Gray and red, the drab and fiery
colors of the desert lent the ridges character--forbidding and
barren.
From a car window Neale got his first glimpse of the wonderful
terminus city, and for once his old thrills returned. He recalled
the distance--seven hundred--no, six hundred and ninety-eight miles
from Omaha. So far westward was Benton.
It lay in the heart of barrenness, alkali, and desolation, on the
face of the windy desert, alive with dust-devils, sweeping along,
yellow and funnel-shaped--a huge blocked-out town, and set where no
town could ever live. Benton was prey for sun, wind, dust, drought,
and the wind was terribly and insupportably cold. No sage, no
cedars, no grass, not even a cactus-bush, nothing green or living to
relieve the eye, which swept across the gray and the white, through
the dust, to the distant bare and desolate hills of drab.
The hell that was reported to abide at Benton was in harmony with
its setting.
The immense train clattered and jolted to a stop. A roar of wind, a
cloud of powdery dust, a discordant and unceasing din of voices,
came through the open windows of the car. The heterogeneous mass of
humanity with which Neale had traveled jostled out, struggling with
packs and bags.
Neale, carrying his bag, stepped off into half a foot of dust.
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