Vague sense of movement, of darkness, and of cold attended Carley’s
consciousness for what seemed endless time.
A fall over rocks and a severe thrust from a sharp branch brought an
acute appreciation of her position, if not of her mental state. Night
had fallen. The stars were out. She had stumbled over a low ledge.
Evidently she had wandered around, dazedly and aimlessly, until brought
to her senses by pain. But for a gleam of campfires through the cedars
she would have been lost. It did not matter. She was lost, anyhow. What
was it that had happened?
Charley, the sheep herder! Then the thunderbolt of his words burst upon
her, and she collapsed to the cold stones. She lay quivering from head
to toe. She dug her fingers into the moss and lichen. “Oh, God, to
think—after all—it happened!” she moaned. There had been a rending
within her breast, as of physical violence, from which she now suffered
anguish. There were a thousand stinging nerves. There was a mortal
sickness of horror, of insupportable heartbreaking loss. She could not
endure it. She could not live under it.
She lay there until energy supplanted shock. Then she rose to rush into
the darkest shadows of the cedars, to grope here and there, hanging her
head, wringing her hands, beating her breast. “It can’t be true,” she
cried. “Not after my struggle—my victory—not _now!_” But there had been
no victory. And now it was too late. She was betrayed, ruined, lost.
That wonderful love had wrought transformation in her—and now havoc.
Once she fell against the branches of a thick cedar that upheld her.
The fragrance which had been sweet was now bitter. Life that had been
bliss was now hateful! She could not keep still for a single moment.
Black night, cedars, brush, rocks, washes, seemed not to obstruct her.
In a frenzy she rushed on, tearing her dress, her hands, her hair.
Violence of some kind was imperative. All at once a pale gleaming open
space, shimmering under the stars, lay before her. It was water. Deep
Lake! And instantly a hideous terrible longing to destroy herself
obsessed her. She had no fear. She could have welcomed the cold, slimy
depths that meant oblivion. But could they really bring oblivion? A
year ago she would have believed so, and would no longer have endured
such agony. She had changed. A cursed strength had come to her, and it
was this strength that now augmented her torture. She flung wide her
arms to the pitiless white stars and looked up at them. “My hope, my
faith, my love have failed me,” she whispered. “They have been a lie. I
went through hell for them. And now I’ve nothing to live for.... Oh,
let me end it all!”
If she prayed to the stars for mercy, it was denied her. Passionlessly
they blazed on. But she could not kill herself. In that hour death
would have been the only relief and peace left to her. Stricken by the
cruelty of her fate, she fell back against the stones and gave up to
grief. Nothing was left but fierce pain. The youth and vitality and
intensity of her then locked arms with anguish and torment and a
cheated, unsatisfied love. Strength of mind and body involuntarily
resisted the ravages of this catastrophe. Will power seemed nothing,
but the flesh of her, that medium of exquisite sensation, so full of
life, so prone to joy, refused to surrender. The part of her that felt
fought terribly for its heritage.
All night long Carley lay there. The crescent moon went down, the stars
moved on their course, the coyotes ceased to wail, the wind died away,
the lapping of the waves along the lake shore wore to gentle splash,
the whispering of the insects stopped as the cold of dawn approached.
The darkest hour fell—hour of silence, solitude, and melancholy, when
the desert lay tranced, cold, waiting, mournful without light of moon
or stars or sun.
In the gray dawn Carley dragged her bruised and aching body back to her
tent, and, fastening the door, she threw off wet clothes and boots and
fell upon her bed. Slumber of exhaustion came to her.
When she awoke the tent was light and the moving shadows of cedar
boughs on the white canvas told that the sun was straight above. Carley
ached as never before. A deep pang seemed invested in every bone. Her
heart felt swollen out of proportion to its space in her breast. Her
breathing came slow and it hurt. Her blood was sluggish. Suddenly she
shut her eyes. She loathed the light of day. What was it that had
happened?
