I
had learned enough of the prairies to see that this would be a miry
place to cross, if a crossing had to be made; so I waited for Henderson
L. to come up and tell me how to steer my course.
"This is Hell Slew," said he as he came up. "But I guess we won't have
to cross. Le's see; le's see! Yes, here we are."
He looked at his memorandum of the description of my land, looked about
him, drove off a mile south and came back, finally put his horse down
the hill to the base of it, and out a hundred yards in the waving grass
that made early hay for the town for fifteen years, he found the corner
stake driven by the government surveyors, and beckoned for me to
come down.
"This is the southeast corner of your land," said he. "Looks like a
mighty good place for a man with as good a shotgun as that--ducks and
geese the year round!"
"Where are the other corners?" I asked.
"That's to be determined," he answered.
To determine it, he tied his handkerchief about the felly of his buggy
wheel, held a pocket compass in his left hand to drive by, picked out a
tall rosin-weed to mark the course for me, and counted the times the
handkerchief went round as the buggy traveled on. He knew how many turns
made a mile. The horse's hoofs sucked in the wet sod as we got farther
out into the marsh, and then the ground rose a little and we went up
over a headland that juts out into the marsh; then we went down into the
slew again, and finally stopped in a miry place where there was a
flowing spring with tall yellow lady's-slippers and catkined willows
growing around it.
Pages:
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238