My Ántonia Page 8

  VI

  ONE afternoon we were having our reading lesson on the warm, grassy bankwhere the badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight, but there was ashiver of coming winter in the air. I had seen ice on the littlehorse-pond that morning, and as we went through the garden we found thetall asparagus, with its red berries, lying on the ground, a mass of slimygreen.

  Tony was barefooted, and she shivered in her cotton dress and wascomfortable only when we were tucked down on the baked earth, in the fullblaze 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 thebadger was in her part of the world, and how men kept a special kind ofdog, with very short legs, to hunt him. Those dogs, she said, went downinto the hole after the badger and killed him there in a terrific struggleunderground; you could hear the barks and yelps outside. Then the dogdragged himself back, covered with bites and scratches, to be rewarded andpetted by his master. She knew a dog who had a star on his collar forevery badger he had killed.

  The rabbits were unusually spry that afternoon. They kept starting up allabout us, and dashing off down the draw as if they were playing a game ofsome kind. But the little buzzing things that lived in the grass were alldead--all but one. While we were lying there against the warm bank, alittle insect of the palest, frailest green hopped painfully out of thebuffalo 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 antennaequivering, 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 gayly andindulgently in Bohemian. Presently he began to sing for us--a thin, rustylittle chirp. She held him close to her ear and laughed, but a momentafterward I saw there were tears in her eyes. She told me that in hervillage at home there was an old beggar woman who went about selling herbsand roots she had dug up in the forest. If you took her in and gave her awarm place by the fire, she sang old songs to the children in a crackedvoice, like this. Old Hata, she was called, and the children loved to seeher coming and saved their cakes and sweets for her.

  When the bank on the other side of the draw began to throw a narrow shelfof shadow, we knew we ought to be starting homeward; the chill came onquickly when the sun got low, and Antonia's dress was thin. What were weto do with the frail little creature we had lured back to life by falsepretenses? I offered my pockets, but Tony shook her head and carefully putthe green insect in her hair, tying her big handkerchief down loosely overher curls. I said I would go with her until we could see Squaw Creek, andthen turn and run home. We drifted along lazily, very happy, through themagical light of the late afternoon.

  All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them. Asfar as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched insunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day.The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threwlong shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fireand was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of victory, oftriumphant ending, like a hero's death--heroes who died young andgloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day.

  How many an afternoon Antonia and I have trailed along the prairie underthat magnificence! And always two long black shadows flitted before us orfollowed after, dark spots on the ruddy grass.

  We had been silent a long time, and the edge of the sun sank nearer andnearer the prairie floor, when we saw a figure moving on the edge of theupland, a gun over his shoulder. He was walking slowly, dragging his feetalong 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 peeredabout. Tony ran up to him, caught his hand and pressed it against hercheek. She was the only one of his family who could rouse the old man fromthe torpor in which he seemed to live. He took the bag from his belt andshowed us three rabbits he had shot, looked at Antonia with a wintryflicker 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 win-ter!"she exclaimed joyfully. "Meat for eat, skin for hat,"--she told off thesebenefits on her fingers.

  Her father put his hand on her hair, but she caught his wrist and liftedit carefully away, talking to him rapidly. I heard the name of old Hata.He untied the handkerchief, separated her hair with his fingers, and stoodlooking down at the green insect. When it began to chirp faintly, helistened 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 examiningit, he turned to me with his far-away look that always made me feel as ifI were down at the bottom of a well. He spoke kindly and gravely, andAntonia translated:--

  "My tatinek say when you are big boy, he give you his gun. Very fine, fromBohemie. It was belong to a great man, very rich, like what you not gothere; many fields, many forests, many big house. My papa play for hiswedding, and he give my papa fine gun, and my papa give you."

  Mr. Shimerda walking on the upland prairie with a gun over his shoulder]

  I was glad that this project was one of futurity. There never were suchpeople as the Shimerdas for wanting to give away everything they had. Eventhe mother was always offering me things, though I knew she expectedsubstantial presents in return. We stood there in friendly silence, whilethe feeble minstrel sheltered in Antonia's hair went on with its scratchychirp. The old man's smile, as he listened, was so full of sadness, ofpity for things, that I never afterward forgot it. As the sun sank therecame a sudden coolness and the strong smell of earth and drying grass.Antonia and her father went off hand in hand, and I buttoned up my jacketand raced my shadow home.