as I crawled
on hands and knees.”
“Glenn, for me you were a prehistoric monster—a dinosaur, or
something,” replied Carley.
It developed, upon their return to the campfire circle, that everybody
had been in the joke; and they all derived hearty enjoyment from it.
“Reckon that makes you one of us,” said Hutter, genially. “We’ve all
had our scares.”
Carley wondered if she were not so constituted that such trickery
alienated her. Deep in her heart she resented being made to show her
cowardice. But then she realized that no one had really seen any
evidence of her state. It was fun to them.
Soon after this incident Hutter sounded what he called the roll-call
for bed. Following Flo’s instructions, Carley sat on their bed, pulled
off her boots, folded coat and sweater at her head, and slid down under
the blankets. How strange and hard a bed! Yet Carley had the most
delicious sense of relief and rest she had ever experienced. She
straightened out on her back with a feeling that she had never before
appreciated the luxury of lying down.
Flo cuddled up to her in quite sisterly fashion, saying: “Now don’t
cover your head. If it rains I’ll wake and pull up the tarp. Good
night, Carley.” And almost immediately she seemed to fall asleep.
For Carley, however, sleep did not soon come. She had too many aches;
the aftermath of her shock of fright abided with her; and the blackness
of night, the cold whip of wind over her face, and the unprotected
helplessness she felt in this novel bed, were too entirely new and
disturbing to be overcome at once. So she lay wide eyed, staring at the
dense gray shadow, at the flickering lights upon the cedar. At length
her mind formed a conclusion that this sort of thing might be worth the
hardship once in a lifetime, anyway. What a concession to Glenn’s West!
In the secret seclusion of her mind she had to confess that if her
vanity had not been so assaulted and humiliated she might have enjoyed
herself more. It seemed impossible, however, to have thrills and
pleasures and exaltations in the face of discomfort, privation, and an
uneasy half-acknowledged fear. No woman could have either a good or a
profitable time when she was at her worst. Carley thought she would not
be averse to getting Flo Hutter to New York, into an atmosphere wholly
strange and difficult, and see how she met situation after situation
unfamiliar to her. And so Carley’s mind drifted on until at last she
succumbed to drowsiness.
A voice pierced her dreams of home, of warmth and comfort. Something
sharp, cold, and fragrant was scratching her eyes. She opened them.
Glenn stood over her, pushing a sprig of cedar into her face.
“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 transfigured 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.”