Search e-Books

Bostil's
house, at the head of the village, looked in the opposite direction, down the
sage slope that widened like a colossal fan. There was one wide street
bordered by cottonwoods and cabins, and a number of gardens and orchards,
beginning to burst into green and pink and white. A brook ran out of a ravine
in the huge bluff, and from this led irrigation ditches. The red earth seemed
to blossom at the touch of water.
The place resembled an Indian encampment--quiet, sleepy, colorful, with the
tiny-streams of water running everywhere, and lazy columns of blue wood-smoke
rising. Bostil's Ford was the opposite of a busy village, yet its few
inhabitants, as a whole, were prosperous. The wants of pioneers were few.
Perhaps once a month the big, clumsy flatboat was rowed across the river with
horses or cattle or sheep. And the season was now close at hand when for
weeks, sometimes months, the river was unfordable. There were a score of
permanent families, a host of merry, sturdy children, a number of idle young
men, and only one girl--Lucy Bostil.


Pages:
26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50