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Page 43
At last Flo returned with the men. One quick glance at Glenn convinced
Carley that Flo had not yet told him about the sheep dipper, Haze Ruff.
"Carley, you're a real sport," declared Glenn, with the rare smile she
loved. "It's a dreadful mess. And to think you stood it! . . . Why, old
Fifth Avenue, if you needed to make another hit with me you've done it!"
His warmth amazed and pleased Carley. She could not quite understand why it
would have made any difference to him whether she had stood the ordeal or
not. But then every day she seemed to drift a little farther from a real
understanding of her lover. His praise gladdened her, and fortified her to
face the rest of this ride back to Oak Creek.
Four hours later, in a twilight so shadowy that no one saw her distress,
Carley half slipped and half fell from her horse and managed somehow to
mount the steps and enter the bright living room. A cheerful red fire
blazed on the hearth; Glenn's hound, Moze, trembled eagerly at sight of her
and looked up with humble dark eyes; the white-clothed dinner table steamed
with savory dishes. Flo stood before the blaze, warming her hands. Lee
Stanton leaned against the mantel, with eyes on her, and every line of his
lean, hard face expressed his devotion to her. Hutter was taking his seat
at the head of the table. "Come an' get it--you-all," he called, heartily.
Mrs. Hutter's face beamed with the spirit of that home. And lastly, Carley
saw Glenn waiting for her, watching her come, true in this very moment to
his stern hope for her and pride in her, as she dragged her weary, spent
body toward him and the bright fire.
By these signs, or the effect of them, Carley vaguely realized that she was
incalculably changing, that this Carley Burch had become a vastly bigger
person in the sight of her friends, and strangely in her own a lesser
creature.
CHAPTER VI
If spring came at all to Oak Creek Canyon it warmed into summer before
Carley had time to languish with the fever characteristic of early June in
the East.
As if by magic it seemed the green grass sprang up, the green buds opened
into leaves, the bluebells and primroses bloomed, the apple and peach
blossoms burst exquisitely white and pink against the blue sky. Oak Creek
fell to a transparent, beautiful brook, leisurely eddying in the stone
walled nooks, hurrying with murmur and babble over the little falls. The
mornings broke clear and fragrantly cool, the noon hours seemed to lag
under a hot sun, the nights fell like dark mantles from the melancholy
star-sown sky.
Carley had stubbornly kept on riding and climbing until she killed her
secret doubt that she was really a thoroughbred, until she satisfied her
own insistent vanity that she could train to a point where this outdoor
life was not too much for her strength. She lost flesh despite increase of
appetite; she lost her pallor for a complexion of gold-brown she knew her
Eastern friends would admire; she wore out the blisters and aches and
pains; she found herself growing firmer of muscle, lither of line, deeper
of chest. And in addition to these physical manifestations there were
subtle intimations of a delight in a freedom of body she had never before
known, of an exhilaration in action that made her hot and made her breathe,
of a sloughing off of numberless petty and fussy and luxurious little
superficialities which she had supposed were necessary to her happiness.
What she had undertaken in vain conquest of Glenn's pride and Flo Hutter's
Western tolerance she had found to be a boomerang. She had won Glenn's
admiration; she had won the Western girl's recognition. But her passionate,
stubborn desire had been ignoble, and was proved so by the rebound of her
achievement, coming home to her with a sweetness she had not the courage to
accept. She forced it from her. This West with its rawness, its ruggedness,
she hated.
Nevertheless, the June days passed, growing dreamily swift, growing more
incomprehensibly full; and still she had not broached to Glenn the main
object of her visit--to take him back East. Yet a little while longer! She
hated his work and had not talked of that. Yet an honest consciousness told
her that as time flew by she feared more and more to tell him that he was
wasting his life there and that she could not bear it. Still was he wasting
it? Once in a while a timid and unfamiliar Carley Burch voiced a pregnant
query. Perhaps what held Carley back most was the happiness she achieved in
her walks and rides with Glenn. She lingered because of them. Every day she
loved him more, and yet--there was something. Was it in her or in him? She
had a woman's assurance of his love and sometimes she caught her breath--so
sweet and strong was the tumultuous emotion it stirred. She preferred to
enjoy while she could, to dream instead of think. But it was not possible
to hold a blank, dreamy, lulled consciousness all the time. Thought would
return. And not always could she drive away a feeling that Glenn would
never be her slave. She divined something in his mind that kept him gentle
and kindly, restrained always, sometimes melancholy and aloof, as if he
were an impassive destiny waiting for the iron consequences he knew
inevitably must fall. What was this that he knew which she did not know?
The idea haunted her. Perhaps it was that which compelled her to use all
her woman's wiles and charms on Glenn. Still, though it thrilled her to see
she made him love her more as the days passed, she could not blind herself
to the truth that no softness or allurement of hers changed this strange
restraint in him. How that baffled her! Was it resistance or knowledge or
nobility or doubt?
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