BOOK I. The Shimerdas

I

I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey

across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten years old

then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my

Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in

Nebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one

of the ‘hands’ on my father’s old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was

now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake’s experience of the

world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway

train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in

a new world.

We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with

each stage of the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys offered

him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch-charm, and for me a

‘Life of Jesse James,’ which I remember as one of the most satisfactory

books I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of

a friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to which

we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our

confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had been

almost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the names

of distant states and cities. He wore the rings and pins and badges of

different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff-buttons

were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an

Egyptian obelisk.

Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car

ahead there was a family from ‘across the water’ whose destination was

the same as ours.

‘They can’t any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all

she can say is “We go Black Hawk, Nebraska.” She’s not much older than

you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she’s as bright as a new dollar.

Don’t you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She’s got the pretty

brown eyes, too!’

This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down

to ‘Jesse James.’ Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were

likely to get diseases from foreigners.

I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the

long day’s journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had

crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The only thing very

noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long,

Nebraska.

I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat, for a long while

when we reached Black Hawk. Jake roused me and took me by the hand. We

stumbled down from the train to a wooden siding, where men were running

about with lanterns. I couldn’t see any town, or even distant lights;

we were surrounded by utter darkness. The engine was panting heavily

after its long run. In the red glow from the fire-box, a group of

people stood huddled together on the platform, encumbered by bundles

and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had

told us about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and

she carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a

baby. There was an old man, tall and stooped. Two half-grown boys and a

girl stood holding oilcloth bundles, and a little girl clung to her

mother’s skirts. Presently a man with a lantern approached them and

began to talk, shouting and exclaiming. I pricked up my ears, for it

was positively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue.

Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called out: ‘Hello, are

you Mr. Burden’s folks? If you are, it’s me you’re looking for. I’m

Otto Fuchs. I’m Mr. Burden’s hired man, and I’m to drive you out.

Hello, Jimmy, ain’t you scared to come so far west?’

I looked up with interest at the new face in the lantern-light. He

might have stepped out of the pages of ‘Jesse James.’ He wore a

sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a bright buckle, and the

ends of his moustache were twisted up stiffly, like little horns. He

looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history. A

long scar ran across one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up in a

sinister curl. The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown

as an Indian’s. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked

about the platform in his high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I

saw that he was a rather slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his

feet. He told us we had a long night drive ahead of us, and had better

be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm-wagons were

tied, and I saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other

was for us. Jake got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on

the straw in the bottom of the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo

hide. The immigrants rumbled off into the empty darkness, and we

followed them.

I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and I

soon began to ache all over. When the straw settled down, I had a hard

bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my

knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing

to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was

a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was

nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which

countries are made. No, there was nothing but land—slightly undulating,

I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went

down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the

feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge

of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction. I had never before looked

up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it.

But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did

not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up

there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the

creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had

left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I

knew not whither. I don’t think I was homesick. If we never arrived

anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt

erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt,

what would be would be.

II

I do not remember our arrival at my grandfather’s farm sometime before

daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses.

When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcely

larger than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head was

flapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin

and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be my

grandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my

eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my

bed.

‘Had a good sleep, Jimmy?’ she asked briskly. Then in a very different

tone she said, as if to herself, ‘My, how you do look like your

father!’ I remembered that my father had been her little boy; she must

often have come to wake him like this when he overslept. ‘Here are your

clean clothes,’ she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand

as she talked. ‘But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and

have a nice warm bath behind the stove. Bring your things; there’s

nobody about.’

‘Down to the kitchen’ struck me as curious; it was always ‘out in the

kitchen’ at home. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her

through the living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement.

This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs

and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and

whitewashed—the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used

to be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden

ceiling there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots of

geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the

kitchen, I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove

was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a

long wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which

grandmother poured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap and

towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help. ‘Can

you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right

smart little boy.’

It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water

through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed

himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my

grandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously,

‘Grandmother, I’m afraid the cakes are burning!’ Then she came

laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens.

She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry

her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were

looking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew

older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often

thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and

energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill,

and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly

desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her

laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a

lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong

woman, of unusual endurance.

After I was dressed, I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It

was dug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented,

with a stairway and an outside door by which the men came and went.

Under one of the windows there was a place for them to wash when they

came in from work.

While my grandmother was busy about supper, I settled myself on the

wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat—he caught

not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of yellow

sunlight on the floor travelled back toward the stairway, and

grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of the

new Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbours.

We did not talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for

so many years. But after the men came in from the fields, and we were

all seated at the supper table, then she asked Jake about the old place

and about our friends and neighbours there.

My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and

spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once his

deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him.

The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly,

snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard

of an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.

Grandfather’s eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were

bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white and

regular—so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He

had a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a

young man his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.

As we sat at the table, Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances

at each other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper

that he was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had

led an adventurous life in the Far West among mining-camps and cow

outfits. His iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain

pneumonia, and he had drifted back to live in a milder country for a

while. He had relatives in Bismarck, a German settlement to the north

of us, but for a year now he had been working for grandfather.

The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to

me about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale;

he had been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but

he was a ‘perfect gentleman,’ and his name was Dude. Fuchs told me

everything I wanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyoming

blizzard when he was a stage-driver, and how to throw a lasso. He

promised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got out his

‘chaps’ and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his best

cowboy boots, with tops stitched in bold design—roses, and true-lover’s

knots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were

angels.

Before we went to bed, Jake and Otto were called up to the living-room

for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read

several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so

interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favourite chapters

in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word ‘Selah.’

‘He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom

He loved. Selah.’ I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had

not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of

words.

Early the next morning I ran out-of-doors to look about me. I had been

told that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk—until you

came to the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Our

neighbours lived in sod houses and dugouts—comfortable, but not very

roomy. Our white frame house, with a storey and half-storey above the

basement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, with

the windmill close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the ground

sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig-yards. This

slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by

the rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was

a muddy little pond, with rusty willow bushes growing about it. The

road from the post-office came directly by our door, crossed the

farmyard, and curved round this little pond, beyond which it began to

climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west. There, along

the western sky-line it skirted a great cornfield, much larger than any

field I had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghum patch behind the

barn, were the only broken land in sight. Everywhere, as far as the eye

could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it

as tall as I.

North of the house, inside the ploughed fire-breaks, grew a thick-set

strip of box-elder trees, low and bushy, their leaves already turning

yellow. This hedge was nearly a quarter of a mile long, but I had to

look very hard to see it at all. The little trees were insignificant

against the grass. It seemed as if the grass were about to run over

them, and over the plum-patch behind the sod chicken-house.

As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the

water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the

colour of winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed

up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed,

somehow, to be running.

I had almost forgotten that I had a grandmother, when she came out, her

sunbonnet on her head, a grain-sack in her hand, and asked me if I did

not want to go to the garden with her to dig potatoes for dinner.

The garden, curiously enough, was a quarter of a mile from the house,

and the way to it led up a shallow draw past the cattle corral.

Grandmother called my attention to a stout hickory cane, tipped with

copper, which hung by a leather thong from her belt. This, she said,

was her rattlesnake cane. I must never go to the garden without a heavy

stick or a corn-knife; she had killed a good many rattlers on her way

back and forth. A little girl who lived on the Black Hawk road was

bitten on the ankle and had been sick all summer.

I can remember exactly how the country looked to me as I walked beside

my grandmother along the faint wagon-tracks on that early September

morning. Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me,

for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the

fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the

shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild

buffalo were galloping, galloping...

Alone, I should never have found the garden—except, perhaps, for the

big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering

vines—and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted

to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the

world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me

that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left,

and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and

one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over

our heads making slow shadows on the grass. While grandmother took the

pitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while

I picked them up out of the soft brown earth and put them into the bag,

I kept looking up at the hawks that were doing what I might so easily

do.

