After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled ourselves up and

climbed into the cold front wagon-seat. As we approached the Shimerdas’ we

heard the frosty whine of the pump and saw Ántonia, her head tied up and

her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her weight on the

pump-handle as it went up and down. She heard our wagon, looked back over

her shoulder, and catching up her pail of water, started at a run for the

hole in the bank.

Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he would bring the

provisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went slowly up the icy

path toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs of smoke came from

the stovepipe that stuck out through the grass and snow, but the wind

whisked them roughly away.

Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seized grandmother’s

hand. She did not say “How do!” as usual, but at once began to cry,

talking very fast in her own language, pointing to her feet which were

tied up in rags, and looking about accusingly at every one.

The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove, crouching over as if

he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the floor at his feet, her

kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and smiled, but, glancing up at

her mother, hid again. Ántonia was washing pans and dishes in a dark

corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a gunnysack

stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered he threw a grainsack over the

crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the cave was stifling, and it

was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung over the stove, threw out a

feeble yellow glimmer.

Mrs. Shimerda snatched off the covers of two barrels behind the door, and

made us look into them. In one there were some potatoes that had been

frozen and were rotting, in the other was a little pile of flour.

Grandmother murmured something in embarrassment, but the Bohemian woman

laughed scornfully, a kind of whinny-laugh, and catching up an empty

coffee-pot from the shelf, shook it at us with a look positively

vindictive.

Grandmother went on talking in her polite Virginia way, not admitting

their stark need or her own remissness, until Jake arrived with the

hamper, as if in direct answer to Mrs. Shimerda’s reproaches. Then the

poor woman broke down. She dropped on the floor beside her crazy son, hid

her face on her knees, and sat crying bitterly. Grandmother paid no heed

to her, but called Ántonia to come and help empty the basket. Tony left

her corner reluctantly. I had never seen her crushed like this before.

“You not mind my poor mamenka, Mrs. Burden. She is so sad,” she whispered,

as she wiped her wet hands on her skirt and took the things grandmother

handed her.

The crazy boy, seeing the food, began to make soft, gurgling noises and

stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time with a sack of

potatoes. Grandmother looked about in perplexity.

“Have n’t you got any sort of cave or cellar outside, Ántonia? This is no

place to keep vegetables. How did your potatoes get frozen?”

“We get from Mr. Bushy, at the post-office,—what he throw out. We got no

potatoes, Mrs. Burden,” Tony admitted mournfully.

When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and stuffed up the

door-crack again. Then, quietly as a shadow, Mr. Shimerda came out from

behind the stove. He stood brushing his hand over his smooth gray hair, as

if he were trying to clear away a fog about his head. He was clean and

neat as usual, with his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He took

grandmother’s arm and led her behind the stove, to the back of the room.

In the rear wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much bigger

than an oil barrel, scooped out in the black earth. When I got up on one

of the stools and peered into it, I saw some quilts and a pile of straw.

The old man held the lantern. “Yulka,” he said in a low, despairing voice,

“Yulka; my Ántonia!”

Grandmother drew back. “You mean they sleep in there,—your girls?” He

bowed his head.

Tony slipped under his arm. “It is very cold on the floor, and this is

warm like the badger hole. I like for sleep there,” she insisted eagerly.

“My mamenka have nice bed, with pillows from our own geese in Bohemie.

See, Jim?” She pointed to the narrow bunk which Krajiek had built against

the wall for himself before the Shimerdas came.

Grandmother sighed. “Sure enough, where _would_ you sleep, dear! I don’t

doubt you’re warm there. You’ll have a better house after while, Ántonia,

and then you’ll forget these hard times.”

Mr. Shimerda made grandmother sit down on the only chair and pointed his

wife to a stool beside her. Standing before them with his hand on

Ántonia’s shoulder, he talked in a low tone, and his daughter translated.

He wanted us to know that they were not beggars in the old country; he

made good wages, and his family were respected there. He left Bohemia with

more than a thousand dollars in savings, after their passage money was

paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New York, and the railway

fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected. By the time they paid

Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and oxen and some old farm

machinery, they had very little money left. He wished grandmother to know,

however, that he still had some money. If they could get through until

spring came, they would buy a cow and chickens and plant a garden, and

would then do very well. Ambrosch and Ántonia were both old enough to work

in the fields, and they were willing to work. But the snow and the bitter

weather had disheartened them all.

Ántonia explained that her father meant to build a new house for them in

the spring; he and Ambrosch had already split the logs for it, but the

logs were all buried in the snow, along the creek where they had been

felled.

While grandmother encouraged and gave them advice, I sat down on the floor

with Yulka and let her show me her kitten. Marek slid cautiously toward us

and began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I knew he wanted to make his

queer noises for me—to bark like a dog or whinny like a horse,—but he did

not dare in the presence of his elders. Marek was always trying to be

agreeable, poor fellow, as if he had it on his mind that he must make up

for his deficiencies.

Mrs. Shimerda grew more calm and reasonable before our visit was over,

and, while Ántonia translated, put in a word now and then on her own

account. The woman had a quick ear, and caught up phrases whenever she

heard English spoken. As we rose to go, she opened her wooden chest and

brought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long as a flour sack and

half as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight of it, the crazy boy

began to smack his lips. When Mrs. Shimerda opened the bag and stirred the

contents with her hand, it gave out a salty, earthy smell, very pungent,

even among the other odors of that cave. She measured a teacup full, tied

it up in a bit of sacking, and presented it ceremoniously to grandmother.

“For cook,” she announced. “Little now; be very much when cook,” spreading

out her hands as if to indicate that the pint would swell to a gallon.

“Very good. You no have in this country. All things for eat better in my

country.”

“Maybe so, Mrs. Shimerda,” grandmother said drily. “I can’t say but I

prefer our bread to yours, myself.”

[Illustration: Mrs. Shimerda gathering mushrooms in a Bohemian forest]

Ántonia undertook to explain. “This very good, Mrs. Burden,”—she clasped

her hands as if she could not express how good,—“it make very much when

you cook, like what my mama say. Cook with rabbit, cook with chicken, in

the gravy,—oh, so good!”

All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about how easily good

Christian people could forget they were their brothers’ keepers.

“I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and sisters are hard to keep.

Where’s a body to begin, with these people? They’re wanting in everything,

and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give ’em that, I guess. Jimmy,

here, is about as able to take over a homestead as they are. Do you reckon

that boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?”

“He’s a worker, all right, mam, and he’s got some ketch-on about him; but

he’s a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world; and

then, ag’in, they can be too mean.”

That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we opened the package

Mrs. Shimerda had given her. It was full of little brown chips that looked

like the shavings of some root. They were as light as feathers, and the

most noticeable thing about them was their penetrating, earthy odor. We

could not determine whether they were animal or vegetable.

“They might be dried meat from some queer beast, Jim. They ain’t dried

fish, and they never grew on stalk or vine. I’m afraid of ’em. Anyhow, I

should n’t want to eat anything that had been shut up for months with old

clothes and goose pillows.”

She threw the package into the stove, but I bit off a corner of one of the

chips I held in my hand, and chewed it tentatively. I never forgot the

strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little

brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so

jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some

deep Bohemian forest …

XI

DURING the week before Christmas, Jake was the most important person of

our household, for he was to go to town and do all our Christmas shopping.

But on the 21st of December, the snow began to fall. The flakes came down

so thickly that from the sitting-room windows I could not see beyond the

windmill—its frame looked dim and gray, unsubstantial like a shadow. The

snow did not stop falling all day, or during the night that followed. The

cold was not severe, but the storm was quiet and resistless. The men could

not go farther than the barns and corral. They sat about the house most of

the day as if it were Sunday; greasing their boots, mending their

suspenders, plaiting whiplashes.

On the morning of the 22d, grandfather announced at breakfast that it

would be impossible to go to Black Hawk for Christmas purchases. Jake was

sure he could get through on horseback, and bring home our things in

saddle-bags; but grandfather told him the roads would be obliterated, and

a newcomer in the country would be lost ten times over. Anyway, he would

never allow one of his horses to be put to such a strain.

We decided to have a country Christmas, without any help from town. I had

wanted to get some picture-books for Yulka and Ántonia; even Yulka was

able to read a little now. Grandmother took me into the ice-cold

storeroom, where she had some bolts of gingham and sheeting. She cut

squares of cotton cloth and we sewed them together into a book. We bound

it between pasteboards, which I covered with brilliant calico,

representing scenes from a circus. For two days I sat at the dining-room

table, pasting this book full of pictures for Yulka. We had files of those

good old family magazines which used to publish colored lithographs of

popular paintings, and I was allowed to use some of these. I took

“Napoleon Announcing the Divorce to Josephine” for my frontispiece. On the

white pages I grouped Sunday-School cards and advertising cards which I

had brought from my “old country.” Fuchs got out the old candle-moulds and

made tallow candles. Grandmother hunted up her fancy cake-cutters and

baked gingerbread men and roosters, which we decorated with burnt sugar

and red cinnamon drops.

