If spring came at all to Oak Creek Canyon it warmed into summer before
Carley had time to languish with the fever characteristic of early June
in the East.
As if by magic it seemed the green grass sprang up, the green buds
opened into leaves, the bluebells and primroses bloomed, the apple and
peach blossoms burst exquisitely white and pink against the blue sky.
Oak Creek fell to a transparent, beautiful brook, leisurely eddying in
the stone walled nooks, hurrying with murmur and babble over the little
falls. The mornings broke clear and fragrantly cool, the noon hours
seemed to lag under a hot sun, the nights fell like dark mantles from
the melancholy star-sown sky.
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 fiancée 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 it 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.
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.”