When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up there

in the garden awhile.

She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. ‘Aren’t you afraid of

snakes?’

‘A little,’ I admitted, ‘but I’d like to stay, anyhow.’

‘Well, if you see one, don’t have anything to do with him. The big

yellow and brown ones won’t hurt you; they’re bull-snakes and help to

keep the gophers down. Don’t be scared if you see anything look out of

that hole in the bank over there. That’s a badger hole. He’s about as

big as a big ‘possum, and his face is striped, black and white. He

takes a chicken once in a while, but I won’t let the men harm him. In a

new country a body feels friendly to the animals. I like to have him

come out and watch me when I’m at work.’

Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went down

the path, leaning forward a little. The road followed the windings of

the draw; when she came to the first bend, she waved at me and

disappeared. I was left alone with this new feeling of lightness and

content.

I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely

approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin.

There were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of

fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the

berries and ate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as

any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines.

The gophers scurried up and down the ploughed ground. There in the

sheltered draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear

it singing its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall

grasses wave. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it

through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow

squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black

spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect

anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it,

like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was

entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part

of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and

knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into

something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as

naturally as sleep.

III

On Sunday morning Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the

acquaintance of our new Bohemian neighbours. We were taking them some

provisions, as they had come to live on a wild place where there was no

garden or chicken-house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up

a sack of potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and

grandmother packed some loaves of Saturday’s bread, a jar of butter,

and several pumpkin pies in the straw of the wagon-box. We clambered up

to the front seat and jolted off past the little pond and along the

road that climbed to the big cornfield.

I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but there

was only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the high

wagon-seat one could look off a long way. The road ran about like a

wild thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide

and shallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the

sunflowers grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great

rough leaves and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made

a gold ribbon across the prairie. Occasionally one of the horses would

tear off with his teeth a plant full of blossoms, and walk along

munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his bites as he ate down

toward them.

The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought

the homestead of a fellow countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid him

more than it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before they

left the old country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relative

of Mrs. Shimerda. The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come

to this part of the county. Krajiek was their only interpreter, and

could tell them anything he chose. They could not speak enough English

to ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known. One

son, Fuchs said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land;

but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was

a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and

upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which

wouldn’t be of much use here, though he used to pick up money by it at

home.

‘If they’re nice people, I hate to think of them spending the winter in

that cave of Krajiek’s,’ said grandmother. ‘It’s no better than a

badger hole; no proper dugout at all. And I hear he’s made them pay

twenty dollars for his old cookstove that ain’t worth ten.’

‘Yes’m,’ said Otto; ‘and he’s sold ‘em his oxen and his two bony old

horses for the price of good workteams. I’d have interfered about the

horses—the old man can understand some German—if I’d I a’ thought it

would do any good. But Bohemians has a natural distrust of Austrians.’

Grandmother looked interested. ‘Now, why is that, Otto?’

Fuchs wrinkled his brow and nose. ‘Well, ma’m, it’s politics. It would

take me a long while to explain.’

The land was growing rougher; I was told that we were approaching Squaw

Creek, which cut up the west half of the Shimerdas’ place and made the

land of little value for farming. Soon we could see the broken, grassy

clay cliffs which indicated the windings of the stream, and the

glittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that grew down in the

ravine. Some of the cottonwoods had already turned, and the yellow

leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver

trees in fairy tales.

As we approached the Shimerdas’ dwelling, I could still see nothing but

rough red hillocks, and draws with shelving banks and long roots

hanging out where the earth had crumbled away. Presently, against one

of those banks, I saw a sort of shed, thatched with the same

wine-coloured grass that grew everywhere. Near it tilted a shattered

windmill frame, that had no wheel. We drove up to this skeleton to tie

our horses, and then I saw a door and window sunk deep in the drawbank.

The door stood open, and a woman and a girl of fourteen ran out and

looked up at us hopefully. A little girl trailed along behind them. The

woman had on her head the same embroidered shawl with silk fringes that

she wore when she had alighted from the train at Black Hawk. She was

not old, but she was certainly not young. Her face was alert and

lively, with a sharp chin and shrewd little eyes. She shook

grandmother’s hand energetically.

‘Very glad, very glad!’ she ejaculated. Immediately she pointed to the

bank out of which she had emerged and said, ‘House no good, house no

good!’

Grandmother nodded consolingly. ‘You’ll get fixed up comfortable after

while, Mrs. Shimerda; make good house.’

My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone to foreigners, as if

they were deaf. She made Mrs. Shimerda understand the friendly

intention of our visit, and the Bohemian woman handled the loaves of

bread and even smelled them, and examined the pies with lively

curiosity, exclaiming, ‘Much good, much thank!’—and again she wrung

grandmother’s hand.

The oldest son, Ambroz—they called it Ambrosch—came out of the cave and

stood beside his mother. He was nineteen years old, short and

broad-backed, with a close-cropped, flat head, and a wide, flat face.

His hazel eyes were little and shrewd, like his mother’s, but more sly

and suspicious; they fairly snapped at the food. The family had been

living on corncakes and sorghum molasses for three days.

The little girl was pretty, but Ántonia—they accented the name thus,

strongly, when they spoke to her—was still prettier. I remembered what

the conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and full

of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood. Her skin was

brown, too, and in her cheeks she had a glow of rich, dark colour. Her

brown hair was curly and wild-looking. The little sister, whom they

called Yulka (Julka), was fair, and seemed mild and obedient. While I

stood awkwardly confronting the two girls, Krajiek came up from the

barn to see what was going on. With him was another Shimerda son. Even

from a distance one could see that there was something strange about

this boy. As he approached us, he began to make uncouth noises, and

held up his hands to show us his fingers, which were webbed to the

first knuckle, like a duck’s foot. When he saw me draw back, he began

to crow delightedly, ‘Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo!’ like a rooster. His

mother scowled and said sternly, ‘Marek!’ then spoke rapidly to Krajiek

in Bohemian.

‘She wants me to tell you he won’t hurt nobody, Mrs. Burden. He was

born like that. The others are smart. Ambrosch, he make good farmer.’

He struck Ambrosch on the back, and the boy smiled knowingly.

At that moment the father came out of the hole in the bank. He wore no

hat, and his thick, iron-grey hair was brushed straight back from his

forehead. It was so long that it bushed out behind his ears, and made

him look like the old portraits I remembered in Virginia. He was tall

and slender, and his thin shoulders stooped. He looked at us

understandingly, then took grandmother’s hand and bent over it. I

noticed how white and well-shaped his own hands were. They looked calm,

somehow, and skilled. His eyes were melancholy, and were set back deep

under his brow. His face was ruggedly formed, but it looked like

ashes—like something from which all the warmth and light had died out.

Everything about this old man was in keeping with his dignified manner.

He was neatly dressed. Under his coat he wore a knitted grey vest, and,

instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefully

crossed and held together by a red coral pin. While Krajiek was

translating for Mr. Shimerda, Ántonia came up to me and held out her

hand coaxingly. In a moment we were running up the steep drawside

together, Yulka trotting after us.

When we reached the level and could see the gold tree-tops, I pointed

toward them, and Ántonia laughed and squeezed my hand as if to tell me

how glad she was I had come. We raced off toward Squaw Creek and did

not stop until the ground itself stopped—fell away before us so

abruptly that the next step would have been out into the tree-tops. We

stood panting on the edge of the ravine, looking down at the trees and

bushes that grew below us. The wind was so strong that I had to hold my

hat on, and the girls’ skirts were blown out before them. Ántonia

seemed to like it; she held her little sister by the hand and chattered

away in that language which seemed to me spoken so much more rapidly

than mine. She looked at me, her eyes fairly blazing with things she

could not say.