On the day before Christmas, Jake packed the things we were sending to the

Shimerdas in his saddle-bags and set off on grandfather’s gray gelding.

When he mounted his horse at the door, I saw that he had a hatchet slung

to his belt, and he gave grandmother a meaning look which told me he was

planning a surprise for me. That afternoon I watched long and eagerly from

the sitting-room window. At last I saw a dark spot moving on the west

hill, beside the half-buried cornfield, where the sky was taking on a

coppery flush from the sun that did not quite break through. I put on my

cap and ran out to meet Jake. When I got to the pond I could see that he

was bringing in a little cedar tree across his pommel. He used to help my

father cut Christmas trees for me in Virginia, and he had not forgotten

how much I liked them.

By the time we had placed the cold, fresh-smelling little tree in a corner

of the sitting-room, it was already Christmas Eve. After supper we all

gathered there, and even grandfather, reading his paper by the table,

looked up with friendly interest now and then. The cedar was about five

feet high and very shapely. We hung it with the gingerbread animals,

strings of popcorn, and bits of candle which Fuchs had fitted into

pasteboard sockets. Its real splendors, however, came from the most

unlikely place in the world—from Otto’s cowboy trunk. I had never seen

anything in that trunk but old boots and spurs and pistols, and a

fascinating mixture of yellow leather thongs, cartridges, and shoemaker’s

wax. From under the lining he now produced a collection of brilliantly

colored paper figures, several inches high and stiff enough to stand

alone. They had been sent to him year after year, by his old mother in

Austria. There was a bleeding heart, in tufts of paper lace; there were

the three kings, gorgeously appareled, and the ox and the ass and the

shepherds; there was the Baby in the manger, and a group of angels,

singing; there were camels and leopards, held by the black slaves of the

three kings. Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends

and stories nestled like birds in its branches. Grandmother said it

reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge. We put sheets of cotton wool under

it for a snow-field, and Jake’s pocket-mirror for a frozen lake.

I can see them now, exactly as they looked, working about the table in the

lamplight: Jake with his heavy features, so rudely moulded that his face

seemed, somehow, unfinished; Otto with his half-ear and the savage scar

that made his upper lip curl so ferociously under his twisted mustache. As

I remember them, what unprotected faces they were; their very roughness

and violence made them defenseless. These boys had no practiced manner

behind which they could retreat and hold people at a distance. They had

only their hard fists to batter at the world with. Otto was already one of

those drifting, case-hardened laborers who never marry or have children of

their own. Yet he was so fond of children!

XII

ON Christmas morning, when I got down to the kitchen, the men were just

coming in from their morning chores—the horses and pigs always had their

breakfast before we did. Jake and Otto shouted “Merry Christmas”! to me,

and winked at each other when they saw the waffle-irons on the stove.

Grandfather came down, wearing a white shirt and his Sunday coat. Morning

prayers were longer than usual. He read the chapters from St. Matthew

about the birth of Christ, and as we listened it all seemed like something

that had happened lately, and near at hand. In his prayer he thanked the

Lord for the first Christmas, and for all that it had meant to the world

ever since. He gave thanks for our food and comfort, and prayed for the

poor and destitute in great cities, where the struggle for life was harder

than it was here with us. Grandfather’s prayers were often very

interesting. He had the gift of simple and moving expression. Because he

talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not worn dull

from constant use. His prayers reflected what he was thinking about at the

time, and it was chiefly through them that we got to know his feelings and

his views about things.

After we sat down to our waffles and sausage, Jake told us how pleased the

Shimerdas had been with their presents; even Ambrosch was friendly and

went to the creek with him to cut the Christmas tree. It was a soft gray

day outside, with heavy clouds working across the sky, and occasional

squalls of snow. There were always odd jobs to be done about the barn on

holidays, and the men were busy until afternoon. Then Jake and I played

dominoes, while Otto wrote a long letter home to his mother. He always

wrote to her on Christmas Day, he said, no matter where he was, and no

matter how long it had been since his last letter. All afternoon he sat in

the dining-room. He would write for a while, then sit idle, his clenched

fist lying on the table, his eyes following the pattern of the oilcloth.

He spoke and wrote his own language so seldom that it came to him

awkwardly. His effort to remember entirely absorbed him.

At about four o’clock a visitor appeared: Mr. Shimerda, wearing his

rabbit-skin cap and collar, and new mittens his wife had knitted. He had

come to thank us for the presents, and for all grandmother’s kindness to

his family. Jake and Otto joined us from the basement and we sat about the

stove, enjoying the deepening gray of the winter afternoon and the

atmosphere of comfort and security in my grandfather’s house. This feeling

seemed completely to take possession of Mr. Shimerda. I suppose, in the

crowded clutter of their cave, the old man had come to believe that peace

and order had vanished from the earth, or existed only in the old world he

had left so far behind. He sat still and passive, his head resting against

the back of the wooden rocking-chair, his hands relaxed upon the arms. His

face had a look of weariness and pleasure, like that of sick people when

they feel relief from pain. Grandmother insisted on his drinking a glass

of Virginia apple-brandy after his long walk in the cold, and when a faint

flush came up in his cheeks, his features might have been cut out of a

shell, they were so transparent. He said almost nothing, and smiled

rarely; but as he rested there we all had a sense of his utter content.

[Illustration: Jake bringing home a Christmas tree]

As it grew dark, I asked whether I might light the Christmas tree before

the lamp was brought. When the candle ends sent up their conical yellow

flames, all the colored figures from Austria stood out clear and full of

meaning against the green boughs. Mr. Shimerda rose, crossed himself, and

quietly knelt down before the tree, his head sunk forward. His long body

formed a letter “S.” I saw grandmother look apprehensively at grandfather.

He was rather narrow in religious matters, and sometimes spoke out and

hurt people’s feelings. There had been nothing strange about the tree

before, but now, with some one kneeling before it,—images, candles, …

Grandfather merely put his finger-tips to his brow and bowed his venerable

head, thus Protestantizing the atmosphere.

We persuaded our guest to stay for supper with us. He needed little

urging. As we sat down to the table, it occurred to me that he liked to

look at us, and that our faces were open books to him. When his

deep-seeing eyes rested on me, I felt as if he were looking far ahead into

the future for me, down the road I would have to travel.

At nine o’clock Mr. Shimerda lighted one of our lanterns and put on his

overcoat and fur collar. He stood in the little entry hall, the lantern

and his fur cap under his arm, shaking hands with us. When he took

grandmother’s hand, he bent over it as he always did, and said slowly,

“Good wo-man!” He made the sign of the cross over me, put on his cap and

went off in the dark. As we turned back to the sitting-room, grandfather

looked at me searchingly. “The prayers of all good people are good,” he

said quietly.

XIII

THE week following Christmas brought in a thaw, and by New Year’s Day all

the world about us was a broth of gray slush, and the guttered slope

between the windmill and the barn was running black water. The soft black

earth stood out in patches along the roadsides. I resumed all my chores,

carried in the cobs and wood and water, and spent the afternoons at the

barn, watching Jake shell corn with a hand-sheller.

One morning, during this interval of fine weather, Ántonia and her mother

rode over on one of their shaggy old horses to pay us a visit. It was the

first time Mrs. Shimerda had been to our house, and she ran about

examining our carpets and curtains and furniture, all the while commenting

upon them to her daughter in an envious, complaining tone. In the kitchen

she caught up an iron pot that stood on the back of the stove and said:

“You got many, Shimerdas no got.” I thought it weak-minded of grandmother

to give the pot to her.

After dinner, when she was helping to wash the dishes, she said, tossing

her head: “You got many things for cook. If I got all things like you, I

make much better.”

She was a conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could not

humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward Ántonia and

listened unsympathetically when she told me her father was not well.

“My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make music

any more. At home he play violin all the time; for weddings and for dance.

Here never. When I beg him for play, he shake his head no. Some days he

take his violin out of his box and make with his fingers on the strings,

like this, but never he make the music. He don’t like this kawn-tree.”

“People who don’t like this country ought to stay at home,” I said

severely. “We don’t make them come here.”

“He not want to come, nev-er!” she burst out. “My mamenka make him come.

All the time she say: ‘America big country; much money, much land for my

boys, much husband for my girls.’ My papa, he cry for leave his old

friends what make music with him. He love very much the man what play the

long horn like this”—she indicated a slide trombone. “They go to school

together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want Ambrosch for be

rich, with many cattle.”

