A WAIF OF THE PLAINS

by Bret Harte




CHAPTER I


A long level of dull gray that further away became a faint blue, with
here and there darker patches that looked like water. At times an open
space, blackened and burnt in an irregular circle, with a shred of
newspaper, an old rag, or broken tin can lying in the ashes. Beyond
these always a low dark line that seemed to sink into the ground at
night, and rose again in the morning with the first light, but never
otherwise changed its height and distance. A sense of always moving with
some indefinite purpose, but of always returning at night to the same
place--with the same surroundings, the same people, the same bedclothes,
and the same awful black canopy dropped down from above. A chalky taste
of dust on the mouth and lips, a gritty sense of earth on the fingers,
and an all-pervading heat and smell of cattle.

This was "The Great Plains" as they seemed to two children from the
hooded depth of an emigrant wagon, above the swaying heads of toiling
oxen, in the summer of 1852.

It had appeared so to them for two weeks, always the same and always
without the least sense to them of wonder or monotony. When they viewed
it from the road, walking beside the wagon, there was only the team