‘Name? What name?’ she asked, touching me on the shoulder. I told her

my name, and she repeated it after me and made Yulka say it. She

pointed into the gold cottonwood tree behind whose top we stood and

said again, ‘What name?’

We sat down and made a nest in the long red grass. Yulka curled up like

a baby rabbit and played with a grasshopper. Ántonia pointed up to the

sky and questioned me with her glance. I gave her the word, but she was

not satisfied and pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated the

word, making it sound like ‘ice.’ She pointed up to the sky, then to my

eyes, then back to the sky, with movements so quick and impulsive that

she distracted me, and I had no idea what she wanted. She got up on her

knees and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook her

head, then to mine and to the sky, nodding violently.

‘Oh,’ I exclaimed, ‘blue; blue sky.’

She clapped her hands and murmured, ‘Blue sky, blue eyes,’ as if it

amused her. While we snuggled down there out of the wind, she learned a

score of words. She was alive, and very eager. We were so deep in the

grass that we could see nothing but the blue sky over us and the gold

tree in front of us. It was wonderfully pleasant. After Ántonia had

said the new words over and over, she wanted to give me a little chased

silver ring she wore on her middle finger. When she coaxed and

insisted, I repulsed her quite sternly. I didn’t want her ring, and I

felt there was something reckless and extravagant about her wishing to

give it away to a boy she had never seen before. No wonder Krajiek got

the better of these people, if this was how they behaved.

While we were disputing ‘about the ring, I heard a mournful voice

calling, ‘Ántonia, Ántonia!’ She sprang up like a hare. ‘Tatinek!

Tatinek!’ she shouted, and we ran to meet the old man who was coming

toward us. Ántonia reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. When

I came up, he touched my shoulder and looked searchingly down into my

face for several seconds. I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was used

to being taken for granted by my elders.

We went with Mr. Shimerda back to the dugout, where grandmother was

waiting for me. Before I got into the wagon, he took a book out of his

pocket, opened it, and showed me a page with two alphabets, one English

and the other Bohemian. He placed this book in my grandmother’s hands,

looked at her entreatingly, and said, with an earnestness which I shall

never forget, ‘Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Ántonia!’

IV

On the afternoon of that same Sunday I took my first long ride on my

pony, under Otto’s direction. After that Dude and I went twice a week

to the post-office, six miles east of us, and I saved the men a good

deal of time by riding on errands to our neighbours. When we had to

borrow anything, or to send about word that there would be preaching at

the sod schoolhouse, I was always the messenger. Formerly Fuchs

attended to such things after working hours.

All the years that have passed have not dimmed my memory of that first

glorious autumn. The new country lay open before me: there were no

fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass

uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed

the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were

introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the

persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness

to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the

members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah,

scattered sunflower seed as they went. The next summer, when the long

trains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had

the sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm

Fuchs’s story, but insist that the sunflower was native to those

plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and

sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.

I used to love to drift along the pale-yellow cornfields, looking for

the damp spots one sometimes found at their edges, where the smartweed

soon turned a rich copper colour and the narrow brown leaves hung

curled like cocoons about the swollen joints of the stem. Sometimes I

went south to visit our German neighbours and to admire their catalpa

grove, or to see the big elm tree that grew up out of a deep crack in

the earth and had a hawk’s nest in its branches. Trees were so rare in

that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we

used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were

persons. It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny

landscape that made detail so precious.

Sometimes I rode north to the big prairie-dog town to watch the brown

earth-owls fly home in the late afternoon and go down to their nests

underground with the dogs. Ántonia Shimerda liked to go with me, and we

used to wonder a great deal about these birds of subterranean habit. We

had to be on our guard there, for rattlesnakes were always lurking

about. They came to pick up an easy living among the dogs and owls,

which were quite defenceless against them; took possession of their

comfortable houses and ate the eggs and puppies. We felt sorry for the

owls. It was always mournful to see them come flying home at sunset and

disappear under the earth. But, after all, we felt, winged things who

would live like that must be rather degraded creatures. The dog-town

was a long way from any pond or creek. Otto Fuchs said he had seen

populous dog-towns in the desert where there was no surface water for

fifty miles; he insisted that some of the holes must go down to

water—nearly two hundred feet, hereabouts. Ántonia said she didn’t

believe it; that the dogs probably lapped up the dew in the early

morning, like the rabbits.

Ántonia had opinions about everything, and she was soon able to make

them known. Almost every day she came running across the prairie to

have her reading lesson with me. Mrs. Shimerda grumbled, but realized

it was important that one member of the family should learn English.

When the lesson was over, we used to go up to the watermelon patch

behind the garden. I split the melons with an old corn-knife, and we

lifted out the hearts and ate them with the juice trickling through our

fingers. The white Christmas melons we did not touch, but we watched

them with curiosity. They were to be picked late, when the hard frosts

had set in, and put away for winter use. After weeks on the ocean, the

Shimerdas were famished for fruit. The two girls would wander for miles

along the edge of the cornfields, hunting for ground-cherries.

Ántonia loved to help grandmother in the kitchen and to learn about

cooking and housekeeping. She would stand beside her, watching her

every movement. We were willing to believe that Mrs. Shimerda was a

good housewife in her own country, but she managed poorly under new

conditions: the conditions were bad enough, certainly!

I remember how horrified we were at the sour, ashy-grey bread she gave

her family to eat. She mixed her dough, we discovered, in an old tin

peck-measure that Krajiek had used about the barn. When she took the

paste out to bake it, she left smears of dough sticking to the sides of

the measure, put the measure on the shelf behind the stove, and let

this residue ferment. The next time she made bread, she scraped this

sour stuff down into the fresh dough to serve as yeast.

During those first months the Shimerdas never went to town. Krajiek

encouraged them in the belief that in Black Hawk they would somehow be

mysteriously separated from their money. They hated Krajiek, but they

clung to him because he was the only human being with whom they could

talk or from whom they could get information. He slept with the old man

and the two boys in the dugout barn, along with the oxen. They kept him

in their hole and fed him for the same reason that the prairie-dogs and

the brown owls house the rattlesnakes—because they did not know how to

get rid of him.

V

We knew that things were hard for our Bohemian neighbours, but the two

girls were lighthearted and never complained. They were always ready to

forget their troubles at home, and to run away with me over the

prairie, scaring rabbits or starting up flocks of quail.

I remember Ántonia’s excitement when she came into our kitchen one

afternoon and announced: ‘My papa find friends up north, with Russian

mans. Last night he take me for see, and I can understand very much

talk. Nice mans, Mrs. Burden. One is fat and all the time laugh.

Everybody laugh. The first time I see my papa laugh in this kawntree.

Oh, very nice!’

I asked her if she meant the two Russians who lived up by the big

dog-town. I had often been tempted to go to see them when I was riding

in that direction, but one of them was a wild-looking fellow and I was

a little afraid of him. Russia seemed to me more remote than any other

country—farther away than China, almost as far as the North Pole. Of

all the strange, uprooted people among the first settlers, those two

men were the strangest and the most aloof. Their last names were

unpronounceable, so they were called Pavel and Peter. They went about

making signs to people, and until the Shimerdas came they had no

friends. Krajiek could understand them a little, but he had cheated

them in a trade, so they avoided him. Pavel, the tall one, was said to

be an anarchist; since he had no means of imparting his opinions,

probably his wild gesticulations and his generally excited and

rebellious manner gave rise to this supposition. He must once have been

a very strong man, but now his great frame, with big, knotty joints,

had a wasted look, and the skin was drawn tight over his high

cheekbones. His breathing was hoarse, and he always had a cough.

