As Summers Die [antikvár]

Prologue Thb land, looking from its highest point, stretched westward and south, rolling fields of broom grass and blackjack oak that glistened in the autumn dew, and a few scrubby pines and thistle bushes, and except in the draws where narrow swampy streams gurgled and tall hardwoods rose from the thickets, it was a harsh, unyielding place, long since timbered out and farmed out—aside from some truck vegetable patches that had been kept by the Negro families. Forty miles to the south, if it had been possible to see that far, lay the great blue-green Gulf of Mexico and the brackish waters of Mississippi Sound through which the original Holt ancestor sailed, took notice of the shoreline, landed and in time established himself as a functionary for the Spanish king, collecting taxes and tariffs. Years later he was rewarded for this service with these very same acres and many more through a custom of the time called a thumb grant—that being the amount of land a man could cover with his thumb on a map of the day. This Holt ancestor, Don Miguel Estaban, apparently was blessed either with an exceptionally large thumb or a very small map to put it on, since his gratuity extended westward clear into what is now the state of Louisiana, and east to the