Then the brutal truth flashed over her again, in aspect new, with all
the old bitterness. For an instant she experienced a suffocating
sensation as if the canvas had sagged under the burden of heavy air and
was crushing her breast and heart. Then wave after wave of emotion
swept over her. The storm winds of grief and passion were loosened
again. And she writhed in her misery.
Some one knocked on her door. The Mexican woman called anxiously.
Carley awoke to the fact that her presence was not solitary on the
physical earth, even if her soul seemed stricken to eternal loneliness.
Even in the desert there was a world to consider. Vanity that had bled
to death, pride that had been crushed, availed her not here. But
something else came to her support. The lesson of the West had been to
endure, not to shirk—to face an issue, not to hide. Carley got up,
bathed, dressed, brushed and arranged her dishevelled hair. The face
she saw in the mirror excited her amaze and pity. Then she went out in
answer to the call for dinner. But she could not eat. The ordinary
functions of life appeared to be deadened.
The day happened to be Sunday, and therefore the workmen were absent.
Carley had the place to herself. How the half-completed house mocked
her! She could not bear to look at it. What use could she make of it
now? Flo Hutter had become the working comrade of Glenn Kilbourne, the
mistress of his cabin. She was his wife and she would be the mother of
his children.
That thought gave birth to the darkest hour of Carley Burch’s life. She
became possessed as by a thousand devils. She became merely a female
robbed of her mate. Reason was not in her, nor charity, nor justice.
All that was abnormal in human nature seemed coalesced in her,
dominant, passionate, savage, terrible. She hated with an incredible
and insane ferocity. In the seclusion of her tent, crouched on her bed,
silent, locked, motionless, she yet was the embodiment of all terrible
strife and storm in nature. Her heart was a maelstrom and would have
whirled and sucked down to hell all the beings that were men. Her soul
was a bottomless gulf, filled with the gales and the fires of jealousy,
superhuman to destroy.
That fury consumed all her remaining strength, and from the relapse she
sank to sleep.
Morning brought the inevitable reaction. However long her other
struggles, this monumental and final one would be brief. She realized
that, yet was unable to understand how it could be possible, unless
shock or death or mental aberration ended the fight. An eternity of
emotion lay back between this awakening of intelligence and the hour of
her fall into the clutches of primitive passion.
That morning she faced herself in the mirror and asked, “Now—what do I
owe _you?_” It was not her voice that answered. It was beyond her. But
it said: “Go on! You are cut adrift. You are alone. You owe none but
yourself!... Go on! Not backward—not to the depths—but up—upward!”
She shuddered at such a decree. How impossible for her! All animal, all
woman, all emotion, how could she live on the cold, pure heights? Yet
she owed something intangible and inscrutable to herself. Was it the
thing that woman lacked physically, yet contained hidden in her soul?
An element of eternal spirit to rise! Because of heartbreak and ruin
and irreparable loss must she fall? Was loss of love and husband and
children only a test? The present hour would be swallowed in the sum of
life’s trials. She could not go back. She would not go down. There was
wrenched from her tried and sore heart an unalterable and unquenchable
decision—to make her own soul prove the evolution of woman. Vessel of
blood and flesh she might be, doomed by nature to the reproduction of
her kind, but she had in her the supreme spirit and power to carry on
the progress of the ages—the climb of woman out of the darkness.
Carley went out to the workmen. The house should be completed and she
would live in it. Always there was the stretching and illimitable
desert to look at, and the grand heave upward of the mountains. Hoyle
was full of zest for the practical details of the building. He saw
nothing of the havoc wrought in her. Nor did the other workmen glance
more than casually at her. In this Carley lost something of a shirking
fear that her loss and grief were patent to all eyes.
