2018.04.19

Today is Thursday.

Pa decided they had better go downhill. He said that the creek was down in the bottoms and that must be the way to the ford. He turn Pet and Patty toward the south. The road went down and up and down and up again, over gently curving land. The trees were nearer now, but they were no taller. Then Laura gasped and clutched the wagon bow, for almost under Pet’s and Patty’s noses there was no more blowing grass, there was no land at all. She looked beyond the edge of the land and across the tops of trees. The road turned there. For a little way it went along the cliff’s top, then it went sharply downward. Pa put on the brakes; Pet and Patty braced themselves backward and almost sat down. The wagon wheels slid onward, little by little lowering the wagon farther down the steep slope into the ground. Jagged cliffs of bare red earth rose up on both sides of the wagon. Grass waved along their seamed, straight-up-and-down sides. They were hot, and heat came from them against Laura’s face. The wind was still blowing overhead, but it did not blow down into the deep crack in the ground. The stillness seemed strange and empty.