Day was breaking over Panther Canyon1. The gulf2 was cold and full of heavy, purplish twilight3. The wood smoke which drifted from one of the cliff-houses hung in a blue scarf across the chasm4, until the draft caught it and whirled it away. Thea was crouching5 in the doorway6 of her rock house, while Ottenburg looked after the crackling fire in the next cave. He was waiting for it to burn down to coals before he put the coffee on to boil.
They had left the ranch7 house that morning a little after three o’clock, having packed their camp equipment the day before, and had crossed the open pasture land with their lantern while the stars were still bright. During the descent into the canyon by lantern-light, they were chilled through their coats and sweaters. The lantern crept slowly along the rock trail, where the heavy air seemed to offer resistance. The voice of the stream at the bottom of the gorge8 was hollow and threatening, much louder and deeper than it ever was by day—another voice altogether. The sullenness9 of the place seemed to say that the world could get on very well without people, red or white; that under the human world there was a geological world, conducting its silent, immense operations which were indifferent to man. Thea had often seen the desert sunrise,—a lighthearted affair, where the sun springs out of bed and the world is golden in an instant. But this canyon seemed to waken like an old man, with rheum and stiffness of the joints10, with heaviness, and a dull, malignant11 mind. She crouched12 against the wall while the stars faded, and thought what courage the early races must have had to endure so much for the little they got out of life.
At last a kind of hopefulness broke in the air. In a moment the pine trees up on the edge of the rim13 were flashing with coppery fire. The thin red clouds which hung above their pointed14 tops began to boil and move rapidly, weaving in and out like smoke. The swallows darted15 out of their rock houses as at a signal, and flew upward, toward the rim. Little brown birds began to chirp16 in the bushes along the watercourse down at the bottom of the ravine, where everything was still dusky and pale. At first the golden light seemed to hang like a wave upon the rim of the canyon; the trees and bushes up there, which one scarcely noticed at noon, stood out magnified by the slanting17 rays. Long, thin streaks18 of light began to reach quiveringly down into the canyon. The red sun rose rapidly above the tops of the blazing pines, and its glow burst into the gulf, about the very doorstep on which Thea sat. It bored into the wet, dark underbrush. The dripping cherry bushes, the pale aspens, and the frosty piñons were glittering and trembling, swimming in the liquid gold. All the pale, dusty little herbs of the bean family, never seen by any one but a botanist19, became for a moment individual and important, their silky leaves quite beautiful with dew and light. The arch of sky overhead, heavy as lead a little while before, lifted, became more and more transparent20, and one could look up into depths of pearly blue.
The savor21 of coffee and bacon mingled22 with the smell of wet cedars23 drying, and Fred called to Thea that he was ready for her. They sat down in the doorway of his kitchen, with the warmth of the live coals behind them and the sunlight on their faces, and began their breakfast, Mrs. Biltmer’s thick coffee cups and the cream bottle between them, the coffee-pot and frying-pan conveniently keeping hot among the embers.
“I thought you were going back on the whole proposition, Thea, when you were crawling along with that lantern. I couldn’t get a word out of you.”
“I know. I was cold and hungry, and I didn’t believe there was going to be any morning, anyway. Didn’t you feel queer, at all?”
Fred squinted24 above his smoking cup. “Well, I am never strong for getting up before the sun. The world looks unfurnished. When I first lit the fire and had a square look at you, I thought I’d got the wrong girl. Pale, grim—you were a sight!”
Thea leaned back into the shadow of the rock room and warmed her hands over the coals. “It was dismal25 enough. How warm these walls are, all the way round; and your breakfast is so good. I’m all right now, Fred.”
“Yes, you’re all right now.” Fred lit a cigarette and looked at her critically as her head emerged into the sun again. “You get up every morning just a little bit handsomer than you were the day before. I’d love you just as much if you were not turning into one of the loveliest women I’ve ever seen; but you are, and that’s a fact to be reckoned with.” He watched her across the thin line of smoke he blew from his lips. “What are you going to do with all that beauty and all that talent, Miss Kronborg?”
She turned away to the fire again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she muttered with an awkwardness which did not conceal26 her pleasure.
Ottenburg laughed softly. “Oh, yes, you do! Nobody better! You’re a close one, but you give yourself away sometimes, like everybody else. Do you know, I’ve decided27 that you never do a single thing without an ulterior motive28.” He threw away his cigarette, took out his tobacco-pouch and began to fill his pipe. “You ride and fence and walk and climb, but I know that all the while you’re getting somewhere in your mind. All these things are instruments; and I, too, am an instrument.” He looked up in time to intercept29 a quick, startled glance from Thea. “Oh, I don’t mind,” he chuckled30; “not a bit. Every woman, every interesting woman, has ulterior motives31, many of ’em less creditable than yours. It’s your constancy that amuses me. You must have been doing it ever since you were two feet high.”
Thea looked slowly up at her companion’s good-humored face. His eyes, sometimes too restless and sympathetic in town, had grown steadier and clearer in the open air. His short curly beard and yellow hair had reddened in the sun and wind. The pleasant vigor32 of his person was always delightful33 to her, something to signal to and laugh with in a world of negative people. With Fred she was never becalmed. There was always life in the air, always something coming and going, a rhythm of feeling and action,—stronger than the natural accord of youth. As she looked at him, leaning against the sunny wall, she felt a desire to be frank with him. She was not willfully holding anything back. But, on the other hand, she could not force things that held themselves back. “Yes, it was like that when I was little,” she said at last. “I had to be close, as you call it, or go under. But I didn’t know I had been like that since you came. I’ve had nothing to be close about. I haven’t thought about anything but having a good time with you. I’ve just drifted.”
Fred blew a trail of smoke out into the breeze and looked knowing. “Yes, you drift like a rifle ball, my dear. It’s your—your direction that I like best of all. Most fellows wouldn’t, you know. I’m unusual.”
They both laughed, but Thea frowned questioningly. “Why wouldn’t most fellows? Other fellows have liked me.”
“Yes, serious fellows. You told me yourself they were all old, or solemn. But jolly fellows want to be the whole target. They would say you were all brain and muscle; that you have no feeling.”
She glanced at him sidewise. “Oh, they would, would they?”
“Of course they would,” Fred continued blandly34. “Jolly fellows have no imagination. They want to be the animating35 force. When they are not around, they want a girl to be—extinct,” he waved his hand. “Old fellows like Mr. Nathanmeyer understand your kind; but among the young ones, you are rather lucky to have found me. Even I wasn’t always so wise. I’ve had my time of thinking it would not bore me to be the Apollo of a homey flat, and I’ve paid out a trifle to learn better. All those things get very tedious unless they are hooked up with an idea of some sort. It’s because we do............