VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS

A ROMANCE OF THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL




I

THE BEGINNINGS OF A PLAINSMAN


There came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke, and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.
--LANGDON SMITH.


It might have been but yesterday that I saw it all: the glinting
sunlight on the yellow Missouri boiling endlessly along at the foot of
the bluff; the flood-washed sands across the river; the tangle of tall,
coarse weeds fringing them, edged by the scrubby underbrush. And beyond
that the big trees of the Missouri woodland, so level against the
eastern horizon that I used to wonder if I might not walk upon their
solid-looking tops if I could only reach them. I wondered, too, why the
trees on our side of the river should vary so in height when those in
the eastern distance were so evenly grown. One day I had asked Jondo the
reason for this, and had learned that it was because of the level ground