@Shefford halted his tired horse and gazed around with slowly realizing eyes.
A long slope of sage rolled down to Red Lake, a dry red basin, bare and shiny. It was a hollow sunk in the desert, a bleak and lonely door to the vast, wild, and broken hills beyond.
For days now, Shefford had ridden the wild, bare flats and climbed the rocky desert benches. He had plodded steadily onward, but he always felt the horizon was out of reach in the distance.
But a hundred miles of desert travel, with its mistakes and lessons and hints of what lay beyond had not prepared him for what he saw now. Before him lay a world that seemed built entirely of greatness. Shefford looked at it with awe and wonder, his mind detached from any conscious thought. Then that dark and unknown land seemed to cloud, as if to warn him not to search for what lay hidden beyond the towering ranges. But Shefford thrilled with both fear and elation. This was the country that had been described to him. Far across the red valley, far beyond the ragged line of black mesa and yellow range, lay the wild canyon with its haunting secret.
He was faced with a choice. He could either enter the unknown to seek and find that secret, or he could turn back and always be haunted by his lack of knowledge. A friend's strange story had prompted his journey, and a beautiful rainbow with its mystery and promise had decided him. For once in his life he had answered the call adventure that lay within him, and for once in his life he was happy. But here in the vastness of the unforgiving desert, he grew cold; he hesitated, even while he felt drawn to move forward. No, he had not choice. He must go to Red Lake.
As Shefford started his horse down the sandy trail, he checked the way ahead. It was the month of April, and the waning sun quickly lost its heat and brightness. Long shadows crept down the slope ahead of him and the sparse sage turned a deep gray. He watched the lizards shoot like brown streaks across the sand, leaving their slender tracks; he heard the rustle of pack-rats as they darted into their brushy homes; his horse startled at the cry of a low-sailing hawk.
Like ocean waves the slope rose and fell. Its hollows were choked with sand, its ridge-tops showing scant growth of sage and grass and weed. The last ridge was a sand-dune, beautifully ribbed and scalloped and lined by the wind. From its knife-sharp crest a thin sheet of sand blew, drifting, almost like smoke. Shefford wondered why the sand looked red at a distance, for here it seemed almost white. It rippled everywhere, clean and glistening, always leading down.
Suddenly he became aware of a house looming out of the bareness of the slope. It dominated that long white incline. It was grim, lonely, forbidding. How strange, then, that it blended in so well with the surroundings, yet it did. The structure was octagon-shaped, built of uncut stone, and resembled a fort. There was no door on the sides exposed to Shefford's gaze, but small openings about two-thirds of the way up probably served as windows. The roof appeared to be made of poles covered with red earth.
Like a huge cold rock on a wide plain this house stood there on the windy slope. Shefford knew it was an outpost of the trader @Presbrey. He had heard of the trader in both @Flagstaff and @Tuba. But no living thing appeared in the limit of Shefford's vision. He gazed at the unwelcoming house with a shudder, took in the dark eyelike windows, the sweep of barren slope merging into the vast red valley, the bold, bleak bluffs beyond.
Could anyone really live here? The nature of the valley forbade the warmth of a place to call home. Shefford thought irresistibly of how his enemies would have sent him to just such a hell. He thought bitterly of the narrow congregation that had proved him a failure in the ministry. He remembered painfully those that had rejected his ideas of religion and immortality and God, that had driven him, at the age of twenty-four, from the calling forced upon him by his people. As a boy he had yearned to make himself an artist; his family had made him a clergyman; fate had made him a failure. No, a failure only so far in his life, he reminded himself -- in the lonely days and silent nights of the desert he had experienced a strange birth of hope. True, it was adventure that had called him, but it was filled with a vague and spiritual hope. It contained a dream of promise, a nameless strength that gave support to his earlier ideas.
As he rode around a corner of the stone house his horse snorted and stopped. A lean, shaggy pony jumped at the sight of him, almost displacing a red long-haired blanket that covered an @Indian saddle. Quick thuds of hoofs in sand drew his attention to a corral made of peeled poles, and here he saw another pony.
Shefford heard subdued voices. He dismounted and walked to an open door. In the dark interior he dimly made out a high counter, a stairway, a pile of bags of flour, blankets, and silver-ornamented objects. However, the people he had heard were not in that part of the house. Around another corner of the octagon-shaped wall he found another open door, and through it saw goat-skins and a mound of dirty sheep-wool, black and brown and white. It was light in this part of the building. When he crossed the threshold he was astounded to see a man struggling with a girl -- an Indian girl. She was straining back from him, panting, and uttering low guttural sounds. The man's face was corded and dark with passion. Shefford felt strange; such primitive emotions were new to him.
Before he could speak, though, the girl broke loose and turned to flee. She was an Indian and this place was the uncivilized desert, but Shefford knew terror when he saw it. Like a dog, the man rushed after her. It was instinct that made Shefford strike, and his blow laid the man flat. He lay stunned a moment, then raised himself to a sitting posture, his hand to his face. As he looked at Shefford, his gaze seemed to combine both astonishment and rage.
Shefford stood his ground, saying only, "I hope you're not Presbrey."