Peter, his companion, was a very different sort of fellow; short,

bow-legged, and as fat as butter. He always seemed pleased when he met

people on the road, smiled and took off his cap to everyone, men as

well as women. At a distance, on his wagon, he looked like an old man;

his hair and beard were of such a pale flaxen colour that they seemed

white in the sun. They were as thick and curly as carded wool. His rosy

face, with its snub nose, set in this fleece, was like a melon among

its leaves. He was usually called ‘Curly Peter,’ or ‘Rooshian Peter.’

The two Russians made good farm-hands, and in summer they worked out

together. I had heard our neighbours laughing when they told how Peter

always had to go home at night to milk his cow. Other bachelor

homesteaders used canned milk, to save trouble. Sometimes Peter came to

church at the sod schoolhouse. It was there I first saw him, sitting on

a low bench by the door, his plush cap in his hands, his bare feet

tucked apologetically under the seat.

After Mr. Shimerda discovered the Russians, he went to see them almost

every evening, and sometimes took Ántonia with him. She said they came

from a part of Russia where the language was not very different from

Bohemian, and if I wanted to go to their place, she could talk to them

for me. One afternoon, before the heavy frosts began, we rode up there

together on my pony.

The Russians had a neat log house built on a grassy slope, with a

windlass well beside the door. As we rode up the draw, we skirted a big

melon patch, and a garden where squashes and yellow cucumbers lay about

on the sod. We found Peter out behind his kitchen, bending over a

washtub. He was working so hard that he did not hear us coming. His

whole body moved up and down as he rubbed, and he was a funny sight

from the rear, with his shaggy head and bandy legs. When he

straightened himself up to greet us, drops of perspiration were rolling

from his thick nose down onto his curly beard. Peter dried his hands

and seemed glad to leave his washing. He took us down to see his

chickens, and his cow that was grazing on the hillside. He told Ántonia

that in his country only rich people had cows, but here any man could

have one who would take care of her. The milk was good for Pavel, who

was often sick, and he could make butter by beating sour cream with a

wooden spoon. Peter was very fond of his cow. He patted her flanks and

talked to her in Russian while he pulled up her lariat pin and set it

in a new place.

After he had shown us his garden, Peter trundled a load of watermelons

up the hill in his wheelbarrow. Pavel was not at home. He was off

somewhere helping to dig a well. The house I thought very comfortable

for two men who were ‘batching.’ Besides the kitchen, there was a

living-room, with a wide double bed built against the wall, properly

made up with blue gingham sheets and pillows. There was a little

storeroom, too, with a window, where they kept guns and saddles and

tools, and old coats and boots. That day the floor was covered with

garden things, drying for winter; corn and beans and fat yellow

cucumbers. There were no screens or window-blinds in the house, and all

the doors and windows stood wide open, letting in flies and sunshine

alike.

Peter put the melons in a row on the oilcloth-covered table and stood

over them, brandishing a butcher knife. Before the blade got fairly

into them, they split of their own ripeness, with a delicious sound. He

gave us knives, but no plates, and the top of the table was soon

swimming with juice and seeds. I had never seen anyone eat so many

melons as Peter ate. He assured us that they were good for one—better

than medicine; in his country people lived on them at this time of

year. He was very hospitable and jolly. Once, while he was looking at

Ántonia, he sighed and told us that if he had stayed at home in Russia

perhaps by this time he would have had a pretty daughter of his own to

cook and keep house for him. He said he had left his country because of

a ‘great trouble.’

When we got up to go, Peter looked about in perplexity for something

that would entertain us. He ran into the storeroom and brought out a

gaudily painted harmonica, sat down on a bench, and spreading his fat

legs apart began to play like a whole band. The tunes were either very

lively or very doleful, and he sang words to some of them.

Before we left, Peter put ripe cucumbers into a sack for Mrs. Shimerda

and gave us a lard-pail full of milk to cook them in. I had never heard

of cooking cucumbers, but Ántonia assured me they were very good. We

had to walk the pony all the way home to keep from spilling the milk.

VI

One afternoon we were having our reading lesson on the warm, grassy

bank where the badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight, but there

was a shiver of coming winter in the air. I had seen ice on the little

horsepond that morning, and as we went through the garden we found the

tall asparagus, with its red berries, lying on the ground, a mass of

slimy green.

Tony was barefooted, and she shivered in her cotton dress and was

comfortable only when we were tucked down on the baked earth, in the

full blaze of the sun. She could talk to me about almost anything by

this time. That afternoon she was telling me how highly esteemed our

friend the badger was in her part of the world, and how men kept a

special kind of dog, with very short legs, to hunt him. Those dogs, she

said, went down into the hole after the badger and killed him there in

a terrific struggle underground; you could hear the barks and yelps

outside. Then the dog dragged himself back, covered with bites and

scratches, to be rewarded and petted by his master. She knew a dog who

had a star on his collar for every badger he had killed.

The rabbits were unusually spry that afternoon. They kept starting up

all about us, and dashing off down the draw as if they were playing a

game of some kind. But the little buzzing things that lived in the

grass were all dead—all but one. While we were lying there against the

warm bank, a little insect of the palest, frailest green hopped

painfully out of the buffalo grass and tried to leap into a bunch of

bluestem. He missed it, fell back, and sat with his head sunk between

his long legs, his antennae quivering, as if he were waiting for

something to come and finish him. Tony made a warm nest for him in her

hands; talked to him gaily and indulgently in Bohemian. Presently he

began to sing for us—a thin, rusty little chirp. She held him close to

her ear and laughed, but a moment afterward I saw there were tears in

her eyes. She told me that in her village at home there was an old

beggar woman who went about selling herbs and roots she had dug up in

the forest. If you took her in and gave her a warm place by the fire,

she sang old songs to the children in a cracked voice, like this. Old

Hata, she was called, and the children loved to see her coming and

saved their cakes and sweets for her.

When the bank on the other side of the draw began to throw a narrow

shelf of shadow, we knew we ought to be starting homeward; the chill

came on quickly when the sun got low, and Ántonia’s dress was thin.

What were we to do with the frail little creature we had lured back to

life by false pretences? I offered my pockets, but Tony shook her head

and carefully put the green insect in her hair, tying her big

handkerchief down loosely over her curls. I said I would go with her

until we could see Squaw Creek, and then turn and run home. We drifted

along lazily, very happy, through the magical light of the late

afternoon.

All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them.

As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in

sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the

day. The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and

threw long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned

with fire and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of

victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero’s death—heroes who died

young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of

day.

How many an afternoon Ántonia and I have trailed along the prairie

under that magnificence! And always two long black shadows flitted

before us or followed after, dark spots on the ruddy grass.

We had been silent a long time, and the edge of the sun sank nearer and

nearer the prairie floor, when we saw a figure moving on the edge of

the upland, a gun over his shoulder. He was walking slowly, dragging

his feet along as if he had no purpose. We broke into a run to overtake

him.

‘My papa sick all the time,’ Tony panted as we flew. ‘He not look good,

Jim.’

As we neared Mr. Shimerda she shouted, and he lifted his head and

peered about. Tony ran up to him, caught his hand and pressed it

against her cheek. She was the only one of his family who could rouse

the old man from the torpor in which he seemed to live. He took the bag

from his belt and showed us three rabbits he had shot, looked at

Ántonia with a wintry flicker of a smile and began to tell her

something. She turned to me.

‘My tatinek make me little hat with the skins, little hat for winter!’

she exclaimed joyfully. ‘Meat for eat, skin for hat’—she told off these

benefits on her fingers.

Her father put his hand on her hair, but she caught his wrist and

lifted it carefully away, talking to him rapidly. I heard the name of

old Hata. He untied the handkerchief, separated her hair with his

fingers, and stood looking down at the green insect. When it began to

chirp faintly, he listened as if it were a beautiful sound.

