The
road was rough and hilly, her new horse and vehicle in keeping with the
rudeness of the route--by far the most difficult of her whole journey.
The rare wagon tracks that indicated her road were often scarcely
discernible; at times they led her through openings in the half-cleared
woods, skirted suspicious morasses, painfully climbed the smooth,
dome-like hills, or wound along perilous slopes at a dangerous angle.
Twice she had to alight and cling to the sliding wheels on one of those
treacherous inclines, or drag them from impending ruts or immovable
mire. In the growing light she could distinguish the distant, low-lying
marshes eaten by encroaching sloughs and insidious channels, and beyond
them the faint gray waste of the Lower Bay. A darker peninsula in the
marsh she knew to be the extreme boundary of her future home: the Rancho
de los Cuervos. In another hour she began to descend to the plain, and
once more to approach the main road, which now ran nearly parallel
with her track. She scanned it cautiously for any early traveler; it
stretched north and south in apparent unending solitude.
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