That afternoon she mounted the most spirited of the mustangs she had
purchased from the Indians. To govern him and stick on him required all
her energy. And she rode him hard and far, out across the desert,
across mile after mile of cedar forest, clear to the foothills. She
rested there, absorbed in gazing desertward, and upon turning back
again, she ran him over the level stretches. Wind and branch threshed
her seemingly to ribbons. Violence seemed good for her. A fall had no
fear for her now. She reached camp at dusk, hot as fire, breathless and
strengthless. But she had earned something. Such action required
constant use of muscle and mind. If need be she could drive both to the
very furthermost limit. She could ride and ride—until the future, like
the immensity of the desert there, might swallow her. She changed her
clothes and rested a while. The call to supper found her hungry. In
this fact she discovered mockery of her grief. Love was not the food of
life. Exhausted nature’s need of rest and sleep was no respecter of a
woman’s emotion.
Next day Carley rode northward, wildly and fearlessly, as if this
conscious activity was the initiative of an endless number of rides
that were to save her. As before the foothills called her, and she went
on until she came to a very high one.
Carley dismounted from her panting horse, answering the familiar
impulse to attain heights by her own effort.
“Am I only a weakling?” she asked herself. “Only a creature mined by
the fever of the soul!... Thrown from one emotion to another? Never the
same. Yearning, suffering, sacrificing, hoping, and changing—forever
the same! What is it that drives _me?_ A great city with all its
attractions has failed to help me realize my life. So have friends
failed. So has the world. What can solitude and grandeur do?... All
this obsession of mine—all this strange feeling for simple elemental
earthly things likewise will fail me. Yet I am driven. They would call
me a mad woman.”
It took Carley a full hour of slow body-bending labor to climb to the
summit of that hill. High, steep, and rugged, it resisted ascension.
But at last she surmounted it and sat alone on the heights, with naked
eyes, and an unconscious prayer on her lips.
What was it that had happened? Could there be here a different answer
from that which always mocked her?
She had been a girl, not accountable for loss of mother, for choice of
home and education. She had belonged to a class. She had grown to
womanhood in it. She had loved, and in loving had escaped the evil of
her day, if not its taint. She had lived only for herself. Conscience
had awakened—but, alas! too late. She had overthrown the sordid,
self-seeking habit of life; she had awakened to real womanhood; she had
fought the insidious spell of modernity and she had defeated it; she
had learned the thrill of taking root in new soil, the pain and joy of
labor, the bliss of solitude, the promise of home and love and
motherhood. But she had gathered all these marvelous things to her soul
too late for happiness.
“_Now_ it is answered,” she declared aloud. “That is what has
happened?... And all that is _past_.... Is there anything left? If so
_what?_”
She flung her query out to the winds of the desert. But the desert
seemed too gray, too vast, too remote, too aloof, too measureless. It
was not concerned with her little life. Then she turned to the mountain
kingdom.
It seemed overpoweringly near at hand. It loomed above her to pierce
the fleecy clouds. It was only a stupendous upheaval of earth-crust,
grown over at the base by leagues and leagues of pine forest, belted
along the middle by vast slanting zigzag slopes of aspen, rent and
riven toward the heights into canyon and gorge, bared above to cliffs
and corners of craggy rock, whitened at the sky-piercing peaks by snow.
Its beauty and sublimity were lost upon Carley now; she was concerned
with its travail, its age, its endurance, its strength. And she studied
it with magnified sight.
What incomprehensible subterranean force had swelled those immense
slopes and lifted the huge bulk aloft to the clouds? Cataclysm of
nature—the expanding or shrinking of the earth—vast volcanic action
under the surface! Whatever it had been, it had left its expression of
the travail of the universe. This mountain mass had been hot gas when
flung from the parent sun, and now it was solid granite. What had it
endured in the making? What indeed had been its dimensions before the
millions of years of its struggle?
