the house, and the way to it led up a shallow
draw past the cattle corral. Grandmother
called my attention to a stout hickory cane,
tipped with copper, which hung by a leather
thong from her belt. This, she said, was her
rattlesnake cane. I must never go to the gar-
den without a heavy stick or a corn-knife; she
had killed a good many rattlers on her way
back and forth. A little girl who lived on the
Black Hawk road was bitten on the ankle
and had been sick all summer.

I can remember exactly how the country
looked to me as I walked beside my grand-
mother along the faint wagon-tracks on that
early September morning. Perhaps the glide
of long railway travel was still with me, for
more than anything else I felt motion in the
landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning
wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy
grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath
it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, gal-
loping...

Alone, I should never have found the garden
-- except, perhaps, for the big yellow pumpkins
that lay about unprotected by their withering
vines -- and I felt very little interest in it when
I got there. I wanted to walk straight on

[[17]]

p016 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p017w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p018

v?