The Call of the Canyon | Page 4

would. Has he ever asked you?"
"No-o--come to think of it, he hasn't," replied Carley, reluctantly. "Aunt
Mary, you hurt my feelings."
"Well, child, I'm glad to learn your feelings are hurt," returned the aunt.
"I'm sure, Carley, that underneath all this--this blase ultra something
you've acquired, there's a real heart. Only you must hurry and listen to
it--or--"
"Or what?" queried Carley.
Aunt Mary shook her gray head sagely. "Never mind what. Carley, I'd
like your idea of the most significant thing in Glenn's letter."
"Why, his love for me, of course!" replied Carley.
"Naturally you think that. But I don't. What struck me most were his
words, 'out of the West.' Carley, you'd do well to ponder over them."
"I will," rejoined Carley, positively. "I'll do more. I'll go out to his
wonderful West and see what he meant by them."
Carley Burch possessed in full degree the prevailing modern craze for
speed. She loved a motor-car ride at sixty miles an hour along a smooth,
straight road, or, better, on the level seashore of Ormond, where on
moonlight nights the white blanched sand seemed to flash toward her.
Therefore quite to her taste was the Twentieth Century Limited which
was hurtling her on the way to Chicago. The unceasingly smooth and
even rush of the train satisfied something in her. An old lady sitting in
an adjoining seat with a companion amused Carley by the remark: "I
wish we didn't go so fast. People nowadays haven't time to draw a
comfortable breath. Suppose we should run off the track!"
Carley had no fear of express trains, or motor cars, or transatlantic
liners; in fact, she prided herself in not being afraid of anything. But
she wondered if this was not the false courage of association with a
crowd. Before this enterprise at hand she could not remember anything

she had undertaken alone. Her thrills seemed to be in abeyance to the
end of her journey. That night her sleep was permeated with the steady
low whirring of the wheels. Once, roused by a jerk, she lay awake in
the darkness while the thought came to her that she and all her fellow
passengers were really at the mercy of the engineer. Who was he, and
did he stand at his throttle keen and vigilant, thinking of the lives
intrusted to him? Such thoughts vaguely annoyed Carley, and she
dismissed them.
A long half-day wait in Chicago was a tedious preliminary to the
second part of her journey. But at last she found herself aboard the
California Limited, and went to bed with a relief quite a stranger to her.
The glare of the sun under the curtain awakened her. Propped up on her
pillows, she looked out at apparently endless green fields or pastures,
dotted now and then with little farmhouses and tree-skirted villages.
This country, she thought, must be the prairie land she remembered lay
west of the Mississippi.
Later, in the dining car, the steward smilingly answered her question:
"This is Kansas, and those green fields out there are the wheat that
feeds the nation."
Carley was not impressed. The color of the short wheat appeared soft
and rich, and the boundless fields stretched away monotonously. She
had not known there was so much flat land in the world, and she
imagined it might be a fine country for automobile roads. When she got
back to her seat she drew the blinds down and read her magazines.
Then tiring of that, she went back to the observation car. Carley was
accustomed to attracting attention, and did not resent it, unless she was
annoyed. The train evidently had a full complement of passengers, who,
as far as Carley could see, were people not of her station in life. The
glare from the many windows, and the rather crass interest of several
men, drove her back to her own section. There she discovered that
some one had drawn up her window shades. Carley promptly pulled
them down and settled herself comfortably. Then she heard a woman
speak, not particularly low: "I thought people traveled west to see the
country." And a man replied, rather dryly. "Wal, not always." His

companion went on: "If that girl was mine I'd let down her skirt." The
man laughed and replied: "Martha, you're shore behind the times. Look
at the pictures in the magazines."
Such remarks amused Carley, and later she took advantage of an
opportunity to notice her neighbors. They appeared a rather quaint old
couple, reminding her of the natives of country towns in the
Adirondacks. She was not amused, however, when another of her
woman neighbors, speaking low, referred to her as a "lunger." Carley
appreciated the fact that she was pale, but she assured herself that there
ended any