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.
Curiously Carley watched him, and did not allow her mind to become
concerned with a somewhat painful swell of her heart. What a stride he
had! How vigorous he looked, and earnest! He was as intent upon this
job as if he had been a rustic. He might have been failing to do it
well, but he most certainly was doing it conscientiously. Once he had
said to her that a man should never be judged by the result of his
labors, but by the nature of his effort. A man might strive with all
his heart and strength, yet fail. Carley watched him striding along and
bending down, absorbed in his task, unmindful of the glaring hot sun,
and somehow to her singularly detached from the life wherein he had
once moved and to which she yearned to take him back. Suddenly an
unaccountable flashing query assailed her conscience: How dare she want
to take him back? She seemed as shocked as if some stranger had
accosted her. What was this dimming of her eye, this inward
tremulousness; this dammed tide beating at an unknown and riveted gate
of her intelligence? She felt more then than she dared to face. She
struggled against something in herself. The old habit of mind
instinctively resisted the new, the strange. But she did not come off
wholly victorious. The Carley Burch whom she recognized as of old,
passionately hated this life and work of Glenn Kilbourne’s, but the
rebel self, an unaccountable and defiant Carley, loved him all the
better for them.
Carley drew a long deep breath before she called Glenn. This meeting
would be momentous and she felt no absolute surety of herself.
Manifestly he was surprised to hear her call, and, dropping his sack
and implement, he hurried across the tilled ground, sending up puffs of
dust. He vaulted the rude fence of poles, and upon sight of her called
out lustily. How big and virile he looked! Yet he was gaunt and
strained. It struck Carley that he had not looked so upon her arrival
at Oak Creek. Had she worried him? The query gave her a pang.
“Sir Tiller of the Fields,” said Carley, gayly, “see, your dinner! _I_
brought it and _I_ am going to share it.”
“You old darling!” he replied, and gave her an embrace that left her
cheek moist with the sweat of his. He smelled of dust and earth and his
body was hot. “I wish to God it could be true for always!”
His loving, bearish onslaught and his words quite silenced Carley. How
at critical moments he always said the thing that hurt her or inhibited
her! She essayed a smile as she drew back from him.
“It’s sure good of you,” he said, taking the basket. “I was thinking
I’d be through work sooner today, and was sorry I had not made a date
with you. Come, we’ll find a place to sit.”
Whereupon he led her back under the trees to a half-sunny, half-shady
bench of rock overhanging the stream. Great pines overshadowed a still,
eddying pool. A number of brown butterflies hovered over the water, and
small trout floated like spotted feathers just under the surface.
Drowsy summer enfolded the sylvan scene.
Glenn knelt at the edge of the brook, and, plunging his hands in, he
splashed like a huge dog and bathed his hot face and head, and then
turned to Carley with gay words and laughter, while he wiped himself
dry with a large red scarf. Carley was not proof against the virility
of him then, and at the moment, no matter what it was that had made him
the man he looked, she loved it.
“I’ll sit in the sun,” he said, designating a place. “When you’re hot
you mustn’t rest in the shade, unless you’ve coat or sweater. But you
sit here in the shade.”
“Glenn, that’ll put us too far apart,” complained Carley. “I’ll sit in
the sun with you.”
The delightful simplicity and happiness of the ensuing hour was
something Carley believed she would never forget.
“There! we’ve licked the platter clean,” she said. “What starved bears
we were!.... I wonder if I shall enjoy eating—when I get home. I used
to be so finnicky and picky.”
“Carley, don’t talk about home,” said Glenn, appealingly.
“You dear old farmer, I’d love to stay here and just dream—forever,”
replied Carley, earnestly. “But I came on purpose to talk seriously.”
“Oh, you did! About what?” he returned, with some quick, indefinable
change of tone and expression.
“Well, first about your work. I know I hurt your feelings when I
wouldn’t listen. But I wasn’t ready. I wanted to—to just be gay with
you for a while. Don’t think I wasn’t interested. I was. And now, I’m
ready to hear all about it—and everything.”
