She walked steadily, keeping one ear tuned to a cry from six-month-old Benjamin or the call from five-year-old Rose. She was a tall woman, well formed, with dark hair and startling blue eyes. She wore, as did all the other women, a cotton bonnet to keep the hot sun off and a plain, unembroidered brown dress. The trip had turned her skin a summer darkness, and her smooth, beautiful complexion was attractive. The plains on either side of the river were bare of trees. She missed the trees a great deal, and the short grass and the wide-open spaces made the landscape look like the regions of Africa, or, at least, pictures she had seen. About three miles on both sides of the valley, the land rose in sandstone cliffs, higher and more broken as the trail moved west. Marzina was delighted with the prairie wildlife. She had seen antelope, coyote, grizzly and black bears, buffalo, and the strange prairie dog villages that covered sometimes five hundred acres. To her right she saw a herd of buffalo and hoped they stayed away.
