Carley did not wait many days.  Strange how the old vanity held her back until something of the havoc in her face should be gone!

One morning she set out early, riding her best horse, and she took a sheep trail across country.  The distance by road was much farther.  The June morning was cool, sparkling, fragrant.  Mocking birds sang from the topmost twig of cedars; doves cooed in the pines; sparrow hawks sailed low over the open grassy patches.  Desert primroses showed their rounded pink clusters in sunny places, and here and there burned the carmine of Indian paint-brush.  Jack rabbits and cotton-tails bounded and scampered away through the sage.  The desert had life and color and movement this June day.  And as always there was the dry fragrance on the air.

Her mustang had been inured to long and consistent travel over the desert.  Her weight was nothing to him and he kept to the swinging lope for miles.  As she approached Oak Creek Canyon, however, she drew him to a trot, and then a walk.  Sight of the deep red-walled and green-floored canyon was a shock to her.

The trail came out on the road that led to Ryan’s sheep camp, at a point several miles west of the cabin where Carley had encountered Haze Ruff.  She remembered the curves and stretches, and especially the steep jump-off where the road led down off the rim into the canyon.  Here she dismounted and walked.  From the foot of this descent she knew every rod of the way would be familiar to her, and, womanlike, she wanted to turn away and fly from them.  But she kept on and mounted again at level ground.

The murmur of the creek suddenly assailed her ears—­sweet, sad, memorable, strangely powerful to hurt.  Yet the sound seemed of long ago.  Down here summer had advanced.  Rich thick foliage overspread the winding road of sand.  Then out of the shade she passed into the sunnier regions of isolated pines.  Along here she had raced Calico with Glenn’s bay; and here she had caught him, and there was the place she had fallen.  She halted a moment under the pine tree where Glenn had held her in his arms.  Tears dimmed her eyes.  If only she had known then the truth, the reality!  But regrets were useless.

By and by a craggy red wall loomed above the trees, and its pipe-organ conformation was familiar to Carley.  She left the road and turned to go down to the creek.  Sycamores and maples and great bowlders, and mossy ledges overhanging the water, and a huge sentinel pine marked the spot where she and Glenn had eaten their lunch that last day.  Her mustang splashed into the clear water and halted to drink.  Beyond, through the trees, Carley saw the sunny red-earthed clearing that was Glenn’s farm.  She looked, and fought herself, and bit her quivering lip until she tasted blood.  Then she rode out into the open.