In a cavern Carley found the den of a bear, and in another place the bleached bones of a steer.
She lingered here in the shaded depths with a feeling as if she were indeed lost to the world.

These big brown and seamy-barked pines with their spreading gnarled arms and webs of green needles belonged to her, as also the tiny brook, the blue bells smiling out of the ferns, the single stalk of mescal on a rocky ledge.
Never had sun and earth, tree and rock, seemed a part of her being until then.

She would become a sun-worshiper and a lover of the earth.

That canyon had opened there to sky and light for millions of years; and doubtless it had harbored sheep herders, Indians, cliff dwellers, barbarians.

She was a woman with white skin and a cultivated mind, but the affinity for them existed in her.