I picked up the gun he had dropped; a queer piece from the old country,

short and heavy, with a stag’s head on the cock. When he saw me

examining it, he turned to me with his far-away look that always made

me feel as if I were down at the bottom of a well. He spoke kindly and

gravely, and Ántonia translated:

‘My tatinek say when you are big boy, he give you his gun. Very fine,

from Bohemie. It was belong to a great man, very rich, like what you

not got here; many fields, many forests, many big house. My papa play

for his wedding, and he give my papa fine gun, and my papa give you.’

I was glad that this project was one of futurity. There never were such

people as the Shimerdas for wanting to give away everything they had.

Even the mother was always offering me things, though I knew she

expected substantial presents in return. We stood there in friendly

silence, while the feeble minstrel sheltered in Ántonia’s hair went on

with its scratchy chirp. The old man’s smile, as he listened, was so

full of sadness, of pity for things, that I never afterward forgot it.

As the sun sank there came a sudden coolness and the strong smell of

earth and drying grass. Ántonia and her father went off hand in hand,

and I buttoned up my jacket and raced my shadow home.

VII

Much as I liked Ántonia, I hated a superior tone that she sometimes

took with me. She was four years older than I, to be sure, and had seen

more of the world; but I was a boy and she was a girl, and I resented

her protecting manner. Before the autumn was over, she began to treat

me more like an equal and to defer to me in other things than reading

lessons. This change came about from an adventure we had together.

One day when I rode over to the Shimerdas’ I found Ántonia starting off

on foot for Russian Peter’s house, to borrow a spade Ambrosch needed. I

offered to take her on the pony, and she got up behind me. There had

been another black frost the night before, and the air was clear and

heady as wine. Within a week all the blooming roads had been despoiled,

hundreds of miles of yellow sunflowers had been transformed into brown,

rattling, burry stalks.

We found Russian Peter digging his potatoes. We were glad to go in and

get warm by his kitchen stove and to see his squashes and Christmas

melons, heaped in the storeroom for winter. As we rode away with the

spade, Ántonia suggested that we stop at the prairie-dog-town and dig

into one of the holes. We could find out whether they ran straight

down, or were horizontal, like mole-holes; whether they had underground

connections; whether the owls had nests down there, lined with

feathers. We might get some puppies, or owl eggs, or snakeskins.

The dog-town was spread out over perhaps ten acres. The grass had been

nibbled short and even, so this stretch was not shaggy and red like the

surrounding country, but grey and velvety. The holes were several yards

apart, and were disposed with a good deal of regularity, almost as if

the town had been laid out in streets and avenues. One always felt that

an orderly and very sociable kind of life was going on there. I

picketed Dude down in a draw, and we went wandering about, looking for

a hole that would be easy to dig. The dogs were out, as usual, dozens

of them, sitting up on their hind legs over the doors of their houses.

As we approached, they barked, shook their tails at us, and scurried

underground. Before the mouths of the holes were little patches of sand

and gravel, scratched up, we supposed, from a long way below the

surface. Here and there, in the town, we came on larger gravel patches,

several yards away from any hole. If the dogs had scratched the sand up

in excavating, how had they carried it so far? It was on one of these

gravel beds that I met my adventure.

We were examining a big hole with two entrances. The burrow sloped into

the ground at a gentle angle, so that we could see where the two

corridors united, and the floor was dusty from use, like a little

highway over which much travel went. I was walking backward, in a

crouching position, when I heard Ántonia scream. She was standing

opposite me, pointing behind me and shouting something in Bohemian. I

whirled round, and there, on one of those dry gravel beds, was the

biggest snake I had ever seen. He was sunning himself, after the cold

night, and he must have been asleep when Ántonia screamed. When I

turned, he was lying in long loose waves, like a letter ‘W.’ He

twitched and began to coil slowly. He was not merely a big snake, I

thought—he was a circus monstrosity. His abominable muscularity, his

loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as my

leg, and looked as if millstones couldn’t crush the disgusting vitality

out of him. He lifted his hideous little head, and rattled. I didn’t

run because I didn’t think of it—if my back had been against a stone

wall I couldn’t have felt more cornered. I saw his coils tighten—now he

would spring, spring his length, I remembered. I ran up and drove at

his head with my spade, struck him fairly across the neck, and in a

minute he was all about my feet in wavy loops. I struck now from hate.

Ántonia, barefooted as she was, ran up behind me. Even after I had

pounded his ugly head flat, his body kept on coiling and winding,

doubling and falling back on itself. I walked away and turned my back.

I felt seasick.

Ántonia came after me, crying, ‘O Jimmy, he not bite you? You sure? Why

you not run when I say?’

‘What did you jabber Bohunk for? You might have told me there was a

snake behind me!’ I said petulantly.

‘I know I am just awful, Jim, I was so scared.’ She took my

handkerchief from my pocket and tried to wipe my face with it, but I

snatched it away from her. I suppose I looked as sick as I felt.

‘I never know you was so brave, Jim,’ she went on comfortingly. ‘You is

just like big mans; you wait for him lift his head and then you go for

him. Ain’t you feel scared a bit? Now we take that snake home and show

everybody. Nobody ain’t seen in this kawntree so big snake like you

kill.’

She went on in this strain until I began to think that I had longed for

this opportunity, and had hailed it with joy. Cautiously we went back

to the snake; he was still groping with his tail, turning up his ugly

belly in the light. A faint, fetid smell came from him, and a thread of

green liquid oozed from his crushed head.

‘Look, Tony, that’s his poison,’ I said.

I took a long piece of string from my pocket, and she lifted his head

with the spade while I tied a noose around it. We pulled him out

straight and measured him by my riding-quirt; he was about five and a

half feet long. He had twelve rattles, but they were broken off before

they began to taper, so I insisted that he must once have had

twenty-four. I explained to Ántonia how this meant that he was

twenty-four years old, that he must have been there when white men

first came, left on from buffalo and Indian times. As I turned him

over, I began to feel proud of him, to have a kind of respect for his

age and size. He seemed like the ancient, eldest Evil. Certainly his

kind have left horrible unconscious memories in all warm-blooded life.

When we dragged him down into the draw, Dude sprang off to the end of

his tether and shivered all over—wouldn’t let us come near him.

We decided that Ántonia should ride Dude home, and I would walk. As she

rode along slowly, her bare legs swinging against the pony’s sides, she

kept shouting back to me about how astonished everybody would be. I

followed with the spade over my shoulder, dragging my snake. Her

exultation was contagious. The great land had never looked to me so big

and free. If the red grass were full of rattlers, I was equal to them

all. Nevertheless, I stole furtive glances behind me now and then to

see that no avenging mate, older and bigger than my quarry, was racing

up from the rear.

The sun had set when we reached our garden and went down the draw

toward the house. Otto Fuchs was the first one we met. He was sitting

on the edge of the cattle-pond, having a quiet pipe before supper.

Ántonia called him to come quick and look. He did not say anything for

a minute, but scratched his head and turned the snake over with his

boot.

‘Where did you run onto that beauty, Jim?’

‘Up at the dog-town,’ I answered laconically.

‘Kill him yourself? How come you to have a weepon?’

‘We’d been up to Russian Peter’s, to borrow a spade for Ambrosch.’

Otto shook the ashes out of his pipe and squatted down to count the

rattles. ‘It was just luck you had a tool,’ he said cautiously. ‘Gosh!

I wouldn’t want to do any business with that fellow myself, unless I

had a fence-post along. Your grandmother’s snake-cane wouldn’t more

than tickle him. He could stand right up and talk to you, he could. Did

he fight hard?’

Ántonia broke in: ‘He fight something awful! He is all over Jimmy’s

boots. I scream for him to run, but he just hit and hit that snake like

he was crazy.’

Otto winked at me. After Ántonia rode on he said: ‘Got him in the head

first crack, didn’t you? That was just as well.’

We hung him up to the windmill, and when I went down to the kitchen, I

found Ántonia standing in the middle of the floor, telling the story

with a great deal of colour.