She smiled at him bravely, and she knew that unless some unforeseen
shock upset her composure, she would be able to conceal from him
anything which might hurt his feelings.
“You do look serious,” he said, with keen eyes on her.
“Just what are your business relations with Hutter?” she inquired.
“I’m simply working for him,” replied Glenn. “My aim is to get an
interest in his sheep, and I expect to, some day. We have some plans.
And one of them is the development of that Deep Lake section. You
remember—you were with us. The day Spillbeans spilled you?”
“Yes, I remember. It was a pretty place,” she replied.
Carley did not tell him that for a month past she had owned the Deep
Lake section of six hundred and forty acres. She had, in fact,
instructed Hutter to purchase it, and to keep the transaction a secret
for the present. Carley had never been able to understand the impulse
that prompted her to do it. But as Hutter had assured her it was a
remarkably good investment on very little capital, she had tried to
persuade herself of its advantages. Back of it all had been an
irresistible desire to be able some day to present to Glenn this ranch
site he loved. She had concluded he would never wholly dissociate
himself from this West; and as he would visit it now and then, she had
already begun forming plans of her own. She could stand a month in
Arizona at long intervals.
“Hutter and I will go into cattle raising some day,” went on Glenn.
“And that Deep Lake place is what I want for myself.”
“What work are you doing for Hutter?” asked Carley.
“Anything from building fence to cutting timber,” laughed Glenn. “I’ve
not yet the experience to be a foreman like Lee Stanton. Besides, I
have a little business all my own. I put all my money in that.”
“You mean here—this—this farm?”
“Yes. And the stock I’m raisin’. You see I have to feed corn. And
believe me, Carley, those cornfields represent some job.”
“I can well believe that,” replied Carley. “You—you looked it.”
“Oh, the hard work is over. All I have to do now it to plant and keep
the weeds out.”
“Glenn, do sheep eat corn?”
“I plant corn to feed my hogs.”
“Hogs?” she echoed, vaguely.
“Yes, hogs,” he said, with quiet gravity. “The first day you visited my
cabin I told you I raised hogs, and I fried my own ham for your
dinner.”
“Is that what you—put your money in?”
“Yes. And Hutter says I’ve done well.”
“_Hogs!_” ejaculated Carley, aghast.
“My dear, are you growin’ dull of comprehension?” retorted Glenn.
“H-o-g-s.” He spelled the word out. “I’m in the hog-raising business,
and pretty blamed well pleased over my success so far.”
Carley caught herself in time to quell outwardly a shock of amaze and
revulsion. She laughed, and exclaimed against her stupidity. The look
of Glenn was no less astounding than the content of his words. He was
actually proud of his work. Moreover, he showed not the least sign that
he had any idea such information might be startlingly obnoxious to his
fiancée.
“Glenn! It’s so—so queer,” she ejaculated. “That you—Glenn
Kilbourne-should ever go in for—for hogs!... It’s unbelievable. How’d
you ever—ever happen to do it?”
“By Heaven! you’re hard on me!” he burst out, in sudden dark, fierce
passion. “How’d I ever happen to do it?... _What_ was there left for
me? I gave my soul and heart and body to the government—to fight for my
country. I came home a wreck. _What_ did my government do for me?
_What_ did my employers do for me? _What_ did the people I fought for
do for me?... Nothing—so help me God—_nothing!_... I got a ribbon and a
bouquet—a little applause for an hour—and then the sight of me sickened
my countrymen. I was broken and used. I was absolutely forgotten....
But my body, my life, my soul meant _all_ to me. My future was ruined,
but I wanted to live. I had killed men who never harmed me—I was not
fit to die.... I _tried_ to live. So I fought out my battle alone.
Alone!... No one understood. No one cared. I came West to keep from
dying of consumption in sight of the indifferent mob for whom I had
sacrificed myself. I chose to die on my feet away off alone
somewhere.... But I got well. And what _made_ me well—and _saved_ my
soul—was the first work that offered. _Raising and tending hogs!_”
The dead whiteness of Glenn’s face, the lightning scorn of his eyes,
the grim, stark strangeness of him then had for Carley a terrible
harmony with this passionate denunciation of her, of her kind, of the
America for whom he had lost all.
