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.