Suddenly it was whooping across the sage and flinging up clouds of dust from the road.
To Lorraine, softened by years of southern California weather, it seemed to blow straight off an ice field, it was so cold.
After an interminable time which measured three hours on her watch, she came to an abrupt descent into a creek bed, down the middle of which the creek itself was flowing swiftly.

Here the road forked, a rough, little-used trail keeping on up the creek, the better traveled road crossing and climbing the farther bank.

Lorraine scarcely hesitated before she chose the main trail which crossed the creek.
From the creek the trail she followed kept climbing until Lorraine wondered if there would ever be a top.

The wind whipped her narrow skirts and impeded her, tugged at her hat, tingled her nose and watered her eyes.

But she kept on doggedly, disgustedly, the West, which she had seen through the glamour of swift-blooded Romance, sinking lower and lower in her estimation.