The sun
shone bright upon a white-frosted land. The air was still. Carley labored
at her task of rising, and brushing her hair, and pulling on her boots; and
it appeared her former sufferings were as naught compared with the pangs of
this morning. How she hated the cold, the bleak, denuded forest land, the
emptiness, the roughness, the crudeness! If this sort of feeling grew any
worse she thought she would hate Glenn. Yet she was nonetheless set upon
going on, and seeing the sheep-dip, and riding that fiendish mustang until
the trip was ended.
Getting in the saddle and on the way this morning was an ordeal that made
Carley actually sick. Glenn and Flo both saw how it was with her, and they
left her to herself. Carley was grateful for this understanding. It seemed
to proclaim their respect. She found further matter for satisfaction in the
astonishing circumstance that after the first dreadful quarter of an hour
in the saddle she began to feel easier. And at the end of several hours of
riding she was not suffering any particular pain, though she was weaker.
At length the cut-over land ended in a forest of straggling pines, through
which the road wound southward, and eventually down into a wide shallow
canyon.
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