Subsequent experiences with rattlesnakes taught me that my first

encounter was fortunate in circumstance. My big rattler was old, and

had led too easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had

probably lived there for years, with a fat prairie-dog for breakfast

whenever he felt like it, a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed,

perhaps, and he had forgot that the world doesn’t owe rattlers a

living. A snake of his size, in fighting trim, would be more than any

boy could handle. So in reality it was a mock adventure; the game was

fixed for me by chance, as it probably was for many a dragon-slayer. I

had been adequately armed by Russian Peter; the snake was old and lazy;

and I had Ántonia beside me, to appreciate and admire.

That snake hung on our corral fence for several days; some of the

neighbours came to see it and agreed that it was the biggest rattler

ever killed in those parts. This was enough for Ántonia. She liked me

better from that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with me

again. I had killed a big snake—I was now a big fellow.

VIII

While the autumn colour was growing pale on the grass and cornfields,

things went badly with our friends the Russians. Peter told his

troubles to Mr. Shimerda: he was unable to meet a note which fell due

on the first of November; had to pay an exorbitant bonus on renewing

it, and to give a mortgage on his pigs and horses and even his milk

cow. His creditor was Wick Cutter, the merciless Black Hawk

money-lender, a man of evil name throughout the county, of whom I shall

have more to say later. Peter could give no very clear account of his

transactions with Cutter. He only knew that he had first borrowed two

hundred dollars, then another hundred, then fifty—that each time a

bonus was added to the principal, and the debt grew faster than any

crop he planted. Now everything was plastered with mortgages.

Soon after Peter renewed his note, Pavel strained himself lifting

timbers for a new barn, and fell over among the shavings with such a

gush of blood from the lungs that his fellow workmen thought he would

die on the spot. They hauled him home and put him into his bed, and

there he lay, very ill indeed. Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil

bird on the roof of the log house, and to flap its wings there, warning

human beings away. The Russians had such bad luck that people were

afraid of them and liked to put them out of mind.

One afternoon Ántonia and her father came over to our house to get

buttermilk, and lingered, as they usually did, until the sun was low.

Just as they were leaving, Russian Peter drove up. Pavel was very bad,

he said, and wanted to talk to Mr. Shimerda and his daughter; he had

come to fetch them. When Ántonia and her father got into the wagon, I

entreated grandmother to let me go with them: I would gladly go without

my supper, I would sleep in the Shimerdas’ barn and run home in the

morning. My plan must have seemed very foolish to her, but she was

often large-minded about humouring the desires of other people. She

asked Peter to wait a moment, and when she came back from the kitchen

she brought a bag of sandwiches and doughnuts for us.

Mr. Shimerda and Peter were on the front seat; Ántonia and I sat in the

straw behind and ate our lunch as we bumped along. After the sun sank,

a cold wind sprang up and moaned over the prairie. If this turn in the

weather had come sooner, I should not have got away. We burrowed down

in the straw and curled up close together, watching the angry red die

out of the west and the stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky.

Peter kept sighing and groaning. Tony whispered to me that he was

afraid Pavel would never get well. We lay still and did not talk. Up

there the stars grew magnificently bright. Though we had come from such

different parts of the world, in both of us there was some dusky

superstition that those shining groups have their influence upon what

is and what is not to be. Perhaps Russian Peter, come from farther away

than any of us, had brought from his land, too, some such belief.

The little house on the hillside was so much the colour of the night

that we could not see it as we came up the draw. The ruddy windows

guided us—the light from the kitchen stove, for there was no lamp

burning.

We entered softly. The man in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony

and I sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the

table in front of us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that

supported the thatch overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he

breathed, and he kept moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and

windows impatiently, then swept on again, singing through the big

spaces. Each gust, as it bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off

like the others. They made me think of defeated armies, retreating; or

of ghosts who were trying desperately to get in for shelter, and then

went moaning on. Presently, in one of those sobbing intervals between

the blasts, the coyotes tuned up with their whining howl; one, two,

three, then all together—to tell us that winter was coming. This sound

brought an answer from the bed—a long complaining cry—as if Pavel were

having bad dreams or were waking to some old misery. Peter listened,

but did not stir. He was sitting on the floor by the kitchen stove. The

coyotes broke out again; yap, yap, yap—then the high whine. Pavel

called for something and struggled up on his elbow.

‘He is scared of the wolves,’ Ántonia whispered to me. ‘In his country

there are very many, and they eat men and women.’ We slid closer

together along the bench.

I could not take my eyes off the man in the bed. His shirt was hanging

open, and his emaciated chest, covered with yellow bristle, rose and

fell horribly. He began to cough. Peter shuffled to his feet, caught up

the teakettle and mixed him some hot water and whiskey. The sharp smell

of spirits went through the room.

Pavel snatched the cup and drank, then made Peter give him the bottle

and slipped it under his pillow, grinning disagreeably, as if he had

outwitted someone. His eyes followed Peter about the room with a

contemptuous, unfriendly expression. It seemed to me that he despised

him for being so simple and docile.

Presently Pavel began to talk to Mr. Shimerda, scarcely above a

whisper. He was telling a long story, and as he went on, Ántonia took

my hand under the table and held it tight. She leaned forward and

strained her ears to hear him. He grew more and more excited, and kept

pointing all around his bed, as if there were things there and he

wanted Mr. Shimerda to see them.

‘It’s wolves, Jimmy,’ Ántonia whispered. ‘It’s awful, what he says!’

The sick man raged and shook his fist. He seemed to be cursing people

who had wronged him. Mr. Shimerda caught him by the shoulders, but

could hardly hold him in bed. At last he was shut off by a coughing fit

which fairly choked him. He pulled a cloth from under his pillow and

held it to his mouth. Quickly it was covered with bright red spots—I

thought I had never seen any blood so bright. When he lay down and

turned his face to the wall, all the rage had gone out of him. He lay

patiently fighting for breath, like a child with croup. Ántonia’s

father uncovered one of his long bony legs and rubbed it rhythmically.

From our bench we could see what a hollow case his body was. His spine

and shoulder-blades stood out like the bones under the hide of a dead

steer left in the fields. That sharp backbone must have hurt him when

he lay on it.

Gradually, relief came to all of us. Whatever it was, the worst was

over. Mr. Shimerda signed to us that Pavel was asleep. Without a word

Peter got up and lit his lantern. He was going out to get his team to

drive us home. Mr. Shimerda went with him. We sat and watched the long

bowed back under the blue sheet, scarcely daring to breathe.

On the way home, when we were lying in the straw, under the jolting and

rattling Ántonia told me as much of the story as she could. What she

did not tell me then, she told later; we talked of nothing else for

days afterward.

When Pavel and Peter were young men, living at home in Russia, they

were asked to be groomsmen for a friend who was to marry the belle of

another village. It was in the dead of winter and the groom’s party

went over to the wedding in sledges. Peter and Pavel drove in the

groom’s sledge, and six sledges followed with all his relatives and

friends.

After the ceremony at the church, the party went to a dinner given by

the parents of the bride. The dinner lasted all afternoon; then it

became a supper and continued far into the night. There was much

dancing and drinking. At midnight the parents of the bride said

good-bye to her and blessed her. The groom took her up in his arms and

carried her out to his sledge and tucked her under the blankets. He

sprang in beside her, and Pavel and Peter (our Pavel and Peter!) took

the front seat. Pavel drove. The party set out with singing and the

jingle of sleigh-bells, the groom’s sledge going first. All the drivers

were more or less the worse for merry-making, and the groom was

absorbed in his bride.

The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it, yet when they

heard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed. They had

too much good food and drink inside them. The first howls were taken up

and echoed and with quickening repetitions. The wolves were coming

together. There was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow. A

black drove came up over the hill behind the wedding party. The wolves

ran like streaks of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there

were hundreds of them.

