Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather — Read

Lucy found the walking bad enough. The roads had been rutted during the thaw, and afterwards the deep cuts made by the wagon- wheels had frozen hard. Yesterday's snowfall had packed into them. Her foot kept catching in the walls of the ruts. On either side of the wheel-tracks the mud had frozen in jagged ridges, rough and sharp like mushroom coral. Since yesterday few countrymen had been abroad, and the horses' hoofs had not yet broken down these frozen incrustations. Lucy couldn't remember that her feet had ever got so cold when she was walking; but this was not walking, really, it was plodding, and breaking through.

She was going west, directly against the wind, and she had often to turn and stand still to catch her breath. After she was a mile out of town, not a single sleigh or wagon passed her. It was still too early for the farmers who had gone to town in the morning to be driving homeward. The country looked very dreary, certainly. If only the sun would break through! But it made a mere glassy white spot in the low grey sky. In that cold light even the fresh snow looked grey, and the frozen weeds sticking up through it. In the draws, between the low hills, thickets of wild plum bushes were black against the drifts; they should have been thatched with yesterday's snow, but today's sharp wind had stripped them bare.