'Reckon we're all right now, onless we meet somebody comin' up,' declared the driver.
Carley relaxed. She drew a deep breath of relief. She had her first faint intimation that perhaps her extensive experience of motor cars, express trains, transatlantic liners, and even a little of airplanes, did not range over the whole of adventurous life. She was likely to meet something, entirely new and striking out here in the West.
The murmur of falling water sounded closer. Presently Carley saw that the road turned at the notch in the canyon, and crossed a clear swift stream. Here were huge mossy boulders, and red walls covered by lichens, and the air appeared dim and moist, and full of mellow, hollow roar. Beyond this crossing the road descended the west side of the canyon, drawing away and higher from the creek. Huge trees, the like of which Carley had never seen, began to stand majestically up out of the gorge, dwarfing the maples and white-spotted sycamores. The driver called these great trees yellow pines.
At last the road led down from the steep slope to the floor of the canyon. What from far above had appeared only a green timber-choked cleft proved from close relation to be a wide winding valley, tip and down, densely forested for the most part, yet having open glades and bisected from wall to wall by the creek. Every quarter of a mile or so the road crossed the stream; and at these fords Carley again held on desperately and gazed out dubiously, for the creek was deep, swift, and full of bowlders. Neither driver nor horses appeared to mind obstacles. Carley was splashed and jolted not inconsiderably. They passed through groves of oak trees, from which the creek manifestly derived its name; and under gleaming walls, cold, wet, gloomy, and silent; and between lines of solemn wide-spreading pines. Carley saw deep, still green pools eddying under huge massed jumble of cliffs, and stretches of white water, and then, high above the treetops, a wild line of canyon rim, cold against the sky. She felt shut in from the world, lost in an unscalable rut of the earth. Again the sunlight had failed, and the gray gloom of the canyon oppressed her. It struck Carley as singular that she could not help being affected by mere weather, mere heights and depths, mere rock walls and pine trees, and rushing water. For really, what had these to do with her? These were only physical things that she was passing. Nevertheless, although she resisted sensation, she was more and more shot through and through with the wildness and savageness of this canyon.
A sharp turn of the road to the right disclosed a slope down the creek, across which showed orchards and fields, and a cottage nestling at the base of the wall. The ford at this crossing gave Carley more concern than any that had been passed, for there was greater volume and depth of water. One of the horses slipped on the rocks, plunged up and on with great splash. They crossed, however, without more mishap to Carley than further acquaintance with this iciest of waters. From this point the driver turned back along the creek, passed between orchards and fields, and drove along the base of the red wall to come suddenly upon a large rustic house that had been hidden from Carley's sight. It sat almost against the stone cliff, from which poured a white foamy sheet of water. The house was built of slabs with the bark on, and it had a lower and upper porch running all around, at least as far as the cliff. Green growths from the rock wall overhung the upper porch. A column of blue smoke curled lazily upward from a stone chimney. On one of the porch posts hung a sign with rude lettering: 'Lolomi Lodge.'
'Hey, Josh, did you fetch the flour?' called a woman's voice from inside.
'Hullo I Reckon I didn't forgit nothin',' replied the man, as he got down. 'An' say, Mrs. Hutter, hyar's a young lady from Noo Yorrk.'
That latter speech of the driver's brought Mrs. Hutter out on the porch. 'Flo, come here,' she called to some one evidently near at hand. And then she smilingly greeted Carley.
'Get down an' come in, miss,' she said. 'I'm sure glad to see you.'
Carley, being stiff and cold, did not very gracefully disengage herself from the high muddy wheel and step. When she mounted to the porch she saw that Mrs. Hutter was a woman of middle age, rather stout, with strong face full of fine wavy lines, and kind dark eyes.
'I'm Miss Burch,' said Carley.
'You're the girl whose picture Glenn Kilbourne has over his fireplace,' declared the woman, heartily. 'I'm sure glad to meet you, an' my daughter Flo will be, too.'
That about her picture pleased and warmed Carley. 'Yes, I'm Glenn Kilbourne's fiancee. I've come West to surprise him. Is he here... . Is– is he well?'
'Fine. I saw him yesterday. He's changed a great deal from what he was at first. Most all the last few months. I reckon you won't know him... . But you're wet an' cold an' you look fagged. Come right in to the fire.'
'Thank you; I'm all right,' returned Carley.
At the doorway they encountered a girl of lithe and robust figure, quick in her movements. Carley was swift to see the youth and grace of her; and then a face that struck Carley as neither pretty nor beautiful, but still wonderfully attractive.
'Flo, here's Miss Burch,' burst out Mrs. Hutter, with cheerful importance. 'Glenn Kilbourne's girl come all the way from New York to surprise him!'
'Oh, Carley, I'm shore happy to meet you!' said the girl, in a voice of slow drawling richness. 'I know you. Glenn has told me all about you.'
If this greeting, sweet and warm as it seemed, was a shock to Carley, she gave no sign. But as she murmured something in reply she looked with all a woman's keenness into the face before her. Flo Hutter had a fair skin generously freckled; a mouth and chin too firmly cut to suggest a softer feminine beauty; and eyes of clear light hazel, penetrating, frank, fearless. Her hair was very abundant, almost silver-gold in color, and it was either rebellious or showed lack of care. Carley liked the girl's looks and liked the sincerity of her greeting; but instinctively she reacted antagonistically because of the frank suggestion of intimacy with Glenn.
But for that she would have been spontaneous and friendly rather than restrained.
They ushered Carley into a big living room and up to a fire of blazing logs, where they helped divest her of the wet wraps. And all the time they talked in the solicitous way natural to women who were kind and unused to many visitors. Then Mrs. Hutter bustled off to make a cup of hot coffee while Flo talked.
'We'll shore give you the nicest room–with a sleeping porch right under the cliff where the water falls. It'll sing you to sleep. Of course you needn't use the bed outdoors until it's warmer. Spring is late here, you know, and we'll have nasty weather yet. You really happened on Oak Creek at its least attractive season. But then it's always–well, just Oak Creek. You'll come to know.'
'I dare say I'll remember my first sight of it and the ride down that cliff road,' said Carley, with a wan smile.
'Oh, that's nothing to what you'll see and do,' returned Flo, knowingly. 'We've had Eastern tenderfeet here before. And never was there a one of them who didn't come to love Arizona.'
'Tenderfoot! It hadn't occurred to me. But of course–' murmured Carley.
Then Mrs. Hutter returned, carrying a tray, which she set upon a chair, and drew to Carley's side. 'Eat an' drink,' she said, as if these actions were the cardinally important ones of life. 'Flo, you carry her bags up to that west room we always give to some particular person we want to love Lolomi.' Next she threw sticks of wood upon the fire, making it crackle and blaze, then seated herself near Carley and beamed upon her.
'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,
