VI
DAY was breaking over Panther Canyon. The gulf was
cold and full of heavy, purplish twilight. The wood
smoke which drifted from one of the cliff-houses hung in a
blue scarf across the chasm, until the draft caught it and
whirled it away. Thea was crouching in the doorway of
her rock house, while Ottenburg looked after the crackling
fire in the next cave. He was waiting for it to burn down to
coals before he put the coffee on to boil.
They had left the ranch house that morning a little after
three o'clock, having packed their camp equipment the
day before, and had crossed the open pasture land with
their lantern while the stars were still bright. During the
descent into the canyon by lantern-light, they were chilled
through their coats and sweaters. The lantern crept slowly
along the rock trail, where the heavy air seemed to offer
resistance. The voice of the stream at the bottom of the
gorge was hollow and threatening, much louder and deeper
than it ever was by day--another voice altogether. The
sullenness of the place seemed to say that the world could
get on very well without people, red or white; that under
the human world there was a geological world, conducting
its silent, immense operations which were indifferent to
man. Thea had often seen the desert sunrise,--a light-
hearted affair, where the sun springs out of bed and the
world is golden in an instant. But this canyon seemed to
waken like an old man, with rheum and stiffness of the
joints, with heaviness, and a dull, malignant mind. She
crouched against the wall while the stars faded, and thought
what courage the early races must have had to endure so
much for the little they got out of life.
At last a kind of hopefulness broke in the air. In a mo-
ment the pine trees up on the edge of the rim were flashing
with coppery fire. The thin red clouds which hung above
their pointed tops began to boil and move rapidly, weaving
in and out like smoke. The swallows darted out of their
rock houses as at a signal, and flew upward, toward the
rim. Little brown birds began to chirp in the bushes along
the watercourse down at the bottom of the ravine, where
everything was still dusky and pale. At first the golden
light seemed to hang like a wave upon the rim of the can-
yon; the trees and bushes up there, which one scarcely
noticed at noon, stood out magnified by the slanting rays.
Long, thin streaks of light began to reach quiveringly
down into the canyon. The red sun rose rapidly above the
tops of the blazing pines, and its glow burst into the gulf,
about the very doorstep on which Thea sat. It bored into
the wet, dark underbrush. The dripping cherry bushes,
the pale aspens, and the frosty PINONS were glittering and
trembling, swimming in the liquid gold. All the pale, dusty
little herbs of the bean family, never seen by any one but
a botanist, became for a moment individual and import-
ant, their silky leaves quite beautiful with dew and light.
The arch of sky overhead, heavy as lead a little while be-
fore, lifted, became more and more transparent, and one
could look up into depths of pearly blue.
The savor of coffee and bacon mingled with the smell of
wet cedars drying, and Fred called to Thea that he was
ready for her. They sat down in the doorway of his
kitchen, with the warmth of the live coals behind them and
the sunlight on their faces, and began their breakfast,
Mrs. Biltmer's thick coffee cups and the cream bottle
between them, the coffee-pot and frying-pan conveniently
keeping hot among the embers.
"I thought you were going back on the whole proposi-
tion, Thea, when you were crawling along with that lan-
tern. I couldn't get a word out of you."
"I know. I was cold and hungry, and I didn't believe
there was going to be any morning, anyway. Didn't you
feel queer, at all?"
Fred squinted above his smoking cup. "Well, I am
never strong for getting up before the sun. The world
looks unfurnished. When I first lit the fire and had a square
look at you, I thought I'd got the wrong girl. Pale, grim--
you were a sight!"
Thea leaned back into the shadow of the rock room and
warmed her hands over the coals. "It was dismal enough.
How warm these walls are, all the way round; and your
breakfast is so good. I'm all right now, Fred."
"Yes, you're all right now." Fred lit a cigarette and
looked at her critically as her head emerged into the sun
again. "You get up every morning just a little bit hand-
somer than you were the day before. I'd love you just as
much if you were not turning into one of the loveliest wo-
men I've ever seen; but you are, and that's a fact to be
reckoned with." He watched her across the thin line of
smoke he blew from his lips. "What are you going to do
with all that beauty and all that talent, Miss Kronborg?"
She turned away to the fire again. "I don't know what
you're talking about," she muttered with an awkwardness
which did not conceal her pleasure.
Ottenburg laughed softly. "Oh, yes, you do! Nobody
better! You're a close one, but you give yourself away
sometimes, like everybody else. Do you know, I've de-
cided that you never do a single thing without an ulterior
motive." He threw away his cigarette, took out his
tobacco-pouch and began to fill his pipe. "You ride and
fence and walk and climb, but I know that all the while
you're getting somewhere in your mind. All these things
are instruments; and I, too, am an instrument." He looked
up in time to intercept a quick, startled glance from Thea.
