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 Antonia 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 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.
