Harte, Bret, 1836-1902 / 2008-06-25 00:00:00

EBOOK SUSY, A STORY OF THE PLAINS ***


Produced by Donald Lainson


SUSY, A STORY OF THE PLAINS

By Bret Harte

From: "ARGONAUT EDITION" OF THE WORKS OF BRET HARTE, VOL. 7
P. F. COLLIER & SON
NEW YORK


SUSY, A STORY OF THE PLAINS


CHAPTER I.

Where the San Leandro turnpike stretches its dusty, hot, and
interminable length along the valley, at a point where the heat and dust
have become intolerable, the monotonous expanse of wild oats on either
side illimitable, and the distant horizon apparently remoter than ever,
it suddenly slips between a stunted thicket or hedge of "scrub oaks,"
which until that moment had been undistinguishable above the long,
misty, quivering level of the grain. The thicket rising gradually in
height, but with a regular slope whose gradient had been determined
by centuries of western trade winds, presently becomes a fair wood of
live-oak, and a few hundred yards further at last assumes the aspect of
a primeval forest. A delicious coolness fills the air; the long, shadowy
aisles greet the aching eye with a soothing twilight; the murmur
of unseen brooks is heard, and, by a strange irony, the enormous,
widely-spaced stacks of wild oats are replaced by a carpet of
tiny-leaved mosses and chickweed at the roots of trees, and the minutest
clover in more open spaces. The baked and cracked adobe soil of the now
vanished plains is exchanged for a heavy red mineral dust and gravel,
rocks and boulders make their appearance, and at times the road is
crossed by the white veins of quartz.
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