LITE COMES OUT OF THE BACKGROUND For hours Jean had sat staring out at the drear stretches of desert dripping under the dismal rain that streaked the car windows.

The clouds hung leaden and gray close over the earth; the smoke from the engine trailed a funereal plume across the grease-wood covered plain.
Away in the distance a low line of hills stretched vaguely, as though they were placed there to hold up the sky that was so heavy and dank.
Alongside the track every ditch ran full of clay-colored water that wrapped little, ragged wreaths of dirty foam around every obstruction, like the tawdry finery of the slums.
From the smoking-room where he had been for the past two hours with Art Osgood, Lite came unsteadily down the aisle, heralded as it were by the muffled scream of the whistle at a country crossing.

Jean turned toward him a face as depressed as the desert out there under the rain.
Lite, looking at her keenly, saw on her cheeks the traces of tears.

He let himself down wearily into the seat beside her, reached over calmly, and took her hand from off her lap and held it snugly in his own.
"This is likely a snowstorm, up home," he said in his quiet, matter-of-fact way.

"I guess we'll have to make our headquarters in town till I get things hauled out to the ranch.