When Carley squeezed the spigot handle there burst forth a torrent of water that spouted up out of the washbasin to deluge her.It was colder than any ice water she had ever felt.It was piercingly cold.Hard upon the surprise and shock Carley suffered a flash of temper.But then the humor of it struck her and she had to laugh.
"Serves you right--you spoiled doll of luxury!" she mocked."This is out West.Shiver and wait on yourself!"Never before had she undressed so swiftly nor felt grateful for thick woollen blankets on a hard bed.Gradually she grew warm.The blackness, too, seemed rather comforting.
"I'm only twenty miles from Glenn," she whispered."How strange! I wonder will he be glad." She felt a sweet, glowing assurance of that.Sleep did not come readily.Excitement had laid hold of her nerves, and for a long time she lay awake.After a while the chug of motor cars, the click of pool balls, the murmur of low voices all ceased.Then she heard a sound of wind outside, an intermittent, low moaning, new to her ears, and somehow pleasant.Another sound greeted her--the musical clanging of a clock that struck the quarters of the hour.Some time late sleep claimed her.
Upon awakening she found she had overslept, necessitating haste upon her part.As to that, the temperature of the room did not admit of leisurely dressing.She had no adequate name for the feeling of the water.And her fingers grew so numb that she made what she considered a disgraceful matter of her attire.
Downstairs in the lobby another cheerful red fire burned in the grate.How perfectly satisfying was an open fireplace! She thrust her numb hands almost into the blaze, and simply shook with the tingling pain that slowly warmed out of them.The lobby was deserted.A sign directed her to a dining room in the basement, where of the ham and eggs and strong coffee she managed to partake a little.Then she went upstairs into the lobby and out into the street.
A cold, piercing air seemed to blow right through her.Walking to the near corner, she paused to look around.Down the main street flowed a leisurely stream of pedestrians, horses, cars, extending between two blocks of low buildings.Across from where she stood lay a vacant lot, beyond which began a line of neat, oddly constructed houses, evidently residences of the town.
And then lifting her gaze, instinctively drawn by something obstructing the sky line, she was suddenly struck with surprise and delight.
"Oh! how perfectly splendid!" she burst out.
Two magnificent mountains loomed right over her, sloping up with majestic sweep of green and black timber, to a ragged tree-fringed snow area that swept up cleaner and whiter, at last to lift pure glistening peaks, noble and sharp, and sunrise-flushed against the blue.
Carley had climbed Mont Blanc and she had seen the Matterhorn, but they had never struck such amaze and admiration from her as these twin peaks of her native land.
"What mountains are those?" she asked a passer-by.
"San Francisco Peaks, ma'am," replied the man.
"Why, they can't be over a mile away!" she said.
"Eighteen miles, ma'am," he returned, with a grin."Shore this Arizonie air is deceivin'.""How strange," murmured Carley."It's not that way in the Adirondacks."She was still gazing upward when a man approached her and said the stage for Oak Creek Canyon would soon be ready to start, and he wanted to know if her baggage was ready.Carley hurried back to her room to pack.
She had expected the stage would be a motor bus, or at least a large touring car, but it turned out to be a two-seated vehicle drawn by a team of ragged horses.The driver was a little wizen-faced man of doubtful years, and he did not appear obviously susceptible to the importance of his passenger.There was considerable freight to be hauled, besides Carley's luggage, but evidently she was the only passenger.
"Reckon it's goin' to be a bad day," said the driver."These April days high up on the desert are windy an' cold.Mebbe it'll snow, too.Them clouds hangin' around the peaks ain't very promisin'.Now, miss, haven't you a heavier coat or somethin'?""No, I have not," replied Carley."I'll have to stand it.Did you say this was desert?""I shore did.Wal, there's a hoss blanket under the seat, an' you can have that," he replied, and, climbing to the seat in front of Carley, he took up the reins and started the horses off at a trot.
At the first turning Carley became specifically acquainted with the driver's meaning of a bad day.A gust of wind, raw and penetrating, laden with dust and stinging sand, swept full in her face.It came so suddenly that she was scarcely quick enough to close her eyes.It took considerable clumsy effort on her part with a handkerchief, aided by relieving tears, to clear her sight again.Thus uncomfortably Carley found herself launched on the last lap of her journey.
All before her and alongside lay the squalid environs of the town.Looked back at, with the peaks rising behind, it was not unpicturesque.But the hard road with its sheets of flying dust, the bleak railroad yards, the round pens she took for cattle corrals, and the sordid debris littering the approach to a huge sawmill,--these were offensive in Carley's sight.From a tall dome-like stack rose a yellowish smoke that spread overhead, adding to the lowering aspect of the sky.Beyond the sawmill extended the open country sloping somewhat roughly, and evidently once a forest, but now a hideous bare slash, with ghastly burned stems of trees still standing, and myriads of stumps attesting to denudation.