"Reckon it's goin' to be a bad day," said the driver. "These April days
high up on the desert are windy an' cold. Mebbe it'll snow, too. Them
clouds hangin' around the peaks ain't very promisin'. Now, miss, haven't
you a heavier coat or somethin'?"
"No, I have not," replied Carley. "I'll have to stand it. Did you say
this was desert?"
"I shore did. Wal, there's a hoss blanket under the seat, an' you can
have that," he replied, and, climbing to the seat in front of Carley, he
took up the reins and started the horses off at a trot.
At the first turning Carley became specifically acquainted with the
driver's meaning of a bad day. A gust of wind, raw and penetrating,
laden with dust and stinging sand, swept full in her face. It came so
suddenly that she was scarcely quick enough to close her eyes. It took
considerable clumsy effort on her part with a handkerchief, aided by
relieving tears, to clear her sight again. Thus uncomfortably Carley
found herself launched on the last lap of her journey.
All before her and alongside lay the squalid environs of the town.
Looked back at, with the peaks rising behind, it was not unpicturesque.
But the hard road with its sheets of flying dust, the bleak railroad
yards, the round pens she took for cattle corrals, and the sordid debris
littering the approach to a huge sawmill,--these were offensive in
Carley's sight. From a tall dome-like stack rose a yellowish smoke that
spread overhead, adding to the lowering aspect of the sky. Beyond
the sawmill extended the open country sloping somewhat roughly, and
evidently once a forest, but now a hideous bare slash, with ghastly
burned stems of trees still standing, and myriads of stumps attesting to
denudation.
The bleak road wound away to the southwest, and from this direction came
the gusty wind. It did not blow regularly so that Carley could be on her
guard. It lulled now and then, permitting her to look about, and then
suddenly again whipping dust into her face. The smell of the dust was as
unpleasant as the sting. It made her nostrils smart. It was penetrating,
and a little more of it would have been suffocating. And as a leaden
gray bank of broken clouds rolled up the wind grew stronger and the air
colder. Chilled before, Carley now became thoroughly cold.
There appeared to be no end to the devastated forest land, and the
farther she rode the more barren and sordid grew the landscape. Carley
forgot about the impressive mountains behind her. And as the ride wore
into hours, such was her discomfort and disillusion that she forgot
about Glenn Kilbourne. She did not reach the point of regretting her
adventure, but she grew mightily unhappy. Now and then she espied
dilapidated log cabins and surroundings even more squalid than the
ruined forest. What wretched abodes! Could it be possible that people
had lived in them? She imagined men had but hardly women and children.
Somewhere she had forgotten an idea that women and children were
extremely scarce in the West.