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 from east to
west. It trans-figured the round foothills. They seemed bathed in
ethereal light, and the silver mists that overhung them faded while
Carley gazed, and a rosy flush crowned the symmetrical domes. Southward
along the horizon line, down-dropping veils of rain, just touched with
the sunrise tint, streamed in drifting slow movement from cloud to
earth. To the north the range of foothills lifted toward the majestic
dome of Sunset Peak, a volcanic upheaval of red and purple cinders, bare
as rock, round as the lower hills, and wonderful in its color. Full in
the blaze of the rising sun it flaunted an unchangeable front. Carley
understood now what had been told her about this peak. Volcanic fires
had thrown up a colossal mound of cinders burned forever to the hues
of the setting sun. In every light and shade of day it held true to its
name. Farther north rose the bold bulk of the San Francisco Peaks,
that, half lost in the clouds, still dominated the desert scene. Then as
Carley gazed the rifts began to close. Another transformation began, the
reverse of what she watched. The golden radiance of sunrise vanished,
and under a gray, lowering, coalescing pall of cloud the round hills
returned to their bleak somberness, and the green desert took again its
cold sheen.

"Wasn't it fine, Carley?" asked Glenn. "But nothing to what you will
experience. I hope you stay till the weather gets warm. I want you to
see a summer dawn on the Painted Desert, and a noon with the great white
clouds rolling up from the horizon, and a sunset of massed purple and
gold. If they do not get you then I'll give up."

Carley murmured something of her appreciation of what she had just seen.
Part of his remark hung on her ear, thought-provoking and disturbing. He
hoped she would stay until summer! That was kind of him. But her visit
must be short and she now intended it to end with his return East with
her. If she did not persuade him to go he might not want to go for a
while, as he had written--"just yet." Carley grew troubled in mind. Such
mental disturbance, however, lasted no longer than her return with Glenn
to camp, where the mustang Spillbeans stood ready for her to mount. He
appeared to put one ear up, the other down, and to look at her with mild
surprise, as if to say: "What--hello--tenderfoot! Are y