Something happened to the hindmost sledge: the driver lost control—he

was probably very drunk—the horses left the road, the sledge was caught

in a clump of trees, and overturned. The occupants rolled out over the

snow, and the fleetest of the wolves sprang upon them. The shrieks that

followed made everybody sober. The drivers stood up and lashed their

horses. The groom had the best team and his sledge was lightest—all the

others carried from six to a dozen people.

Another driver lost control. The screams of the horses were more

terrible to hear than the cries of the men and women. Nothing seemed to

check the wolves. It was hard to tell what was happening in the rear;

the people who were falling behind shrieked as piteously as those who

were already lost. The little bride hid her face on the groom’s

shoulder and sobbed. Pavel sat still and watched his horses. The road

was clear and white, and the groom’s three blacks went like the wind.

It was only necessary to be calm and to guide them carefully.

At length, as they breasted a long hill, Peter rose cautiously and

looked back. ‘There are only three sledges left,’ he whispered.

‘And the wolves?’ Pavel asked.

‘Enough! Enough for all of us.’

Pavel reached the brow of the hill, but only two sledges followed him

down the other side. In that moment on the hilltop, they saw behind

them a whirling black group on the snow. Presently the groom screamed.

He saw his father’s sledge overturned, with his mother and sisters. He

sprang up as if he meant to jump, but the girl shrieked and held him

back. It was even then too late. The black ground-shadows were already

crowding over the heap in the road, and one horse ran out across the

fields, his harness hanging to him, wolves at his heels. But the

groom’s movement had given Pavel an idea.

They were within a few miles of their village now. The only sledge left

out of six was not very far behind them, and Pavel’s middle horse was

failing. Beside a frozen pond something happened to the other sledge;

Peter saw it plainly. Three big wolves got abreast of the horses, and

the horses went crazy. They tried to jump over each other, got tangled

up in the harness, and overturned the sledge.

When the shrieking behind them died away, Pavel realized that he was

alone upon the familiar road. ‘They still come?’ he asked Peter.

‘Yes.’

‘How many?’

‘Twenty, thirty—enough.’

Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the other two. Pavel

gave Peter the reins and stepped carefully into the back of the sledge.

He called to the groom that they must lighten—and pointed to the bride.

The young man cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag her

away. In the struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side

of the sledge and threw the girl after him. He said he never remembered

exactly how he did it, or what happened afterward. Peter, crouching in

the front seat, saw nothing. The first thing either of them noticed was

a new sound that broke into the clear air, louder than they had ever

heard it before—the bell of the monastery of their own village, ringing

for early prayers.

Pavel and Peter drove into the village alone, and they had been alone

ever since. They were run out of their village. Pavel’s own mother

would not look at him. They went away to strange towns, but when people

learned where they came from, they were always asked if they knew the

two men who had fed the bride to the wolves. Wherever they went, the

story followed them. It took them five years to save money enough to

come to America. They worked in Chicago, Des Moines, Fort Wayne, but

they were always unfortunate. When Pavel’s health grew so bad, they

decided to try farming.

Pavel died a few days after he unburdened his mind to Mr. Shimerda, and

was buried in the Norwegian graveyard. Peter sold off everything, and

left the country—went to be cook in a railway construction camp where

gangs of Russians were employed.

At his sale we bought Peter’s wheelbarrow and some of his harness.

During the auction he went about with his head down, and never lifted

his eyes. He seemed not to care about anything. The Black Hawk

money-lender who held mortgages on Peter’s livestock was there, and he

bought in the sale notes at about fifty cents on the dollar. Everyone

said Peter kissed the cow before she was led away by her new owner. I

did not see him do it, but this I know: after all his furniture and his

cookstove and pots and pans had been hauled off by the purchasers, when

his house was stripped and bare, he sat down on the floor with his

clasp-knife and ate all the melons that he had put away for winter.

When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek drove up in their wagon to take Peter to

the train, they found him with a dripping beard, surrounded by heaps of

melon rinds.

The loss of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr.

Shimerda. When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty log

house and sit there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until the

winter snows penned him in his cave. For Ántonia and me, the story of

the wedding party was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel’s secret

to anyone, but guarded it jealously—as if the wolves of the Ukraine had

gathered that night long ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to

give us a painful and peculiar pleasure. At night, before I went to

sleep, I often found myself in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashing

through a country that looked something like Nebraska and something

like Virginia.

IX

The first snowfall came early in December. I remember how the world

looked from our sitting-room window as I dressed behind the stove that

morning: the low sky was like a sheet of metal; the blond cornfields

had faded out into ghostliness at last; the little pond was frozen

under its stiff willow bushes. Big white flakes were whirling over

everything and disappearing in the red grass.

Beyond the pond, on the slope that climbed to the cornfield, there was,

faintly marked in the grass, a great circle where the Indians used to

ride. Jake and Otto were sure that when they galloped round that ring

the Indians tortured prisoners, bound to a stake in the centre; but

grandfather thought they merely ran races or trained horses there.

Whenever one looked at this slope against the setting sun, the circle

showed like a pattern in the grass; and this morning, when the first

light spray of snow lay over it, it came out with wonderful

distinctness, like strokes of Chinese white on canvas. The old figure

stirred me as it had never done before and seemed a good omen for the

winter.

As soon as the snow had packed hard, I began to drive about the country

in a clumsy sleigh that Otto Fuchs made for me by fastening a wooden

goods-box on bobs. Fuchs had been apprenticed to a cabinetmaker in the

old country and was very handy with tools. He would have done a better

job if I hadn’t hurried him. My first trip was to the post-office, and

the next day I went over to take Yulka and Ántonia for a sleigh-ride.

It was a bright, cold day. I piled straw and buffalo robes into the

box, and took two hot bricks wrapped in old blankets. When I got to the

Shimerdas’, I did not go up to the house, but sat in my sleigh at the

bottom of the draw and called. Ántonia and Yulka came running out,

wearing little rabbit-skin hats their father had made for them. They

had heard about my sledge from Ambrosch and knew why I had come. They

tumbled in beside me and we set off toward the north, along a road that

happened to be broken.

The sky was brilliantly blue, and the sunlight on the glittering white

stretches of prairie was almost blinding. As Ántonia said, the whole

world was changed by the snow; we kept looking in vain for familiar

landmarks. The deep arroyo through which Squaw Creek wound was now only

a cleft between snowdrifts—very blue when one looked down into it. The

tree-tops that had been gold all the autumn were dwarfed and twisted,

as if they would never have any life in them again. The few little

cedars, which were so dull and dingy before, now stood out a strong,

dusky green. The wind had the burning taste of fresh snow; my throat

and nostrils smarted as if someone had opened a hartshorn bottle. The

cold stung, and at the same time delighted one. My horse’s breath rose

like steam, and whenever we stopped he smoked all over. The cornfields

got back a little of their colour under the dazzling light, and stood

the palest possible gold in the sun and snow. All about us the snow was

crusted in shallow terraces, with tracings like ripple-marks at the

edges, curly waves that were the actual impression of the stinging lash

in the wind.

The girls had on cotton dresses under their shawls; they kept shivering

beneath the buffalo robes and hugging each other for warmth. But they

were so glad to get away from their ugly cave and their mother’s

scolding that they begged me to go on and on, as far as Russian Peter’s

house. The great fresh open, after the stupefying warmth indoors, made

them behave like wild things. They laughed and shouted, and said they

never wanted to go home again. Couldn’t we settle down and live in

Russian Peter’s house, Yulka asked, and couldn’t I go to town and buy

things for us to keep house with?