"Oh, I don't mind," he chuckled; "not a bit. Every
woman, every interesting woman, has ulterior motives,
many of 'em less creditable than yours. It's your constancy
that amuses me. You must have been doing it ever since
you were two feet high."
Thea looked slowly up at her companion's good-humored
face. His eyes, sometimes too restless and sympathetic in
town, had grown steadier and clearer in the open air. His
short curly beard and yellow hair had reddened in the sun
and wind. The pleasant vigor of his person was always
delightful to her, something to signal to and laugh with in
a world of negative people. With Fred she was never be-
calmed. There was always life in the air, always something
coming and going, a rhythm of feeling and action,--
stronger than the natural accord of youth. As she looked
at him, leaning against the sunny wall, she felt a desire to
be frank with him. She was not willfully holding anything
back. But, on the other hand, she could not force things
that held themselves back. "Yes, it was like that when I
was little," she said at last. "I had to be close, as you
call it, or go under. But I didn't know I had been like that
since you came. I've had nothing to be close about. I
haven't thought about anything but having a good time
with you. I've just drifted."
Fred blew a trail of smoke out into the breeze and looked
knowing. "Yes, you drift like a rifle ball, my dear. It's
your--your direction that I like best of all. Most fellows
wouldn't, you know. I'm unusual."
They both laughed, but Thea frowned questioningly.
"Why wouldn't most fellows? Other fellows have liked
me."
"Yes, serious fellows. You told me yourself they were all
old, or solemn. But jolly fellows want to be the whole
target. They would say you were all brain and muscle;
that you have no feeling."
She glanced at him sidewise. "Oh, they would, would
they?"
"Of course they would," Fred continued blandly. "Jolly
fellows have no imagination. They want to be the animat-
ing force. When they are not around, they want a girl to
be--extinct," he waved his hand. "Old fellows like Mr.
Nathanmeyer understand your kind; but among the young
ones, you are rather lucky to have found me. Even I
wasn't always so wise. I've had my time of thinking it
would not bore me to be the Apollo of a homey flat, and
I've paid out a trifle to learn better. All those things get
very tedious unless they are hooked up with an idea of
some sort. It's because we DON'T come out here only to
look at each other and drink coffee that it's so pleasant to
--look at each other." Fred drew on his pipe for a while,
studying Thea's abstraction. She was staring up at the
far wall of the canyon with a troubled expression that drew
her eyes narrow and her mouth hard. Her hands lay in her
lap, one over the other, the fingers interlacing. "Suppose,"
Fred came out at length,--"suppose I were to offer you
what most of the young men I know would offer a girl
they'd been sitting up nights about: a comfortable flat in
Chicago, a summer camp up in the woods, musical even-
ings, and a family to bring up. Would it look attractive
to you?"
Thea sat up straight and stared at him in alarm, glared
into his eyes. "Perfectly hideous!" she exclaimed.
Fred dropped back against the old stonework and
laughed deep in his chest. "Well, don't be frightened. I
won't offer them. You're not a nest-building bird. You
know I always liked your song, `Me for the jolt of the
breakers!' I understand."
She rose impatiently and walked to the edge of the cliff.
"It's not that so much. It's waking up every morning
with the feeling that your life is your own, and your
strength is your own, and your talent is your own; that
you're all there, and there's no sag in you." She stood for
a moment as if she were tortured by uncertainty, then
turned suddenly back to him. "Don't talk about these
things any more now," she entreated. "It isn't that I
want to keep anything from you. The trouble is that I've
got nothing to keep--except (you know as well as I) that
feeling. I told you about it in Chicago once. But it always
makes me unhappy to talk about it. It will spoil the day.
Will you go for a climb with me?" She held out her hands
with a smile so eager that it made Ottenburg feel how much
she needed to get away from herself.
He sprang up and caught the hands she put out so cor-
dially, and stood swinging them back and forth. "I won't
tease you. A word's enough to me. But I love it, all the
same. Understand?" He pressed her hands and dropped
them. "Now, where are you going to drag me?"
"I want you to drag me. Over there, to the other houses.
They are more interesting than these." She pointed across
the gorge to the row of white houses in the other cliff.
"The trail is broken away, but I got up there once. It's
possible. You have to go to the bottom of the canyon,
cross the creek, and then go up hand-over-hand."
Ottenburg, lounging against the sunny wall, his hands in
the pockets of his jacket, looked across at the distant dwell-
ings. "It's an awful climb," he sighed, "when I could be
perfectly happy here with my pipe. However--" He
took up his stick and hat and followed Thea down the
water trail. "Do you climb this path every day? You
surely earn your bath. I went down and had a look at your
pool the other afternoon. Neat place, with all those little
cottonwoods. Must be very becoming."
