One of Ours

  the wagon beside him. It was about five o’clock, the yellowest

  hour of the autumn day. He stood lost in a forest of light, dry,

  rustling corn leaves, quite hidden away from the world. Taking

  off his husking-gloves, he wiped the sweat from his face, climbed

  up to the wagon box, and lay down on the ivory-coloured corn. The

  horses cautiously advanced a step or two, and munched with great

  content at ears they tore from the stalks with their teeth.

  Claude lay still, his arms under his head, looking up at the

  hard, polished blue sky, watching the flocks of crows go over

  from the fields where they fed on shattered grain, to their nests

  in the trees along Lovely Creek. He was thinking about what Dan

  had said while they were hitching up. There was a great deal of

  truth in it, certainly. Yet, as for him, he often felt that he

  would rather go out into the world and earn his bread among

  strangers than sweat under this half-responsibility for acres and

  crops that were not his own. He knew that his father was

  sometimes called a “land hog” by the country people, and he

  himself had begun to feel that it was not right they should have

  so much land,—to farm, or to rent, or to leave idle, as they

  chose. It was strange that in all the centuries the world had

  been going, the question of property had not been better

  adjusted. The people who had it were slaves to it, and the people

  who didn’t have it were slaves to them.

  He sprang down into the gold light to finish his load. Warm

  silence nestled over the cornfield. Sometimes a light breeze rose

  for a moment and rattled the stiff, dry leaves, and he himself

  made a great rustling and crackling as he tore the husks from the

  ears.

  Greedy crows were still cawing about before they flapped

  homeward. When he drove out to the highway, the sun was going

  down, and from his seat on the load he could see far and near.

  Yonder was Dan’s wagon, coming in from the north quarter; over

  there was the roof of Leonard Dawson’s new house, and his

  windmill, standing up black in the declining day. Before him were

  the bluffs of the pasture, and the little trees, almost bare,

  huddled in violet shadow along the creek, and the Wheeler

  farm-house on the hill, its windows all aflame with the last red

  fire of the sun.

  XV

  Claude dreaded the inactivity of the winter, to which the farmer

  usually looks forward with pleasure. He made the Thanksgiving

  football game a pretext for going up to Lincoln,—went intending

  to stay three days and stayed ten. The first night, when he

  knocked at the glass door of the Erlichs’ sitting-room and took

  them by surprise, he thought he could never go back to the farm.

  Approaching the house on that clear, frosty autumn ߂XâňĽś,x‘•Iůyĺă¸šęÁ/ާfżÉĄ˜SĹ}žJ‹__#ĆőŢéZ]ĽŢ•ŹÚľëJc[“Ón?šNpš´ÖçĽO

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  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 6c635478-f238-4ab4-b967-811946bd7f56

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 21.4.2012

  Created using: calibre 0.8.48 software

  Document authors :

  Willa Sibert Cather

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