All the way to Russian Peter’s we were extravagantly happy, but when we

turned back—it must have been about four o’clock—the east wind grew

stronger and began to howl; the sun lost its heartening power and the

sky became grey and sombre. I took off my long woollen comforter and

wound it around Yulka’s throat. She got so cold that we made her hide

her head under the buffalo robe. Ántonia and I sat erect, but I held

the reins clumsily, and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good deal of

the time. It was growing dark when we got to their house, but I refused

to go in with them and get warm. I knew my hands would ache terribly if

I went near a fire. Yulka forgot to give me back my comforter, and I

had to drive home directly against the wind. The next day I came down

with an attack of quinsy, which kept me in the house for nearly two

weeks.

The basement kitchen seemed heavenly safe and warm in those days—like a

tight little boat in a winter sea. The men were out in the fields all

day, husking corn, and when they came in at noon, with long caps pulled

down over their ears and their feet in red-lined overshoes, I used to

think they were like Arctic explorers. In the afternoons, when

grandmother sat upstairs darning, or making husking-gloves, I read ‘The

Swiss Family Robinson’ aloud to her, and I felt that the Swiss family

had no advantages over us in the way of an adventurous life. I was

convinced that man’s strongest antagonist is the cold. I admired the

cheerful zest with which grandmother went about keeping us warm and

comfortable and well-fed. She often reminded me, when she was preparing

for the return of the hungry men, that this country was not like

Virginia; and that here a cook had, as she said, ‘very little to do

with.’ On Sundays she gave us as much chicken as we could eat, and on

other days we had ham or bacon or sausage meat. She baked either pies

or cake for us every day, unless, for a change, she made my favourite

pudding, striped with currants and boiled in a bag.

Next to getting warm and keeping warm, dinner and supper were the most

interesting things we had to think about. Our lives centered around

warmth and food and the return of the men at nightfall. I used to

wonder, when they came in tired from the fields, their feet numb and

their hands cracked and sore, how they could do all the chores so

conscientiously: feed and water and bed the horses, milk the cows, and

look after the pigs. When supper was over, it took them a long while to

get the cold out of their bones. While grandmother and I washed the

dishes and grandfather read his paper upstairs, Jake and Otto sat on

the long bench behind the stove, ‘easing’ their inside boots, or

rubbing mutton tallow into their cracked hands.

Every Saturday night we popped corn or made taffy, and Otto Fuchs used

to sing, ‘For I Am a Cowboy and Know I’ve Done Wrong,’ or, ‘Bury Me Not

on the Lone Prairee.’ He had a good baritone voice and always led the

singing when we went to church services at the sod schoolhouse.

I can still see those two men sitting on the bench; Otto’s

close-clipped head and Jake’s shaggy hair slicked flat in front by a

wet comb. I can see the sag of their tired shoulders against the

whitewashed wall. What good fellows they were, how much they knew, and

how many things they had kept faith with!

Fuchs had been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a bartender, a miner; had

wandered all over that great Western country and done hard work

everywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had nothing to show for it.

Jake was duller than Otto. He could scarcely read, wrote even his name

with difficulty, and he had a violent temper which sometimes made him

behave like a crazy man—tore him all to pieces and actually made him

ill. But he was so soft-hearted that anyone could impose upon him. If

he, as he said, ‘forgot himself’ and swore before grandmother, he went

about depressed and shamefaced all day. They were both of them jovial

about the cold in winter and the heat in summer, always ready to work

overtime and to meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with them

not to spare themselves. Yet they were the sort of men who never get

on, somehow, or do anything but work hard for a dollar or two a day.

On those bitter, starlit nights, as we sat around the old stove that

fed us and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could hear the coyotes

howling down by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to

remind the boys of wonderful animal stories; about grey wolves and

bears in the Rockies, wildcats and panthers in the Virginia mountains.

Sometimes Fuchs could be persuaded to talk about the outlaws and

desperate characters he had known. I remember one funny story about

himself that made grandmother, who was working her bread on the

bread-board, laugh until she wiped her eyes with her bare arm, her

hands being floury. It was like this:

When Otto left Austria to come to America, he was asked by one of his

relatives to look after a woman who was crossing on the same boat, to

join her husband in Chicago. The woman started off with two children,

but it was clear that her family might grow larger on the journey.

Fuchs said he ‘got on fine with the kids,’ and liked the mother, though

she played a sorry trick on him. In mid-ocean she proceeded to have not

one baby, but three! This event made Fuchs the object of undeserved

notoriety, since he was travelling with her. The steerage stewardess

was indignant with him, the doctor regarded him with suspicion. The

first-cabin passengers, who made up a purse for the woman, took an

embarrassing interest in Otto, and often enquired of him about his

charge. When the triplets were taken ashore at New York, he had, as he

said, ‘to carry some of them.’ The trip to Chicago was even worse than

the ocean voyage. On the train it was very difficult to get milk for

the babies and to keep their bottles clean. The mother did her best,

but no woman, out of her natural resources, could feed three babies.

The husband, in Chicago, was working in a furniture factory for modest

wages, and when he met his family at the station he was rather crushed

by the size of it. He, too, seemed to consider Fuchs in some fashion to

blame. ‘I was sure glad,’ Otto concluded, ‘that he didn’t take his hard

feeling out on that poor woman; but he had a sullen eye for me, all

right! Now, did you ever hear of a young feller’s having such hard

luck, Mrs. Burden?’

Grandmother told him she was sure the Lord had remembered these things

to his credit, and had helped him out of many a scrape when he didn’t

realize that he was being protected by Providence.

X

For several weeks after my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from the

Shimerdas. My sore throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a cold

which made the housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was glad

to have a day of rest. One night at supper Fuchs told us he had seen

Mr. Shimerda out hunting.

‘He’s made himself a rabbit-skin cap, Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar

that he buttons on outside his coat. They ain’t got but one overcoat

among ‘em over there, and they take turns wearing it. They seem awful

scared of cold, and stick in that hole in the bank like badgers.’

‘All but the crazy boy,’ Jake put in. ‘He never wears the coat. Krajiek

says he’s turrible strong and can stand anything. I guess rabbits must

be getting scarce in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the

cornfield yesterday where I was at work and showed me three prairie

dogs he’d shot. He asked me if they was good to eat. I spit and made a

face and took on, to scare him, but he just looked like he was

smarter’n me and put ‘em back in his sack and walked off.’

Grandmother looked up in alarm and spoke to grandfather. ‘Josiah, you

don’t suppose Krajiek would let them poor creatures eat prairie dogs,

do you?’

‘You had better go over and see our neighbours tomorrow, Emmaline,’ he

replied gravely.

Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs were clean beasts

and ought to be good for food, but their family connections were

against them. I asked what he meant, and he grinned and said they

belonged to the rat family.

When I went downstairs in the morning, I found grandmother and Jake

packing a hamper basket in the kitchen.

‘Now, Jake,’ grandmother was saying, ‘if you can find that old rooster

that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we’ll take him

along. There’s no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda couldn’t have got hens

from her neighbours last fall and had a hen-house going by now. I

reckon she was confused and didn’t know where to begin. I’ve come

strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good

thing to have, no matter what you don’t have.

‘Just as you say, ma’m,’ said Jake, ‘but I hate to think of Krajiek

getting a leg of that old rooster.’ He tramped out through the long

cellar and dropped the heavy door behind him.

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

everyone.

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

gunny-sack stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered, he threw a

grain-sack 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.

‘Haven’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 grey 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 will 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 odours 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 dryly. ‘I can’t say but I

prefer our bread to yours, myself.’

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, ma’m, 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

odour. 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 shouldn’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 twenty-first 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 grey,

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 twenty-second, 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 coloured

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 grey

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 splendours, 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 coloured 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 apparelled, 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

moustache. As I remember them, what unprotected faces they were; their

very roughness and violence made them defenceless. These boys had no

practised 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 labourers 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

Saint 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

grey 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 grey 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.

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 coloured 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 woman!’ 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 grey 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

kawntree.’

‘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, never!’ 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 anyone 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 wouldn’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 wouldn’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