He lay on his belly in the shadows of the pines, and watched down on the homestead. The rocky ledge crumbled away to a grassy slope, and then stretched mildly toward the cabin with its rail corral and feeble garden patch. There was a woman kneeling in the garden, her back to him as he squinted from his hiding place.
It was so familiar, even with the new barn where he remembered a shed. This was foolish, hiding up here when he wanted to jump up on the fine bay mare behind him, and gallop into that spring fed meadow with a whoop to announce his arrival, like when he was a kid rounding up the team for his father. But he was no kid now.
SETTLER'S LAW, page 2