"Shore I could stand here all day," said Flo. "But it's beginning to cloud
over and this high wind is cold. So we'd better go, Carley."
"I don't know what I am, but it's not cold," replied Carley.
"Wal, Miss Carley, I reckon you'll have to come again an' again before you
get a comfortable feelin' here," said Stanton.
It surprised Carley to see that this young Westerner had hit upon the
truth. He understood her. Indeed she was uncomfortable. She was oppressed,
vaguely unhappy. But why? The thing there--the infinitude of open sand and
rock--was beautiful, wonderful, even glorious. She looked again.
Steep black-cindered slope, with its soft gray patches of grass, sheered
down and down, and out in rolling slope to merge upon a cedar-dotted level.
Nothing moved below, but a red-tailed hawk sailed across her vision. How
still--how gray the desert floor as it reached away, losing its black dots,
and gaining bronze spots of stone! By plain and prairie it fell away, each
inch of gray in her sight magnifying into its league-long roll. On and on,
and down across dark lines that were steppes, and at last blocked and
changed by the meandering green thread which was the verdure of a desert
river.
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