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

yet deeper, huskier, fell upon Carley’s ears as something unconsciously longed for. His frame had so filled out that she did not recognize it. His face, too, had unbelievably changed—not in the regularity of feature that had been its chief charm, but in contour of cheek and vanishing of pallid hue and tragic line. Carley’s heart swelled with joy. Beyond all else she had hoped to see the sad fixed hopelessness, the havoc, gone from his face. Therefore the restraint and nonchalance upon which Carley prided herself sustained eclipse.

“Glenn! Look—who’s—here!” she called, in voice she could not have steadied to save her life. This meeting was more than she had anticipated.

Glenn whirled with an inarticulate cry. He saw Carley. Then—no matter how unreasonable or exacting had been Carley’s longings, they were satisfied.

“You!” he cried, and leaped at her with radiant face.

Carley not only did not care about the spectators of this meeting, but forgot them utterly. More than the joy of seeing Glenn, more than the all— satisfying assurance to her woman’s heart that she was still beloved, welled up a deep, strange, profound something that shook her to her depths. It was beyond selfishness. It was gratitude to God and to the West that had restored him.

“Carley! I couldn’t believe it was you,” he declared, releasing her from his close embrace, yet still holding her.

“Yes, Glenn—it’s I—all you’ve left of me,” she replied, tremulously, and she sought with unsteady hands to put up her dishevelled hair. “You—you big sheep herder! You Goliath!”

“I never was so knocked off my pins,” he said. “A lady to see me—from New York! … Of course it had to be you. But I couldn’t believe. Carley, you were good to come.”

Somehow the soft, warm took of his dark eyes hurt her. New and strange indeed it was to her, as were other things about him. Why had she not come West sooner? She disengaged herself from his hold and moved away, striving for the composure habitual with her. Flo Hutter was standing before the fire, looking down. Mrs. Hutter beamed upon Carley.

“Now let’s have supper,” she said.

“Reckon Miss Carley can’t eat now, after that hug Glenn gave her,” drawled Tom Hutter. “I was some worried. You see Glenn has gained seventy pounds in six months. An’ he doesn’t know his strength.”

“Seventy pounds!” exclaimed Carley, gayly. “I thought it was more.”

“Carley, you must excuse my violence,” said Glenn. “I’ve been hugging sheep. That is, when I shear a sheep I have to hold him.”

They all laughed, and so the moment of readjustment passed. Presently Carley found herself sitting at table, directly across from Flo. A pearly whiteness was slowly warming out of the girl’s face. Her frank clear eyes met Carley’s and they had nothing to hide. Carley’s first requisite for character in a woman was that she be a thoroughbred. She lacked it often enough herself to admire it greatly in another woman. And that moment saw a birth of respect and sincere liking in her for this Western girl. If Flo Hutter ever was a rival she would be an honest one.

Not long after supper Tom Hutter winked at Carley and said he “reckoned on general principles it was his hunch to go to bed.” Mrs. Hutter suddenly discovered tasks to perform elsewhere. And Flo said in her cool sweet drawl, somehow audacious and tantalizing, “Shore you two will want to spoon.”

“Now, Flo, Eastern girls are no longer old-fashioned enough for that,” declared Glenn.

“Too bad! Reckon I can’t see how love could ever be old-fashioned. Good night, Glenn. Good night, Carley.”

Flo stood an instant at the foot of the dark stairway where the light from the lamp fell upon her face. It seemed sweet and earnest to Carley. It expressed unconscious longing, but no envy. Then she ran up the stairs to disappear.

“Glenn, is that girl in love with you?” asked Carley, bluntly.

To her amaze, Glenn laughed. When had she heard him laugh? It thrilled her, yet nettled her a little.

“If that isn’t like you!” he ejaculated. “Your very first words after we are left alone! It brings back the East, Carley.”

“Probably recall to memory will be good for you,” returned Carley. “But tell me. Is she in love with you?”

“Why, no, certainly not!” replied Glenn. “Anyway, how could I answer such a question? It just made me laugh, that’s all.”

“Humph I I can remember when you were not above making love to a pretty girl. You certainly had me worn to a frazzle—before we became engaged,” said Carley.

“Old times! How long ago they seem! … Carley, it’s sure wonderful to see you.”

“How do you like my gown?” asked Carley, pirouetting for his benefit.

“Well, what little there is of it is beautiful,” he replied, with a slow smile. “I always liked you best in white. Did you remember?”

“Yes. I got the gown for you. And I’ll never wear it except for you.”

“Same old coquette—same old eternal feminine,” he said, half sadly. “You know when you look stunning… . But, Carley, the cut of that—or rather the abbreviation of it—inclines me to think that style for women’s clothes has not changed for the better. In fact, it’s worse than two years ago in Paris and later in New York. Where will you women draw the line?”

“Women are slaves to the prevailing mode,” rejoined Carley. “I don’t imagine women who dress would ever draw a line, if fashion went on dictating.”

“But would they care so much—if they had to work—plenty of work—and children?” inquired Glenn, wistfully.

