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Page 87
Meanwhile the construction of her house went on with uninterrupted
rapidity. When the low, slanting, wide-eaved roof was completed Carley lost
further concern about rainstorms. Let them come. When the plumbing was all
in and Carley saw verification of Hoyle's assurance that it would mean a
gravity supply of water ample and continual, she lost her last concern as
to the practicability of the work. That, and the earning of her endurance,
seemed to bring closer a wonderful reward, still nameless and spiritual,
that had been unattainable, but now breathed to her on the fragrant desert
wind and in the brooding silence.
The time came when each afternoon's ride or climb called to Carley with
increasing delight. But the fact that she must soon reveal to Glenn her
presence and transformation did not seem to be all the cause. She could
ride without pain, walk without losing her breath, work without blistering
her hands; and in this there was compensation. The building of the house
that was to become a home, the development of water resources and land that
meant the making of a ranch--these did not altogether constitute the
anticipation of content. To be active, to accomplish things, to recall to
mind her knowledge of manual training, of domestic science, of designing
and painting, to learn to cook--these were indeed measures full of reward,
but they were not all. In her wondering, pondering meditation she arrived
at the point where she tried to assign to her love the growing fullness of
her life. This, too, splendid and all-pervading as it was, she had to
reject. Some exceedingly illusive and vital significance of life had
insidiously come to Carley.
One afternoon, with the sky full of white and black rolling clouds and a
cold wind sweeping through the cedars, she halted to rest and escape the
chilling gale for a while. In a sunny place, under the lee of a gravel
bank, she sought refuge. It was warm here because of the reflected sunlight
and the absence of wind. The sand at the bottom of the bank held a heat
that felt good to her cold hands. All about her and over her swept the keen
wind, rustling the sage, seeping the sand, swishing the cedars, but she was
out of it, protected and insulated. The sky above showed blue between the
threatening clouds. There were no birds or living creatures in sight.
Certainly the place had little of color or beauty or grace, nor could she
see beyond a few rods. Lying there, without any particular reason that she
was conscious of, she suddenly felt shot through and through with
exhilaration.
Another day, the warmest of the spring so far, she rode a Navajo mustang
she had recently bought from a passing trader; and at the farthest end of
her section, in rough wooded and ridged ground she had not explored, she
found a canyon with red walls and pine trees and gleaming streamlet and
glades of grass and jumbles of rock. It was a miniature canyon, to be
sure, only a quarter of a mile long, and as deep as the height of a lofty
pine, and so narrow that it seemed only the width of a lane, but it had all
the features of Oak Creek Canyon, and so sufficed for the exultant joy of
possession. She explored it. The willow brakes and oak thickets harbored
rabbits and birds. She saw the white flags of deer running away down the
open. Up at the head where the canyon boxed she flushed a flock of wild
turkeys. They ran like ostriches and flew like great brown chickens. In a
cavern Carley found the den of a bear, and in another place the bleached
bones of a steer.
She lingered here in the shaded depths with a feeling as if she were indeed
lost to the world. These big brown and seamy-barked pines with their
spreading gnarled arms and webs of green needles belonged to her, as also
the tiny brook, the blue bells smiling out of the ferns, the single stalk
of mescal on a rocky ledge.
Never had sun and earth, tree and rock, seemed a part of her being until
then. She would become a sun-worshiper and a lover of the earth. That
canyon had opened there to sky and light for millions of years; and
doubtless it had harbored sheep herders, Indians, cliff dwellers,
barbarians. She was a woman with white skin and a cultivated mind, but the
affinity for them existed in her. She felt it, and that an understanding of
it would be good for body and soul.
Another day she found a little grove of jack pines growing on a flat mesa-
like bluff, the highest point on her land. The trees were small and close
together, mingling their green needles overhead and their discarded brown
ones on the ground. From here Carley could see afar to all points of the
compass--the slow green descent to the south and the climb to the
black-timbered distance; the ridged and canyoned country to the west, red
vents choked with green and rimmed with gray; to the north the grand
upflung mountain kingdom crowned with snow; and to the east the vastness of
illimitable space, the openness and wildness, the chased and beaten mosaic
of colored sands and rocks.
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