There burned the light, diabolically like a signal fire on the peak, where no fire should be.

I began to seek explanations, but the best of them were vague.

Electricity playing a prank of some obscure kind,--that was as close as I could get to it, and even that did not satisfy as it should have done, perhaps because the high, barren mesas and the mountains of bare rocks are in themselves weird and sinister, and commonplace explanations of their phenomena seem out of place.
The land is empty of men, emptier still of habitations.

There are not many animals, even.

A few coyotes, all of them under suspicion of having rabies; venomous things such as tarantulas and centipedes, scorpions, rattlers, hydrophobia skunks.