a long while yet. Even after the boys grew
up, there would always be Cuzak himself! I
meant to tramp along a few miles of lighted
streets with Cuzak.

As I wandered over those rough pastures,
I had the good luck to stumble upon a bit of
the first road that went from Black Hawk out
to the north country; to my grandfather's
farm, then on to the Shimerdas' and to the
Norwegian settlement. Everywhere else it
had been ploughed under when the highways
were surveyed; this half-mile or so within the
pasture fence was all that was left of that old
road which used to run like a wild thing across
the open prairie, clinging to the high places
and circling and doubling like a rabbit be-
fore the hounds. On the level land the tracks
had almost disappeared -- were mere shad-
ings in the grass, and a stranger would not
have noticed them. But wherever the road
had crossed a draw, it was easy to find. The
rains had made channels of the wheel-ruts
and washed them so deep that the sod had
never healed over them. They looked like
gashes torn by a grizzly's claws, on the slopes
where the farm wagons used to lurch up out
of the hollows with a pull that brought curling

[[418]]

p417 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p418w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p419

v?