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Page 35
CHAPTER V
Later Carley leaned back in a comfortable seat, before a blazing fire that
happily sent its acrid smoke up the chimney, pondering ideas in her mind.
There could be a relation to familiar things that was astounding in its
revelation. To get off a horse that had tortured her, to discover an almost
insatiable appetite, to rest weary, aching body before the genial warmth of
a beautiful fire--these were experiences which Carley found to have been
hitherto unknown delights. It struck her suddenly and strangely that to
know the real truth about anything in life might require infinite
experience and understanding. How could one feel immense gratitude and
relief, or the delight of satisfying acute hunger, or the sweet comfort of
rest, unless there had been circumstances of extreme contrast? She had been
compelled to suffer cruelly on horseback in order to make her appreciate
how good it was to get down on the ground. Otherwise she never would have
known. She wondered, then, how true that principle might be in all
experience. It gave strong food for thought. There were things in the world
never before dreamed of in her philosophy.
Carley was wondering if she were narrow and dense to circumstances of life
differing from her own when a remark of Flo's gave pause to her
reflections.
"Shore the worst is yet to come." Flo had drawled.
Carley wondered if this distressing statement had to do in some way with
the rest of the trip. She stifled her curiosity. Painful knowledge of that
sort would come quickly enough.
"Flo, are you girls going to sleep here in the cabin?" inquired Glenn.
"Shore. It's cold and wet outside," replied Flo.
"Well, Felix, the Mexican herder, told me some Navajos had been bunking
here."
"Navajos? You mean Indians?" interposed Carley, with interest.
"Shore do," said Flo. "I knew that. But don't mind Glenn. He's full of
tricks, Carley. He'd give us a hunch to lie out in the wet."
Hutter burst into his hearty laugh. "Wal, I'd rather get some things anyday
than a bad cold."
"Shore I've had both," replied Flo, in her easy drawl, "and I'd prefer the
cold. But for Carley's sake--"
"Pray don't consider me," said Carley. The rather crude drift of the
conversation affronted her.
"Well, my dear," put in Glenn, "it's a bad night outside. We'll all make
our beds here."
"Glenn, you shore are a nervy fellow," drawled Flo.
Long after everybody was in bed Carley lay awake in the blackness of the
cabin, sensitively fidgeting and quivering over imaginative contact with
creeping things. The fire had died out. A cold air passed through the room.
On the roof pattered gusts of rain. Carley heard a rustling of mice. It did
not seem possible that she could keep awake, yet she strove to do so. But
her pangs of body, her extreme fatigue soon yielded to the quiet and rest
of her bed, engendering a drowsiness that proved irresistible.
Morning brought fair weather and sunshine, which helped to sustain Carley
in her effort to brave out her pains and woes. Another disagreeable day
would have forced her to humiliating defeat. Fortunately for her, the
business of the men was concerned with the immediate neighborhood, in which
they expected to stay all morning.
"Flo, after a while persuade Carley to ride with you to the top of this
first foothill," said Glenn. "It's not far, and it's worth a good deal to
see the Painted Desert from there. The day is clear and the air free from
dust."
"Shore. Leave it to me. I want to get out of camp, anyhow. That conceited
hombre, Lee Stanton, will be riding in here," answered Flo, laconically.
The slight knowing smile on Glenn's face and the grinning disbelief on Mr.
Hutter's were facts not lost upon Carley. And when Charley, the herder,
deliberately winked at Carley, she conceived the idea that Flo, like many
women, only ran off to be pursued. In some manner Carley did not seek to
analyze, the purported advent of this Lee Stanton pleased her. But she did
admit to her consciousness that women, herself included, were both as deep
and mysterious as the sea, yet as transparent as an inch of crystal water.
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