| Description |
up early, washed her hands and face, played with her breakfast and was waiting by the back door. As her father approached the porch, she asked, "Is it time to go yet?" Hex dad, just finishing morning chores, scraped the mud and manure from his worn boots on an old piece of iron cemented to the small porch. "Yawp! Grab your nail," he answered, picking up two large galvanized buckets. As they headed down the packed-gravel road outside their house, her father took shorter than usual ateps. Vera skipped beside him, swinging a small pail that held a simple lunch. Soon, they reached the foot of Red Point* Her father pointed over two ridges to a third one. "That's where we are going," he said, Vera's tiny ftame flinched at the distance, but being big enough to go with her father outweighed any misgivings* She grinned and commented mostly for her own ears to hear, "We can do it, huh, Dad?" They climbed to the top of the first ridge, binding a large flat rockt they sat down to rest. Her father pointed south to Crystal Springs. "There's where I take the cows for summer grazing." A small stream formed where water emerged from the earth, and trickled into a swampy, grassy area. Clusters of scrub oak surrounded it* There, they had often chased water skeeters, dragonfly larvae, polliwogs, and frogs. "I don't like to feel frongs," Vera said, "They don't like to feel you either," he aaid. "They prefer shady spots in warm water." "Do-they like to feel the insides of a can?" she asked, thinking of the times when her older brothers had captured frogs and brought them home. 46 |
