Its efforts certainly were
as frantic as those of the rabbit had looked. I could
have picked it up with my hands. Its beak was open with
the exertion--the way you see chickens walking about with
open beaks on a swooningly hot summer day I reached for
the whip to lower it in front of the bird and stop it
from this unequal race. It cowered down, and we left it
behind...
We had by that time reached the narrow strip of wild land
which separated the English settlements to the south from
those of the Russian Germans to the north. We came to
the church, and like everything else it rushed back to
the rear; the school on the correction line appeared.
Strangely, school was still on in that yellow building
at the corner. I noticed a cutter outside, with a man in
it, who apparently was waiting for his children. This is
the fourth of the pictures that stand out in my memory.
The man looked so forlorn. His horse, a big, hulking farm
beast, wore a blanket under the harness. I looked at my
watch. It was twenty-five minutes past four. Here, in
the bush country where the pioneers carve the farms out
of the wilderness, the time kept is often oddly at variance
with the time of the towns.
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