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.
