At another sunrise the crown of the rim, a broad belt of bare rock, turned pale gold under its fringed dark line of pines.The tips of the peak gleamed opal.There was no sunrise red, no fire.The light in the east was a pale gold under a steely green-blue sky.All the abyss of the Canyon was soft, gray, transparent, and the belt of gold broadened downward, making shadows on the west slopes of the mesas and escarpments.Far down in the shadows she discerned the river, yellow, turgid, palely gleaming.By straining her ears Carley heard a low dull roar as of distant storm.She stood fearfully at the extreme edge of a stupendous cliff, where it sheered dark and forbidding, down and down, into what seemed red and boundless depths of Hades.She saw gold spots of sunlight on the dark shadows, proving that somewhere, impossible to discover, the sun was shining through wind-worn holes in the sharp ridges.Every instant Carley grasped a different effect.Her studied gaze absorbed an endless changing.And at last she realized that sun and light and stars and moon and night and shade, all working incessantly and mutably over shapes and lines and angles and surfaces too numerous and too great for the sight of man to hold, made an ever-changing spectacle of supreme beauty and colorful grandeur.
She talked very little while at the Canyon.It silenced her.She had come to see it at the critical time of her life and in the right mood.The superficialities of the world shrunk to their proper insignificance.Once she asked her aunt: "Why did not Glenn bring me here?" As if this Canyon proved the nature of all things!
But in the end Carley found that the rending strife of the transformation of her attitude toward life had insensibly ceased.It had ceased during the long watching of this cataclysm of nature, this canyon of gold-banded black-fringed ramparts, and red-walled mountains which sloped down to be lost in purple depths.That was final proof of the strength of nature to soothe, to clarify, to stabilize the tried and weary and upward-gazing soul.Stronger than the recorded deeds of saints, stronger than the eloquence of the gifted uplifters of men, stronger than any words ever written, was the grand, brooding, sculptured aspect of nature.And it must have been so because thousands of years before the age of saints or preachers--before the fret and symbol and figure were cut in stone-man must have watched with thought--developing sight the wonders of the earth, the monuments of time, the glooming of the dark-blue sea, the handiwork of God.
In May, Carley returned to Flagstaff to take up with earnest inspiration the labors of homebuilding in a primitive land.
It required two trucks to transport her baggage and purchases out to Deep Lake.The road was good for eighteen miles of the distance, until it branched off to reach her land, and from there it was desert rock and sand.
But eventually they made it; and Carley found herself and belongings dumped out into the windy and sunny open.The moment was singularly thrilling and full of transport.She was free.She had shaken off the shackles.She faced lonely, wild, barren desert that must be made habitable by the genius of her direction and the labor of her hands.Always a thought of Glenn hovered tenderly, dreamily in the back of her consciousness, but she welcomed the opportunity to have a few weeks of work and activity and solitude before taking up her life with him.She wanted to adapt herself to the metamorphosis that had been wrought in her.
To her amazement and delight, a very considerable progress had been made with her plans.Under a sheltered red cliff among the cedars had been erected the tents where she expected to live until the house was completed.
These tents were large, with broad floors high off the ground, and there were four of them.Her living tent had a porch under a wide canvas awning.
The bed was a boxlike affair, raised off the floor two feet, and it contained a great, fragrant mass of cedar boughs upon which the blankets were to be spread.At one end was a dresser with large mirror, and a chiffonier.There were table and lamp, a low rocking chair, a shelf for books, a row of hooks upon which to hang things, a washstand with its necessary accessories, a little stove and a neat stack of cedar chips and sticks.Navajo rugs on the floor lent brightness and comfort.
Carley heard the rustling of cedar branches over her head, and saw where they brushed against the tent roof.It appeared warm and fragrant inside, and protected from the wind, and a subdued white light filtered through the canvas.Almost she felt like reproving herself for the comfort surrounding her.For she had come West to welcome the hard knocks of primitive life.
It took less than an hour to have her trunks stored in one of the spare tents, and to unpack clothes and necessaries for immediate use.Carley donned the comfortable and somewhat shabby outdoor garb she had worn at Oak Creek the year before; and it seemed to be the last thing needed to make her fully realize the glorious truth of the present.
"I'm here," she said to her pale, yet happy face in the mirror."The impossible has happened.I have accepted Glenn's life.I have answered that strange call out of the West."She wanted to throw herself on the sunlit woolly blankets of her bed and hug them, to think and think of the bewildering present happiness, to dream of the future, but she could not lie or sit still, nor keep her mind from grasping at actualities and possibilities of this place, nor her hands from itching to do things.
It developed, presently, that she could not have idled away the time even if she had wanted to, for the Mexican woman came for her, with smiling gesticulation and jabber that manifestly meant dinner.Carley could not understand many Mexican words, and herein she saw another task.This swarthy woman and her sloe-eyed husband favorably impressed Carley.
