adapted from Wild Western Scenes: A Narrative of Adventures
by J. B. Jones

"Do you see any light yet, Joe?"
"Not the least speck that ever was created, except the lightning, and it's gone before I can turn my head to look at it."
The interrogator, Charles Glenn, reclined musingly in a two-horse wagon, the canvas covering of which served in some measure to protect him from the wind and rain. Joe Beck was perched upon one of the horses, his shoulders screwed under the scanty folds of an oil-cloth cape as the team plunged along in a stumbling pace. Their pathway, or rather their direction, for there was no beaten road, lay along the northern bank of the "Mad Missouri," some two hundred miles above the St. Louis settlement. It was at a time when there were few men in those regions save trappers and traders.
Our travelers had been told in the morning, when setting out from a temporary village which consisted of a few families, that they could attain the desired point by making the river their guide, should they be at a loss to distinguish the faintly-marked pathway that led in a more direct course to the place of destination. The storm coming up suddenly from the north, and showers of hail accompanying the gusts, caused the driver to incline his face to the left. The drenched horses, similarly influenced, had unconsciously departed far from the right line of march. Now, rather than turn his front again to the pitiless blast, which could be the only means of regaining the road, Joe preferred diverging still farther, until he should find himself on the margin of the river, by which time he hoped the storm would abate.
At all events, he thought there would be more safety on the beach, which extended out a hundred paces from the water, among the small switches of cotton-wood that grew thereon, than in the midst of the tall trees of the forest, where a heavy branch was every now and then torn off by the wind, and thrown to the earth with a terrible crash. Occasionally a deafening explosion of thunder would burst overhead; and Joe, stretching himself on the neck of his horse, would, with his eyes closed and his teeth set, bear it out in silence.
9
Which sentence best describes the setting?
A.
a remote forest on a stormy night
B.
the broad beach along a riverbank
C.
the inside of a canvas-covered wagon
D.
a village made up of a few families