“Oh, Glenn!—forgive—me!” she faltered. “I was only—talking. What do I
know? Oh, I am blind—blind and little!”
She could not bear to face him for a moment, and she hung her head. Her
intelligence seemed concentrating swift, wild thoughts round the shock
to her consciousness. By that terrible expression of his face, by those
thundering words of scorn, would she come to realize the mighty truth
of his descent into the abyss and his rise to the heights. Vaguely she
began to see. An awful sense of her deadness, of her soul-blighting
selfishness, began to dawn upon her as something monstrous out of dim,
gray obscurity. She trembled under the reality of thoughts that were
not new. How she had babbled about Glenn and the crippled soldiers! How
she had imagined she sympathized! But she had only been a vain,
worldly, complacent, effusive little fool. She had here the shock of
her life, and she sensed a greater one, impossible to grasp.
“Carley, that was coming to you,” said Glenn, presently, with deep,
heavy expulsion of breath.
“I only know I love you—more—more,” she cried, wildly, looking up and
wanting desperately to throw herself in his arms.
“I guess you do—a little,” he replied. “Sometimes I feel you are a kid.
Then again you represent the world—your world with its age-old
custom—its unalterable.... But, Carley, let’s get back to my work.”
“Yes—yes,” exclaimed Carley, gladly. “I’m ready to—to go pet your
hogs—anything.”
“By George! I’ll take you up,” he declared. “I’ll bet you won’t go near
one of my hogpens.”
“Lead me to it!” she replied, with a hilarity that was only a nervous
reversion of her state.
“Well, maybe I’d better hedge on the bet,” he said, laughing again.
“You have more in you than I suspect. You sure fooled me when you stood
for the sheep-dip. But, come on, I’ll take you anyway.”
So that was how Carley found herself walking arm in arm with Glenn down
the canyon trail. A few moments of action gave her at least an
appearance of outward composure. And the state of her emotion was so
strained and intense that her slightest show of interest must deceive
Glenn into thinking her eager, responsive, enthusiastic. It certainly
appeared to loosen his tongue. But Carley knew she was farther from
normal than ever before in her life, and that the subtle, inscrutable
woman’s intuition of her presaged another shock. Just as she had seemed
to change, so had the aspects of the canyon undergone some illusive
transformation. The beauty of green foliage and amber stream and brown
tree trunks and gray rocks and red walls was there; and the summer
drowsiness and languor lay as deep; and the loneliness and solitude
brooded with its same eternal significance. But some nameless
enchantment, perhaps of hope, seemed no longer to encompass her. A blow
had fallen upon her, the nature of which only time could divulge.
Glenn led her around the clearing and up to the base of the west wall,
where against a shelving portion of the cliff had been constructed a
rude fence of poles. It formed three sides of a pen, and the fourth
side was solid rock. A bushy cedar tree stood in the center. Water
flowed from under the cliff, which accounted for the boggy condition of
the red earth. This pen was occupied by a huge sow and a litter of
pigs.
Carley climbed on the fence and sat there while Glenn leaned over the
top pole and began to wax eloquent on a subject evidently dear to his
heart. Today of all days Carley made an inspiring listener. Even the
shiny, muddy, suspicious old sow in no wise daunted her fictitious
courage. That filthy pen of mud a foot deep, and of odor rancid, had no
terrors for her. With an arm round Glenn’s shoulder she watched the
rooting and squealing little pigs, and was amused and interested, as if
they were far removed from the vital issue of the hour. But all the
time as she looked and laughed, and encouraged Glenn to talk, there
seemed to be a strange, solemn, oppressive knocking at her heart. Was
it only the beat-beat-beat of blood?
