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`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.
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