“Thank you; I’m all right,” returned Carley.

At the doorway they encountered a girl of lithe and robust figure, quick in her movements.  Carley was swift to see the youth and grace of her; and then a face that struck Carley as neither pretty nor beautiful, but still wonderfully attractive.

“Flo, here’s Miss Burch,” burst out Mrs. Hutter, with cheerful importance.  “Glenn Kilbourne’s girl come all the way from New York to surprise him!”

“Oh, Carley, I’m shore happy to meet you!” said the girl, in a voice of slow drawling richness.  “I know you.  Glenn has told me all about you.”

If this greeting, sweet and warm as it seemed, was a shock to Carley, she gave no sign.  But as she murmured something in reply she looked with all a woman’s keenness into the face before her.  Flo Hutter had a fair skin generously freckled; a mouth and chin too firmly cut to suggest a softer feminine beauty; and eyes of clear light hazel, penetrating, frank, fearless.  Her hair was very abundant, almost silver-gold in color, and it was either rebellious or showed lack of care.  Carley liked the girl’s looks and liked the sincerity of her greeting; but instinctively she reacted antagonistically because of the frank suggestion of intimacy with Glenn.

But for that she would have been spontaneous and friendly rather than restrained.

They ushered Carley into a big living room and up to a fire of blazing logs, where they helped divest her of the wet wraps.  And all the time they talked in the solicitous way natural to women who were kind and unused to many visitors.  Then Mrs. Hutter bustled off to make a cup of hot coffee while Flo talked.

“We’ll shore give you the nicest room—­with a sleeping porch right under the cliff where the water falls.  It’ll sing you to sleep.  Of course you needn’t use the bed outdoors until it’s warmer.  Spring is late here, you know, and we’ll have nasty weather yet.  You really happened on Oak Creek at its least attractive season.  But then it’s always—­well, just Oak Creek.  You’ll come to know.”

“I dare say I’ll remember my first sight of it and the ride down that cliff road,” said Carley, with a wan smile.

“Oh, that’s nothing to what you’ll see and do,” returned Flo, knowingly.  “We’ve had Eastern tenderfeet here before.  And never was there a one of them who didn’t come to love Arizona.”

“Tenderfoot!  It hadn’t occurred to me.  But of course—­” murmured Carley.

Then Mrs. Hutter returned, carrying a tray, which she set upon a chair, and drew to Carley’s side.  “Eat an’ drink,” she said, as if these actions were the cardinally important ones of life.  “Flo, you carry her bags up to that west room we always give to some particular person we want to love Lolomi.”  Next she threw sticks of wood upon the fire, making it crackle and blaze, then seated herself near Carley and beamed upon her.

“You’ll not mind if we call you Carley?” she asked, eagerly.