“Your mama,” I said angrily, “wants other people’s things.”

“Your grandfather is rich,” she retorted fiercely. “Why he not help my

papa? Ambrosch be rich, too, after while, and he pay back. He is very

smart boy. For Ambrosch my mama come here.”

Ambrosch was considered the important person in the family. Mrs. Shimerda

and Ántonia always deferred to him, though he was often surly with them

and contemptuous toward his father. Ambrosch and his mother had everything

their own way. Though Ántonia loved her father more than she did any one

else, she stood in awe of her elder brother.

After I watched Ántonia and her mother go over the hill on their miserable

horse, carrying our iron pot with them, I turned to grandmother, who had

taken up her darning, and said I hoped that snooping old woman would n’t

come to see us any more.

Grandmother chuckled and drove her bright needle across a hole in Otto’s

sock. “She’s not old, Jim, though I expect she seems old to you. No, I

would n’t mourn if she never came again. But, you see, a body never knows

what traits poverty might bring out in ’em. It makes a woman grasping to

see her children want for things. Now read me a chapter in ‘The Prince of

the House of David.’ Let’s forget the Bohemians.”

We had three weeks of this mild, open weather. The cattle in the corral

ate corn almost as fast as the men could shell it for them, and we hoped

they would be ready for an early market. One morning the two big bulls,

Gladstone and Brigham Young, thought spring had come, and they began to

tease and butt at each other across the barbed wire that separated them.

Soon they got angry. They bellowed and pawed up the soft earth with their

hoofs, rolling their eyes and tossing their heads. Each withdrew to a far

corner of his own corral, and then they made for each other at a gallop.

Thud, thud, we could hear the impact of their great heads, and their

bellowing shook the pans on the kitchen shelves. Had they not been

dehorned, they would have torn each other to pieces. Pretty soon the fat

steers took it up and began butting and horning each other. Clearly, the

affair had to be stopped. We all stood by and watched admiringly while

Fuchs rode into the corral with a pitchfork and prodded the bulls again

and again, finally driving them apart.

The big storm of the winter began on my eleventh birthday, the 20th of

January. When I went down to breakfast that morning, Jake and Otto came in

white as snow-men, beating their hands and stamping their feet. They began

to laugh boisterously when they saw me, calling:—

“You’ve got a birthday present this time, Jim, and no mistake. They was a

full-grown blizzard ordered for you.”

All day the storm went on. The snow did not fall this time, it simply

spilled out of heaven, like thousands of feather-beds being emptied. That

afternoon the kitchen was a carpenter-shop; the men brought in their tools

and made two great wooden shovels with long handles. Neither grandmother

nor I could go out in the storm, so Jake fed the chickens and brought in a

pitiful contribution of eggs.

Next day our men had to shovel until noon to reach the barn—and the snow

was still falling! There had not been such a storm in the ten years my

grandfather had lived in Nebraska. He said at dinner that we would not try

to reach the cattle—they were fat enough to go without their corn for a

day or two; but to-morrow we must feed them and thaw out their water-tap

so that they could drink. We could not so much as see the corrals, but we

knew the steers were over there, huddled together under the north bank.

Our ferocious bulls, subdued enough by this time, were probably warming

each other’s backs. “This’ll take the bile out of ’em!” Fuchs remarked

gleefully.

At noon that day the hens had not been heard from. After dinner Jake and

Otto, their damp clothes now dried on them, stretched their stiff arms and

plunged again into the drifts. They made a tunnel under the snow to the

henhouse, with walls so solid that grandmother and I could walk back and

forth in it. We found the chickens asleep; perhaps they thought night had

come to stay. One old rooster was stirring about, pecking at the solid

lump of ice in their water-tin. When we flashed the lantern in their eyes,

the hens set up a great cackling and flew about clumsily, scattering

down-feathers. The mottled, pin-headed guinea-hens, always resentful of

captivity, ran screeching out into the tunnel and tried to poke their

ugly, painted faces through the snow walls. By five o’clock the chores

were done—just when it was time to begin them all over again! That was a

strange, unnatural sort of day.

XIV

ON the morning of the 22d I wakened with a start. Before I opened my eyes,

I seemed to know that something had happened. I heard excited voices in

the kitchen—grandmother’s was so shrill that I knew she must be almost

beside herself. I looked forward to any new crisis with delight. What

could it be, I wondered, as I hurried into my clothes. Perhaps the barn

had burned; perhaps the cattle had frozen to death; perhaps a neighbor was

lost in the storm.

Down in the kitchen grandfather was standing before the stove with his

hands behind him. Jake and Otto had taken off their boots and were rubbing

their woolen socks. Their clothes and boots were steaming, and they both

looked exhausted. On the bench behind the stove lay a man, covered up with

a blanket. Grandmother motioned me to the dining-room. I obeyed

reluctantly. I watched her as she came and went, carrying dishes. Her lips

were tightly compressed and she kept whispering to herself: “Oh, dear

Saviour!” “Lord, Thou knowest!”

Presently grandfather came in and spoke to me: “Jimmy, we will not have

prayers this morning, because we have a great deal to do. Old Mr. Shimerda

is dead, and his family are in great distress. Ambrosch came over here in

the middle of the night, and Jake and Otto went back with him. The boys

have had a hard night, and you must not bother them with questions. That

is Ambrosch, asleep on the bench. Come in to breakfast, boys.”

After Jake and Otto had swallowed their first cup of coffee, they began to

talk excitedly, disregarding grandmother’s warning glances. I held my

tongue, but I listened with all my ears.

“No, sir,” Fuchs said in answer to a question from grandfather, “nobody

heard the gun go off. Ambrosch was out with the ox team, trying to break a

road, and the women folks was shut up tight in their cave. When Ambrosch

come in it was dark and he did n’t see nothing, but the oxen acted kind of

queer. One of ’em ripped around and got away from him—bolted clean out of

the stable. His hands is blistered where the rope run through. He got a

lantern and went back and found the old man, just as we seen him.”

“Poor soul, poor soul!” grandmother groaned. “I’d like to think he never

done it. He was always considerate and un-wishful to give trouble. How

could he forget himself and bring this on us!”

“I don’t think he was out of his head for a minute, Mrs. Burden,” Fuchs

declared. “He done everything natural. You know he was always sort of

fixy, and fixy he was to the last. He shaved after dinner, and washed

hisself all over after the girls was done the dishes. Ántonia heated the

water for him. Then he put on a clean shirt and clean socks, and after he

was dressed he kissed her and the little one and took his gun and said he

was going out to hunt rabbits. He must have gone right down to the barn

and done it then. He layed down on that bunk-bed, close to the ox stalls,

where he always slept. When we found him, everything was decent

except,”—Fuchs wrinkled his brow and hesitated,—“except what he could n’t

nowise foresee. His coat was hung on a peg, and his boots was under the

bed. He’d took off that silk neckcloth he always wore, and folded it

smooth and stuck his pin through it. He turned back his shirt at the neck

and rolled up his sleeves.”

“I don’t see how he could do it!” grandmother kept saying.

Otto misunderstood her. “Why, mam, it was simple enough; he pulled the

trigger with his big toe. He layed over on his side and put the end of the

barrel in his mouth, then he drew up one foot and felt for the trigger. He

found it all right!”

“Maybe he did,” said Jake grimly. “There’s something mighty queer about

it.”

“Now what do you mean, Jake?” grandmother asked sharply.

“Well, mam, I found Krajiek’s axe under the manger, and I picks it up and

carries it over to the corpse, and I take my oath it just fit the gash in

the front of the old man’s face. That there Krajiek had been sneakin’

round, pale and quiet, and when he seen me examinin’ the axe, he begun

whimperin’, ‘My God, man, don’t do that!’ ‘I reckon I’m a-goin’ to look

into this,’ says I. Then he begun to squeal like a rat and run about

wringin’ his hands. ‘They’ll hang me!’ says he. ‘My God, they’ll hang me

sure!’”

Fuchs spoke up impatiently. “Krajiek’s gone silly, Jake, and so have you.

The old man would n’t have made all them preparations for Krajiek to

murder him, would he? It don’t hang together. The gun was right beside him

when Ambrosch found him.”

“Krajiek could ’a’ put it there, could n’t he?” Jake demanded.

Grandmother broke in excitedly: “See here, Jake Marpole, don’t you go

trying to add murder to suicide. We’re deep enough in trouble. Otto reads

you too many of them detective stories.”

“It will be easy to decide all that, Emmaline,” said grandfather quietly.

“If he shot himself in the way they think, the gash will be torn from the

inside outward.”

