ll 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. The smell of the dust was as
unpleasant as the sting. It made her nostrils smart. It was penetrating,
and a little more of it would have been suffocating. And as a leaden
gray bank of broken clouds rolled up the wind grew stronger and the air
colder. Chilled before, Carley now became thoroughly cold.

There appeared to be no end to the devastated forest land, and the
farther she rode the more barren and sordid grew the landscape. Carley
forgot about the impressive mountains behind her. And as the ride wore
into hours, such was her discomfort and disillusion that she forgot
about Glenn Kilbourne. She did not reach the point of regretting her
adventure, but she grew mightily unhappy. Now and then she espied
dilapidated log cabins and surroundings even more squalid than the
ruined forest. What wretched abodes! Could it be possible that people
had lived in them? She imagined men had but hardly women and children.
Somewhere she had forgotten an idea that women and children were
extremely scarce in the West.

Straggling bits of forest--yellow pines, the driver called the
trees--began to encroach upon the burned-over and arid barren land. To
Carley these groves, by reason of contrast and proof of what once was,
only rendered the landscape more forlorn and dreary. Why had these miles
and miles of forest been cut? By money grubbers, she supposed, the same
as were devastating the Adirondacks. Presently, when the driver had to
halt to repair or adjust something wrong with the harness, Carley was
grateful for a respite from cold inaction. She got out and walked. Sleet
began to fall, and when she resumed her seat in the vehicle she asked
the driver for the blanket to cover her. The smell of this horse blanket
was less endurable than the cold. Carley huddled down into a state of
apathetic misery. Already she had enough of the West.

But the sleet