red spicy plants
rose in the shimmering mid-day air. At such times the mere joy of living
filled our young hearts with wordless satisfaction.

Nor were the upland ridges less interesting, for huge antlers lying
bleached and bare in countless numbers on the slopes told of the herds
of elk and bison that had once fed in these splendid savannahs, living
and dying in the days when the tall Sioux were the only hunters.

The gray hermit, the badger, still clung to his deep den on the rocky
unplowed ridges, and on sunny April days the mother fox lay out with her
young, on southward-sloping swells. Often we met the prairie wolf or
startled him from his sleep in hazel copse, finding in him the spirit
of the wilderness. To us it seemed that just over the next long swell
toward the sunset the shaggy brown bulls still fed in myriads, and in
our hearts was a longing to ride away into the "sunset regions" of our
song.

All the boys I knew talked of Colorado, never of New England. We dreamed
of the plains, of the Black Hills, discussing cattle raising and mining
and hunting. "We'll have our rifles ready, boys, ha, ha, ha-ha!" was
still our favorite chorus, "Newbrasky" and Wyoming our far-off
wonderlands, Buffalo Bill our hero.

David, my hunter uncle who lived near us, still retained his long
old-fashioned, muzzle-loading rifle, and one day offered it to me, but
as I could not hold it at arm's length, I sorrowfully returned it. We
owned a shotgun, however, and this I used with all the confidence of a
man. I was able to kill a few ducks with it and I also hunted gophers
during May when the sprouting corn was in most danger. Later I became
quite expert in catching chickens on the wing.

On a long ridge to the north and west, the soil, too wet and cold to
cultivate easily, remained unplowed for several years and scattered over
these clay lands stood small groves of popple trees which we called
"tow-heads." They were usually only two or three hundred feet in
diameter, but they stood out like islands in the waving seas of grasses.
Against these dark-green masses, breakers of blue-joint radiantly
rolled.--To the east some four miles ran the Little Cedar River, and
plum trees and crab-apples and haws bloomed along its banks. In June
immense crops of strawberries offered from many meadows. Their delicious
odor rose to us as we rode our way, tempting us to dismount and gather
and eat.

Over these uplands, through these thickets of hazel