“Just so it is, Mr. Burden,” Otto affirmed. “I seen bunches of hair and

stuff sticking to the poles and straw along the roof. They was blown up

there by gunshot, no question.”

Grandmother told grandfather she meant to go over to the Shimerdas with

him.

“There is nothing you can do,” he said doubtfully. “The body can’t be

touched until we get the coroner here from Black Hawk, and that will be a

matter of several days, this weather.”

“Well, I can take them some victuals, anyway, and say a word of comfort to

them poor little girls. The oldest one was his darling, and was like a

right hand to him. He might have thought of her. He’s left her alone in a

hard world.” She glanced distrustfully at Ambrosch, who was now eating his

breakfast at the kitchen table.

Fuchs, although he had been up in the cold nearly all night, was going to

make the long ride to Black Hawk to fetch the priest and the coroner. On

the gray gelding, our best horse, he would try to pick his way across the

country with no roads to guide him.

“Don’t you worry about me, Mrs. Burden,” he said cheerfully, as he put on

a second pair of socks. “I’ve got a good nose for directions, and I never

did need much sleep. It’s the gray I’m worried about. I’ll save him what I

can, but it’ll strain him, as sure as I’m telling you!”

“This is no time to be over-considerate of animals, Otto; do the best you

can for yourself. Stop at the Widow Steavens’s for dinner. She’s a good

woman, and she’ll do well by you.”

After Fuchs rode away, I was left with Ambrosch. I saw a side of him I had

not seen before. He was deeply, even slavishly, devout. He did not say a

word all morning, but sat with his rosary in his hands, praying, now

silently, now aloud. He never looked away from his beads, nor lifted his

hands except to cross himself. Several times the poor boy fell asleep

where he sat, wakened with a start, and began to pray again.

No wagon could be got to the Shimerdas’ until a road was broken, and that

would be a day’s job. Grandfather came from the barn on one of our big

black horses, and Jake lifted grandmother up behind him. She wore her

black hood and was bundled up in shawls. Grandfather tucked his bushy

white beard inside his overcoat. They looked very Biblical as they set

off, I thought. Jake and Ambrosch followed them, riding the other black

and my pony, carrying bundles of clothes that we had got together for Mrs.

Shimerda. I watched them go past the pond and over the hill by the drifted

cornfield. Then, for the first time, I realized that I was alone in the

house.

I felt a considerable extension of power and authority, and was anxious to

acquit myself creditably. I carried in cobs and wood from the long cellar,

and filled both the stoves. I remembered that in the hurry and excitement

of the morning nobody had thought of the chickens, and the eggs had not

been gathered. Going out through the tunnel, I gave the hens their corn,

emptied the ice from their drinking-pan, and filled it with water. After

the cat had had his milk, I could think of nothing else to do, and I sat

down to get warm. The quiet was delightful, and the ticking clock was the

most pleasant of companions. I got “Robinson Crusoe” and tried to read,

but his life on the island seemed dull compared with ours. Presently, as I

looked with satisfaction about our comfortable sitting-room, it flashed

upon me that if Mr. Shimerda’s soul were lingering about in this world at

all, it would be here, in our house, which had been more to his liking

than any other in the neighborhood. I remembered his contented face when

he was with us on Christmas Day. If he could have lived with us, this

terrible thing would never have happened.

I knew it was homesickness that had killed Mr. Shimerda, and I wondered

whether his released spirit would not eventually find its way back to his

own country. I thought of how far it was to Chicago, and then to Virginia,

to Baltimore,—and then the great wintry ocean. No, he would not at once

set out upon that long journey. Surely, his exhausted spirit, so tired of

cold and crowding and the struggle with the ever-falling snow, was resting

now in this quiet house.

I was not frightened, but I made no noise. I did not wish to disturb him.

I went softly down to the kitchen which, tucked away so snugly

underground, always seemed to me the heart and center of the house. There,

on the bench behind the stove, I thought and thought about Mr. Shimerda.

Outside I could hear the wind singing over hundreds of miles of snow. It

was as if I had let the old man in out of the tormenting winter, and were

sitting there with him. I went over all that Ántonia had ever told me

about his life before he came to this country; how he used to play the

fiddle at weddings and dances. I thought about the friends he had mourned

to leave, the trombone-player, the great forest full of game,—belonging,

as Ántonia said, to the “nobles,”—from which she and her mother used to

steal wood on moonlight nights. There was a white hart that lived in that

forest, and if any one killed it, he would be hanged, she said. Such vivid

pictures came to me that they might have been Mr. Shimerda’s memories, not

yet faded out from the air in which they had haunted him.

It had begun to grow dark when my household returned, and grandmother was

so tired that she went at once to bed. Jake and I got supper, and while we

were washing the dishes he told me in loud whispers about the state of

things over at the Shimerdas’. Nobody could touch the body until the

coroner came. If any one did, something terrible would happen, apparently.

The dead man was frozen through, “just as stiff as a dressed turkey you

hang out to freeze,” Jake said. The horses and oxen would not go into the

barn until he was frozen so hard that there was no longer any smell of

blood. They were stabled there now, with the dead man, because there was

no other place to keep them. A lighted lantern was kept hanging over Mr.

Shimerda’s head. Ántonia and Ambrosch and the mother took turns going down

to pray beside him. The crazy boy went with them, because he did not feel

the cold. I believed he felt cold as much as any one else, but he liked to

be thought insensible to it. He was always coveting distinction, poor

Marek!

Ambrosch, Jake said, showed more human feeling than he would have supposed

him capable of; but he was chiefly concerned about getting a priest, and

about his father’s soul, which he believed was in a place of torment and

would remain there until his family and the priest had prayed a great deal

for him. “As I understand it,” Jake concluded, “it will be a matter of

years to pray his soul out of Purgatory, and right now he’s in torment.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said stoutly. “I almost know it is n’t true.” I

did not, of course, say that I believed he had been in that very kitchen

all afternoon, on his way back to his own country. Nevertheless, after I

went to bed, this idea of punishment and Purgatory came back on me

crushingly. I remembered the account of Dives in torment, and shuddered.

But Mr. Shimerda had not been rich and selfish; he had only been so

unhappy that he could not live any longer.

XV

OTTO FUCHS got back from Black Hawk at noon the next day. He reported that

the coroner would reach the Shimerdas’ sometime that afternoon, but the

missionary priest was at the other end of his parish, a hundred miles

away, and the trains were not running. Fuchs had got a few hours’ sleep at

the livery barn in town, but he was afraid the gray gelding had strained

himself. Indeed, he was never the same horse afterward. That long trip

through the deep snow had taken all the endurance out of him.

Fuchs brought home with him a stranger, a young Bohemian who had taken a

homestead near Black Hawk, and who came on his only horse to help his

fellow-countrymen in their trouble. That was the first time I ever saw

Anton Jelinek. He was a strapping young fellow in the early twenties then,

handsome, warm-hearted, and full of life, and he came to us like a miracle

in the midst of that grim business. I remember exactly how he strode into

our kitchen in his felt boots and long wolfskin coat, his eyes and cheeks

bright with the cold. At sight of grandmother, he snatched off his fur

cap, greeting her in a deep, rolling voice which seemed older than he.

“I want to thank you very much, Mrs. Burden, for that you are so kind to

poor strangers from my kawn-tree.”

He did not hesitate like a farmer boy, but looked one eagerly in the eye

when he spoke. Everything about him was warm and spontaneous. He said he

would have come to see the Shimerdas before, but he had hired out to husk

corn all the fall, and since winter began he had been going to the school

by the mill, to learn English, along with the little children. He told me

he had a nice “lady-teacher” and that he liked to go to school.

At dinner grandfather talked to Jelinek more than he usually did to

strangers.

“Will they be much disappointed because we cannot get a priest?” he asked.

Jelinek looked serious. “Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their father

has done a great sin,” he looked straight at grandfather. “Our Lord has

said that.”

Grandfather seemed to like his frankness. “We believe that, too, Jelinek.

But we believe that Mr. Shimerda’s soul will come to its Creator as well

off without a priest. We believe that Christ is our only intercessor.”

The young man shook his head. “I know how you think. My teacher at the

school has explain. But I have seen too much. I believe in prayer for the

dead. I have seen too much.”

We asked him what he meant.

