Her one remaining desire upon arrival was for a bed, and actuated by this necessity, when she learned that the army post was fully two miles from the town, she accepted proffered guidance to the famous Gilsey House and promptly fell asleep.

The light of a new day gave her a first real glimpse of the surrounding dreariness as she stood looking out through the grimy glass of her single window, depressed and heartsick.

The low, rolling hills, bare and desolate, stretched to the horizon, the grass already burned brown by the sun.
The town itself consisted of but one short, crooked street, flanked by rough, ramshackle frame structures, two-thirds of these apparently saloons, with dirty, flapping tents sandwiched between, and huge piles of tin cans and other rubbish stored away behind.

The street was rutted and dusty, and the ceaseless wind swirled the dirt about in continuous, suffocating clouds.

The hotel itself, a little, squatty, two-storied affair, groaned to the blast, threatening to collapse.
Nothing moved except a wagon down the long ribbon of road, and a dog digging for a bone behind a near-by tent.