The Mistress of Bonaventure by Harold Bindloss

Sleep had brought me a brief forgetfulness, but the awakening was not pleasant when I painfully straightened my limbs on the jolting platform, while the twin whistles shrieked ahead. Every joint ached from the previous day's exertions, my borrowed garments were clammy with dew, and I shivered in the cold draught that swept past the slowing cars. The sun had not cleared the grayness which veiled the east, and, frowned down upon by huge elevators which rose higher and higher against a lowering sky, the straggling town loomed up depressingly out of the surrounding desolation. The pace grew slower, a thicket of willows choked with empty cans and garbage slid by, then the rails of the stockyards closed in on each hand, and we jolted over the switches into the station, which was built, as usual, not in, but facing, the prairie town.

There was no sign of life in its ill-paved streets, down which the dust wisps danced; bare squares of wooden buildings, devoid of all ornamentation, save for glaring advertisements which emphasized their ugliness, walled them in, and the whole place seemed stamped with the dreariness which characterizes most prairie towns when seen early on a gloomy morning by anybody not in the best of spirits. My fellow-passengers were apparently asleep, but I was the better pleased, having no desire for speech, and I dropped from the platform as soon as the locomotive stopped. Hurrying out of the station, I did not turn around until a row of empty farm wagons hid the track, which action was not without results.