The hoofs of the horses sank in the cinders.  A fine choking dust assailed Carley’s nostrils.  Presently, when there appeared at least a third of the ascent still to be accomplished and Flo dismounted to walk, leading their horses.  Carley had no choice but to do likewise.  At first walking was a relief.  Soon, however, the soft yielding cinders began to drag at her feet.  At every step she slipped back a few inches, a very annoying feature of climbing.  When her legs seemed to grow dead Carley paused for a little rest.  The last of the ascent, over a few hundred yards of looser cinders, taxed her remaining strength to the limit.  She grew hot and wet and out of breath.  Her heart labored.  An unreasonable antipathy seemed to attend her efforts.  Only her ridiculous vanity held her to this task.  She wanted to please Glenn, but not so earnestly that she would have kept on plodding up this ghastly bare mound of cinders.  Carley did not mind being a tenderfoot, but she hated the thought of these Westerners considering her a weakling.  So she bore the pain of raw blisters and the miserable sensation of staggering on under a leaden weight.

Several times she noted that Flo and Stanton halted to face each other in rather heated argument.  At least Stanton’s red face and forceful gestures attested to heat on his part.  Flo evidently was weary of argument, and in answer to a sharp reproach she retorted, “Shore I was different after he came.”  To which Stanton responded by a quick passionate shrinking as if he had been stung.

Carley had her own reaction to this speech she could not help hearing; and inwardly, at least, her feeling must have been similar to Stanton’s.  She forgot the object of this climb and looked off to her right at the green level without really seeing it.  A vague sadness weighed upon her soul.  Was there to be a tangle of fates here, a conflict of wills, a crossing of loves?  Flo’s terse confession could not be taken lightly.  Did she mean that she loved Glenn?  Carley began to fear it.  Only another reason why she must persuade Glenn to go back East!  But the closer Carley came to what she divined must be an ordeal the more she dreaded it.  This raw, crude West might have confronted her with a situation beyond her control.  And as she dragged her weighted feet through the cinders, kicking, up little puffs of black dust, she felt what she admitted to be an unreasonable resentment toward these Westerners and their barren, isolated, and boundless world.

“Carley,” called Flo, “come—­looksee, as the Indians say.  Here is Glenn’s Painted Desert, and I reckon it’s shore worth seeing.”

To Carley’s surprise, she found herself upon the knob of the foothill.  And when she looked out across a suddenly distinguishable void she seemed struck by the immensity of something she was unable to grasp.  She dropped her bridle; she gazed slowly, as if drawn, hearing Flo’s voice.