The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey (readnow .txt) 📖

Later Carley leaned back in a comfortable seat, before a blazing fire that happily sent its acrid smoke up the chimney, pondering ideas in her mind.

There could be a relation to familiar things that was astounding in its revelation. To get off a horse that had tortured her, to discover an almost insatiable appetite, to rest weary, aching body before the genial warmth of a beautiful fire—these were experiences which Carley found to have been hitherto unknown delights. It struck her suddenly and strangely that to know the real truth about anything in life might require infinite experience and understanding. How could one feel immense gratitude and relief, or the delight of satisfying acute hunger, or the sweet comfort of rest, unless there had been circumstances of extreme contrast? She had been compelled to suffer cruelly on horseback in order to make her appreciate how good it was to get down on the ground. Otherwise she never would have known. She wondered, then, how true that principle might be in all experience. It gave strong food for thought. There were things in the world never before dreamed of in her philosophy.

Carley was wondering if she were narrow and dense to circumstances of life differing from her own when a remark of Flo's gave pause to her reflections.

“Shore the worst is yet to come.” Flo had drawled.

Carley wondered if this distressing statement had to do in some way with the rest of the trip. She stifled her curiosity. Painful knowledge of that sort would come quickly enough.

“Flo, are you girls going to sleep here in the cabin?” inquired Glenn.

“Shore. It's cold and wet outside,” replied Flo.

“Well, Felix, the Mexican herder, told me some Navajos had been bunking here.”

“Navajos? You mean Indians?” interposed Carley, with interest.

“Shore do,” said Flo. “I knew that. But don't mind Glenn. He's full of tricks, Carley. He'd give us a hunch to lie out in the wet.”

Hutter burst into his hearty laugh. “Wal, I'd rather get some things any day than a bad cold.”

“Shore I've had both,” replied Flo, in her easy drawl, “and I'd prefer the cold. But for Carley's sake—”

“Pray don't consider me,” said Carley. The rather crude drift of the conversation affronted her.

“Well, my dear,” put in Glenn, “it's a bad night outside. We'll all make our beds here.”

“Glenn, you shore are a nervy fellow,” drawled Flo.

Long after everybody was in bed Carley lay awake in the blackness of the cabin, sensitively fidgeting and quivering over imaginative contact with creeping things. The fire had died out. A cold air passed through the room. On the roof pattered gusts of rain. Carley heard a rustling of mice. It did not seem possible that she could keep awake, yet she strove to do so. But her pangs of body, her extreme fatigue soon yielded to the quiet and rest of her bed, engendering a drowsiness that proved irresistible.

Morning brought fair weather and sunshine, which helped to sustain Carley in her effort to brave out her pains and woes. Another disagreeable day would have forced her to humiliating defeat. Fortunately for her, the business of the men was concerned with the immediate neighborhood, in which they expected to stay all morning.

“Flo, after a while persuade Carley to ride with you to the top of this first foothill,” said Glenn. “It's not far, and it's worth a good deal to see the Painted Desert from there. The day is clear and the air free from dust.”

“Shore. Leave it to me. I want to get out of camp, anyhow. That conceited hombre, Lee Stanton, will be riding in here,” answered Flo, laconically.

The slight knowing smile on Glenn's face and the grinning disbelief on Mr. Hutter's were facts not lost upon Carley. And when Charley, the herder, deliberately winked at Carley, she conceived the idea that Flo, like many women, only ran off to be pursued. In some manner Carley did not seek to analyze, the purported advent of this Lee Stanton pleased her. But she did admit to her consciousness that women, herself included, were both as deep and mysterious as the sea, yet as transparent as an inch of crystal water.

It happened that the expected newcomer rode into camp before anyone left. Before he dismounted he made a good impression on Carley, and as he stepped down in lazy, graceful action, a tall lithe figure, she thought him singularly handsome. He wore black sombrero, flannel shirt, blue jeans stuffed into high boots, and long, big-roweled spurs.

“How are you-all?” was his greeting.

From the talk that ensued between him and the men, Carley concluded that he must be overseer of the sheep hands. Carley knew that Hutter and Glenn were not interested in cattle raising. And in fact they were, especially Hutter, somewhat inimical to the dominance of the range land by cattle barons of Flagstaff.

“When's Ryan goin' to dip?” asked Hutter.

“Today or tomorrow,” replied Stanton.

“Reckon we ought to ride over,” went on Hutter. “Say, Glenn, do you reckon Miss Carley could stand a sheep-dip?”

This was spoken in a low tone, scarcely intended for Carley, but she had keen ears and heard distinctly. Not improbably this sheep-dip was what Flo meant as the worst to come. Carley adopted a listless posture to hide