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Page 67
Tiny moved about restlessly, fanning herself with her straw hat. `If I was
smart like her, I'd be at my books day and night. But she was born
smart--and look how her father's trained her! He was something high up in
the old country.'
`So was my mother's father,' murmured Lena, `but that's all the good it
does us! My father's father was smart, too, but he was wild. He married a
Lapp. I guess that's what's the matter with me; they say Lapp blood will
out.'
`A real Lapp, Lena?' I exclaimed. `The kind that wear skins?'
`I don't know if she wore skins, but she was a Lapps all right, and his
folks felt dreadful about it. He was sent up North on some government job
he had, and fell in with her. He would marry her.'
`But I thought Lapland women were fat and ugly, and had squint eyes, like
Chinese?' I objected.
`I don't know, maybe. There must be something mighty taking about the Lapp
girls, though; mother says the Norwegians up North are always afraid their
boys will run after them.'
In the afternoon, when the heat was less oppressive, we had a lively game
of `Pussy Wants a Corner,' on the flat bluff-top, with the little trees for
bases. Lena was Pussy so often that she finally said she wouldn't play any
more. We threw ourselves down on the grass, out of breath.
`Jim,' Antonia said dreamily, `I want you to tell the girls about how the
Spanish first came here, like you and Charley Harling used to talk about.
I've tried to tell them, but I leave out so much.'
They sat under a little oak, Tony resting against the trunk and the other
girls leaning against her and each other, and listened to the little I was
able to tell them about Coronado and his search for the Seven Golden
Cities. At school we were taught that he had not got so far north as
Nebraska, but had given up his quest and turned back somewhere in Kansas.
But Charley Harling and I had a strong belief that he had been along this
very river. A farmer in the county north of ours, when he was breaking
sod, had turned up a metal stirrup of fine workmanship, and a sword with a
Spanish inscription on the blade. He lent these relics to Mr. Harling, who
brought them home with him. Charley and I scoured them, and they were on
exhibition in the Harling office all summer. Father Kelly, the priest, had
found the name of the Spanish maker on the sword and an abbreviation that
stood for the city of Cordova.
`And that I saw with my own eyes,' Antonia put in triumphantly. `So Jim
and Charley were right, and the teachers were wrong!'
The girls began to wonder among themselves. Why had the Spaniards come so
far? What must this country have been like, then? Why had Coronado never
gone back to Spain, to his riches and his castles and his king? I couldn't
tell them. I only knew the schoolbooks said he `died in the wilderness, of
a broken heart.'
`More than him has done that,' said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured
assent.
We sat looking off across the country, watching the sun go down. The curly
grass about us was on fire now. The bark of the oaks turned red as copper.
There was a shimmer of gold on the brown river. Out in the stream the
sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in the willow
thickets as if little flames were leaping among them. The breeze sank to
stillness. In the ravine a ringdove mourned plaintively, and somewhere off
in the bushes an owl hooted. The girls sat listless, leaning against each
other. The long fingers of the sun touched their foreheads.
Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going
down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk
rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure
suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining
our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland
farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking
just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it
stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the
disk; the handles, the tongue, the share--black against the molten red.
There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.
Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped
and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us
were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk
back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.
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