It was twenty-six miles from
point to point, a way that crossed a towering range, hung above a far
veil of unbroken spruce, forded swift glittering streams, and followed
a road that passed rare isolated dwellings, dominating rocky and
precarious patches and hills of cultivation. One night Allen slept in
Beaulings; the next he was home, rising at four o'clock in order to
take his stage out of Crabapple at seven sharp.
It was a splendid job, and brought them thirty-five dollars a month;
not in mere trade at the store, but actual money. This, together with
Hunter Kinemon's position, tending the rich bottom farm of State
Senator Gait, gave them a position of ease and comfort in Greenstream.
They were a very highly esteemed family.
Gait's farm was in grazing; it extended in deep green pastures and
sparkling water between two high mountainous walls drawn across east
and west. In the morning the rising sun cast long delicate shadows on
one side; at evening the shadow troops lengthened across the emerald
valley from the other. The farmhouse occupied a fenced clearing on the
eastern rise, with a gray huddle of barn and sheds below, a garden
patch of innumerable bean poles, and an incessant stir of snowy
chickens. Beyond, the cattle moved in sleek chestnut-brown and orange
herds; and farther out flocks of sheep shifted like gray-white clouds
on a green-blue sky.
It was, Mrs. Kinemon occasionally complained, powerful lonely, with the
store two miles up the road, Crabapple over a heft of a rise, and no
personable neighbors; and she kept a loaded rifle in an angle of the
kitchen when the men were all out in a distant pasturage.
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