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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 m sleigh at the bottom of the draw and called. Antonia 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 Antonia 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. Antonia 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 centred 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.
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