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Page 33
"Shore you're doing fine," was Flo's greeting. "Come and get it before we
throw it out."
Carley made haste to comply with the Western mandate, and was once again
confronted with the singular fact that appetite did not wait upon the
troubles of a tenderfoot. Glenn remarked that at least she would not starve
to death on the trip.
"Come, climb the ridge with me," he invited. "I want you to take a look to
the north and east."
He led her off through the cedars, up a slow red-earth slope, away from the
lake. A green moundlike eminence topped with flat red rock appeared near at
hand and not at all a hard climb. Nevertheless, her eyes deceived her, as
she found to the cost of her breath. It was both far away and high.
"I like this location," said Glenn. "If I had the money I'd buy this
section of land--six hundred and forty acres--and make a ranch of it. Just
under this bluff is a fine open flat bench for a cabin. You could see away
across the desert clear to Sunset Peak. There's a good spring of granite
water. I'd run water from the lake down into the lower flats, and I'd sure
raise some stock."
"What do you call this place?" asked Carley, curiously.
"Deep Lake. It's only a watering place for sheep and cattle. But there's
fine grazing, and it's a wonder to me no one has ever settled here."
Looking down, Carley appreciated his wish to own the place; and immediately
there followed in her a desire to get possession of this tract of land
before anyone else discovered its advantages, and to hold it for Glenn. But
this would surely conflict with her intention of persuading Glenn to go
back East. As quickly as her impulse had been born it died.
Suddenly the scene gripped Carley. She looked from near to far, trying to
grasp the illusive something. Wild lonely Arizona land! She saw ragged
dumpy cedars of gray and green, lines of red earth, and a round space of
water, gleaming pale under the lowering clouds; and in the distance
isolated hills, strangely curved, wandering away to a black uplift of earth
obscured in the sky.
These appeared to be mere steps leading her sight farther and higher to the
cloud-navigated sky, where rosy and golden effulgence betokened the sun and
the east. Carley held her breath. A transformation was going on before her
eyes.
"Carley, it's a stormy sunrise," said Glenn.
His words explained, but they did not convince. Was this sudden-bursting
glory only the sun rising behind storm clouds? She could see the clouds
moving while they were being colored. The universal gray surrendered under
some magic paint brush. The rifts widened, and the gloom of the pale-gray
world seemed to vanish. Beyond the billowy, rolling, creamy edges of
clouds, white and pink, shone the soft exquisite fresh blue sky. And a
blaze of fire, a burst of molten gold, sheered up from behind the rim of
cloud and suddenly poured a sea of sunlight from east to west. It trans-
figured the round foothills. They seemed bathed in ethereal light, and the
silver mists that overhung them faded while Carley gazed, and a rosy flush
crowned the symmetrical domes. Southward along the horizon line,
down-dropping veils of rain, just touched with the sunrise tint, streamed
in drifting slow movement from cloud to earth. To the north the range of
foothills lifted toward the majestic dome of Sunset Peak, a volcanic
upheaval of red and purple cinders, bare as rock, round as the lower hills,
and wonderful in its color. Full in the blaze of the rising sun it flaunted
an unchangeable front. Carley understood now what had been told her about
this peak. Volcanic fires had thrown up a colossal mound of cinders burned
forever to the hues of the setting sun. In every light and shade of day it
held true to its name. Farther north rose the bold bulk of the San
Francisco Peaks, that, half lost in the clouds, still dominated the desert
scene. Then as Carley gazed the rifts began to close. Another
transformation began, the reverse of what she watched. The golden radiance
of sunrise vanished, and under a gray, lowering, coalescing pall of cloud
the round hills returned to their bleak somberness, and the green desert
took again its cold sheen.
"Wasn't it fine, Carley?" asked Glenn. "But nothing to what you will
experience. I hope you stay till the weather gets warm. I want you to see a
summer dawn on the Painted Desert, and a noon with the great white clouds
rolling up from the horizon, and a sunset of massed purple and gold. If
they do not get you then I'll give up."
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