The faintest rise of collar bone showed
under the satiny skin, fine as a magnolia petal, the color of faintly
tinted meerschaum. She ran her hand across it and it was smooth as
curds yielding with an elastic resistance over its bedding of firm
flesh. The young girl's pride in her beauty rose, bringing with it a
sense of surprise. She had thought it gone forever, and now it still
held, the one surviving sensation that connected her with that other
Susan Gillespie who had lived a half century ago in Rochester.
It was the day after this recrudescence of old coquetry that the first
tragedy of the trail, the tragedy that was hers alone, smote her.
The march that morning had been over a high level across which they
headed for a small river they would follow to the Fort. Early in the
afternoon they saw its course traced in intricate embroidery across the
earth's leathern carpet. The road dropped into it, the trail grooved
deep between ramparts of clay. On the lip of the descent the wayward
Julia, maddened with thirst, plunged forward, her obedient mates
followed, and the wagon went hurling down the slant, dust rising like
the smoke of an explosion.
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