Even the unseemly bay-windowed houses on the hill had gone under. She
walked for another half hour and saw only the gray sage stretching all
around her. The hills looked farther away than when she started. Still,
that beaten road must lead somewhere. Two hours later she began to
wonder why this particular road should be so unending and so empty.
Never in her life before had she walked for two hours without seeming to
get anywhere, or without seeing any living human.
Both shoulders were sore from the weight of the bag on the stick, but
the sagebushes looked so exactly alike that she feared she could not
describe the particular spot where the cowboys would find her bag,
wherefore she carried it still. She was beginning to change hands very
often when the wind came.
Just where or how that wind sprang up she did not know. 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.
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