He glanced around the table. “You want I shall tell you? When I was a

little boy like this one, I begin to help the priest at the altar. I make

my first communion very young; what the Church teach seem plain to me. By

’n’ by war-times come, when the Austrians fight us. We have very many

soldiers in camp near my village, and the cholera break out in that camp,

and the men die like flies. All day long our priest go about there to give

the Sacrament to dying men, and I go with him to carry the vessels with

the Holy Sacrament. Everybody that go near that camp catch the sickness

but me and the priest. But we have no sickness, we have no fear, because

we carry that blood and that body of Christ, and it preserve us.” He

paused, looking at grandfather. “That I know, Mr. Burden, for it happened

to myself. All the soldiers know, too. When we walk along the road, the

old priest and me, we meet all the time soldiers marching and officers on

horse. All those officers, when they see what I carry under the cloth,

pull up their horses and kneel down on the ground in the road until we

pass. So I feel very bad for my kawntree-man to die without the Sacrament,

and to die in a bad way for his soul, and I feel sad for his family.”

We had listened attentively. It was impossible not to admire his frank,

manly faith.

“I am always glad to meet a young man who thinks seriously about these

things,” said grandfather, “and I would never be the one to say you were

not in God’s care when you were among the soldiers.”

After dinner it was decided that young Jelinek should hook our two strong

black farmhorses to the scraper and break a road through to the

Shimerdas’, so that a wagon could go when it was necessary. Fuchs, who was

the only cabinet-maker in the neighborhood, was set to work on a coffin.

Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we admired it, he told us

that he had shot and skinned the coyotes, and the young man who “batched”

with him, Jan Bouska, who had been a fur-worker in Vienna, made the coat.

From the windmill I watched Jelinek come out of the barn with the blacks,

and work his way up the hillside toward the cornfield. Sometimes he was

completely hidden by the clouds of snow that rose about him; then he and

the horses would emerge black and shining.

Our heavy carpenter’s bench had to be brought from the barn and carried

down into the kitchen. Fuchs selected boards from a pile of planks

grandfather had hauled out from town in the fall to make a new floor for

the oats bin. When at last the lumber and tools were assembled, and the

doors were closed again and the cold drafts shut out, grandfather rode

away to meet the coroner at the Shimerdas’, and Fuchs took off his coat

and settled down to work. I sat on his work-table and watched him. He did

not touch his tools at first, but figured for a long while on a piece of

paper, and measured the planks and made marks on them. While he was thus

engaged, he whistled softly to himself, or teasingly pulled at his

half-ear. Grandmother moved about quietly, so as not to disturb him. At

last he folded his ruler and turned a cheerful face to us.

“The hardest part of my job’s done,” he announced. “It’s the head end of

it that comes hard with me, especially when I’m out of practice. The last

time I made one of these, Mrs. Burden,” he continued, as he sorted and

tried his chisels, “was for a fellow in the Black Tiger mine, up above

Silverton, Colorado. The mouth of that mine goes right into the face of

the cliff, and they used to put us in a bucket and run us over on a

trolley and shoot us into the shaft. The bucket traveled across a box

cañon three hundred feet deep, and about a third full of water. Two Swedes

had fell out of that bucket once, and hit the water, feet down. If you’ll

believe it, they went to work the next day. You can’t kill a Swede. But in

my time a little Eyetalian tried the high dive, and it turned out

different with him. We was snowed in then, like we are now, and I happened

to be the only man in camp that could make a coffin for him. It’s a handy

thing to know, when you knock about like I’ve done.”

“We’d be hard put to it now, if you did n’t know, Otto,” grandmother said.

“Yes, ’m,” Fuchs admitted with modest pride. “So few folks does know how

to make a good tight box that’ll turn water. I sometimes wonder if

there’ll be anybody about to do it for me. However, I’m not at all

particular that way.”

All afternoon, wherever one went in the house, one could hear the panting

wheeze of the saw or the pleasant purring of the plane. They were such

cheerful noises, seeming to promise new things for living people: it was a

pity that those freshly planed pine boards were to be put underground so

soon. The lumber was hard to work because it was full of frost, and the

boards gave off a sweet smell of pine woods, as the heap of yellow

shavings grew higher and higher. I wondered why Fuchs had not stuck to

cabinet-work, he settled down to it with such ease and content. He handled

the tools as if he liked the feel of them; and when he planed, his hands

went back and forth over the boards in an eager, beneficent way as if he

were blessing them. He broke out now and then into German hymns, as if

this occupation brought back old times to him.

At four o’clock Mr. Bushy, the postmaster, with another neighbor who lived

east of us, stopped in to get warm. They were on their way to the

Shimerdas’. The news of what had happened over there had somehow got

abroad through the snow-blocked country. Grandmother gave the visitors

sugar-cakes and hot coffee. Before these callers were gone, the brother of

the Widow Steavens, who lived on the Black Hawk road, drew up at our door,

and after him came the father of the German family, our nearest neighbors

on the south. They dismounted and joined us in the dining-room. They were

all eager for any details about the suicide, and they were greatly

concerned as to where Mr. Shimerda would be buried. The nearest Catholic

cemetery was at Black Hawk, and it might be weeks before a wagon could get

so far. Besides, Mr. Bushy and grandmother were sure that a man who had

killed himself could not be buried in a Catholic graveyard. There was a

burying-ground over by the Norwegian church, west of Squaw Creek; perhaps

the Norwegians would take Mr. Shimerda in.

After our visitors rode away in single file over the hill, we returned to

the kitchen. Grandmother began to make the icing for a chocolate cake, and

Otto again filled the house with the exciting, expectant song of the

plane. One pleasant thing about this time was that everybody talked more

than usual. I had never heard the postmaster say anything but “Only

papers, to-day,” or, “I’ve got a sackful of mail for ye,” until this

afternoon. Grandmother always talked, dear woman; to herself or to the

Lord, if there was no one else to listen; but grandfather was naturally

taciturn, and Jake and Otto were often so tired after supper that I used

to feel as if I were surrounded by a wall of silence. Now every one seemed

eager to talk. That afternoon Fuchs told me story after story; about the

Black Tiger mine, and about violent deaths and casual buryings, and the

queer fancies of dying men. You never really knew a man, he said, until

you saw him die. Most men were game, and went without a grudge.

The postmaster, going home, stopped to say that grandfather would bring

the coroner back with him to spend the night. The officers of the

Norwegian church, he told us, had held a meeting and decided that the

Norwegian graveyard could not extend its hospitality to Mr. Shimerda.

Grandmother was indignant. “If these foreigners are so clannish, Mr.

Bushy, we’ll have to have an American graveyard that will be more

liberal-minded. I’ll get right after Josiah to start one in the spring. If

anything was to happen to me, I don’t want the Norwegians holding

inquisitions over me to see whether I’m good enough to be laid amongst

’em.”

Soon grandfather returned, bringing with him Anton Jelinek, and that

important person, the coroner. He was a mild, flurried old man, a Civil

War veteran, with one sleeve hanging empty. He seemed to find this case

very perplexing, and said if it had not been for grandfather he would have

sworn out a warrant against Krajiek. “The way he acted, and the way his

axe fit the wound, was enough to convict any man.”

Although it was perfectly clear that Mr. Shimerda had killed himself, Jake

and the coroner thought something ought to be done to Krajiek because he

behaved like a guilty man. He was badly frightened, certainly, and perhaps

he even felt some stirrings of remorse for his indifference to the old

man’s misery and loneliness.

At supper the men ate like vikings, and the chocolate cake, which I had

hoped would linger on until to-morrow in a mutilated condition,

disappeared on the second round. They talked excitedly about where they

should bury Mr. Shimerda; I gathered that the neighbors were all disturbed

and shocked about something. It developed that Mrs. Shimerda and Ambrosch

wanted the old man buried on the southwest corner of their own land;

indeed, under the very stake that marked the corner. Grandfather had

explained to Ambrosch that some day, when the country was put under fence

and the roads were confined to section lines, two roads would cross

exactly on that corner. But Ambrosch only said, “It makes no matter.”

Grandfather asked Jelinek whether in the old country there was some

superstition to the effect that a suicide must be buried at the

cross-roads.

Jelinek said he did n’t know; he seemed to remember hearing there had once

been such a custom in Bohemia. “Mrs. Shimerda is made up her mind,” he

added. “I try to persuade her, and say it looks bad for her to all the

neighbors; but she say so it must be. ‘There I will bury him, if I dig the

grave myself,’ she say. I have to promise her I help Ambrosch make the

grave to-morrow.”

Grandfather smoothed his beard and looked judicial. “I don’t know whose

wish should decide the matter, if not hers. But if she thinks she will

live to see the people of this country ride over that old man’s head, she

is mistaken.”

XVI

MR. SHIMERDA lay dead in the barn four days, and on the fifth they buried

him. All day Friday Jelinek was off with Ambrosch digging the grave,

chopping out the frozen earth with old axes. On Saturday we breakfasted

before daylight and got into the wagon with the coffin. Jake and Jelinek

went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from the pool of blood in

which it was frozen fast to the ground.

