He was sending me West to gather Indian pupils for the school, and this
was his way of expressing it.

I needed nourishment, but the midsummer's travel across the continent to
search the hot prairies for overconfident parents who would entrust
their children to strangers was a lean pasturage. However, I dwelt on
the hope of seeing my mother. I tried to reason that a change was a
rest. Within a couple of days I started toward my mother's home.

The intense heat and the sticky car smoke that followed my homeward
trail did not noticeably restore my vitality. Hour after hour I gazed
upon the country which was receding rapidly from me. I noticed the
gradual expansion of the horizon as we emerged out of the forests into
the plains. The great high buildings, whose towers overlooked the dense
woodlands, and whose gigantic clusters formed large cities, diminished,
together with the groves, until only little log cabins lay snugly in the
bosom of the vast prairie. The cloud shadows which drifted about on the
waving yellow of long-dried grasses thrilled me like the meeting of old
friends.

At a small station, consisting of a single frame house with a rickety
board walk around it, I alighted from the iron horse, just thirty miles
from my mother and my brother Dawée. A strong hot wind seemed determined
to blow my hat off, and return me to olden days when I roamed bareheaded
over the hills. After the puffing engine of my train was gone, I stood
on the platform in deep solitude. In the distance I saw the gently
rolling land leap up into bare hills. At their bases a broad gray road
was winding itself round about them until it came by the station. Among
these hills I rode in a light conveyance, with a trusty driver, whose
unkempt flaxen hair hung shaggy about his ears and his leather neck of