g it, but she preferred
the going up to coming down. It took half an hour to climb.

Once up on the flat cedar-dotted desert she was met, full in the face,
by a hot dusty wind coming from the south. Carley searched her pockets
for her goggles, only to ascertain that she had forgotten them. Nothing,
except a freezing sleety wind, annoyed and punished Carley so much as
a hard puffy wind, full of sand and dust. Somewhere along the first few
miles of this road she was to meet Glenn. If she turned back for any
cause he would be worried, and, what concerned her more vitally, he
would think she had not the courage to face a little dust. So Carley
rode on.

The wind appeared to be gusty. It would blow hard awhile, then lull
for a few moments. On the whole, however, it increased in volume and
persistence until she was riding against a gale. She had now come to a
bare, flat, gravelly region, scant of cedars and brush, and far ahead
she could see a dull yellow pall rising high into the sky. It was a
duststorm and it was sweeping down on the wings of that gale. Carley
remembered that somewhere along this flat there was a log cabin which
had before provided shelter for her and Flo when they were caught in a
rainstorm. It seemed unlikely that she had passed by this cabin.

Resolutely she faced the gale and knew she had a task to find that
refuge. If there had been a big rock or bushy cedar to offer shelter she
would have welcomed it. But there was nothing. When the hard dusty
gusts hit her, she found it absolutely necessary to shut her eyes. At
intervals less windy she opened them, and rode on, peering through
the yellow gloom for the cabin. Thus she got her eyes full of dust--an
alkali dust that made them sting and smart. The fiercer puffs of wind
carried pebbles large enough to hurt severely. Then the dust clogged
her nose and sand got between her teeth. Added to these annoyances was a
heat like a blast from a furnace. Carley perspired freely and that caked
the dust on her face. She rode on, gradually growing more uncomfortable
and miserable. Yet even then she did not utterly lose a sort of
thrilling zest in being thrown upon her own responsibility. She could
hate an obstacle, yet feel something of pride in holding her own against
it.

Another mile of buffeting this increasing gale so exhausted Carley and
wrought upon her nerves that she became nearly panic-stricken. It grew
harder and harder not to turn back. At last she was a