Later Carley leaned back in a comfortable seat, before a blazing fire

that happily sent its acrid smoke up the chimney, pondering ideas in her

mind.

There could be a relation to familiar things that was astounding in its

revelation. To get off a horse that had tortured her, to discover an

almost insatiable appetite, to rest weary, aching body before the genial

warmth of a beautiful fire--these were experiences which Carley found

to have been hitherto unknown delights. It struck her suddenly and

strangely that to know the real truth about anything in life might

require infinite experience and understanding. How could one feel

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immense gratitude and relief, or the delight of satisfying acute hunger,

or the sweet comfort of rest, unless there had been circumstances of

extreme contrast? She had been compelled to suffer cruelly on horseback

in order to make her appreciate how good it was to get down on the

ground. Otherwise she never would have known. She wondered, then, how

true that principle might be in all experience. It gave strong food for

thought. There were things in the world never before dreamed of in her

philosophy.

Carley was wondering if she were narrow and dense to circumstances of

life differing from her own when a remark of Flo's gave pause to her

reflections.

"Shore the worst is yet to come." Flo had drawled.

Carley wondered if this distressing statement had to do in some way with

the rest of the trip. She stifled her curiosity. Painful knowledge of

that sort would come quickly enough.

"Flo, are you girls going to sleep here in the cabin?" inquired Glenn.

"Shore. It's cold and wet outside," replied Flo.

"Well, Felix, the Mexican herder, told me some Navajos had been bunking

here."

"Navajos? You mean Indians?" interposed Carley, with interest.

"Shore do," said Flo. "I knew that. But don't mind Glenn. He's full of

tricks, Carley. He'd give us a hunch to lie out in the wet."

Hutter burst into his hearty laugh. "Wal, I'd rather get some things

any day than a bad cold."

"Shore I've had both," replied Flo, in her easy drawl, "and I'd prefer

the cold. But for Carley's sake--"

"Pray don't consider me," said Carley. The rather crude drift of the

conversation affronted her.

"Well, my dear," put in Glenn, "it's a bad night outside. We'll all make

our beds here."

"Glenn, you shore are a nervy fellow," drawled Flo.

Long after everybody was in bed Carley lay awake in the blackness of the

cabin, sensitively fidgeting and quivering over imaginative contact with

creeping things. The fire had died out. A cold air passed through the

room. On the roof pattered gusts of rain. Carley heard a rustling of

mice. It did not seem possible that she could keep awake, yet she strove

to do so. But her pangs of body, her extreme fatigue soon yielded to

the quiet and rest of her bed, engendering a drowsiness that proved

irresistible.




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