“There were twelve pigs in that litter,” Glenn was saying, “and now you
see there are only nine. I’ve lost three. Mountain lions, bears,
coyotes, wild cats are all likely to steal a pig. And at first I was
sure one of these varmints had been robbing me. But as I could not find
any tracks, I knew I had to lay the blame on something else. So I kept
watch pretty closely in daytime, and at night I shut the pigs up in the
corner there, where you see I’ve built a pen. Yesterday I heard
squealing—and, by George! I saw an eagle flying off with one of my
pigs. Say, I was mad. A great old bald-headed eagle—the regal bird you
see with America’s stars and stripes had degraded himself to the level
of a coyote. I ran for my rifle, and I took some quick shots at him as
he flew up. Tried to hit him, too, but I failed. And the old rascal
hung on to my pig. I watched him carry it to that sharp crag way up
there on the rim.”
“Poor little piggy!” exclaimed Carley. “To think of our American
emblem—our stately bird of noble warlike mien—our symbol of lonely
grandeur and freedom of the heights—think of him being a robber of
pigpens!—Glenn, I begin to appreciate the many-sidedness of things.
Even my hide-bound narrowness is susceptible to change. It’s never too
late to learn. This should apply to the Society for the Preservation of
the American Eagle.”
Glenn led her along the base of the wall to three other pens, in each
of which was a fat old sow with a litter. And at the last enclosure,
that owing to dry soil was not so dirty, Glenn picked up a little pig
and held it squealing out to Carley as she leaned over the fence. It
was fairly white and clean, a little pink and fuzzy, and certainly cute
with its curled tall.
“Carley Burch, take it in your hands,” commanded Glenn.
The feat seemed monstrous and impossible of accomplishment for Carley.
Yet such was her temper at the moment that she would have undertaken
anything.
“Why, shore I will, as Flo says,” replied Carley, extending her
ungloved hands. “Come here, piggy. I christen you Pinky.” And hiding an
almost insupportable squeamishness from Glenn, she took the pig in her
hands and fondled it.
“By George!” exclaimed Glenn, in huge delight. “I wouldn’t have
believed it. Carley, I hope you tell your fastidious and immaculate
Morrison that you held one of my pigs in your beautiful hands.”
“Wouldn’t it please you more to tell him yourself?” asked Carley.
“Yes, it would,” declared Glenn, grimly.
This incident inspired Glenn to a Homeric narration of his hog-raising
experience. In spite of herself the content of his talk interested her.
And as for the effect upon her of his singular enthusiasm, it was deep
and compelling. The little-boned Berkshire razorback hogs grew so large
and fat and heavy that their bones broke under their weight. The Duroc
jerseys were the best breed in that latitude, owing to their larger and
stronger bones, that enabled them to stand up under the greatest
accumulation of fat.
Glenn told of his droves of pigs running wild in the canyon below. In
summertime they fed upon vegetation, and at other seasons on acorns,
roots, bugs, and grubs. Acorns, particularly, were good and fattening
feed. They ate cedar and juniper berries, and pinyon nuts. And
therefore they lived off the land, at little or no expense to the
owner. The only loss was from beasts and birds of prey. Glenn showed
Carley how a profitable business could soon be established. He meant to
fence off side canyons and to segregate droves of his hogs, and to
raise abundance of corn for winter feed. At that time there was a
splendid market for hogs, a condition Hutter claimed would continue
indefinitely in a growing country. In conclusion Glenn eloquently told
how in his necessity he had accepted gratefully the humblest of labors,
to find in the hard pursuit of it a rejuvenation of body and mind, and
a promise of independence and prosperity.
When he had finished, and excused himself to go repair a weak place in
the corral fence, Carley sat silent, wrapped in strange meditation.
Whither had faded the vulgarity and ignominy she had attached to
Glenn’s raising of hogs? Gone—like other miasmas of her narrow mind!
Partly she understood him now. She shirked consideration of his
sacrifice to his country. That must wait. But she thought of his work,
and the more she thought the less she wondered.
