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."
