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Page 57
"By Heaven! you're hard on me!" he burst out, in sudden dark, fierce
passion. "How'd I ever happen to do it? . . . What was there left for me? I
gave my soul and heart and body to the government--to fight for my country.
I came home a wreck. What did my government do for me? What did my
employers do for me? What did the people I fought for do for me? . . .
Nothing--so help me God--nothing! . . . I got a ribbon and a bouquet--a
little applause for an hour--and then the sight of me sickened my
countrymen. I was broken and used. I was absolutely forgotten. . . . But my
body, my life, my soul meant all to me. My future was ruined, but I wanted
to live. I had killed men who never harmed me--I was not fit to die. . . .
I tried to live. So I fought out my battle alone. Alone! . . . No one
understood. No one cared. I came West to keep from dying of consumption in
sight of the indifferent mob for whom I had sacrificed myself. I chose to
die on my feet away off alone somewhere. . . . But I got well. And what
made me well--and saved my soul--was the first work that offered. Raising
and tending hogs!"
The dead whiteness of Glenn's face, the lightning scorn of his eyes, the
grim, stark strangeness of him then had for Carley a terrible harmony with
this passionate denunciation of her, of her kind, of the America for whom
he had lost all.
"Oh, Glenn!--forgive--me!" she faltered. "I was only--talking. What do I
know? Oh, I am blind--blind and little!"
She could not bear to face him for a moment, and she hung her head. Her
intelligence seemed concentrating swift, wild thoughts round the shock to
her consciousness. By that terrible expression of his face, by those
thundering words of scorn, would she come to realize the mighty truth of
his descent into the abyss and his rise to the heights. Vaguely she began
to see. An awful sense of her deadness, of her soul-blighting selfishness,
began to dawn upon her as something monstrous out of dim, gray obscurity.
She trembled under the reality of thoughts that were not new. How she had
babbled about Glenn and the crippled soldiers! How she had imagined she
sympathized! But she had only been a vain, worldly, complacent, effusive
little fool. She had here the shock of her life, and she sensed a greater
one, impossible to grasp.
"Carley, that was coming to you," said Glenn, presently, with deep, heavy
expulsion of breath.
"I only know I love you--more--more," she cried, wildly, looking up and
wanting desperately to throw herself in his arms.
"I guess you do--a little," he replied. "Sometimes I feel you are a kid.
Then again you represent the world--your world with its age-old custom--its
unalterable. . . . But, Carley, let's get back to my work."
"Yes--yes," exclaimed Carley, gladly. "I'm ready to--to go pet your hogs
--anything."
"By George! I'll take you up," he declared. "I'll bet you won't go near one
of my hogpens."
"Lead me to it!" she replied, with a hilarity that was only a nervous
reversion of her state.
"Well, maybe I'd better hedge on the bet," he said, laughing again. "You
have more in you than I suspect. You sure fooled me when you stood for the
sheep-dip. But, come on, I'll take you anyway."
So that was how Carley found herself walking arm in arm with Glenn down the
canyon trail. A few moments of action gave her at least an appearance of
outward composure. And the state of her emotion was so strained and intense
that her slightest show of interest must deceive Glenn into thinking her
eager, responsive, enthusiastic. It certainly appeared to loosen his
tongue. But Carley knew she was farther from normal than ever before in her
life, and that the subtle, inscrutable woman's intuition of her presaged
another shock. Just as she had seemed to change, so had the aspects of the
canyon undergone some illusive transformation. The beauty of green foliage
and amber stream and brown tree trunks and gray rocks and red walls was
there; and the summer drowsiness and languor lay as deep; and the
loneliness and solitude brooded with its same eternal significance. But
some nameless enchantment, perhaps of hope, seemed no longer to encompass
her. A blow had fallen upon her, the nature of which only time could
divulge.
Glenn led her around the clearing and up to the base of the west wall,
where against a shelving portion of the cliff had been constructed a rude
fence of poles. It formed three sides of a pen, and the fourth side was
solid rock. A bushy cedar tree stood in the center. Water flowed from under
the cliff, which accounted for the boggy condition of the red earth. This
pen was occupied by a huge sow and a litter of pigs.
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