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She pinned patterns and sewed. She was irritated when Kennicott was jocular about "these frightful big doings that are going on." She regarded the affair as an attack on Gopher Prairie's timidity in pleasure. "I'll make 'em lively, if nothing else. I'll make 'em stop regarding parties as committee-meetings." Kennicott usually considered himself the master of the house.
They could hear the thud of pony hoofs on the dry prairie's hollow drum as they traveled, winding in and out the tangle of willow bushes that followed the river. Then the hoof beats died away, and A'tim said: "Now he has circled to the West that means something; let us go up and see." They stole up the old river bank to the brow of the uplands.
There it poised for one brief instant, then, with a roar swooped down into the tall bunch grass, rushing roaring and crackling toward him. For an instant he stood unbelieving, then the truth dawned upon him. "The prairie's on fire!" cried Tad. The shouts of the Pony Rider Boys and of the guide were swallowed up in the roar of the flames." "They'll be burned alive!" whispered the lad.
Its steps are counted by centuries, and yet while countless millions stand almost at the same point where they stood, and some even have declined since America first emerged out of an unexplored darkness which had covered her for thousands of years, like the gem in the sea; while it is but yesterday a few pilgrims landed on the wild coast of Plymouth, flying from causeless oppression, seeking but for a place of refuge and of rest, and for a free spot in the wilderness to adore the Almighty in their own way; still, in such a brief time, shorter than the recorded genealogy of the noble horse of the wandering Arab; yes, almost within the turn of the hand, out of the unknown wilderness a mighty empire arose, broad as an ocean, solid as a mountain-rock, and upon the scarcely rotted roots of the primitive forest, proud cities stand, teeming with boundless life, growing like the prairie's grass in spring, advancing like the steam-engine, baffling time and distance like the telegraph, and spreading the pulsation of their life-tide to the remotest parts of the world; and in those cities and on that broad land a nation, free as the mountain air, independent as the soaring eagle, active as nature, and powerful as the giant strength of millions of freemen.
At another time she dropped behind, and his ear, trained in her direction, heard her voice in alternation with Daddy John's. When she joined them after this withdrawal she was bright eyed and excited. "Father," she called as she came up at a sharp trot, "Daddy John says the prairie's not far beyond. He says we'll see it soon the prairie that I've been thinking of all winter!"
It was growing cooler, a vivid band of green still flickered along the prairie's rim, and the deep silence was intensified by the soft sound the cattle made cropping the dew-damped herbage. "I wonder if they go to sleep," mused Edgar. "I'm beginning to think this kind of thing must be rather fine when one gets used to it. It's a glorious night."
After the excitement of life on the plains, going to school was dull work; but Will realized that there was a world beyond the prairie's horizon, and he entered school, determined to do honest work. Our first teacher was of the good, old-fashioned sort. He taught because he had to live. He had no love for his work, and knew nothing of children.
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