"Cather, Willa - O Pioneers!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cather Willa Sibert)

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O Pioneers!

by Willa Cather




PART I

The Wild Land




I


One January day, thirty years ago, the little
town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Ne-
braska tableland, was trying not to be blown
away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling
and eddying about the cluster of low drab
buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a
gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about
haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of
them looked as if they had been moved in
overnight, and others as if they were straying
off by themselves, headed straight for the open
plain. None of them had any appearance of
permanence, and the howling wind blew under
them as well as over them. The main street
was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard,
which ran from the squat red railway station
and the grain "elevator" at the north end of
the town to the lumber yard and the horse
pond at the south end. On either side of this
road straggled two uneven rows of wooden
buildings; the general merchandise stores, the
two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the
saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks
were gray with trampled snow, but at two
o'clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, hav-
ing come back from dinner, were keeping well
behind their frosty windows. The children were
all in school, and there was nobody abroad in
the streets but a few rough-looking country-