The Call of the Canyon, Zane Grey [ereader for textbooks txt] 📗

The dust had ceased to blow, although the wind had by no means died away. Sunset marked the west in old rose and gold, a vast flare. Carley espied a horseman far down the road, and presently recognized both rider and steed. He was coming fast. She went out and, mounting her mustang, she rode out to meet Glenn. It did not appeal to her to wait for him at the cabin; besides hoof tracks other than those made by her mustang might have been noticed by Glenn. Presently he came up to her and pulled his loping horse.

“Hello! I sure was worried,” was his greeting, as his gloved hand went out to her. “Did you run into that sandstorm?”

“It ran into me, Glenn, and buried me,” she laughed.

His fine eyes lingered on her face with glad and warm glance, and the keen, apprehensive penetration of a lover.

“Well, under all that dust you look scared,” he said.

“Scared! I was worse than that. When I first ran into the flying dirt I was only afraid I’d lose my way—and my complexion. But when the worst of the storm hit me—then I feared I’d lose my breath.”

“Did you face that sand and ride through it all?” he queried.

“No, not all. But enough. I went through the worst of it before I reached the cabin,” she replied.

“Wasn’t it great?”

“Yes—great bother and annoyance,” she said, laconically.

Whereupon he reached with long, arm and wrapped it round her as they rocked side by side. Demonstrations of this nature were infrequent with Glenn. Despite losing one foot out of a stirrup and her seat in the saddle Carley rather encouraged it. He kissed her dusty face, and then set her back.

“By George! Carley, sometimes I think you’ve changed since you’ve been here,” he said, with warmth. “To go through that sandstorm without one kick—one knock at my West!”

“Glenn, I always think of what Flo says—the worst is yet to come,” replied Carley, trying to hide her unreasonable and tumultuous pleasure at words of praise from him.

“Carley Burch, you don’t know yourself,” he declared, enigmatically.

“What woman knows herself? But do you know me?”

“Not I. Yet sometimes I see depths in you—wonderful possibilities- -submerged under your poise—under your fixed, complacent idle attitude toward life.”

This seemed for Carley to be dangerously skating near thin ice, but she could not resist a retort:

“Depths in me? Why I am a shallow, transparent stream like your West Fork! … And as for possibilities-may I ask what of them you imagine you see?”

“As a girl, before you were claimed by the world, you were earnest at heart. You had big hopes and dreams. And you had intellect, too. But you have wasted your talents, Carley. Having money, and spending it, living for pleasure, you have not realized your powers… . Now, don’t look hurt. I’m not censuring you, It’s just the way of modern life. And most of your friends have been more careless, thoughtless, useless than you. The aim of their existence is to be comfortable, free from work, worry, pain. They want pleasure, luxury. And what a pity it is! The best of you girls regard marriage as an escape, instead of responsibility. You don’t marry to get your shoulders square against the old wheel of American progress—to help some man make good—to bring a troop of healthy American kids into the world. You bare your shoulders to the gaze of the multitude and like it best if you are strung with pearls.”

“Glenn, you distress me when you talk like this, ” replied Carley, soberly. “You did not use to talk so. It seems to me you are bitter against women.”

“Oh no, Carley! I am only sad,” he said. “I only see where once I was blind. American women are the finest on earth, but as a race, if they don’t change, they’re doomed to extinction.”

“How can you say such things?” demanded Carley, with spirit.

“I say them because they are true. Carley, on the level now, tell me how many of your immediate friends have children.”

Put to a test, Carley rapidly went over in mind her circle of friends, with the result that she was somewhat shocked and amazed to realize how few of them were even married, and how the babies of her acquaintance were limited to three. It was not easy to admit this to Glenn.

“My dear,” replied he, “if that does not show you the handwriting on the wall, nothing ever will.”

“A girl has to find a husband, doesn’t she?” asked Carley, roused to defense of her sex. “And if she’s anybody she has to find one in her set. Well, husbands are not plentiful. Marriage certainly is not the end of existence these days. We have to get along somehow. The high cost of living is no inconsderable factor today. Do you know that most of the better-class apartment houses in New York will not take children? Women are not all to blame. Take the speed mania. Men must have automobiles. I know one girl who wanted a baby, but her husband wanted a car. They couldn’t afford both.”

“Carley, I’m not blaming women more than men,” returned Glenn. “I don’t know that I blame them as a class. But in my own mind I have worked it all out. Every man or woman who is genuinely American should read the signs of the times, realize the crisis, and meet it in an American way. Otherwise we are done as a race. Money is God in the older countries. But it should never become God in America. If it does we will make the fall of Rome pale into insignificance.”

“Glenn, let’s put off the argument,” appealed Carley. “I’m not—just up to fighting you today. Oh—you needn’t smile. I’m not showing a yellow streak, as Flo puts it. I’ll fight you some other time.”

