So she abandoned herself to the woman within her. She held out her arms to
the blue abyss of heaven as if to embrace the universe. She was Nature. She
kissed the dusty cinders and pressed her breast against the warm slope. Her
heart swelled to bursting with a glorious and unutterable happiness.
That afternoon as the sun was setting under a gold-white scroll of cloud
Carley got back to Deep Lake.
A familiar lounging figure crossed her sight. It approached to where she
had dismounted. Charley, the sheep herder of Oak Creek!
"Howdy!" he drawled, with his queer smile. "So it was you-all who had this
Deep Lake section?"
"Yes. And how are you, Charley?" she replied, shaking hands with him.
"Me? Aw, I'm tip-top. I'm shore glad you got this ranch. Reckon I'll hit
you for a job."
"I'd give it to you. But aren't you working for the Hutters?"
"Nope. Not any more. Me an' Stanton had a row with them."
How droll and dry he was! His lean, olive-brown face, with its guileless
clear eyes and his lanky figure in blue jeans vividly recalled Oak Creek to
Carley.
"Oh, I'm sorry," returned she haltingly, somehow checked in her warm rush
of thought. "Stanton? . . . Did he quit too?"
"Yep.
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