deep, deep breath of the
fresh prairie air.

CHAPTER XII

HELL SLEW, ALIAS VANDEMARK'S FOLLY

That last night before I reached my "home town" of Monterey Centre, I
had camped within two or three miles of the settlement. I forgot all
that day to inquire where I was: so absent-minded was I with all my
botheration because of losing Virginia. I was thinking all the time of
seeing her again, wondering if I should ever see her alone or to speak
to her, ashamed of my behavior toward her--in my thoughts at
least--vexed because I had felt toward her, except for the last two or
three days, things that made it impossible to get really acquainted and
friendly with her. I was absorbed in the attempt to figure out the
meaning of her friendly acts when we parted, especially her coming back,
as I was sure she had, against the will of Grandma Thorndyke; and that
kiss she had given me was a much greater problem than making time on my
journey: I lived it over and over again a thousand times and asked
myself what I ought to have done when she kissed me, and never feeling
satisfied with myself for not doing more of something or other, I knew
not what. It was well for me that my teams were way-wised so that they
drove themselves. I could have made Monterey Centre easily that night;
for it was only about eight o'clock by the sun next morning when I
pulled up at the blacksmith shop, and was told by Jim Boyd, the smith,
that I was in Monterey Centre.

And now I did not know what to do. I did not know where my land was, nor
how to find out. Monterey Prairie was as blank as the sea, except for a
few settlers' houses scattered about within a mile or two of the
village. I sat scratching my head and gazing about me like a lunkhead
while Boyd finished shoeing a horse, and had begun sharpening the lay of
a breaking-plow--when up rode Pitt Bushyager on one of the horses he and
his gang had had in the Grove of Destiny back beyond Waterloo.

I must have started when I saw him; for he glanced at me sharply and
suspiciously, and his dog-like brown eyes darted about for a moment, as
if the dog in him had scented game: then he looked at my jaded cows, at
my muddy wagon, its once-white cover now weather-beaten and ragged, and
at myself, a buttermilk-eyed, tow-headed Dutch boy with a face covered
with down like a month-old gosling; and his eyes grew warm and friendly,
as they usually looked, and his curly black mustache parted from his
little black g