“You’re right, Carley,” he assented. “Here we are loafing six or seven miles from home. Let’s rustle along.”

Riding fast with Glenn was something Carley had only of late added to her achievements. She had greatest pride in it. So she urged her mustang to keep pace with Glenn’s horse and gave herself up to the thrill of the motion and feel of wind and sense of flying along. At a good swinging lope Calico covered ground swiftly and did not tire. Carley rode the two miles to the rim of the canyon, keeping alongside of Glenn all the way. Indeed, for one long level stretch she and Glenn held hands. When they arrived at the descent, which necessitated slow and careful riding, she was hot and tingling and breathless, worked by the action into an exuberance of pleasure. Glenn complimented her riding as well as her rosy cheeks. There was indeed a sweetness in working at a task as she had worked to learn to ride in Western fashion. Every turn of her mind seemed to confront her with sobering antitheses of thought. Why had she come to love to ride down a lonely desert road, through ragged cedars where the wind whipped her face with fragrant wild breath, if at the same time she hated the West? Could she hate a country, however barren and rough, if it had saved the health and happiness of her future husband? Verily there were problems for Carley to solve.

Early twilight purple lay low in the hollows and clefts of the canyon. Over the western rim a pale ghost of the evening star seemed to smile at Carley, to bid her look and look. Like a strain of distant music, the dreamy hum of falling water, the murmur and melody of the stream, came again to Carley’s sensitive ear.

“Do you love this?” asked Glenn, when they reached the green-forested canyon floor, with the yellow road winding away into the purple shadows.

“Yes, both the ride—and you,” flashed Carley, contrarily. She knew he had meant the deep-walled canyon with its brooding solitude.

“But I want you to love Arizona,” he said.

“Glenn, I’m a faithful creature. You should be glad of that. I love New York.”

“Very well, then. Arizona to New York,” he said, lightly brushing her cheek with his lips. And swerving back into his saddle, he spurred his horse and called back over his shoulder: “That mustang and Flo have beaten me many a time. Come on.”

It was not so much his words as his tone and look that roused Carley. Had he resented her loyalty to the city of her nativity? Always there was a little rift in the lute. Had his tone and look meant that Flo might catch him if Carley could not? Absurd as the idea was, it spurred her to recklessness. Her mustang did not need any more than to know she wanted him to run. The road was of soft yellow earth flanked with green foliage and overspread by pines. In a moment she was racing at a speed she had never before half attained on a horse. Down the winding road Glenn’s big steed sped, his head low, his stride tremendous, his action beautiful. But Carley saw the distance between them diminishing. Calico was overtaking the bay. She cried out in the thrilling excitement of the moment. Glenn saw her gaining and pressed his mount to greater speed. Still he could not draw away from Calico. Slowly the little mustang gained. It seemed to Carley that riding him required no effort at all. And at such fast pace, with the wind roaring in her ears, the walls of green vague and continuous in her sight, the sting of pine tips on cheek and neck, the yellow road streaming toward her, under her, there rose out of the depths of her, out of the tumult of her breast, a sense of glorious exultation. She closed in on Glenn. From the flying hoofs of his horse shot up showers of damp sand and gravel that covered Carley’s riding habit and spattered in her face. She had to hold up a hand before her eyes. Perhaps this caused her to lose something of her confidence, or her swing in the saddle, for suddenly she realized she was not riding well. The pace was too fast for her inexperience. But nothing could have stopped her then. No fear or awkwardness of hers should be allowed to hamper that thoroughbred mustang. Carley felt that Calico understood the situation; or at least he knew he could catch and pass this big bay horse, and he intended to do it. Carley was hard put to it to hang on and keep the flying sand from blinding her.

When Calico drew alongside the bay horse and brought Carley breast to breast with Glenn, and then inch by inch forged ahead of him, Carley pealed out an exultant cry. Either it frightened Calico or inspired him, for he shot right ahead of Glenn’s horse. Then he lost the smooth, wonderful action. He seemed hurtling through space at the expense of tremendous muscular action. Carley could feel it. She lost her equilibrium. She seemed rushing through a blurred green and black aisle of the forest with a gale in her face. Then, with a sharp jolt, a break, Calico plunged to the sand. Carley felt herself propelled forward out of the saddle into the air, and down to strike with a sliding, stunning force that ended in sudden dark oblivion.

Upon recovering consciousness she first felt a sensation of oppression in her chest and a dull numbness of her whole body. When she opened her eyes she saw Glenn bending over her, holding her head on his knee. A wet, cold, reviving sensation evidently came from the handkerchief with which he was mopping her face.

“Carley, you can’t be hurt—really!” he was ejaculating, in