The Call of the Canyon | Page 6

proprietor was talking from
behind his desk to several men, and there were loungers in the lobby.
The air was thick with tobacco smoke. No one paid any attention to
Carley until at length she stepped up to the desk and interrupted the
conversation there.
"Is this a hotel?" she queried, brusquely.
The shirt-sleeved individual leisurely turned and replied, "Yes, ma'am."
And Carley said: "No one would recognize it by the courtesy shown. I
have been standing here waiting to register."
With the same leisurely case and a cool, laconic stare the clerk turned
the book toward her. "Reckon people round here ask for what they
want."
Carley made no further comment. She assuredly recognized that what
she had been accustomed to could not be expected out here. What she
most wished to do at the moment was to get close to the big open grate
where a cheery red- and-gold fire cracked. It was necessary, however,
to follow the clerk. He assigned her to a small drab room which
contained a bed, a bureau, and a stationary washstand with one spigot.
There was also a chair. While Carley removed her coat and hat the
clerk went downstairs for the rest of her luggage. Upon his return
Carley learned that a stage left the hotel for Oak Creek Canyon at nine
o'clock next morning. And this cheered her so much that she faced the

strange sense of loneliness and discomfort with something of fortitude.
There was no heat in the room, and no hot water. 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,