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Page 86
The cold, clear, silent night brought back the charm of the desert. How
flaming white the stars! The great spire-pointed peaks lifted cold
pale-gray outlines up into the deep star-studded sky. Carley walked a
little to and fro, loath to go to her tent, though tired. She wanted calm.
But instead of achieving calmness she grew more and more towards a strange
state of exultation.
Westward, only a matter of twenty or thirty miles, lay the deep rent in the
level desert--Oak Creek Canyon. If Glenn had been there this night would
have been perfect, yet almost unendurable. She was again grateful for his
absence. What a surprise she had in store for him! And she imagined his
face in its change of expression when she met him. If only he never learned
of her presence in Arizona until she made it known in person! That she most
longed for. Chances were against it, but then her luck had changed. She
looked to the eastward where a pale luminosity of afterglow shone in the
heavens. Far distant seemed the home of her childhood, the friends she had
scorned and forsaken, the city of complaining and striving millions. If
only some miracle might illumine the minds of her friends, as she felt that
hers was to be illumined here in the solitude. But she well realized that
not all problems could be solved by a call out of the West. Any open and
lonely land that might have saved Glenn Kilbourne would have sufficed for
her. It was the spirit of the thing and not the letter. It was work of any
kind and not only that of ranch life. Not only the raising of hogs!
Carley directed stumbling steps toward the light of her tent. Her eyes had
not been used to such black shadow along the ground. She had, too,
squeamish feminine fears of hydrophobia skunks, and nameless animals or
reptiles that were imagined denizens of the darkness. She gained her tent
and entered. The Mexican, Gino, as he called himself, had lighted her lamp
and fire. Carley was chilled through, and the tent felt so warm and cozy
that she could scarcely believe it. She fastened the screen door, laced the
flaps across it, except at the top, and then gave herself up to the lulling
and comforting heat.
There were plans to perfect; innumerable things to remember; a car and
accessories, horses, saddles, outfits to buy. Carley knew she should sit
down at her table and write and figure, but she could not do it then.
For a long time she sat over the little stove, toasting her knees and
hands, adding some chips now and then to the red coals. And her mind seemed
a kaleidoscope of changing visions, thoughts, feelings. At last she
undressed and blew out the lamp and went to bed.
Instantly a thick blackness seemed to enfold her and silence as of a dead
world settled down upon her. Drowsy as she was, she could not close her
eyes nor refrain from listening. Darkness and silence were tangible things.
She felt them. And they seemed suddenly potent with magic charm to still
the tumult of her, to soothe and rest, to create thoughts she had never
thought before. Rest was more than selfish indulgence. Loneliness was
necessary to gain consciousness of the soul. Already far back in the past
seemed Carley's other life.
By and by the dead stillness awoke to faint sounds not before perceptible
to her--a low, mournful sough of the wind in the cedars, then the faint
far-distant note of a coyote, sad as the night and infinitely wild.
Days passed. Carley worked in the mornings with her hands and her brains.
In the afternoons she rode and walked and climbed with a double object, to
work herself into fit physical condition and to explore every nook and
corner of her six hundred and forty acres.
Then what she had expected and deliberately induced by her efforts quickly
came to pass. Just as the year before she had suffered excruciating pain
from aching muscles, and saddle blisters, and walking blisters, and a very
rending of her bones, so now she fell victim to them again. In sunshine and
rain she faced the desert. Sunburn and sting of sleet were equally to be
endured. And that abomination, the hateful blinding sandstorm, did not
daunt her. But the weary hours of abnegation to this physical torture at
least held one consoling recompense as compared with her experience of last
year, and it was that there was no one interested to watch for her
weaknesses and failures and blunders. She could fight it out alone.
Three weeks of this self-imposed strenuous training wore by before Carley
was free enough from weariness and pain to experience other sensations. Her
general health, evidently, had not been so good as when she had first
visited Arizona. She caught cold and suffered other ills attendant upon an
abrupt change of climate and condition. But doggedly she kept at her task.
She rode when she should have been in bed; she walked when she should have
ridden; she climbed when she should have kept to level ground. And finally
by degrees so gradual as not to be noticed except in the sum of them she
began to mend.
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