Quills Window | Page 3

in three foot of water up above the bend, that's what he did. Come on. Let's be movin'. It'll be hotter'n blazes by eleven o'clock, and you oughtn't to be walkin' in the sun."
The young man settled himself a little more comfortably against the tree.
"I think I'll stay here in the shade for a while longer. Don't be uneasy. I shan't go popping into the water the minute your back's turned. What was it you said early this morning about sniffing rain in the air?"
"Thunderstorms today, sure as my name's Brown. Been threatening rain for nearly a week. Got to come some time, and I figure today's--"
"Threats are all we get," growled the young man peevishly. "Lord, I never dreamed I could get so sick of white skies and what you call fresh air. You farmers go to bed every night praying for rain, and you get up in the morning still praying, and what's the result? Nothing except a whiter sky than the day before, and a greater shortage of fresh air. Don't talk to me about country air and country sunshine and country quiet. My God, it never was so hot and stifling as this in New York, and as for peace and quiet,--why, those rotten birds in the trees around the house make more noise than the elevated trains at the rush hour, and the rotten roosters begin crowing just about the time I'm going to sleep, and the dogs bark, and the cows,--the cows do whatever cows do to make a noise,--and then the crows begin to yawp. And all night long the katydids keep up their beastly racket, and the frogs in the pond back of the barns,--my God, man, the city is as silent as the grave compared to what you get in the country."
"I manage to sleep through it all," said the old man drily. "The frogs and katydids don't keep me awake."
"Yes, and that reminds me of another noise that makes the night hideous. It's the way you people sleep. At nine o'clock sharp, every night, the whole house begins to snore, and--Say, I've seen service in France, I've slept in barracks with scores of tired soldiers, I've walked through camps where thousands of able-bodied men were snoring their heads off,--but never have I heard anything so terrifying as the racket that lasts from nine to five in the land of my forefathers. Gad, it sometimes seems to me you're all trying to make my forefathers turn over in their graves up there on the hill."
"You're kind of peevish today, ain't you?" inquired the other, grinning. "You'll get used to the way we snore before long, and you'll kind of enjoy it. I'd be scared to death if I got awake in the night and didn't hear everybody in the house snoring. It's kind of restful to know that everybody's asleep,--and not dead. If they wasn't snoring, I'd certainly think they was dead."
The young man smiled. "I'll say this much for you farmers,--you're a good-natured bunch. I ought to be ashamed of myself for grousing. I suppose it's because I've been sick. You're all so kind and thoughtful,--and so darned GENUINE,--even when you're asleep,--that I feel like a dog for finding fault. By the way, you said something awhile ago about that big black cliff over yonder having a history. I've been looking at that cliff or hill or rock, or whatever it is, and it doesn't look real. It doesn't look as though God had made it. It's more like the work of man. So far as I can see, there isn't another hill on either bank of the river, and yet that thing over there must be three or four hundred feet high, sticking up like a gigantic wart on the face of the earth. What is it? Solid rock?"
"Sort like slate rock, I guess. There's a stretch of about a mile on both sides of the river along here that's solid rock. This bank we're standin' on is rock, covered with six or eight foot of earth. You're right about that big rock over there being a queer thing. There's been college professors and all sorts of scientific men here, off and on, to examine it and to try to account for its being there. But, thunderation, if it's been there for a million years as they say, what's the sense of explaining it?"
"There's something positively forbidding about it. Gives you the willies. How did it come by the name you called it a while ago?"
"Quill's Window? Goes back to the days of the Indians. Long before the time of Tecumseh or The Prophet. They used to range up and down this river more than a hundred years ago. The old trail is over there on the other bank