First he had labored with his hands. What infinite meaning lay
unfolding to her vision! Somewhere out of it all came the conception
that man was intended to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. But
there was more to it than that. By that toil and sweat, by the friction
of horny palms, by the expansion and contraction of muscle, by the
acceleration of blood, something great and enduring, something physical
and spiritual, came to a man. She understood then why she would have
wanted to surrender herself to a man made manly by toil; she understood
how a woman instinctively leaned toward the protection of a man who had
used his hands—who had strength and red blood and virility who could
fight like the progenitors of the race. Any toil was splendid that
served this end for any man. It all went back to the survival of the
fittest. And suddenly Carley thought of Morrison. He could dance and
dangle attendance upon her, and amuse her—but how would he have
acquitted himself in a moment of peril? She had her doubts. Most
assuredly he could not have beaten down for her a ruffian like Haze
Ruff. What then should be the significance of a man for a woman?
Carley’s querying and answering mind reverted to Glenn. He had found a
secret in this seeking for something through the labor of hands. All
development of body must come through exercise of muscles. The virility
of cell in tissue and bone depended upon that. Thus he had found in
toil the pleasure and reward athletes had in their desultory training.
But when a man learned this secret the need of work must become
permanent. Did this explain the law of the Persians that every man was
required to sweat every day?
Carley tried to picture to herself Glenn’s attitude of mind when he had
first gone to work here in the West. Resolutely she now denied her
shrinking, cowardly sensitiveness. She would go to the root of this
matter, if she had intelligence enough. Crippled, ruined in health,
wrecked and broken by an inexplicable war, soul-blighted by the
heartless, callous neglect of government and public, on the verge of
madness at the insupportable facts, he had yet been wonderful enough,
true enough to himself and God, to fight for life with the instinct of
a man, to fight for his mind with a noble and unquenchable faith. Alone
indeed he had been alone! And by some miracle beyond the power of
understanding he had found day by day in his painful efforts some hope
and strength to go on. He could not have had any illusions. For Glenn
Kilbourne the health and happiness and success most men held so dear
must have seemed impossible. His slow, daily, tragic, and terrible task
must have been something he owed himself. Not for Carley Burch! She
like all the others had failed him. How Carley shuddered in confession
of that! Not for the country which had used him and cast him off!
Carley divined now, as if by a flash of lightning, the meaning of
Glenn’s strange, cold, scornful, and aloof manner when he had
encountered young men of his station, as capable and as strong as he,
who had escaped the service of the army. For him these men did not
exist. They were less than nothing. They had waxed fat on lucrative
jobs; they had basked in the presence of girls whose brothers and
lovers were in the trenches or on the turbulent sea, exposed to the
ceaseless dread and almost ceaseless toil of war. If Glenn’s spirit had
lifted him to endurance of war for the sake of others, how then could
it fail him in a precious duty of fidelity to himself? Carley could see
him day by day toiling in his lonely canyon—plodding to his lonely
cabin. He had been playing the game—fighting it out alone as surely he
knew his brothers of like misfortune were fighting.
So Glenn Kilbourne loomed heroically in Carley’s transfigured sight. He
was one of Carlyle’s battle-scarred warriors. Out of his travail he had
climbed on stepping-stones of his dead self. _Resurgam!_ That had been
his unquenchable cry. Who had heard it? Only the solitude of his lonely
canyon, only the waiting, dreaming, watching walls, only the silent
midnight shadows, only the white, blinking, passionless stars, only the
wild creatures of his haunts, only the moaning wind in the pines—only
these had been with him in his agony. How near were these things to
God?
Carley’s heart seemed full to bursting. Not another single moment could
her mounting love abide in a heart that held a double purpose. How
bitter the assurance that she had not come West to help him! It was
self, self, all self that had actuated her. Unworthy indeed was she of
the love of this man. Only a lifetime of devotion to him could acquit
her in the eyes of her better self. Sweetly and madly raced the thrill
and tumult of her blood. There must be only one outcome to her romance.
Yet the next instant there came a dull throbbing—an oppression which
was pain—an impondering vague thought of catastrophe. Only the
fearfulness of love perhaps!
