It was just a cluster of miners' shacks, most of them inhabited by Mexicans.
There were the Company's stores and the post-office, and away at the farther end of the one street were the houses of the few American families who had found their way to Lone-Rock, either on account of the mines or the healthful climate of the pine-covered hills.

She could distinguish the roof of their own cottage among them, and the chimney of the little, unpainted school-house.
She wondered what the outcome of all their troubles was to be.

She couldn't go on in this aimless way, day after day.

She must find something to do that would pay her a salary, and it must be something that she could do at home, where she would be needed sorely as soon as the nurse left.

Then she would go over and over the same little round.
She might teach.