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Page 24
"All right, Carley," he replied, laughing. "What do you want to do? The day
is at your disposal. I wish it were June. Then if you didn't fall in love
with West Fork you'd be no good."
"Glenn, I love people, not places," she returned.
"So I remember. And that's one thing I don't like. But let's not quarrel.
What'll we do?"
"Suppose you tramp with me all around, until I'm good and hungry. Then
we'll come back here--and you can cook dinner for me."
"Fine! Oh, I know you're just bursting with curiosity to see how I'll do
it. Well, you may be surprised, miss."
"Let's go," she urged.
"Shall I take my gun or fishing rod?"
"You shall take nothing but me," retorted Carley. "What chance has a girl
with a man, if he can hunt or fish?"
So they went out hand in hand. Half of the belt of sky above was obscured
by swiftly moving gray clouds. The other half was blue and was being slowly
encroached upon by the dark storm-like pall. How cold the air! Carley had
already learned that when the sun was hidden the atmosphere was cold. Glenn
led her down a trail to the brook, where he calmly picked her up in his
arms, quite easily, it appeared, and leisurely packed her across, kissing
her half a dozen times before he deposited her on her feet.
"Glenn, you do this sort of thing so well that it makes me imagine you have
practice now and then," she said.
"No. But you are pretty and sweet, and like the girl you were four years
ago. That takes me back to those days."
"I thank you. That's dear of you. I think I am something of a cat. . . .
I'll be glad if this walk leads us often to the creek."
Spring might have been fresh and keen in the air, but it had not yet
brought much green to the brown earth or to the trees. The cotton-woods
showed a light feathery verdure. The long grass was a bleached white, and
low down close to the sod fresh tiny green blades showed. The great fern
leaves were sear and ragged, and they rustled in the breeze. Small gray
sheath-barked trees with clumpy foliage and snags of dead branches, Glenn
called cedars; and, grotesque as these were, Carley rather liked them. They
were approachable, not majestic and lofty like the pines, and they smelled
sweetly wild, and best of all they afforded some protection from the bitter
wind. Carley rested better than she walked. The huge sections of red rock
that had tumbled from above also interested Carley, especially when the sun
happened to come out for a few moments and brought out their color. She
enjoyed walking on the fallen pines, with Glenn below, keeping pace with
her and holding her hand. Carley looked in vain for flowers and birds. The
only living things she saw were rainbow trout that Glenn pointed out to her
in the beautiful clear pools. The way the great gray bowlders trooped down
to the brook as if they were cattle going to drink; the dark caverns under
the shelving cliffs, where the water murmured with such hollow mockery; the
low spear-pointed gray plants, resembling century plants, and which Glenn
called mescal cactus, each with its single straight dead stalk standing on
high with fluted head; the narrow gorges, perpendicularly walled in red,
where the constricted brook plunged in amber and white cascades over fall
after fall, tumbling, rushing, singing its water melody--these all held
singular appeal for Carley as aspects of the wild land, fascinating for the
moment, symbolic of the lonely red man and his forbears, and by their raw
contrast making more necessary and desirable and elevating the comforts and
conventions of civilization. The cave man theory interested Carley only as
mythology.
Lonelier, wilder, grander grew Glenn's canyon. Carley was finally forced to
shift her attention from the intimate objects of the canyon floor to the
aloof and unattainable heights. Singular to feel the difference! That which
she could see close at hand, touch if she willed, seemed to, become part of
her knowledge, could be observed and so possessed and passed by. But the
gold-red ramparts against the sky, the crannied cliffs, the crags of the
eagles, the lofty, distant blank walls, where the winds of the gods had
written their wars--these haunted because they could never be possessed.
Carley had often gazed at the Alps as at celebrated pictures. She admired,
she appreciated--then she forgot. But the canyon heights did not affect her
that way. They vaguely dissatisfied, and as she could not be sure of what
they dissatisfied, she had to conclude that it was in herself. To see, to
watch, to dream, to seek, to strive, to endure, to find! Was that what they
meant? They might make her thoughtful of the vast earth, and its endless
age, and its staggering mystery. But what more!
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