“Glenn! Work and children for modern women? Why, you are dreaming!” said Carley, with a laugh.

She saw him gaze thoughtfully into the glowing embers of the fire, and as she watched him her quick intuition grasped a subtle change in his mood. It brought a sternness to his face. She could hardly realize she was looking at the Glenn Kilbourne of old.

“Come close to the fire,” he said, and pulled up a chair for her. Then he threw more wood upon the red coals. “You must be careful not to catch cold out here. The altitude makes a cold dangerous. And that gown is no protection.”

“Glenn, one chair used to be enough for us,” she said, archly, standing beside him.

But he did not respond to her hint, and, a little affronted, she accepted the proffered chair. Then he began to ask questions rapidly. He was eager for news from home—from his people—from old friends. However he did not inquire of Carley about her friends. She talked unremittingly for an hour, before she satisfied his hunger. But when her turn came to ask questions she found him reticent.

He had fallen upon rather hard days at first out here in the West; then his health had begun to improve; and as soon as he was able to work his condition rapidly changed for the better; and now he was getting along pretty well. Carley felt hurt at his apparent disinclination to confide in her. The strong cast of his face, as if it had been chiseled in bronze; the stern set of his lips and the jaw that protruded lean and square cut; the quiet masked light of his eyes; the coarse roughness of his brown hands, mute evidence of strenuous labors—these all gave a different impression from his brief remarks about himself. Lastly there was a little gray in the light-brown hair over his temples. Glenn was only twenty-seven, yet he looked ten years older. Studying him so, with the memory of earlier years in her mind, she was forced to admit that she liked him infinitely more as he was now. He seemed proven. Something had made him a man. Had it been his love for her, or the army service, or the war in France, or the struggle for life and health afterwards? Or had it been this rugged, uncouth West? Carley felt insidious jealousy of this last possibility. She feared this West. She was going to hate it. She had womanly intuition enough to see in Flo Hutter a girl somehow to be reckoned with. Still, Carley would not acknowledge to herself that his simple, unsophisticated Western girl could possibly be a rival. Carley did not need to consider the fact that she had been spoiled by the attention of men. It was not her vanity that precluded Flo Hutter as a rival.

Gradually the conversation drew to a lapse, and it suited Carley to let it be so. She watched Glenn as he gazed thoughtfully into the amber depths of the fire. What was going on in his mind? Carley’s old perplexity suddenly had rebirth. And with it came an unfamiliar fear which she could not smother. Every moment that she sat there beside Glenn she was realizing more and more a yearning, passionate love for him. The unmistakable manifestation of his joy at sight of her, the strong, almost rude expression of his love, had called to some responsive, but hitherto unplumbed deeps of her. If it had not been for these undeniable facts Carley would have been panic-stricken. They reassured her, yet only made her state of mind more dissatisfied.

“Carley, do you still go in for dancing?” Glenn asked, presently, with his thoughtful eyes turning to her.

“Of course. I like dancing, and it’s about all the exercise I get,” she replied.

“Have the dances changed—again?”

“It’s the music, perhaps, that changes the dancing. Jazz is becoming popular. And about all the crowd dances now is an infinite variation of fox-trot.”

“No waltzing?”

“I don’t believe I waltzed once this winter.”

“Jazz? That’s a sort of tinpanning, jiggly stuff, isn’t it?”

“Glenn, it’s the fever of the public pulse,” replied Carley. “The graceful waltz, like the stately minuet, flourished back in the days when people rested rather than raced.”

“More’s the pity,” said Glenn. Then after a moment, in which his gaze returned to the fire, he inquired rather too casually, “Does Morrison still chase after you

“Glenn, I’m neither old—nor married,” she replied, laughing.

“No, that’s true. But if you were married it wouldn’t make any difference to Morrison.”

Carley could not detect bitterness or jealousy in his voice. She would not have been averse to hearing either. She gathered from his remark, however, that he was going to be harder than ever to understand. What had she said or done to make him retreat within himself, aloof, impersonal, unfamiliar? He did not impress her as loverlike. What irony of fate was this that held her there yearning for his kisses and caresses as never before, while he watched the fire, and talked as to a mere acquaintance, and seemed sad and far away? Or did she merely imagine that? Only one thing could she be sure of at that moment, and it was that pride would never be her ally.

“Glenn, look here,” she said, sliding her chair close to his and holding out tier left hand, slim and white, with its glittering diamond on the third finger.

He took her hand in his and pressed it, and smiled at her. “Yes, Carley, it’s a beautiful, soft little hand. But I think I’d like it better if it were strong and brown, and coarse on the inside—from useful work.”

“Like Flo Hutter’s?” queried Carley.

“Yes.”

Carley looked proudly into his eyes. “People are born in different stations. I respect your little Western friend, Glenn, but could I wash and sweep, milk cows and chop wood, and all that sort of thing?”

“I suppose you couldn’t,” he admitted, with a blunt little laugh.

“Would you want me to?” she asked.

“Well, that’s hard to say,” he replied, knitting his brows. “I hardly know. I think it depends on you… . But if you did do such work