My Antonia Read online

  VII

  MUCH AS I LIKED Antonia, I hated a superior tone that she sometimes tookwith me. She was four years older than I, to be sure, and had seen moreof the world; but I was a boy and she was a girl, and I resented herprotecting manner. Before the autumn was over, she began to treat memore like an equal and to defer to me in other things than readinglessons. This change came about from an adventure we had together.

  One day when I rode over to the Shimerdas' I found Antonia starting offon 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 hadbeen another black frost the night before, and the air was clear andheady 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 andget warm by his kitchen stove and to see his squashes and Christmasmelons, heaped in the storeroom for winter. As we rode away with thespade, Antonia suggested that we stop at the prairie-dog-town and diginto one of the holes. We could find out whether they ran straightdown, or were horizontal, like mole-holes; whether they had undergroundconnections; 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 beennibbled short and even, so this stretch was not shaggy and red like thesurrounding country, but grey and velvety. The holes were several yardsapart, and were disposed with a good deal of regularity, almost as ifthe town had been laid out in streets and avenues. One always felt thatan orderly and very sociable kind of life was going on there. I picketedDude down in a draw, and we went wandering about, looking for a holethat 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. Aswe approached, they barked, shook their tails at us, and scurriedunderground. Before the mouths of the holes were little patches ofsand and gravel, scratched up, we supposed, from a long way below thesurface. 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 upin excavating, how had they carried it so far? It was on one of thesegravel beds that I met my adventure.

  We were examining a big hole with two entrances. The burrow slopedinto the ground at a gentle angle, so that we could see where thetwo corridors united, and the floor was dusty from use, like a littlehighway over which much travel went. I was walking backward, in acrouching position, when I heard Antonia scream. She was standingopposite me, pointing behind me and shouting something in Bohemian.I whirled round, and there, on one of those dry gravel beds, was thebiggest snake I had ever seen. He was sunning himself, after the coldnight, and he must have been asleep when Antonia screamed. When Iturned, he was lying in long loose waves, like a letter 'W.' He twitchedand began to coil slowly. He was not merely a big snake, I thought--hewas a circus monstrosity. His abominable muscularity, his loathsome,fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as my leg, andlooked as if millstones couldn't crush the disgusting vitality outof him. He lifted his hideous little head, and rattled. I didn't runbecause I didn't think of it--if my back had been against a stone wall Icouldn't have felt more cornered. I saw his coils tighten--now he wouldspring, spring his length, I remembered. I ran up and drove at his headwith my spade, struck him fairly across the neck, and in a minute hewas all about my feet in wavy loops. I struck now from hate. Antonia,barefooted as she was, ran up behind me. Even after I had pounded hisugly head flat, his body kept on coiling and winding, doubling andfalling back on itself. I walked away and turned my back. I feltseasick.

  Antonia came after me, crying, 'O Jimmy, he not bite you? You sure? Whyyou not run when I say?'

  'What did you jabber Bohunk for? You might have told me there was asnake behind me!' I said petulantly.

  'I know I am just awful, Jim, I was so scared.' She took my handkerchieffrom my pocket and tried to wipe my face with it, but I snatched it awayfrom her. I suppose I looked as sick as I felt.

  'I never know you was so brave, Jim,' she went on comfortingly. 'You isjust like big mans; you wait for him lift his head and then you go forhim. Ain't you feel scared a bit? Now we take that snake home and showeverybody. Nobody ain't seen in this kawntree so big snake like youkill.'

  She went on in this strain until I began to think that I had longed forthis opportunity, and had hailed it with joy. Cautiously we went back tothe snake; he was still groping with his tail, turning up his ugly bellyin the light. A faint, fetid smell came from him, and a thread of greenliquid 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 hishead with the spade while I tied a noose around it. We pulled him outstraight and measured him by my riding-quirt; he was about five and ahalf feet long. He had twelve rattles, but they were broken offbefore they began to taper, so I insisted that he must once havehad twenty-four. I explained to Antonia how this meant that he wastwenty-four years old, that he must have been there when white men firstcame, left on from buffalo and Indian times. As I turned him over, Ibegan to feel proud of him, to have a kind of respect for his age andsize. He seemed like the ancient, eldest Evil. Certainly his kind haveleft horrible unconscious memories in all warm-blooded life. When wedragged him down into the draw, Dude sprang off to the end of his tetherand shivered all over--wouldn't let us come near him.

  We decided that Antonia should ride Dude home, and I would walk. As sherode 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. Herexultation was contagious. The great land had never looked to me so bigand free. If the red grass were full of rattlers, I was equal to themall. Nevertheless, I stole furtive glances behind me now and then to seethat no avenging mate, older and bigger than my quarry, was racing upfrom the rear.

  The sun had set when we reached our garden and went down the draw towardthe house. Otto Fuchs was the first one we met. He was sitting on theedge of the cattle-pond, having a quiet pipe before supper. Antoniacalled 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 therattles. 'It was just luck you had a tool,' he said cautiously. 'Gosh! Iwouldn't want to do any business with that fellow myself, unless I hada fence-post along. Your grandmother's snake-cane wouldn't more thantickle him. He could stand right up and talk to you, he could. Did hefight hard?'

  Antonia broke in: 'He fight something awful! He is all over Jimmy'sboots. I scream for him to run, but he just hit and hit that snake likehe was crazy.'

  Otto winked at me. After Antonia rode on he said: 'Got him in the headfirst 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 Antonia standing in the middle of the floor, telling the storywith a great deal of colour.

  Subsequent experiences with rattlesnakes taught me that my firstencounter was fortunate in circumstance. My big rattler was old, and hadled too easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probablylived there for years, with a fat prairie-dog for breakfast whenever hefelt like it, a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and hehad forgot that the world doesn't owe rattlers a living. A snake of hissize, in fighting trim, would be more than any boy could handle. So inreality it was a mock adventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, asit probably was for many a dragon-slayer. I had been adequately armed byRussian Peter; the snake was old and lazy;
and I had Antonia beside me,to appreciate and admire.

  That snake hung on our corral fence for several days; some of theneighbours came to see it and agreed that it was the biggest rattlerever killed in those parts. This was enough for Antonia. She liked mebetter from that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with meagain. I had killed a big snake--I was now a big fellow.