When grandmother and I went into the Shimerdas’ house, we found the

women-folk alone; Ambrosch and Marek were at the barn. Mrs. Shimerda sat

crouching by the stove, Ántonia was washing dishes. When she saw me she

ran out of her dark corner and threw her arms around me. “Oh, Jimmy,” she

sobbed, “what you tink for my lovely papa!” It seemed to me that I could

feel her heart breaking as she clung to me.

Mrs. Shimerda, sitting on the stump by the stove, kept looking over her

shoulder toward the door while the neighbors were arriving. They came on

horseback, all except the postmaster, who brought his family in a wagon

over the only broken wagon-trail. The Widow Steavens rode up from her farm

eight miles down the Black Hawk road. The cold drove the women into the

cave-house, and it was soon crowded. A fine, sleety snow was beginning to

fall, and every one was afraid of another storm and anxious to have the

burial over with.

Grandfather and Jelinek came to tell Mrs. Shimerda that it was time to

start. After bundling her mother up in clothes the neighbors had brought,

Ántonia put on an old cape from our house and the rabbit-skin hat her

father had made for her. Four men carried Mr. Shimerda’s box up the hill;

Krajiek slunk along behind them. The coffin was too wide for the door, so

it was put down on the slope outside. I slipped out from the cave and

looked at Mr. Shimerda. He was lying on his side, with his knees drawn up.

His body was draped in a black shawl, and his head was bandaged in white

muslin, like a mummy’s; one of his long, shapely hands lay out on the

black cloth; that was all one could see of him.

Mrs. Shimerda came out and placed an open prayer-book against the body,

making the sign of the cross on the bandaged head with her fingers.

Ambrosch knelt down and made the same gesture, and after him Ántonia and

Marek. Yulka hung back. Her mother pushed her forward, and kept saying

something to her over and over. Yulka knelt down, shut her eyes, and put

out her hand a little way, but she drew it back and began to cry wildly.

She was afraid to touch the bandage. Mrs. Shimerda caught her by the

shoulders and pushed her toward the coffin, but grandmother interfered.

“No, Mrs. Shimerda,” she said firmly, “I won’t stand by and see that child

frightened into spasms. She is too little to understand what you want of

her. Let her alone.”

At a look from grandfather, Fuchs and Jelinek placed the lid on the box,

and began to nail it down over Mr. Shimerda. I was afraid to look at

Ántonia. She put her arms round Yulka and held the little girl close to

her.

The coffin was put into the wagon. We drove slowly away, against the fine,

icy snow which cut our faces like a sand-blast. When we reached the grave,

it looked a very little spot in that snow-covered waste. The men took the

coffin to the edge of the hole and lowered it with ropes. We stood about

watching them, and the powdery snow lay without melting on the caps and

shoulders of the men and the shawls of the women. Jelinek spoke in a

persuasive tone to Mrs. Shimerda, and then turned to grandfather.

“She says, Mr. Burden, she is very glad if you can make some prayer for

him here in English, for the neighbors to understand.”

Grandmother looked anxiously at grandfather. He took off his hat, and the

other men did likewise. I thought his prayer remarkable. I still remember

it. He began, “Oh, great and just God, no man among us knows what the

sleeper knows, nor is it for us to judge what lies between him and Thee.”

He prayed that if any man there had been remiss toward the stranger come

to a far country, God would forgive him and soften his heart. He recalled

the promises to the widow and the fatherless, and asked God to smooth the

way before this widow and her children, and to “incline the hearts of men

to deal justly with her.” In closing, he said we were leaving Mr. Shimerda

at “Thy judgment seat, which is also Thy mercy seat.”

All the time he was praying, grandmother watched him through the black

fingers of her glove, and when he said “Amen,” I thought she looked

satisfied with him. She turned to Otto and whispered, “Can’t you start a

hymn, Fuchs? It would seem less heathenish.”

Fuchs glanced about to see if there was general approval of her

suggestion, then began, “Jesus, Lover of my Soul,” and all the men and

women took it up after him. Whenever I have heard the hymn since, it has

made me remember that white waste and the little group of people; and the

bluish air, full of fine, eddying snow, like long veils flying:—

“While the nearer waters roll,

While the tempest still is high.”

Years afterward, when the open-grazing days were over, and the red grass

had been ploughed under and under until it had almost disappeared from the

prairie; when all the fields were under fence, and the roads no longer ran

about like wild things, but followed the surveyed section-lines, Mr.

Shimerda’s grave was still there, with a sagging wire fence around it, and

an unpainted wooden cross. As grandfather had predicted, Mrs. Shimerda

never saw the roads going over his head. The road from the north curved a

little to the east just there, and the road from the west swung out a

little to the south; so that the grave, with its tall red grass that was

never mowed, was like a little island; and at twilight, under a new moon

or the clear evening star, the dusty roads used to look like soft gray

rivers flowing past it. I never came upon the place without emotion, and

in all that country it was the spot most dear to me. I loved the dim

superstition, the propitiatory intent, that had put the grave there; and

still more I loved the spirit that could not carry out the sentence—the

error from the surveyed lines, the clemency of the soft earth roads along

which the home-coming wagons rattled after sunset. Never a tired driver

passed the wooden cross, I am sure, without wishing well to the sleeper.

XVII

WHEN spring came, after that hard winter, one could not get enough of the

nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter

was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch

in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only—spring

itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it

everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in

the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and

playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If

I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known

that it was spring.

Everywhere now there was the smell of burning grass. Our neighbors burned

off their pasture before the new grass made a start, so that the fresh

growth would not be mixed with the dead stand of last year. Those light,

swift fires, running about the country, seemed a part of the same kindling

that was in the air.

The Shimerdas were in their new log house by then. The neighbors had

helped them to build it in March. It stood directly in front of their old

cave, which they used as a cellar. The family were now fairly equipped to

begin their struggle with the soil. They had four comfortable rooms to

live in, a new windmill,—bought on credit,—a chicken-house and poultry.

Mrs. Shimerda had paid grandfather ten dollars for a milk cow, and was to

give him fifteen more as soon as they harvested their first crop.

When I rode up to the Shimerdas’ one bright windy afternoon in April,

Yulka ran out to meet me. It was to her, now, that I gave reading lessons;

Ántonia was busy with other things. I tied my pony and went into the

kitchen where Mrs. Shimerda was baking bread, chewing poppy seeds as she

worked. By this time she could speak enough English to ask me a great many

questions about what our men were doing in the fields. She seemed to think

that my elders withheld helpful information, and that from me she might

get valuable secrets. On this occasion she asked me very craftily when

grandfather expected to begin planting corn. I told her, adding that he

thought we should have a dry spring and that the corn would not be held

back by too much rain, as it had been last year.

She gave me a shrewd glance. “He not Jesus,” she blustered; “he not know

about the wet and the dry.”

I did not answer her; what was the use? As I sat waiting for the hour when

Ambrosch and Ántonia would return from the fields, I watched Mrs. Shimerda

at her work. She took from the oven a coffee-cake which she wanted to keep

warm for supper, and wrapped it in a quilt stuffed with feathers. I have

seen her put even a roast goose in this quilt to keep it hot. When the

neighbors were there building the new house they saw her do this, and the

story got abroad that the Shimerdas kept their food in their feather beds.

When the sun was dropping low, Ántonia came up the big south draw with her

team. How much older she had grown in eight months! She had come to us a

child, and now she was a tall, strong young girl, although her fifteenth

birthday had just slipped by. I ran out and met her as she brought her

horses up to the windmill to water them. She wore the boots her father had

so thoughtfully taken off before he shot himself, and his old fur cap. Her

outgrown cotton dress switched about her calves, over the boot-tops. She

kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as

brown as a sailor’s. Her neck came up strongly out of her shoulders, like

the bole of a tree out of the turf. One sees that draft-horse neck among

the peasant women in all old countries.

She greeted me gayly, and began at once to tell me how much ploughing she

had done that day. Ambrosch, she said, was on the north quarter, breaking

sod with the oxen.

“Jim, you ask Jake how much he ploughed to-day. I don’t want that Jake get

more done in one day than me. I want we have very much corn this fall.”

While the horses drew in the water, and nosed each other, and then drank

again, Ántonia sat down on the windmill step and rested her head on her

hand. “You see the big prairie fire from your place last night? I hope

your grandpa ain’t lose no stacks?”

“No, we did n’t. I came to ask you something, Tony. Grandmother wants to

know if you can’t go to the term of school that begins next week over at

the sod schoolhouse. She says there’s a good teacher, and you’d learn a

lot.”

Ántonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if they were

stiff. “I ain’t got time to learn. I can work like mans now. My mother

can’t say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him. I can work

as much as him. School is all right for little boys. I help make this land

one good farm.”

