Her first glimpse of the unplanted piece had greatly discouraged her, for it seemed dreadfully wide and long. So, after deciding to plant the whole of it before doing any covering with the hoe, because the dropping of the corn was much easier and quicker to do than the hoeing, she went to work half-heartedly. Now, to make her task seem short, she had further determined to play "city."
It was such fun to pretend that, as she went bobbing and bowing up and down the rows, she forgot to stop her game and throw clods at the gray gophers. They lived in the timothy meadow, and were so bold that, if they were not watched, they would come out of their burrows and follow the rows, stealing every kernel out of the hills as they went along and putting the booty in their cheek-pouches.
After she had dropped corn as much as a whole hour, the little girl's back ached, and when she went to refill her seed-bag at the corn-barrel that stood on the border of the meadow near the row-marker, she sat down to rest a moment. The marker resembled a sleigh, only it had five runners instead of two, and there were rocks piled on top of it to make it heavy. So the minute the little girl's eyes fell upon it and she saw the runners, she thought of winter. Winter instantly reminded her of the muskrats in the slough below the bluff. And with that thought she could not resist starting down to see if they were busy after the thaw.
She gathered many flowers on the way, and stopped to pull off her shoes and stockings. At last she reached the slough and waded in to a muskrat house, where she used her hoe-handle as a poker to scare out some of the muskrats. Failing in this, she picked up her shoes and stockings and went around the slough to find out if any green leaves were unfolding yet in the wild-plum thicket. A little later she climbed the bluff to the corn-field, making a diligent search for Indian arrowheads all the way.
When she reached the seed-bag again, she threw the string over her head and started up a row determinedly. For a rod or more she did not pause either to be polite or to scare away gophers, but hurried along very fast, with her eyes to the ground. Suddenly she chanced to look just ahead of her, and stopped abruptly, standing erect. Her shadow pointed straight for the bluff: it was noon and high time to eat dinner.
She sat down on the marker and munched her sandwiches of salted lard and corn-meal bread with great appetite. She was just finishing them when the call of a goose far overhead attracted her attention. She got down and lay flat on her back, with her head on the seed-bag, to watch the flock, high above her, speeding northward to the lakes, their leader crying commands to the gray company that flew in V-shaped order behind him. When the geese were but a dark thread across the north sky, she felt drowsy and, turning on her side with her hat over her face and her back to the gentle spring breeze, went fast asleep.
She lay there for hours, entirely unaware of the saucy stares of several gophers who paused in their hunt for kernels and stood straight as picket-pins to watch and wonder at the little heap of pink calico under the battered sailor-hat, or whisked about her, their short legs flashing, their tails wide and bushy, their cheek-pouches so full of kernels that they smiled fatly when they looked at her, and showed four long front teeth. But the little girl was wrapped in a happy dream of a certain beautiful red wagon with a real seat that she had seen in a thick catalogue sent her mother by a store in a distant city. So she never moved till late in the afternoon, when the gentle breeze strengthened to a sharp wind that, with a petulant gust, whirled her sailor across the rows and far away.
The flying hat caused a stampede among some curious gophers who were just then investigating a near-by unplanted row in the hope of finding more corn. Clattering shrilly, they scudded back to the meadow, and the little girl rose. After a long chase for the hat, she went stiffly to work again, not stopping to put on her shoes and stockings, though the wind was cold.
After that she planted faithfully, leaving off only to throw clods at the gophers, or to ease her back now and then. And it was when she was resting a moment that she noticed something that made her begin working harder than ever. Her shadow stretched out so far to the eastward that she could not touch its head with the end of her long hoe. When she first came out that morning, it had fallen just as far the other way. She looked anxiously up at the sun, which was shining slantingly upon the freshly harrowed land through a gray haze that hung about it. Then she looked again at her shadow, distorted and grotesque, that moved when she moved and mimicked her when she bent to drop the corn. Its length showed her that it was getting late, and that she would soon hear the summoning blast of the cow-horn that hung behind the kitchen door.
She dropped the seed-bag, walked across the strip still unplanted, and counted the rows. She returned on the run. The dropping was little more than half finished, and no covering had been done at all. She knew she could not finish that day; yet if they asked her at the farm-house if she had completed the planting, she would not dare to tell them how little of it was done. She sat down to pull on her shoes and stockings, thinking hard all the while. But, just as she had one leg dressed, she sprang up with a happy thought, and stood on the shod foot like a heron while she dressed the other. Then, without stopping to lace her shoes, she tossed her sailor aside, swung the seed-bag to the front, and began dropping corn as fast as she could.