Eruption, earthquake, avalanche, the attrition of glacier, the erosion
of water, the cracking of frost, the weathering of rain and wind and
snow—these it had eternally fought and resisted in vain, yet still it
stood magnificent, frowning, battle-scarred and undefeated. Its
sky-piercing peaks were as cries for mercy to the Infinite. This old
mountain realized its doom. It had to go, perhaps to make room for a
newer and better kingdom. But it endured because of the spirit of
nature. The great notched circular line of rock below and between the
peaks, in the body of the mountains, showed where in ages past the
heart of living granite had blown out, to let loose on all the near
surrounding desert the streams of black lava and the hills of black
cinders. Despite its fringe of green it was hoary with age. Every
looming gray-faced wall, massive and sublime, seemed a monument of its
mastery over time. Every deep-cut canyon, showing the skeleton ribs,
the caverns and caves, its avalanche-carved slides, its long,
fan-shaped, spreading taluses, carried conviction to the spectator that
it was but a frail bit of rock, that its life was little and brief,
that upon it had been laid the merciless curse of nature. Change!
Change must unknit the very knots of the center of the earth. So its
strength lay in the sublimity of its defiance. It meant to endure to
the last rolling grain of sand. It was a dead mountain of rock, without
spirit, yet it taught a grand lesson to the seeing eye.
Life was only a part, perhaps an infinitely small part of nature’s
plan. Death and decay were just as important to her inscrutable design.
The universe had not been created for life, ease, pleasure, and
happiness of a man creature developed from lower organisms. If nature’s
secret was the developing of a spirit through all time, Carley divined
that she had it within her. So the present meant little.
“I have no right to be unhappy,” concluded Carley. “I had no right to
Glenn Kilbourne. I failed him. In that I failed myself. Neither life
nor nature failed me—nor love. It is no longer a mystery. Unhappiness
is only a change. Happiness itself is only change. So what does it
matter? The great thing is to see life—to understand—to feel—to work—to
fight—to endure. It is not my fault I am here. But it is my fault if I
leave this strange old earth the poorer for my failure.... I will no
longer be little. I will find strength. I will endure.... I still have
eyes, ears, nose, taste. I can feel the sun, the wind, the nip of
frost. Must I slink like a craven because I’ve lost the love of _one_
man? Must I hate Flo Hutter because she will make Glenn happy?
Never!... All of this seems better so, because through it I am changed.
I might have lived on, a selfish clod!”
Carley turned from the mountain kingdom and faced her future with the
profound and sad and far-seeing look that had come with her lesson. She
knew what to give. Sometime and somewhere there would be recompense.
She would hide her wound in the faith that time would heal it. And the
ordeal she set herself, to prove her sincerity and strength, was to
ride down to Oak Creek Canyon.
Carley did not wait many days. Strange how the old vanity held her back
until something of the havoc in her face should be gone!
One morning she set out early, riding her best horse, and she took a
sheep trail across country. The distance by road was much farther. The
June morning was cool, sparkling, fragrant. Mocking birds sang from the
topmost twig of cedars; doves cooed in the pines; sparrow hawks sailed
low over the open grassy patches. Desert primroses showed their rounded
pink clusters in sunny places, and here and there burned the carmine of
Indian paintbrush. Jack rabbits and cotton-tails bounded and scampered
away through the sage. The desert had life and color and movement this
June day. And as always there was the dry fragrance on the air.
Her mustang had been inured to long and consistent travel over the
desert. Her weight was nothing to him and he kept to the swinging lope
for miles. As she approached Oak Creek Canyon, however, she drew him to
a trot, and then a walk. Sight of the deep red-walled and green-floored
canyon was a shock to her.
The trail came out on the road that led to Ryan’s sheep camp, at a
point several miles west of the cabin where Carley had encountered Haze
Ruff. She remembered the curves and stretches, and especially the steep
jump-off where the road led down off the rim into the canyon. Here she
dismounted and walked. From the foot of this descent she knew every rod
of the way would be familiar to her, and, womanlike, she wanted to turn
away and fly from them. But she kept on and mounted again at level
ground.
The murmur of the creek suddenly assailed her ears—sweet, sad,
memorable, strangely powerful to hurt. Yet the sound seemed of long
ago. Down here summer had advanced. Rich thick foliage overspread the
winding road of sand. Then out of the shade she passed into the sunnier
regions of isolated pines. Along here she had raced Calico with Glenn’s
bay; and here she had caught him, and there was the place she had
fallen. She halted a moment under the pine tree where Glenn had held
her in his arms. Tears dimmed her eyes. If only she had known then the
truth, the reality! But regrets were useless.
