the Mexicans lived, then dropped into a deep ravine; a dry
sand creek, across which the railroad track ran on a trestle.
Beyond that gulch, on a little rise of ground that faced the
open sandy plain, was the Kohlers' house, where Professor
Wunsch lived. Fritz Kohler was the town tailor, one of the

first settlers. He had moved there, built a little house and
made a garden, when Moonstone was first marked down on
the map. He had three sons, but they now worked on the
railroad and were stationed in distant cities. One of them
had gone to work for the Santa Fe, and lived in New
Mexico.

Mrs. Kohler seldom crossed the ravine and went into the
town except at Christmas-time, when she had to buy pres-
ents and Christmas cards to send to her old friends in
Freeport, Illinois. As she did not go to church, she did not
possess such a thing as a hat. Year after year she wore the
same red hood in winter and a black sunbonnet in summer.
She made her own dresses; the skirts came barely to her
shoe-tops, and were gathered as full as they could possibly
be to the waistband. She preferred men's shoes, and usu-
ally wore the cast-offs of one of her sons. She had never
learned much English, and her plants and shrubs were her
companions. She lived for her men and her garden. Beside
that sand gulch, she had tried to reproduce a bit of her own
village in the Rhine Valley. She hid herself behind the
growth she had fostered, lived under the shade of what she