ee-bush stood tall along the sandy roadsides, and the
cone-flowers and rose mallow grew everywhere. Across the wire fence, in
the long grass, I saw a clump of flaming orange-colored milkweed, rare in
that part of the State. I left the road and went around through a stretch
of pasture that was always cropped short in summer, where the gaillardia
came up year after year and matted over the ground with the deep, velvety
red that is in Bokhara carpets. The country was empty and solitary except
for the larks that Sunday morning, and it seemed to lift itself up to me
and to come very close.

The river was running strong for midsummer; heavy rains to the west of us
had kept it full. I crossed the bridge and went upstream along the wooded
shore to a pleasant dressing-room I knew among the dogwood bushes, all
overgrown with wild grapevines. I began to undress for a swim. The girls
would not be along yet. For the first time it occurred to me that I would
be homesick for that river after I left it. The sandbars, with their clean
white beaches and their little groves of willows and cottonwood seedlings,
were a sort of No Man's Land, little newly-created worlds that belonged to
the Black Hawk boys. Charley Harling and I had hunted through these woods,
fished from the fallen logs, until I knew every inch of the river shores
and had a friendly feeling for every bar and shallow.

After my swim, while I was playing about indolently in the water, I heard
the sound of hoofs and wheels on the bridge. I struck downstream and
shouted, as the open spring wagon came into view on the middle span. They
stopped the horse, and the two girls in the bottom of the cart stood up,
steadying themselves by the shoulders of the two in front, so that they
could see me better. They were charming up there, huddled together in the
cart and peering down at me like curious deer when they come out of the
thicket to drink. I found bottom near the bridge and stood up, waving to
them.

"How pretty you look!" I called.

"So do you!" they shouted altogether, and broke into peals of laughter.
Anna Hansen shook the reins and they drove on, while I zigzagged back to
my inlet and clambered up behind an overhanging elm. I dried myself in the
sun, and dressed slowly, reluctant to leave that green enclosure where the
sunlight flickered so bright through the grapevine leaves and the
woodpecker hammered away in the crooked elm that trailed out over the
water. As I went alo