Courtney took the latter branch. Presently he was picking his way
carefully along the base of the cliff, scrambling over and between
the rocks that formed a narrow ledge between the river and the
sheer face of Quill's Window. He was now some fifty or sixty feet
above the cold, grey water. Below him grew a line of stunted,
ragged underbrush, springing from the earth-filled fissures among
the boulders. Across the river stretched far away the farms and
fields of the far-famed grain-belt.
He sat down upon a rock and gazed out over these fertile lands,
now crowded with shocks of corn or rusty with the dead glories
of summer. There were great square fields of stubble, fenced-in
patches of pasture-land, small oases of woodland, houses and barns
and silos as far as the eye could reach,--and always the huge red
barns dwarfed the houses in which the farmers dwelt. Cattle and
sheep and horses, wagons and men, all made small and insignificant
in the sweep of this great and solemn panorama.
The home of Amos Vick was visible, standing half-a-mile back from
the river. He looked hard and long at the house in which he had
spent the first three weeks of his stay in the country. So young
Cale had gone off to join the Navy, eh? Good! And Rosabel,--what
of her? What was she doing over at the old Windom house that day?
Could it have been she who was watching him? Looking badly, too,
they said.
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