Almost at once we came to the cemetery, a crude enclosure, fenced with rough pickets, evidently split with the ax.  Mr. Brooks led me to the spot.

Weeds abounded everywhere.  The grasshoppers were flying before our steps.  A long snake glided away from my feet as I stepped near the yellow clay which tented the body of my father ... and Zoe’s father ... the husband of my lovely mother, so long dead.  Here was the soldier of Waterloo, the adventurer into this Far West, the man who had died with some secret sorrow, or some sorrow for which he found no words or no confidant.  Above me was the blinding sun, before me the prairie, at my feet this hillock of clay, where weeds had already begun to sprout.  Mr. Brooks watched me; and seeing me move he started on; and I followed him through the broken gate to the buggy.

It was two miles to the log house which my father had built on his land.  We drove up and went in.  A tenant named Engle was living here with his wife and numerous children.  Some of them crowded around us; others ran and hid, afterwards peered around the corner, timid and wild.  Engle was not there; but his wife came from her washing to tell us where he could be found, what he was doing.  When Mr. Brooks revealed to her who I was she stared at me with simple wondering eyes, drying her hands the while upon her apron.  She was terribly upset by the reports of the cholera.  Besides ... she went on:  “There’s a right smart lot of lung fever this summer.  I ’low the men let their lungs get full of dust in the barn or somethin’.  And I never did see the like of bloody flux among the children, and the scarlet fever too.  We never had nothin’ like that in Kaintucky.  But I says to my man this mornin’, there ain’t nothin’ to do but to stick it out.  When yer time comes I guess there ain’t no use ter run.  And people do die in Kaintucky, too.”

We proceeded to drive around the entire acreage.  It took us some hours.  Always the prairie, boundless and colorful.  Miles of rich tall grass, sprinkled everywhere with purple, brick red, yellow, white, and blue blossoms!  Billows of air drove the surface of it into waves.  It was a sea of living green.

We passed forests of huge oak and elm trees, which grew along the little streams.  There were many fields of corn, too, tall and luxuriant; and wheat ready for harvest.  We came upon Engle at last.  He wanted me to come close to see the corn.  I got out and stood beside it, stroked its long graceful banners, turned up the dark soil with my boot and saw how rich and friable it was.  And all this was mine, mine and Zoe’s.

My imagination took fire.  My ambition rose.  I resolved to study the whole agricultural matter, and to reduce these acres in their entirety to cultivation.  I would raise cattle and sheep.  I would build fences.  Above all I would make a house for myself.  Here was my place in life and my work.  No delay.  I should begin to-morrow with something directed to the general end.