2a BLACK AND WHITE COMRADE 
| i a saucy idliow are you, | 
A bully and scold | 
And robber bold, © 
: lls vices not a few. 
| | —Nina Moore 
. The brilliant poe ne had invited a young teacher out 
early to the brink of the Columbia River where it rushes 
around the big bend in an old town in Oregon. She had q 
pulled a rowboat along near the bank to the lower ground ~ 
up beyond the city limits, as the swift current made it — 
necessary to go almost into some rapids in order to get 
across to the landing place on the opposite side of the river. | 
The white sand-dunes showed purple shadows under the ~ 
silvery. clumps of greasewood, and the yellow-gray hills | 
_ sparkled with April sunbeams. The new leaves among the 
brown stems of the thickly strewn bunch-grass gave a tender 
green hue to the long slopes and a spring tinge to the world. 
A man and a team of horses, which were dragging a. 
plough along the edge of a hill, stood out boldly against a 
blue sky that rivalled the heavens above the Bay of Naples. 
Below them a tawny rock slide of tan and pink stone had 
the shape of an arrow, which pointed toward a ravine where 
the basaltic cliffs formed a dark background for the bare 
- cottonwoods and deeply shadowed white pines which grew 
there. Shagegy-coated cattle fed about the orange-tipped | 
willows, outlining the small stream, and the spirit of youth 
and new life seemed to hover over all earth. 
Two small boys loitered along near the edge of the 
ravine and, unlike most of their kind, time seemed to be 
hanging heavily on their hands. Suddenly their changed 
actions caught the girl’s attention: they scrambled about 
over the dunes, down, at times, on hands and knees and then 
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