hoes and stockings, though the
wind was cold.

After that she planted faithfully, leaving off only to throw clods at
the gophers, or to ease her back now and then. And it was when she was
resting a moment that she noticed something that made her begin working
harder than ever. Her shadow stretched out so far to the eastward that
she could not touch its head with the end of her long hoe. When she
first came out that morning, it had fallen just as far the other way.
She looked anxiously up at the sun, which was shining slantingly upon
the freshly harrowed land through a gray haze that hung about it. Then
she looked again at her shadow, distorted and grotesque, that moved when
she moved and mimicked her when she bent to drop the corn. Its length
showed her that it was getting late, and that she would soon hear the
summoning blast of the cow-horn that hung behind the kitchen door.

She dropped the seed-bag, walked across the strip still unplanted, and
counted the rows. She returned on the run. The dropping was little more
than half finished, and no covering had been done at all. She knew she
could not finish that day; yet if they asked her at the farm-house if
she had completed the planting, she would not dare to tell them how
little of it was done. She sat down to pull on her shoes and stockings,
thinking hard all the while. But, just as she had one leg dressed, she
sprang up with a happy thought, and stood on the shod foot like a heron
while she dressed the other. Then, without stopping to lace her shoes,
she tossed her sailor aside, swung the seed-bag to the front, and began
dropping corn as fast as she could.

The kernels were counted no longer, nor were they placed in the hills
precisely. Without a glance to right or left, she raced along the rows,
her cheeks flaming and her hair flying out in the wind. She had decided
that she would _plant_ all of the strip--but not _cover_ the corn until
next day.

The sun sank slowly toward the horizon as she worked. But the unplanted
rows were rapidly growing fewer and fewer now, and the descending disk
gave her little worry. Up and down she hurried, scattering rather than
dropping the seed, until she was on her final trip. When she reached the
end of the last row, she joyfully put all the corn she had left into one
hill, turned the seed-bag inside out, slipped her lunch-bucket into it,
and, after hiding her hoe in the stone pile on the carnelian bluff,
turned her face toward t