Ivar unslung a hammock from a hook on the wall; in it was rolled a buffalo robe. Alexandra turned away decidedly.
She was going over to the other ocean, maybe, and did not know how far it was. Oscar and Lou, on the front seat, wore their cloth hats and coats, never worn except on Sundays, and Emil, on the second seat with Alexandra, sat proudly in his new trousers, made from a pair of his father's, and a pink-striped shirt, with a wide ruffled collar.
Perhaps that was why she bethought herself of Emil. Have you got it? Cather was fundamentally a Platonist; she believed that vision was more real than reality.
And that was all you saw.
It was a still, deep-breathing summer night, full of the smell of the hay fields. The little town behind them had vanished as if it had never been, had fallen behind the swell of the prairie, and the stern frozen country received them into its bosom.
It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces. The women were checking over their groceries and pinning their big red shawls about their heads.