She clucked to her team and started for the barn. I walked beside her,

feeling vexed. Was she going to grow up boastful like her mother, I

wondered? Before we reached the stable, I felt something tense in her

silence, and glancing up I saw that she was crying. She turned her face

from me and looked off at the red streak of dying light, over the dark

prairie.

I climbed up into the loft and threw down the hay for her, while she

unharnessed her team. We walked slowly back toward the house. Ambrosch had

come in from the north quarter, and was watering his oxen at the tank.

Ántonia took my hand. “Sometime you will tell me all those nice things you

learn at the school, won’t you, Jimmy?” she asked with a sudden rush of

feeling in her voice. “My father, he went much to school. He know a great

deal; how to make the fine cloth like what you not got here. He play horn

and violin, and he read so many books that the priests in Bohemie come to

talk to him. You won’t forget my father, Jim?”

“No,” I said, “I will never forget him.”

Mrs. Shimerda asked me to stay for supper. After Ambrosch and Ántonia had

washed the field dust from their hands and faces at the wash-basin by the

kitchen door, we sat down at the oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Shimerda

ladled meal mush out of an iron pot and poured milk on it. After the mush

we had fresh bread and sorghum molasses, and coffee with the cake that had

been kept warm in the feathers. Ántonia and Ambrosch were talking in

Bohemian; disputing about which of them had done more ploughing that day.

Mrs. Shimerda egged them on, chuckling while she gobbled her food.

[Illustration: Ántonia ploughing in the field]

Presently Ambrosch said sullenly in English: “You take them ox to-morrow

and try the sod plough. Then you not be so smart.”

His sister laughed. “Don’t be mad. I know it’s awful hard work for break

sod. I milk the cow for you to-morrow, if you want.”

Mrs. Shimerda turned quickly to me. “That cow not give so much milk like

what your grandpa say. If he make talk about fifteen dollars, I send him

back the cow.”

“He does n’t talk about the fifteen dollars,” I exclaimed indignantly. “He

does n’t find fault with people.”

“He say I break his saw when we build, and I never,” grumbled Ambrosch.

I knew he had broken the saw, and then hid it and lied about it. I began

to wish I had not stayed for supper. Everything was disagreeable to me.

Ántonia ate so noisily now, like a man, and she yawned often at the table

and kept stretching her arms over her head, as if they ached. Grandmother

had said, “Heavy field work’ll spoil that girl. She’ll lose all her nice

ways and get rough ones.” She had lost them already.

After supper I rode home through the sad, soft spring twilight. Since

winter I had seen very little of Ántonia. She was out in the fields from

sun-up until sun-down. If I rode over to see her where she was ploughing,

she stopped at the end of a row to chat for a moment, then gripped her

plough-handles, clucked to her team, and waded on down the furrow, making

me feel that she was now grown up and had no time for me. On Sundays she

helped her mother make garden or sewed all day. Grandfather was pleased

with Ántonia. When we complained of her, he only smiled and said, “She

will help some fellow get ahead in the world.”

Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or how much

she could lift and endure. She was too proud of her strength. I knew, too,

that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a girl ought not to do, and that

the farmhands around the country joked in a nasty way about it. Whenever I

saw her come up the furrow, shouting to her beasts, sunburned, sweaty, her

dress open at the neck, and her throat and chest dust-plastered, I used to

think of the tone in which poor Mr. Shimerda, who could say so little, yet

managed to say so much when he exclaimed, “My Án-tonia!”

XVIII

AFTER I began to go to the country school, I saw less of the Bohemians. We

were sixteen pupils at the sod schoolhouse, and we all came on horseback

and brought our dinner. My schoolmates were none of them very interesting,

but I somehow felt that by making comrades of them I was getting even with

Ántonia for her indifference. Since the father’s death, Ambrosch was more

than ever the head of the house and he seemed to direct the feelings as

well as the fortunes of his women-folk. Ántonia often quoted his opinions

to me, and she let me see that she admired him, while she thought of me

only as a little boy. Before the spring was over, there was a distinct

coldness between us and the Shimerdas. It came about in this way.

One Sunday I rode over there with Jake to get a horse-collar which

Ambrosch had borrowed from him and had not returned. It was a beautiful

blue morning. The buffalo-peas were blooming in pink and purple masses

along the roadside, and the larks, perched on last year’s dried sunflower

stalks, were singing straight at the sun, their heads thrown back and

their yellow breasts a-quiver. The wind blew about us in warm, sweet

gusts. We rode slowly, with a pleasant sense of Sunday indolence.

We found the Shimerdas working just as if it were a week-day. Marek was

cleaning out the stable, and Ántonia and her mother were making garden,

off across the pond in the draw-head. Ambrosch was up on the windmill

tower, oiling the wheel. He came down, not very cordially. When Jake asked

for the collar, he grunted and scratched his head. The collar belonged to

grandfather, of course, and Jake, feeling responsible for it, flared up.

“Now, don’t you say you have n’t got it, Ambrosch, because I know you

have, and if you ain’t a-going to look for it, I will.”

Ambrosch shrugged his shoulders and sauntered down the hill toward the

stable. I could see that it was one of his mean days. Presently he

returned, carrying a collar that had been badly used—trampled in the dirt

and gnawed by rats until the hair was sticking out of it.

“This what you want?” he asked surlily.

Jake jumped off his horse. I saw a wave of red come up under the rough

stubble on his face. “That ain’t the piece of harness I loaned you,

Ambrosch; or if it is, you’ve used it shameful. I ain’t a-going to carry

such a looking thing back to Mr. Burden.”

Ambrosch dropped the collar on the ground. “All right,” he said coolly,

took up his oil-can, and began to climb the mill. Jake caught him by the

belt of his trousers and yanked him back. Ambrosch’s feet had scarcely

touched the ground when he lunged out with a vicious kick at Jake’s

stomach. Fortunately Jake was in such a position that he could dodge it.

This was not the sort of thing country boys did when they played at

fisticuffs, and Jake was furious. He landed Ambrosch a blow on the head—it

sounded like the crack of an axe on a cow-pumpkin. Ambrosch dropped over,

stunned.

We heard squeals, and looking up saw Ántonia and her mother coming on the

run. They did not take the path around the pond, but plunged through the

muddy water, without even lifting their skirts. They came on, screaming

and clawing the air. By this time Ambrosch had come to his senses and was

sputtering with nose-bleed. Jake sprang into his saddle. “Let’s get out of

this, Jim,” he called.

Mrs. Shimerda threw her hands over her head and clutched as if she were

going to pull down lightning. “Law, law!” she shrieked after us. “Law for

knock my Ambrosch down!”

“I never like you no more, Jake and Jim Burden,” Ántonia panted. “No

friends any more!”

Jake stopped and turned his horse for a second. “Well, you’re a damned

ungrateful lot, the whole pack of you,” he shouted back. “I guess the

Burdens can get along without you. You’ve been a sight of trouble to them,

anyhow!”

We rode away, feeling so outraged that the fine morning was spoiled for

us. I had n’t a word to say, and poor Jake was white as paper and

trembling all over. It made him sick to get so angry. “They ain’t the

same, Jimmy,” he kept saying in a hurt tone. “These foreigners ain’t the

same. You can’t trust ’em to be fair. It’s dirty to kick a feller. You

heard how the women turned on you—and after all we went through on account

of ’em last winter! They ain’t to be trusted. I don’t want to see you get

too thick with any of ’em.”

“I’ll never be friends with them again, Jake,” I declared hotly. “I

believe they are all like Krajiek and Ambrosch underneath.”

Grandfather heard our story with a twinkle in his eye. He advised Jake to

ride to town to-morrow, go to a justice of the peace, tell him he had

knocked young Shimerda down, and pay his fine. Then if Mrs. Shimerda was

inclined to make trouble—her son was still under age—she would be

forestalled. Jake said he might as well take the wagon and haul to market

the pig he had been fattening. On Monday, about an hour after Jake had

started, we saw Mrs. Shimerda and her Ambrosch proudly driving by, looking

neither to the right nor left. As they rattled out of sight down the Black

Hawk road, grandfather chuckled, saying he had rather expected she would

follow the matter up.

Jake paid his fine with a ten-dollar bill grandfather had given him for

that purpose. But when the Shimerdas found that Jake sold his pig in town

that day, Ambrosch worked it out in his shrewd head that Jake had to sell

his pig to pay his fine. This theory afforded the Shimerdas great

satisfaction, apparently. For weeks afterward, whenever Jake and I met

Ántonia on her way to the post-office, or going along the road with her

work-team, she would clap her hands and call to us in a spiteful, crowing

voice:—

“Jake-y, Jake-y, sell the pig and pay the slap!”

