“Shore you’re doing fine,” was Flo’s greeting.  “Come and get it before we throw it out.”

Carley made haste to comply with the Western mandate, and was once again confronted with the singular fact that appetite did not wait upon the troubles of a tenderfoot.  Glenn remarked that at least she would not starve to death on the trip.

“Come, climb the ridge with me,” he invited.  “I want you to take a look to the north and east.”

He led her off through the cedars, up a slow red-earth slope, away from the lake.  A green moundlike eminence topped with flat red rock appeared near at hand and not at all a hard climb.  Nevertheless, her eyes deceived her, as she found to the cost of her breath.  It was both far away and high.

“I like this location,” said Glenn.  “If I had the money I’d buy this section of land—­six hundred and forty acres—­and make a ranch of it.  Just under this bluff is a fine open flat bench for a cabin.  You could see away across the desert clear to Sunset Peak.  There’s a good spring of granite water.  I’d run water from the lake down into the lower flats, and I’d sure raise some stock.”

“What do you call this place?” asked Carley, curiously.

“Deep Lake.  It’s only a watering place for sheep and cattle.  But there’s fine grazing, and it’s a wonder to me no one has ever settled here.”

Looking down, Carley appreciated his wish to own the place; and immediately there followed in her a desire to get possession of this tract of land before anyone else discovered its advantages, and to hold it for Glenn.  But this would surely conflict with her intention of persuading Glenn to go back East.  As quickly as her impulse had been born it died.

Suddenly the scene gripped Carley.  She looked from near to far, trying to grasp the illusive something.  Wild lonely Arizona land!  She saw ragged dumpy cedars of gray and green, lines of red earth, and a round space of water, gleaming pale under the lowering clouds; and in the distance isolated hills, strangely curved, wandering away to a black uplift of earth obscured in the sky.

These appeared to be mere steps leading her sight farther and higher to the cloud-navigated sky, where rosy and golden effulgence betokened the sun and the east.  Carley held her breath.  A transformation was going on before her eyes.

“Carley, it’s a stormy sunrise,” said Glenn.

His words explained, but they did not convince.  Was this sudden-bursting glory only the sun rising behind storm clouds?  She could see the clouds moving while they were being colored.  The universal gray surrendered under some magic paint brush.  The rifts widened, and the gloom of the pale-gray world seemed to vanish.  Beyond the billowy, rolling, creamy edges of clouds, white and pink, shone the soft exquisite fresh blue sky.  And a blaze of fire, a burst of molten gold, sheered up from behind the rim of cloud and suddenly poured a sea of sunlight