By and by a craggy red wall loomed above the trees, and its pipe-organ
conformation was familiar to Carley. She left the road and turned to go
down to the creek. Sycamores and maples and great bowlders, and mossy
ledges overhanging the water, and a huge sentinel pine marked the spot
where she and Glenn had eaten their lunch that last day. Her mustang
splashed into the clear water and halted to drink. Beyond, through the
trees, Carley saw the sunny red-earthed clearing that was Glenn’s farm.
She looked, and fought herself, and bit her quivering lip until she
tasted blood. Then she rode out into the open.
The whole west side of the canyon had been cleared and cultivated and
plowed. But she gazed no farther. She did not want to see the spot
where she had given Glenn his ring and had parted from him. She rode
on. If she could pass West Fork she believed her courage would rise to
the completion of this ordeal. Places were what she feared. Places that
she had loved while blindly believing she hated! There the narrow gap
of green and blue split the looming red wall. She was looking into West
Fork. Up there stood the cabin. How fierce a pang rent her breast! She
faltered at the crossing of the branch stream, and almost surrendered.
The water murmured, the leaves rustled, the bees hummed, the birds
sang—all with some sad sweetness that seemed of the past.
Then the trail leading up West Fork was like a barrier. She saw horse
tracks in it. Next she descried boot tracks the shape of which was so
well-remembered that it shook her heart. There were fresh tracks in the
sand, pointing in the direction of the Lodge. Ah! that was where Glenn
lived now. Carley strained at her will to keep it fighting her memory.
The glory and the dream were gone!
A touch of spur urged her mustang into a gallop. The splashing ford of
the creek—the still, eddying pool beyond—the green orchards—the white
lacy waterfall—and Lolomi Lodge!
Nothing had altered. But Carley seemed returning after many years.
Slowly she dismounted—slowly she climbed the porch steps. Was there no
one at home? Yet the vacant doorway, the silence—something attested to
the knowledge of Carley’s presence. Then suddenly Mrs. Hutter fluttered
out with Flo behind her.
“You dear girl—I’m so glad!” cried Mrs. Hutter, her voice trembling.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” said Carley, bending to receive Mrs.
Hutter’s embrace. Carley saw dim eyes—the stress of agitation, but no
surprise.
“_Oh, Carley!_” burst out the Western girl, with voice rich and full,
yet tremulous.
“Flo, I’ve come to wish you happiness,” replied Carley, very low.
Was it the same Flo? This seemed more of a woman—strange now—white and
strained—beautiful, eager, questioning. A cry of gladness burst from
her. Carley felt herself enveloped in strong close clasp—and then a
warm, quick kiss of joy. It shocked her, yet somehow thrilled. Sure was
the welcome here. Sure was the strained situation, also, but the voice
rang too glad a note for Carley. It touched her deeply, yet she could
not understand. She had not measured the depth of Western friendship.
“Have you—seen Glenn?” queried Flo, breathlessly.
“Oh no, indeed not,” replied Carley, slowly gaining composure. The
nervous agitation of these women had stilled her own. “I just rode up
the trail. Where is he?”
“He was here—a moment ago,” panted Flo. “Oh, Carley, we sure are
locoed. ... Why, we only heard an hour ago—that _you_ were at Deep
Lake.... Charley rode in. He told us.... I thought my heart would
break. Poor Glenn! When he heard it.... But never mind _me_. Jump your
horse and run to West Fork!”
The spirit of her was like the strength of her arms as she hurried
Carley across the porch and shoved her down the steps.
“Climb on and run, Carley,” cried Flo. “If you only knew how glad he’ll
be that you came!”
Carley leaped into the saddle and wheeled the mustang. But she had no
answer for the girl’s singular, almost wild exultance. Then like a shot
the spirited mustang was off down the lane. Carley wondered with
swelling heart. Was her coming such a wondrous surprise—so unexpected
and big in generosity—something that would make Kilbourne as glad as it
had seemed to make Flo? Carley thrilled to this assurance.