Otto pretended not to be surprised at Ántonia’s behavior. He only lifted

his brows and said, “You can’t tell me anything new about a Czech; I’m an

Austrian.”

Grandfather was never a party to what Jake called our feud with the

Shimerdas. Ambrosch and Ántonia always greeted him respectfully, and he

asked them about their affairs and gave them advice as usual. He thought

the future looked hopeful for them. Ambrosch was a far-seeing fellow; he

soon realized that his oxen were too heavy for any work except breaking

sod, and he succeeded in selling them to a newly arrived German. With the

money he bought another team of horses, which grandfather selected for

him. Marek was strong, and Ambrosch worked him hard; but he could never

teach him to cultivate corn, I remember. The one idea that had ever got

through poor Marek’s thick head was that all exertion was meritorious. He

always bore down on the handles of the cultivator and drove the blades so

deep into the earth that the horses were soon exhausted.

In June Ambrosch went to work at Mr. Bushy’s for a week, and took Marek

with him at full wages. Mrs. Shimerda then drove the second cultivator;

she and Ántonia worked in the fields all day and did the chores at night.

While the two women were running the place alone, one of the new horses

got colic and gave them a terrible fright.

Ántonia had gone down to the barn one night to see that all was well

before she went to bed, and she noticed that one of the roans was swollen

about the middle and stood with its head hanging. She mounted another

horse, without waiting to saddle him, and hammered on our door just as we

were going to bed. Grandfather answered her knock. He did not send one of

his men, but rode back with her himself, taking a syringe and an old piece

of carpet he kept for hot applications when our horses were sick. He found

Mrs. Shimerda sitting by the horse with her lantern, groaning and wringing

her hands. It took but a few moments to release the gases pent up in the

poor beast, and the two women heard the rush of wind and saw the roan

visibly diminish in girth.

“If I lose that horse, Mr. Burden,” Ántonia exclaimed, “I never stay here

till Ambrosch come home! I go drown myself in the pond before morning.”

When Ambrosch came back from Mr. Bushy’s, we learned that he had given

Marek’s wages to the priest at Black Hawk, for masses for their father’s

soul. Grandmother thought Ántonia needed shoes more than Mr. Shimerda

needed prayers, but grandfather said tolerantly, “If he can spare six

dollars, pinched as he is, it shows he believes what he professes.”

It was grandfather who brought about a reconciliation with the Shimerdas.

One morning he told us that the small grain was coming on so well, he

thought he would begin to cut his wheat on the first of July. He would

need more men, and if it were agreeable to every one he would engage

Ambrosch for the reaping and thrashing, as the Shimerdas had no small

grain of their own.

“I think, Emmaline,” he concluded, “I will ask Ántonia to come over and

help you in the kitchen. She will be glad to earn something, and it will

be a good time to end misunderstandings. I may as well ride over this

morning and make arrangements. Do you want to go with me, Jim?” His tone

told me that he had already decided for me.

After breakfast we set off together. When Mrs. Shimerda saw us coming, she

ran from her door down into the draw behind the stable, as if she did not

want to meet us. Grandfather smiled to himself while he tied his horse,

and we followed her.

Behind the barn we came upon a funny sight. The cow had evidently been

grazing somewhere in the draw. Mrs. Shimerda had run to the animal, pulled

up the lariat pin, and, when we came upon her, she was trying to hide the

cow in an old cave in the bank. As the hole was narrow and dark, the cow

held back, and the old woman was slapping and pushing at her hind

quarters, trying to spank her into the draw-side.

Grandfather ignored her singular occupation and greeted her politely.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Shimerda. Can you tell me where I will find Ambrosch?

Which field?”

“He with the sod corn.” She pointed toward the north, still standing in

front of the cow as if she hoped to conceal it.

“His sod corn will be good for fodder this winter,” said grandfather

encouragingly. “And where is Ántonia?”

“She go with.” Mrs. Shimerda kept wiggling her bare feet about nervously

in the dust.

“Very well. I will ride up there. I want them to come over and help me cut

my oats and wheat next month. I will pay them wages. Good-morning. By the

way, Mrs. Shimerda,” he said as he turned up the path, “I think we may as

well call it square about the cow.”

She started and clutched the rope tighter. Seeing that she did not

understand, grandfather turned back. “You need not pay me anything more;

no more money. The cow is yours.”

“Pay no more, keep cow?” she asked in a bewildered tone, her narrow eyes

snapping at us in the sunlight.

“Exactly. Pay no more, keep cow.” He nodded.

Mrs. Shimerda dropped the rope, ran after us, and crouching down beside

grandfather, she took his hand and kissed it. I doubt if he had ever been

so much embarrassed before. I was a little startled, too. Somehow, that

seemed to bring the Old World very close.

We rode away laughing, and grandfather said: “I expect she thought we had

come to take the cow away for certain, Jim. I wonder if she would n’t have

scratched a little if we’d laid hold of that lariat rope!”

Our neighbors seemed glad to make peace with us. The next Sunday Mrs.

Shimerda came over and brought Jake a pair of socks she had knitted. She

presented them with an air of great magnanimity, saying, “Now you not come

any more for knock my Ambrosch down?”

Jake laughed sheepishly. “I don’t want to have no trouble with Ambrosch.

If he’ll let me alone, I’ll let him alone.”

“If he slap you, we ain’t got no pig for pay the fine,” she said

insinuatingly.

Jake was not at all disconcerted. “Have the last word, mam,” he said

cheerfully. “It’s a lady’s privilege.”

XIX

JULY came on with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the plains

of Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It seemed as if

we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars one caught a

faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odored cornfields where the feathered

stalks stood so juicy and green. If all the great plain from the Missouri

to the Rocky Mountains had been under glass, and the heat regulated by a

thermometer, it could not have been better for the yellow tassels that

were ripening and fertilizing each other day by day. The cornfields were

far apart in those times, with miles of wild grazing land between. It took

a clear, meditative eye like my grandfather’s to foresee that they would

enlarge and multiply until they would be, not the Shimerdas’ cornfields,

or Mr. Bushy’s, but the world’s cornfields; that their yield would be one

of the great economic facts, like the wheat crop of Russia, which underlie

all the activities of men, in peace or war.

The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional rains at night,

secured the corn. After the milky ears were once formed, we had little to

fear from dry weather. The men were working so hard in the wheatfields

that they did not notice the heat,—though I was kept busy carrying water

for them,—and grandmother and Ántonia had so much to do in the kitchen

that they could not have told whether one day was hotter than another.

Each morning, while the dew was still on the grass, Ántonia went with me

up to the garden to get early vegetables for dinner. Grandmother made her

wear a sunbonnet, but as soon as we reached the garden she threw it on the

grass and let her hair fly in the breeze. I remember how, as we bent over

the pea-vines, beads of perspiration used to gather on her upper lip like

a little mustache.

“Oh, better I like to work out of doors than in a house!” she used to sing

joyfully. “I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a man. I

like to be like a man.” She would toss her head and ask me to feel the

muscles swell in her brown arm.

We were glad to have her in the house. She was so gay and responsive that

one did not mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way with pans.

Grandmother was in high spirits during the weeks that Ántonia worked for

us.

[Illustration: Jim and Ántonia in the garden]

All the nights were close and hot during that harvest season. The

harvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there than in the

house. I used to lie in my bed by the open window, watching the heat

lightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up at the gaunt frame

of the windmill against the blue night sky. One night there was a

beautiful electric storm, though not enough rain fell to damage the cut

grain. The men went down to the barn immediately after supper, and when

the dishes were washed Ántonia and I climbed up on the slanting roof of

the chicken-house to watch the clouds. The thunder was loud and metallic,

like the rattle of sheet iron, and the lightning broke in great zigzags

across the heavens, making everything stand out and come close to us for a

moment. Half the sky was checkered with black thunderheads, but all the

west was luminous and clear: in the lightning-flashes it looked like deep

blue water, with the sheen of moonlight on it; and the mottled part of the

sky was like marble pavement, like the quay of some splendid sea-coast

city, doomed to destruction. Great warm splashes of rain fell on our

upturned faces. One black cloud, no bigger than a little boat, drifted out

into the clear space unattended, and kept moving westward. All about us we

could hear the felty beat of the raindrops on the soft dust of the

farmyard. Grandmother came to the door and said it was late, and we would

get wet out there.

“In a minute we come,” Ántonia called back to her. “I like your

grandmother, and all things here,” she sighed. “I wish my papa live to see

this summer. I wish no winter ever come again.”

“It will be summer a long while yet,” I reassured her. “Why are n’t you

always nice like this, Tony?”

“How nice?”

“Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be

like Ambrosch?”

She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. “If I

live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But

they will be hard for us.”