The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey (top romance novels TXT) 📕

“You’ll not mind if we call you Carley?” she asked, eagerly.

“Oh, indeed no! I—I’d like it,” returned Carley, made to feel friendly and at home in spite of herself.

“You see it’s not as if you were just a stranger,” went on Mrs. flutter. “Tom—that’s Flo’s father—took a likin’ to Glenn Kilbourne when he first came to Oak Creek over a year ago. I wonder if you all know how sick that soldier boy was… . Well, he lay on his back for two solid weeks—in the room we’re givin’ you. An’ I for one didn’t think he’d ever get up. But he did. An’ he got better. An’ after a while he went to work for Tom. Then six months an’ more ago he invested in the sheep business with Tom. He lived with us until he built his cabin up West Fork. He an’ Flo have run together a good deal, an’ naturally he told her about you. So you see you’re not a stranger. An’ we want you to feel you’re with friends.”

“I thank you, Mrs. Hutter,” replied Carley, feelingly. “I never could thank you enough for being good to Glenn. I did not know he was so—so sick. At first he wrote but seldom,”

“Reckon he never wrote you or told you what he did in the war,” declared Mrs. Hutter.

“Indeed he never did!”

“Well, I’ll tell you some day. For Tom found out all about him. Got some of it from a soldier who came to Flagstaff for lung trouble. He’d been in the same company with Glenn. We didn’t know this boy’s name while he was in Flagstaff. But later Tom found out. John Henderson. He was only twenty-two, a fine lad. An’ he died in Phoenix. We tried to get him out here. But the boy wouldn’t live on charity. He was always expectin’ money—a war bonus, whatever that was. It didn’t come. He was a clerk at the El Tovar for a while. Then he came to Flagstaff. But it was too cold an’ he stayed there too long.”

“Too bad,” rejoined Carley, thoughtfully. This information as to the suffering of American soldiers had augmented during the last few months, and seemed to possess strange, poignant power to depress Carley. Always she had turned away from the unpleasant. And the misery of unfortunates was as disturbing almost as direct contact with disease and squalor. But it had begun to dawn upon Carley that there might occur circumstances of life, in every way affronting her comfort and happiness, which it would be impossible to turn her back upon.

At this juncture Flo returned to the room, and again Carley was struck with the girl’s singular freedom of movement and the sense of sure poise and joy that seemed to emanate from her presence.

“I’ve made a fire in your little stove,” she said. “There’s water heating. Now won’t you come up and change those traveling clothes. You’ll want to fix up for Glenn, won’t you?”

Carley had to smile at that. This girl indeed was frank and unsophisticated, and somehow refreshing. Carley rose.

“You are both very good to receive me as a friend,” she said. “I hope I shall not disappoint you… . Yes, I do want to improve my appearance before Glenn sees me… . Is there any way I can send word to him—by someone who has not seen me?”

“There shore is. I’ll send Charley, one of our hired boys.”

“Thank you. Then tell him to say there is a lady here from New York to see him, and it is very important.”

Flo Hutter clapped her hands and laughed with glee. Her gladness gave Carley a little twinge of conscience. Jealously was an unjust and stifling thing.

Carley was conducted up a broad stairway and along a boarded hallway to a room that opened out on the porch. A steady low murmur of falling water assailed her ears. Through the open door she saw across the porch to a white tumbling lacy veil of water falling, leaping, changing, so close that it seemed to touch the heavy pole railing of the porch.

This room resembled a tent. The sides were of canvas. It had no ceiling. But the roughhewn shingles of the roof of the house sloped down closely. The furniture was home made. An Indian rug covered the floor. The bed with its woolly clean blankets and the white pillows looked inviting.

“Is this where Glenn lay—when he was sick?” queried Carley.

“Yes,” replied Flo, gravely, and a shadow darkened her eyes. “I ought to tell you all about it. I will some day. But you must not he made unhappy now… . Glenn nearly died here. Mother or I never left his side—for a while there—when life was so bad.”

She showed Carley how to open the little stove and put the short billets of wood inside and work the damper; and cautioning her to keep an eye on it so that it would not get too hot, she left Carley to herself.

Carley found herself in unfamiliar mood. There came a leap of her heart every time she thought of the meeting with Glenn, so soon now to be, but it was not that which was unfamiliar. She seemed to have difficult approach to undefined and unusual thoughts, All this was so different from her regular life. Besides she was tired. But these explanations did not suffice. There was a pang in her breast which must owe its origin to the fact that Glenn Kilbourne had been ill in this little room and some other girl than Carley Burch had nursed him. “Am I jealous?” she whispered. “No!” But she knew in her heart that she lied. A woman could no more help being jealous, under such circumstances, than she could help the beat and throb of her blood. Nevertheless, Carley was glad Flo Hutter had been there, and always she would be grateful to her for that kindness.

