That night at a spot which is now plow-land, I have no doubt, I listened
to the frogs and prairie-chickens while I caught a mess of chubs,
shiners, punkin-seeds and bullheads in a little pond not ten feet broad,
within a hundred yards of my wagon, and then rolled them in flour and
fried them in butter over my fire, wondering all the time about the
woman I had seen coming eastward on the road ahead of me.
I was still in sight of the road, and the twilight was settling down
gradually; the air was so clear that even in the absence of a moon, it
was long after sunset before it was dark; so I could sit in my dwarf
forest, and keep watch of the road to the west to see whether that woman
was really a lonely wanderer against the stream of travel, or only a
stray from some mover's wagon camped ahead of me along the road.
A pack of wolves just off the road and to the west at that moment began
their devilish concert over some wayside carcass--just at the moment
when she came in sight. She appeared in the road where it came into my
view twenty rods or so beyond the creek, and on the other side of it.
I heard her scream when the first howls of the wolves broke the
silence; and then she came running, stumbling, falling, partly toward me
and partly toward a point up-stream, where I thought she must mean to
cross the brook--a thing which was very easy for one on foot, since it
called only for a little jump from one bank to the other. She seemed to
be carrying something which when she fell would fly out of her hand, and
which in spite of her panic she would pick up before she ran on again.
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