She saw him complete his task and wipe his brown moist face and stride
toward her, coming nearer, tall and erect with something added to his
soldierly bearing, with a light in his eyes she could no longer bear.
The moment for which she had waited more than two months had come at
last.
“Glenn—when will you go back East?” she asked, tensely and low.
The instant the words were spent upon her lips she realized that he had
always been waiting and prepared for this question that had been so
terrible for her to ask.
“Carley,” he replied gently, though his voice rang, “I am never going
back East.”
An inward quivering hindered her articulation.
“_Never?_” she whispered.
“Never to live, or stay any while,” he went on. “I might go some time
for a little visit.... But never to live.”
“Oh—Glenn!” she gasped, and her hands fluttered out to him. The shock
was driving home. No amaze, no incredulity succeeded her reception of
the fact. It was a slow stab. Carley felt the cold blanch of her skin.
“Then—this is it—the something I felt strange between us?”
“Yes, I knew—and you never asked me,” he replied.
“That was it? All the time you knew,” she whispered, huskily. “You
knew. ... _I’d never—marry you—never live out here?_”
“Yes, Carley, I knew you’d never be woman enough—_American enough_—to
help me reconstruct my broken life out here in the West,” he replied,
with a sad and bitter smile.
That flayed her. An insupportable shame and wounded vanity and
clamoring love contended for dominance of her emotions. Love beat down
all else.
“Dearest—I beg of you—don’t break my heart,” she implored.
“I love you, Carley,” he answered, steadily, with piercing eyes on
hers.
“Then come back—home—home with me.”
“No. If you love me you will be my wife.”
“Love you! Glenn, I worship you,” she broke out, passionately. “But I
could not live here—_I could not_.”
“Carley, did you ever read of the woman who said, ‘Whither thou goest,
there will I go’...”
“Oh, don’t be ruthless! Don’t judge me.... I never dreamed of this. I
came West to take you back.”
“My dear, it was a mistake,” he said, gently, softening to her
distress. “I’m sorry I did not write you more plainly. But, Carley, I
could not ask you to share this—this wilderness home with me. I don’t
ask it now. I always knew you couldn’t do it. Yet you’ve changed
so—that I hoped against hope. Love makes us blind even to what we see.”
“Don’t try to spare me. I’m slight and miserable. I stand abased in my
own eyes. I thought I loved you. But I must love best the
crowd—people—luxury—fashion—the damned round of things I was born to.”
“Carley, you will realize their insufficiency too late,” he replied,
earnestly. “The things you were born to are love, work, children,
happiness.”
“Don’t! don’t!... they are hollow mockery for me,” she cried,
passionately. “Glenn, it is the end. It must come—quickly.... You are
free.”
“I do not ask to be free. Wait. Go home and look at it again with
different eyes. Think things over. Remember what came to me out of the
West. I will always love you—and I will be here—hoping—”
“I—I cannot listen,” she returned, brokenly, and she clenched her hands
tightly to keep from wringing them. “I—I cannot face you.... Here
is—your ring.... You—are—free.... Don’t stop me—don’t come.... Oh,
Glenn, good-by!”
With breaking heart she whirled away from him and hurried down the
slope toward the trail. The shade of the forest enveloped her. Peering
back through the trees, she saw Glenn standing where she had left him,
as if already stricken by the loneliness that must be his lot. A sob
broke from Carley’s throat. She hated herself. She was in a terrible
state of conflict. Decision had been wrenched from her, but she sensed
unending strife. She dared not look back again. Stumbling and
breathless, she hurried on. How changed the atmosphere and sunlight and
shadow of the canyon! The looming walls had pitiless eyes for her
flight. When she crossed the mouth of West Fork an almost irresistible
force breathed to her from under the stately pines.
An hour later she had bidden farewell to the weeping Mrs. Hutter, and
to the white-faced Flo, and Lolomi Lodge, and the murmuring waterfall,
and the haunting loneliness of Oak Creek Canyon.