Sentence:  For less than a dozen <WSD>miles</WSD> from the unplowed land of the dead man lived another settler who had ignored the warnings that his existence might be foreclosed on - a blatant and defiant rustler named Fred Powell . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  a unit of length equal to 1,760 yards or 5,280 feet; exactly 1609.344 meters