At Flagstaff, where Carley arrived a few minutes before train time, she

was too busily engaged with tickets and baggage to think of herself

or of the significance of leaving Arizona. But as she walked into the

Pullman she overheard a passenger remark, "Regular old Arizona sunset,"

and that shook her heart. Suddenly she realized she had come to love the

colorful sunsets, to watch and wait for them. And bitterly she thought

how that was her way to learn the value of something when it was gone.

The jerk and start of the train affected her with singular depressing

shock. She had burned her last bridge behind her. Had she unconsciously

hoped for some incredible reversion of Glenn's mind or of her own? A

Advertisement..

sense of irreparable loss flooded over her--the first check to shame and

humiliation.

From her window she looked out to the southwest. Somewhere across the

cedar and pine-greened uplands lay Oak Creek Canyon, going to sleep in

its purple and gold shadows of sunset. Banks of broken clouds hung to

the horizon, like continents and islands and reefs set in a turquoise

sea. Shafts of sunlight streaked down through creamy-edged and

purple-centered clouds. Vast flare of gold dominated the sunset

background.

When the train rounded a curve Carley's strained vision became filled

with the upheaved bulk of the San Francisco Mountains. Ragged gray

grass slopes and green forests on end, and black fringed sky lines, all

pointed to the sharp clear peaks spearing the sky. And as she watched,

the peaks slowly flushed with sunset hues, and the sky flared golden,

and the strength of the eternal mountains stood out in sculptured

sublimity. Every day for two months and more Carley had watched these

peaks, at all hours, in every mood; and they had unconsciously become a

part of her thought. The train was relentlessly whirling her eastward.

Soon they must become a memory. Tears blurred her sight. Poignant regret

seemed added to the anguish she was suffering. Why had she not learned

sooner to see the glory of the mountains, to appreciate the beauty and

solitude? Why had she not understood herself?

The next day through New Mexico she followed magnificent ranges and

valleys--so different from the country she had seen coming West--so

supremely beautiful that she wondered if she had only acquired the

harvest of a seeing eye.

But it was at sunset of the following clay, when the train was speeding

down the continental slope of prairie land beyond the Rockies, that the

West took its ruthless revenge.

Masses of strange cloud and singular light upon the green prairie, and a

luminosity in the sky, drew Carley to the platform of her car, which was

the last of the train. There she stood, gripping the iron gate, feeling

the wind whip her hair and the iron-tracked ground speed from under her,

spellbound and stricken at the sheer wonder and glory of the firmament,

and the mountain range that it canopied so exquisitely.




Most Popular