“It must be glorious to make one’s bread up there.”
“I never made bread up thar but once. I baked hoecakes on a rock one
day when Cyn sent me meal and water for my dinner. I hadn’t left her
any stove-wood, an’ she had proper spirit, Cyn had,” he added, as if
his wife’s memory must be kept clear of blemish. “But thar wa’n’t no
glory in it, as I see.”
“I must go there the first thing. I don’t suppose there are any snakes.”
“No, I don’t see more’n two or three rattlers a year now. Not much
killin’.”
His voice, like a retired general’s, was bored but tolerant.
“Rattlesnakes? In those pastures of heaven? Did you ever kill one
there?”
“One? If they’d been fence-rails I could ’a’ put a mule-proof fence
around that field with all I’ve killed in it.”
I looked again at the line of pallid gold just showing between two
pointed barriers. It ebbed away, more like a bridge to faith, or some
such unsubstantiality, than the trampled ground where man had battled
for his overlordship. I would go there, come to-morrow. And I did. But
what happens in aerial gardens must have its own chapter and aureole.