Dad looked worried. “That’s a hard question, Bill. I still want us to, but with Peggy sick—it’s difficult to say. But our name is still in the hat. I’ll have to make up my mind before the drawing.”
“Dad, I’ll prove it.”
“Eh?”
“You keep your job and take care of Peggy and Molly. I’ll make us a farm.”
13. Johnny Appleseed
The drawing of our division took place three weeks later; the next day George and I walked out to see what we had gotten. It was west of town out through Kneiper’s Ridge, new country to me; I had done my exploring east of town, over toward the power plant, where most of the proved land was located.
We passed a number of farms and some of them looked good, several acres in cultivation, green and lush, and many more acres already chewed level. It put me in mind of Illinois, but there was something missing. I finally figured out what it was—no trees.
Even without trees it was beautiful country. On the right, north of us, were the foothills of the Big Rock Candy Mountains. Snow-covered peaks thrust up beyond them, twenty or thirty miles away. On the left, curving in from the south and closer than it came to Leda, was Laguna Serenidad. We were a couple of hundred feet higher than the lake. It was a clear day and I tried to see the far shore, but I couldn’t be sure.
It was a mighty cheerful scene. Dad felt it, too. He strode along, whistling “Beulah Land” off key. I get my musical talent from Anne.
He broke off and said, “Bill, I envy you.”
I said, “We’ll all be together yet, George. I’m the advance guard.” I thought a bit and said, “George, do you know what the first thing I raise is going to be–after I get some food crops in?”
“What?”
“I’m going to import some seed and raise you some tobacco.”
“Oh, no, Son!”
“Why not?” I knew he was touched by it, because he called me ‘Son’. “I could do it, as well as not.”
“It’s a kind thought, but we’ll have to stick to the main chance. By the time we can afford that, I will have forgotten how to light a pipe. Honest, I don’t miss it.”
We slogged along a bit further, not saying anything but feeling close together and good. Presently the road played out. Dad stopped and took his sketch map out of his pouch. “This must be about it.”
The sketch showed where the road stopped, with just a dotted line to show where it would be, some day. Our farm was outlined on it, with the nearest comer about half a mile further along where the road ought to be and wasn’t. By the map, the edge of our property—or what would be ours if we proved it—ran along the north side of the road about a quarter of a mile and from there back toward the foothills. It was marked “Plot 117-H-2” and had the chief engineer’s stamp on it.
Dad was staring at where the road ended. There was a lava flow right across it, high as my head and rough as a hard winter in Maine. “Bill,” he said, “How good an Indian are you?”
“Fair, I guess.”
“We’ll have to try to pace it off and hold a straight line due west.”
But it was almost impossible to do it. We struggled and slipped on the lava and made detours. Lava looks soft and it isn’t. Dad slipped and skinned his shin and I discovered that I had lost track of how many paces we had come. But presently we were across the flow and in a boulder field. It was loose rubble, from pieces the size of a house down to stuff no bigger than your fist—stuff dropped by the ice when it melted and formed Laguna Serenidad.
George says that Ganymede must have had a boisterous youth, covered with steam and volcanoes.
The boulder field was somewhat easier going but it was even harder to hold a straight line. After a bit Dad stopped. “Bill,” he said, “do you know where we are?”