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Page 48
Maples and sycamores and oaks were in full foliage, and their bright greens
contrasted softly with the dark shine of the pines. Through the spaces
between brown tree trunks and the white-spotted holes of the sycamores
gleamed the amber water of the creek. Always there was murmur of little
rills and the musical dash of little rapids. On the surface of still, shady
pools trout broke to make ever-widening ripples. Indian paintbrush, so
brightly carmine in color, lent touch of fire to the green banks, and under
the oaks, in cool dark nooks where mossy bowlders lined the stream, there
were stately nodding yellow columbines. And high on the rock ledges shot up
the wonderful mescal stalks, beginning to blossom, some with tints of gold
and others with tones of red.
Riding along down the canyon, under its looming walls, Carley wondered that
if unawares to her these physical aspects of Arizona could have become more
significant than she realized. The thought had confronted her before. Here,
as always, she fought it and denied it by the simple defense of
elimination. Yet refusing to think of a thing when it seemed ever present
was not going to do forever. Insensibly and subtly it might get a hold on
her, never to be broken. Yet it was infinitely easier to dream than to
think.
But the thought encroached upon her that it was not a dreamful habit of
mind she had fallen into of late. When she dreamed or mused she lived
vaguely and sweetly over past happy hours or dwelt in enchanted fancy upon
a possible future. Carley had been told by a Columbia professor that she
was a type of the present age--a modern young woman of materialistic mind.
Be that as it might, she knew many things seemed loosening from the
narrowness and tightness of her character, sloughing away like scales,
exposing a new and strange and susceptible softness of fiber. And this
blank habit of mind, when she did not think, and now realized that she was
not dreaming, seemed to be the body of Carley Burch, and her heart and soul
stripped of a shell. Nerve and emotion and spirit received something from
her surroundings. She absorbed her environment. She felt. It was a
delightful state. But when her own consciousness caused it to elude her,
then she both resented and regretted. Anything that approached permanent
attachment to this crude and untenanted West Carley would not tolerate for
a moment. Reluctantly she admitted it had bettered her health, quickened
her blood, and quite relegated Florida and the Adirondacks, to little
consideration.
"Well, as I told Glenn," soliloquized Carley, "every time I'm almost won
over a little to Arizona she gives me a hard jolt. I'm getting near being
mushy today. Now let's see what I'll get. I suppose that's my pessimism or
materialism. Funny how Glenn keeps saying its the jolts, the hard knocks,
the fights that are best to remember afterward. I don't get that at all."
Five miles below West Fork a road branched off and climbed the left side of
the canyon. It was a rather steep road, long and zigzaging, and full of
rocks and ruts. Carley did not enjoy ascending it, but she preferred the
going up to coming down. It took half an hour to climb.
Once up on the flat cedar-dotted desert she was met, full in the face, by a
hot dusty wind coming from the south. Carley searched her pockets for her
goggles, only to ascertain that she had forgotten them. Nothing, except a
freezing sleety wind, annoyed and punished Carley so much as a hard puffy
wind, full of sand and dust. Somewhere along the first few miles of this
road she was to meet Glenn. If she turned back for any cause he would be
worried, and, what concerned her more vitally, he would think she had not
the courage to face a little dust. So Carley rode on.
The wind appeared to be gusty. It would blow hard awhile, then lull for a
few moments. On the whole, however, it increased in volume and persistence
until she was riding against a gale. She had now come to a bare, flat,
gravelly region, scant of cedars and brush, and far ahead she could see a
dull yellow pall rising high into the sky. It was a duststorm and it was
sweeping down on the wings of that gale. Carley remembered that somewhere
along this flat there was a log cabin which had before provided shelter for
her and Flo when they were caught in a rainstorm. It seemed unlikely that
she had passed by this cabin.
Resolutely she faced the gale and knew she had a task to find that refuge.
If there had been a big rock or bushy cedar to offer shelter she would have
welcomed it. But there was nothing. When the hard dusty gusts hit her, she
found it absolutely necessary to shut her eyes. At intervals less windy she
opened them, and rode on, peering through the yellow gloom for the cabin.
Thus she got her eyes full of dust--an alkali dust that made them sting and
smart. The fiercer puffs of wind carried pebbles large enough to hurt
severely. Then the dust clogged her nose and sand got between her teeth.
Added to these annoyances was a heat like a blast from a furnace. Carley
perspired freely and that caked the dust on her face. She rode on,
gradually growing more uncomfortable and miserable. Yet even then she did
not utterly lose a sort of thrilling zest in being thrown upon her own
responsibility. She could hate an obstacle, yet feel something of pride in
holding her own against it.
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