They had the same consistency as those of the ascent she had overcome.But here there was a steeper incline.A tingling rush of daring seemed to drive her over the rounded rim, and, once started down, it was as if she wore seven-league boots.Fear left her.Only an exhilarating emotion consumed her.If there were danger, it mattered not.She strode down with giant steps, she plunged, she started avalanches to ride them until they stopped, she leaped, and lastly she fell, to roll over the soft cinders to the pit.
There she lay.It seemed a comfortable resting place.The pit was scarcely six feet across.She gazed upward and was astounded.How steep was the rounded slope on all sides! There were no sides; it was a circle.She looked up at a round lake of deep translucent sky.Such depth of blue, such exquisite rare color! Carley imagined she could gaze through it to the infinite beyond.
She closed her eyes and rested.Soon the laboring of heart and breath calmed to normal, so that she could not hear them.Then she lay perfectly motionless.With eyes shut she seemed still to look, and what she saw was the sunlight through the blood and flesh of her eyelids.It was red, as rare a hue as the blue of sky.So piercing did it grow that she had to shade her eyes with her arm.
Again the strange, rapt glow suffused her body.Never in all her life had she been so absolutely alone.She might as well have been in her grave.She might have been dead to all earthy things and reveling in spirit in the glory of the physical that had escaped her in life.And she abandoned herself to this influence.
She loved these dry, dusty cinders; she loved the crater here hidden from all save birds; she loved the desert, the earth-above all, the sun.She was a product of the earth--a creation of the sun.She had been an infinitesimal atom of inert something that had quickened to life under the blazing magic of the sun.Soon her spirit would abandon her body and go on, while her flesh and bone returned to dust.This frame of hers, that carried the divine spark, belonged to the earth.She had only been ignorant, mindless, feelingless, absorbed in the seeking of gain, blind to the truth.
She had to give.She had been created a woman; she belonged to nature; she was nothing save a mother of the future.She had loved neither Glenn Kilbourne nor life itself.False education, false standards, false environment had developed her into a woman who imagined she must feed her body on the milk and honey of indulgence.
She was abased now--woman as animal, though saved and uplifted by her power of immortality.Transcendental was her female power to link life with the future.The power of the plant seed, the power of the earth, the heat of the sun, the inscrutable creation-spirit of nature, almost the divinity of God--these were all hers because she was a woman.That was the great secret, aloof so long.That was what had been wrong with life--the woman blind to her meaning, her power, her mastery.
So she abandoned herself to the woman within her.She held out her arms to the blue abyss of heaven as if to embrace the universe.She was Nature.She kissed the dusty cinders and pressed her breast against the warm slope.Her heart swelled to bursting with a glorious and unutterable happiness.
That afternoon as the sun was setting under a gold-white scroll of cloud Carley got back to Deep Lake.
A familiar lounging figure crossed her sight.It approached to where she had dismounted.Charley, the sheep herder of Oak Creek!
"Howdy!" he drawled, with his queer smile."So it was you-all who had this Deep Lake section?""Yes.And how are you, Charley?" she replied, shaking hands with him.
"Me? Aw, I'm tip-top.I'm shore glad you got this ranch.Reckon I'll hit you for a job.""I'd give it to you.But aren't you working for the Hutters?""Nope.Not any more.Me an' Stanton had a row with them."How droll and dry he was! His lean, olive-brown face, with its guileless clear eyes and his lanky figure in blue jeans vividly recalled Oak Creek to Carley.
"Oh, I'm sorry," returned she haltingly, somehow checked in her warm rush of thought."Stanton?...Did he quit too?""Yep.He sure did."
"What was the trouble?"
"Reckon because Flo made up to Kilbourne," replied Charley, with a grin.
"Ah! I--I see," murmured Carley.A blankness seemed to wave over her.It extended to the air without, to the sense of the golden sunset.It passed.
What should she ask--what out of a thousand sudden flashing queries? "Are--are the Hutters back?"
"Sure.Been back several days.I reckoned Hoyle told you.Mebbe he didn't know, though.For nobody's been to town.""How is--how are they all?" faltered Carley.There was a strange wall here between her thought and her utterance.
"Everybody satisfied, I reckon," replied Charley.
"Flo--how is she?" burst out Carley.
"Aw, Flo's loony over her husband," drawled Charley, his clear eyes on Carley's.
"Husband!" she gasped.
"Sure.Flo's gone an' went an' done what I swore on.""Who?" whispered Carley, and the query was a terrible blade piercing her heart.
"Now who'd you reckon on?" asked Charley, with his slow grin.
Carley's lips were mute.
"Wal, it was your old beau thet you wouldn't have," returned Charley, as he gathered up his long frame, evidently to leave."Kilbourne! He an' Flo came back from the Tonto all hitched up."
