"You look great," he asserted, heartily."You've got color.And as for your hair--I like to see it mussed that way.You were always one to have it dressed--just so....Come, Carley, rustle now."Thus adjured, Carley did her best under adverse circumstances.And she was gritting her teeth and complimenting herself when she arrived at the task of pulling on her boots.They were damp and her feet appeared to have swollen.Moreover, her ankles were sore.But she accomplished getting into them at the expense of much pain and sundry utterances more forcible than elegant.Glenn brought her warm water, a mitigating circumstance.The morning was cold and thought of that biting desert water had been trying.
"Shore you're doing fine," was Flo's greeting."Come and get it before we throw it out."Carley made haste to comply with the Western mandate, and was once again confronted with the singular fact that appetite did not wait upon the troubles of a tenderfoot.Glenn remarked that at least she would not starve to death on the trip.
"Come, climb the ridge with me," be invited."I want you to take a look to the north and east."He led her off through the cedars, up a slow red-earth slope, away from the lake.A green moundlike eminence topped with flat red rock appeared near at hand and not at all a hard climb.Nevertheless, her eyes deceived her, as she found to the cost of her breath.It was both far away and high.
"I like this location," said Glenn."If I had the money I'd buy this section of land--six hundred and forty acres--and make a ranch of it.Just under this bluff is a fine open flat bench for a cabin.You could see away across the desert clear to Sunset Peak.There's a good spring of granite water.I'd run water from the lake down into the lower flats, and I'd sure raise some stock.""What do you call this place?" asked Carley, curiously.
"Deep Lake.It's only a watering place for sheep and cattle.But there's fine grazing, and it's a wonder to me no one has ever settled here."Looking down, Carley appreciated his wish to own the place; and immediately there followed in her a desire to get possession of this tract of land before anyone else discovered its advantages, and to hold it for Glenn.But this would surely conflict with her intention of persuading Glenn to go back East.As quickly as her impulse had been born it died.
Suddenly the scene gripped Carley.She looked from near to far, trying to grasp the illusive something.Wild lonely Arizona land! She saw ragged dumpy cedars of gray and green, lines of red earth, and a round space of water, gleaming pale under the lowering clouds; and in the distance isolated hills, strangely curved, wandering away to a black uplift of earth obscured in the sky.
These appeared to be mere steps leading her sight farther and higher to the cloud-navigated sky, where rosy and golden effulgence betokened the sun and the east.Carley held her breath.A transformation was going on before her eyes.
"Carley, it's a stormy sunrise," said Glenn.
His words explained, but they did not convince.Was this sudden-bursting glory only the sun rising behind storm clouds? She could see the clouds moving while they were being colored.The universal gray surrendered under some magic paint brush.The rifts widened, and the gloom of the pale-gray world seemed to vanish.Beyond the billowy, rolling, creamy edges of clouds, white and pink, shone the soft exquisite fresh blue sky.And a blaze of fire, a burst of molten gold, sheered up from behind the rim of cloud and suddenly poured a sea of sunlight from east to west.It trans-figured the round foothills.They seemed bathed in ethereal light, and the silver mists that overhung them faded while Carley gazed, and a rosy flush crowned the symmetrical domes.Southward along the horizon line, down-dropping veils of rain, just touched with the sunrise tint, streamed in drifting slow movement from cloud to earth.To the north the range of foothills lifted toward the majestic dome of Sunset Peak, a volcanic upheaval of red and purple cinders, bare as rock, round as the lower hills, and wonderful in its color.Full in the blaze of the rising sun it flaunted an unchangeable front.Carley understood now what had been told her about this peak.Volcanic fires had thrown up a colossal mound of cinders burned forever to the hues of the setting sun.In every light and shade of day it held true to its name.Farther north rose the bold bulk of the San Francisco Peaks, that, half lost in the clouds, still dominated the desert scene.Then as Carley gazed the rifts began to close.Another transformation began, the reverse of what she watched.The golden radiance of sunrise vanished, and under a gray, lowering) coalescing pall of cloud the round hills returned to their bleak somberness, and the green desert took again its cold sheen.
"Wasn't it fine, Carley?" asked Glenn."But nothing to what you will experience.I hope you stay till the weather gets warm.I want you to see a summer dawn on the Painted Desert, and a noon with the great white clouds rolling up from the horizon, and a sunset of massed purple and gold.If they do not get you then I'll give up."Carley murmured something of her appreciation of what she had just seen.
