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Page 22
"Well, old Fifth Avenue gadder!" called a gay voice. "If the back wall of
my yard so halts you--what will you ever do when you see the Painted
Desert, or climb Sunset Peak, or look down into the Grand Canyon?"
"Oh, Glenn, where are you?" cried Carley, gazing everywhere near at hand.
But he was farther away. The clearness of his voice had deceived her.
Presently she espied him a little distance away, across a creek she had not
before noticed.
"Come on," he called. "I want to see you cross the stepping stones."
Carley ran ahead, down a little slope of clean red rock, to the shore of
the green water. It was clear, swift, deep in some places and shallow in
others, with white wreathes or ripples around the rocks evidently placed
there as a means to cross. Carley drew back aghast.
"Glenn, I could never make it," she called.
"Come on, my Alpine climber," he taunted. "Will you let Arizona daunt you?"
"Do you want me to fall in and catch cold?" she cried, desperately.
"Carley, big women might even cross the bad places of modern life on
stepping stones of their dead selves!" he went on, with something of
mockery. "Surely a few physical steps are not beyond you."
"Say, are you mangling Tennyson or just kidding me?" she demanded slangily.
"My love, Flo could cross here with her eyes shut."
That thrust spurred Carley to action. His words were jest, yet they held a
hint of earnest. With her heart at her throat Carley stepped on the first
rock, and, poising, she calculated on a running leap from stone to stone.
Once launched, she felt she was falling downhill. She swayed, she splashed,
she slipped; and clearing the longest leap from the last stone to shore she
lost her balance and fell into Glenn's arms. His kisses drove away both her
panic and her resentment.
"By Jove! I didn't think you'd even attempt it!" he declared, manifestly
pleased. "I made sure I'd have to pack you over--in fact, rather liked the
idea."
"I wouldn't advise you to employ any such means again--to dare me," she
retorted.
"That's a nifty outdoor suit you've on," he said, admiringly. "I was
wondering what you'd wear. I like short outing skirts for women, rather
than trousers. The service sort of made the fair sex dippy about pants."
"It made them dippy about more than that," she replied. "You and I will
never live to see the day that women recover their balance."
"I agree with you," replied Glenn.
Carley locked her arm in his. "Honey, I want to have a good time today.
Cut out all the other women stuff. . . . Take me to see your little gray
home in the West. Or is it gray?"
He laughed. "Why, yes, it's gray, just about. The logs have bleached some."
Glenn led her away up a trail that climbed between bowlders, and meandered
on over piny mats of needles under great, silent, spreading pines; and
closer to the impondering mountain wall, where at the base of the red rock
the creek murmured strangely with hollow gurgle, where the sun had no
chance to affect the cold damp gloom; and on through sweet-smelling woods,
out into the sunlight again, and across a wider breadth of stream; and up a
slow slope covered with stately pines, to a little cabin that faced the
west.
"Here we are, sweetheart," said Glenn. "Now we shall see what you are made
of."
Carley was non-committal as to that. Her intense interest precluded any
humor at this moment. Not until she actually saw the log cabin Glenn had
erected with his own hands had she been conscious of any great interest.
But sight of it awoke something unaccustomed in Carley. As she stepped into
the cabin her heart was not acting normally for a young woman who had no
illusions about love in a cottage.
Glenn's cabin contained one room about fifteen feet wide by twenty long.
Between the peeled logs were lines of red mud, hard dried. There was a
small window opposite the door. In one corner was a couch of poles, with
green tips of pine boughs peeping from under the blankets. The floor
consisted of flat rocks laid irregularly, with many spaces of earth showing
between. The open fireplace appeared too large for the room, but the very
bigness of it, as well as the blazing sticks and glowing embers, appealed
strongly to Carley. A rough-hewn log formed the mantel, and on it Carley's
picture held the place of honor. Above this a rifle lay across deer
antlers. Carley paused here in her survey long enough to kiss Glenn and
point to her photograph.
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