Down the lane she flew. The red walls blurred and the sweet wind
whipped her face. At the trail she swerved the mustang, but did not
check his gait. Under the great pines he sped and round the bulging
wall. At the rocky incline leading to the creek she pulled the fiery
animal to a trot. How low and clear the water! As Carley forded it
fresh cool drops splashed into her face. Again she spurred her mount
and again trees and walls rushed by. Up and down the yellow bits of
trail—on over the brown mats of pine needles—until there in the
sunlight shone the little gray log cabin with a tall form standing in
the door. One instant the canyon tilted on end for Carley and she was
riding into the blue sky. Then some magic of soul sustained her, so
that she saw clearly. Reaching the cabin she reined in her mustang.
“Hello, Glenn! Look who’s here!” she cried, not wholly failing of
gayety.
He threw up his sombrero.
“Whoopee!” he yelled, in stentorian voice that rolled across the canyon
and bellowed in hollow echo and then clapped from wall to wall. The
unexpected Western yell, so strange from Glenn, disconcerted Carley.
Had he only answered her spirit of greeting? Had hers rung false?
But he was coming to her. She had seen the bronze of his face turn to
white. How gaunt and worn he looked. Older he appeared, with deeper
lines and whiter hair. His jaw quivered.
“Carley Burch, so it was _you?_” he queried, hoarsely.
“Glenn, I reckon it was,” she replied. “I bought your Deep Lake ranch
site. I came back too late.... But it is never too late for some
things.... I’ve come to wish you and Flo all the happiness in the
world—and to say we must be friends.”
The way he looked at her made her tremble. He strode up beside the
mustang, and he was so tall that his shoulder came abreast of her. He
placed a big warm hand on hers, as it rested, ungloved, on the pommel
of the saddle.
“Have you seen Flo?” he asked.
“I just left her. It was funny—the way she rushed me off after you. As
if there weren’t two—”
Was it Glenn’s eyes or the movement of his hand that checked her
utterance? His gaze pierced her soul. His hand slid along her arm to
her waist—around it. Her heart seemed to burst.
“Kick your feet out of the stirrups,” he ordered.
Instinctively she obeyed. Then with a strong pull he hauled her half
out of the saddle, pellmell into his arms. Carley had no resistance.
She sank limp, in an agony of amaze. Was this a dream? Swift and hard
his lips met hers—and again—and again....
“Oh, my God!—Glenn, are—you—mad?” she whispered, almost swooning.
“Sure—I reckon I am,” he replied, huskily, and pulled her all the way
out of the saddle.
Carley would have fallen but for his support. She could not think. She
was all instinct. Only the amaze—the sudden horror—drifted—faded as
before fires of her heart!
“Kiss me!” he commanded.
She would have kissed him if death were the penalty. How his face
blurred in her dimmed sight! Was that a strange smile? Then he held her
back from him.
“Carley—you came to wish Flo and me happiness?” he asked.
“Oh, yes—yes.... Pity me, Glenn—let me go. I meant well.... I
should—never have come.”
“Do you love me?” he went on, with passionate, shaking clasp.
“God help me—I do—I do!... And now it will kill me!”
“What did that damned fool Charley tell you?”
The strange content of his query, the trenchant force of it, brought
her upright, with sight suddenly cleared. Was this giant the tragic
Glenn who had strode to her from the cabin door?
“Charley told me—you and Flo—were married,” she whispered.
“You didn’t _believe_ him!” returned Glenn.
She could no longer speak. She could only see her lover, as if
transfigured, limned dark against the looming red wall.
“That was one of Charley’s queer jokes. I told you to beware of him.
Flo is married, yes—and very happy.... I’m unutterably happy, too—but
I’m _not_ married. Lee Stanton was the lucky bridegroom.... Carley, the
moment I saw you I knew you had come back to me.”