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. Nothing but jack rabbits and little, twittery
birds moved through the sage, though she watched hungrily for horsemen.
Quite suddenly the gray landscape glowed with a palpitating radiance,
unreal, beautiful beyond expression. She stopped, turned to face the
west and stared awestruck at one of those flaming sunsets which makes
the desert land seem but a gateway into the ineffable glory beyond the
earth. That the high-piled, gorgeous cloud-bank presaged a thunderstorm
she never guessed; and that a thunderstorm may be a deadly, terrifying
peril she never had quite believed.
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