There, along the western sky-line, it skirted a great cornfield, much
larger than any field I had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghum
patch behind the barn, were the only broken land in sight. Everywhere, as
far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red
grass, most of it as tall as I.
North of the house, inside the ploughed fire-breaks, grew a thick-set
strip of box-elder trees, low and bushy, their leaves already turning
yellow. This hedge was nearly a quarter of a mile long, but I had to look
very hard to see it at all. The little trees were insignificant against
the grass. It seemed as if the grass were about to run over them, and over
the plum-patch behind the sod chicken-house.
As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water
is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of
wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And
there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be
running.
I had almost forgotten that I had a grandmother, when she came out, her
sunbonnet on her head, a grain-sack in her hand, and asked me if I did not
want to go to the garden with her to dig potatoes for dinner. The garden,
curiously enough, was a quarter of a mile from the house, and the way to
it led up a shallow draw past the cattle corral.
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