"Think so?" Thea said over her shoulder, as she swung
round a turn.
"Yes, and so do you, evidently. I'm becoming expert
at reading your meaning in your back. I'm behind you so
much on these single-foot trails. You don't wear stays, do
you?"
"Not here."
"I wouldn't, anywhere, if I were you. They will make
you less elastic. The side muscles get flabby. If you go in
for opera, there's a fortune in a flexible body. Most of the
German singers are clumsy, even when they're well set up."
Thea switched a PINON branch back at him. "Oh, I'll
never get fat! That I can promise you."
Fred smiled, looking after her. "Keep that promise, no
matter how many others you break," he drawled.
The upward climb, after they had crossed the stream,
was at first a breathless scramble through underbrush.
When they reached the big boulders, Ottenburg went first
because he had the longer leg-reach, and gave Thea a hand
when the step was quite beyond her, swinging her up until
she could get a foothold. At last they reached a little plat-
form among the rocks, with only a hundred feet of jagged,
sloping wall between them and the cliff-houses.
Ottenburg lay down under a pine tree and declared that
he was going to have a pipe before he went any farther.
"It's a good thing to know when to stop, Thea," he said
meaningly.
"I'm not going to stop now until I get there," Thea in-
sisted. "I'll go on alone."
Fred settled his shoulder against the tree-trunk. "Go
on if you like, but I'm here to enjoy myself. If you meet a
rattler on the way, have it out with him."
She hesitated, fanning herself with her felt hat. "I never
have met one."
"There's reasoning for you," Fred murmured languidly.
Thea turned away resolutely and began to go up the
wall, using an irregular cleft in the rock for a path. The
cliff, which looked almost perpendicular from the bottom,
was really made up of ledges and boulders, and behind
these she soon disappeared. For a long while Fred smoked
with half-closed eyes, smiling to himself now and again.
Occasionally he lifted an eyebrow as he heard the rattle of
small stones among the rocks above. "In a temper," he
concluded; "do her good." Then he subsided into warm
drowsiness and listened to the locusts in the yuccas, and
the tap-tap of the old woodpecker that was never weary of
assaulting the big pine.
Fred had finished his pipe and was wondering whether
he wanted another, when he heard a call from the cliff far
above him. Looking up, he saw Thea standing on the edge
of a projecting crag. She waved to him and threw her arm
over her head, as if she were snapping her fingers in the air.
As he saw her there between the sky and the gulf, with
that great wash of air and the morning light about her,
Fred recalled the brilliant figure at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's.
Thea was one of those people who emerge, unexpectedly,
larger than we are accustomed to see them. Even at this
distance one got the impression of muscular energy and
audacity,--a kind of brilliancy of motion,--of a person-
ality that carried across big spaces and expanded among
big things. Lying still, with his hands under his head,
Ottenburg rhetorically addressed the figure in the air.
"You are the sort that used to run wild in Germany,
dressed in their hair and a piece of skin. Soldiers caught
'em in nets. Old Nathanmeyer," he mused, "would like
a peep at her now. Knowing old fellow. Always buying
those Zorn etchings of peasant girls bathing. No sag in
them either. Must be the cold climate." He sat up.
"She'll begin to pitch rocks on me if I don't move." In
response to another impatient gesture from the crag, he
rose and began swinging slowly up the trail.
It was the afternoon of that long day. Thea was lying
on a blanket in the door of her rock house. She and Otten-
burg had come back from their climb and had lunch, and
he had gone off for a nap in one of the cliff-houses farther
down the path. He was sleeping peacefully, his coat under
his head and his face turned toward the wall.
Thea, too, was drowsy, and lay looking through half-
closed eyes up at the blazing blue arch over the rim of the
canyon. She was thinking of nothing at all. Her mind, like
her body, was full of warmth, lassitude, physical content.
Suddenly an eagle, tawny and of great size, sailed over the
cleft in which she lay, across the arch of sky. He dropped
for a moment into the gulf between the walls, then wheeled,
and mounted until his plumage was so steeped in light that
he looked like a golden bird. He swept on, following the
course of the canyon a little way and then disappearing
beyond the rim. Thea sprang to her feet as if she had been
thrown up from the rock by volcanic action. She stood
rigid on the edge of the stone shelf, straining her eyes after
that strong, tawny flight. O eagle of eagles! Endeavor,
achievement, desire, glorious striving of human art! From
a cleft in the heart of the world she saluted it. . . . It had
come all the way; when men lived in caves, it was there.
A vanished race; but along the trails, in the stream, under
the spreading cactus, there still glittered in the sun the
bits of their frail clay vessels, fragments of their desire.
