Chapter 41

Elizabeth was rather quiet, so I left her to her own thoughts, as I maneuvered the old truck down the worn-out dirt road north of Cope and wound my way through the shallow sand hills. Finally, I reached the spot I wanted for her next exposure to history and life on the plains. I turned down an overgrown wheel track, navigating a path between two ancient fence lines.

After I made the turn, Elizabeth gave me a strange look but didn’t say anything.

I topped the small hill and started down the other side, into a shallow valley. At the bottom of the hill was a tumbled-down old “soddie.” I parked next to the old building and got out of the truck. Elizabeth joined me as I dropped the tailgate, sat down and patted the spot next to me.

Elizabeth pointed to the tumbled-down house, asking, “Okay, what is that?”

I looked around the old homestead for a moment before answering.

“A family named Naylor used to live here. Came from Minnesota, about 1880 or so; might have been a little later, I’m not sure.”

I pointed to the house, “That’s what folks around here call a “soddie.” When the homesteaders arrived here, there was no wood for building materials, so they stripped the buffalo grass sod and built a house out of it. Basically, they would use the sod just like bricks. For a roof, they would place poles in an A-frame and sod the top. Soddies were actually fairly cool in the summer and easy to heat in the winter.”

Elizabeth took a long look at the old house, and then asked, “What about the rain? Didn’t the roof leak?”

I chuckled, “It took a pretty good rain to soak through the roof. More of a problem was the snow. If you had big snowstorm, it wasn’t unheard of for the weight to cause the roof to cave in.”

Elizabeth hopped off the tailgate and walked towards the house. The roof was long gone, but with the exception of the north wall, the rest was intact, although from the look of the old place, the whole thing could come tumbling down at any minute.

Elizabeth walked around the outside walls, and when she turned the corner on the southeast side, a cock pheasant flushed in a whirl of wings and noise. She jumped back, but her eyes never left the retreating bird.

As I walked up behind her, she turned toward me, “That was a beautiful sight. Even though it scared the hell out of me.”

I chuckled, “Yes, and just between you and me, those damn birds still make me jump whenever I flush one.”

We stood there, looking east, to where the bird had glided and eventually landed. After a moment, Elizabeth switched gears on me and asked, “Marcus, why did you take me to Sand Creek this morning? I was almost ready to ask you to take me home. I was that upset.”

In a soft voice, I answered, “Elizabeth, I didn’t want you to look at this country in a romanticized fashion. Too many people only see the beauty in a place or have read too many pulp fiction novels. They never stop to realize that the people are not all that much different than where they came from.”