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 about to give up when right at hand through the flying dust she espied the cabin.  Riding behind it, she dismounted and tied the mustang to a post.  Then she ran around to the door and entered.

What a welcome refuge!  She was all right now, and when Glenn came along she would have added to her already considerable list another feat for which he would commend her.  With aid of her handkerchief, and the tears that flowed so copiously, Carley presently freed her eyes of the blinding dust.  But when she essayed to remove it from her face she discovered she would need a towel and soap and hot water.

The cabin appeared to be enveloped in a soft, swishing, hollow sound.  It seeped and rustled.  Then the sound lulled, only to rise again.  Carley went to the door, relieved and glad to see that the duststorm was blowing by.  The great sky-high pall of yellow had moved on to the north.  Puffs of dust were whipping along the road, but no longer in one continuous cloud.  In the west, low down the sun was sinking, a dull magenta in hue, quite weird and remarkable.

“I knew I’d get the jolt all right,” soliloquized Carley, wearily, as she walked to a rude couch of poles and sat down upon it.  She had begun to cool off.  And there, feeling dirty and tired, and slowly wearing to the old depression, she composed herself to wait.

Suddenly she heard the clip-clop of hoofs.  “There! that’s Glenn,” she cried, gladly, and rising, she ran to the door.

She saw a big bay horse bearing a burly rider.  He discovered her at the same instant, and pulled his horse.

“Ho!  Ho! if it ain’t Pretty Eyes!” he called out, in gay, coarse voice.

Carley recognized the voice, and then the epithet, before her sight established the man as Haze Ruff.  A singular stultifying shock passed over her.

“Wal, by all thet’s lucky!” he said, dismounting.  “I knowed we’d meet some day.  I can’t say I just laid fer you, but I kept my eyes open.”

Manifestly he knew she was alone, for he did not glance into the cabin.

“I’m waiting for—­Glenn,” she said, with lips she tried to make stiff.

“Shore I reckoned thet,” he replied, genially.  “But he won’t be along yet awhile.”

He spoke with a cheerful inflection of tone, as if the fact designated was one that would please her; and his swarthy, seamy face expanded into a good-humored, meaning smile.  Then without any particular rudeness he pushed her back from the door, into the cabin, and stepped across the threshold.

“How dare—­you!” cried Carley.  A hot anger that stirred in her seemed to be beaten down and smothered by a cold shaking internal commotion, threatening collapse.  This man loomed over her, huge, somehow monstrous in his brawny uncouth presence.  And his knowing smile, and the hard, glinting twinkle of his light eyes, devilishly intelligent and keen, in no wise lessened the sheer brutal force of him physically.  Sight of his bulk was enough to terrorize Carley.