There were enough Cuzaks to play with for a long while yet. Even after the
boys grew up, there would always be Cuzak himself! I meant to tramp along
a few miles of lighted streets with Cuzak.
As I wandered over those rough pastures, I had the good luck to stumble
upon a bit of the first road that went from Black Hawk out to the north
country; to my grandfather's farm, then on to the Shimerdas' and to the
Norwegian settlement. Everywhere else it had been ploughed under when the
highways were surveyed; this half-mile or so within the pasture fence was
all that was left of that old road which used to run like a wild thing
across the open prairie, clinging to the high places and circling and
doubling like a rabbit before the hounds.
On the level land the tracks had almost disappeared--were mere shadings in
the grass, and a stranger would not have noticed them. But wherever the
road had crossed a draw, it was easy to find. The rains had made channels
of the wheel-ruts and washed them so deeply that the sod had never healed
over them. They looked like gashes torn by a grizzly's claws, on the
slopes where the farm-wagons used to lurch up out of the hollows with a
pull that brought curling muscles on the smooth hips of the horses. I sat
down and watched the haystacks turn rosy in the slanting sunlight.
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