Carley disrobed and, donning her dressing gown, she unpacked her bags and hung her things upon pegs under the curtained shelves. Then she lay down to rest, with no intention of slumber. But there was a strange magic in the fragrance of the room, like the piny tang outdoors, and in the feel of the bed, and especially in the low, dreamy hum and murmur of the waterfall. She fell asleep. When she awakened it was five o’clock. The fire in the stove was out, but the water was still warm. She bathed and dressed, not without care, yet as swiftly as was her habit at home; and she wore white because Glenn had always liked her best in white. But it was assuredly not a gown to wear in a country house where draughts of cold air filled the unheated rooms and halls. So she threw round her a warm sweater-shawl, with colorful bars becoming to her dark eyes and hair.

All the time that she dressed and thought, her very being seemed to be permeated by that soft murmuring sound of falling water. No moment of waking life there at Lolomi Lodge, or perhaps of slumber hours, could be wholly free of that sound. It vaguely tormented Carley, yet was not uncomfortable. She went out upon the porch. The small alcove space held a bed and a rustic chair. Above her the peeled poles of the roof descended to within a few feet of her head. She had to lean over the rail of the porch to look up. The green and red rock wall sheered ponderously near: The waterfall showed first at the notch of a fissure, where the cliff split; and down over smooth places the water gleamed, to narrow in a crack with little drops, and suddenly to leap into a thin white sheet.

Out from the porch the view was restricted to glimpses between the pines, and beyond to the opposite wall of the canyon. How shut-in, how walled in this home!

“In summer it might be good to spend a couple of weeks here,” soliloquized Carley. “But to live here? Heavens! A person might as well be buried.”

Heavy footsteps upon the porch below accompanied by a man’s voice quickened Carley’s pulse. Did they belong to Glenn? After a strained second she decided not. Nevertheless, the acceleration of her blood and an unwonted glow of excitement, long a stranger to her, persisted as she left the porch and entered the boarded hall. How gray and barn-like this upper part of the house! From the head of the stairway, however, the big living room presented a cheerful contrast. There were warm colors, some comfortable rockers, a lamp that shed a bright light, and an open fire which alone would have dispelled the raw gloom of the day.

A large man in corduroys and top boots advanced to meet Carley. He had a clean-shaven face that might have been hard and stern but for his smile, and one look into his eyes revealed their resemblance to Flo’s.

“I’m Tom Hutter, an’ I’m shore glad to welcome you to Lolomi, Miss Carley,” he said. His voice was deep and slow. There were ease and force in his presence, and the grip he gave Carley’s hand was that of a man who made no distinction in hand-shaking. Carley, quick in her perceptions, instantly liked him and sensed in him a strong personality. She greeted him in turn and expressed her thanks for his goodness to Glenn. Naturally Carley expected him to say something about her fiance, but he did not.

“Well, Miss Carley, if you don’t mind, I’ll say you’re prettier than your picture,” said Hutter. “An’ that is shore sayin’ a lot. All the sheep herders in the country have taken a peep at your picture. Without permission, you understand.”

“I’m greatly flattered,” laughed Carley.

“We’re glad you’ve come,” replied Hutter, simply. “I just got back from the East myself. Chicago an’ Kansas City. I came to Arizona from Illinois over thirty years ago. An’ this was my first trip since. Reckon I’ve not got back my breath yet. Times have changed, Miss Carley. Times an’ people!”

Mrs. Hutter bustled in from the kitchen, where manifestly she had been importantly engaged. “For the land’s sakes!” she exclaimed, fervently, as she threw up her hands at sight of Carley. Her expression was indeed a compliment, but there was a suggestion of shock in it. Then Flo came in. She wore a simple gray gown that reached the top of her high shoes.

“Carley, don’t mind mother,” said Flo. “She means your dress is lovely. Which is my say, too… . But, listen. I just saw Glenn comin’ up the road.”

Carley ran to the open door with more haste than dignity. She saw a tall man striding along. Something about him appeared familiar. It was his walk—an erect swift carriage, with a swing of the march still visible. She recognized Glenn. And all within her seemed to become unstable. She watched him cross the road, face the house. How changed! No—this was not Glenn Kilbourne. This was a bronzed man, wide of shoulder, roughly garbed, heavy limbed, quite different from the Glenn she remembered. He mounted the porch steps. And Carley, still unseen herself, saw his face. Yes—Glenn! Hot blood seemed to be tingling liberated in her veins. Wheeling away, she backed against the wall behind the door and held up a warning finger to Flo, who stood nearest. Strange and disturbing then, to see something in Flo Hutter’s eyes that could be read by a woman in only one way!

A tall form darkened the doorway. It strode in and halted.

“Flo!—who—where?” he began, breathlessly.

His voice, so well remembered,