My Ántonia Page 9

  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 more ofthe 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 me morelike an equal and to defer to me in other things than reading lessons.This change came about from an adventure we had together.

  One day when I rode over to the Shimerdas' I found Antonia starting off onfoot for Russian Peter's house, to borrow a spade Ambrosch needed. Ioffered to take her on the pony, and she got up behind me. There had beenanother black frost the night before, and the air was clear and heady aswine. Within a week all the blooming roads had been despoiled--hundreds ofmiles of yellow sunflowers had been transformed into brown, rattling,burry stalks.

  We found Russian Peter digging his potatoes. We were glad to go in and getwarm by his kitchen stove and to see his squashes and Christmas melons,heaped in the storeroom for winter. As we rode away with the spade,Antonia suggested that we stop at the prairie-dog town and dig into one ofthe holes. We could find out whether they ran straight down, or werehorizontal, like mole-holes; whether they had underground connections;whether the owls had nests down there, lined with feathers. We might getsome puppies, or owl eggs, or snake-skins.

  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 gray and velvety. The holes were several yardsapart, and were disposed with a good deal of regularity, almost as if thetown had been laid out in streets and avenues. One always felt that anorderly and very sociable kind of life was going on there. I picketed Dudedown in a draw, and we went wandering about, looking for a hole that wouldbe easy to dig. The dogs were out, as usual, dozens of them, sitting up ontheir hind legs over the doors of their houses. As we approached, theybarked, shook their tails at us, and scurried underground. Before themouths of the holes were little patches of sand and gravel, scratched up,we supposed, from a long way below the surface. Here and there, in thetown, we came on larger gravel patches, several yards away from any hole.If the dogs had scratched the sand up in excavating, how had they carriedit so far? It was on one of these gravel beds that I met my adventure.

  We were examining a big hole with two entrances. The burrow sloped intothe ground at a gentle angle, so that we could see where the two corridorsunited, and the floor was dusty from use, like a little highway over whichmuch travel went. I was walking backward, in a crouching position, when Iheard Antonia scream. She was standing opposite me, pointing behind me andshouting something in Bohemian. I whirled round, and there, on one ofthose dry gravel beds, was the biggest snake I had ever seen. He wassunning himself, after the cold night, and he must have been asleep whenAntonia screamed. When I turned he was lying in long loose waves, like aletter "W." He twitched and began to coil slowly. He was not merely a bigsnake, I thought--he was a circus monstrosity. His abominable muscularity,his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as myleg, and looked as if millstones could n't crush the disgusting vitalityout of him. He lifted his hideous little head, and rattled. I did n't runbecause I did n't think of it--if my back had been against a stone wall Icould n'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 he wasall 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 his uglyhead flat, his body kept on coiling and winding, doubling and falling backon itself. I walked away and turned my back. I felt seasick. Antonia cameafter me, crying, "O Jimmy, he not bite you? You sure? Why you not runwhen I say?"

  "What did you jabber Bohunk for? You might have told me there was a snakebehind 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 kawn-tree 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 his head withthe spade while I tied a noose around it. We pulled him out straight andmeasured him by my riding-quirt; he was about five and a half feet long.He had twelve rattles, but they were broken off before they began totaper, so I insisted that he must once have had twenty-four. I explainedto Antonia how this meant that he was twenty-four years old, that he musthave been there when white men first came, left on from buffalo and Indiantimes. As I turned him over I began to feel proud of him, to have a kindof respect for his age and size. He seemed like the ancient, eldest Evil.Certainly his kind have left horrible unconscious memories in allwarm-blooded life. When we dragged him down into the draw, Dude sprang offto the end of his tether and shivered all over--would n't let us come nearhim.

  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, shekept shouting back to me about how astonished everybody would be. Ifollowed 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 them all.Nevertheless, I stole furtive glances behind me now and then to see thatno avenging mate, older and bigger than my quarry, was racing up from therear.

  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 the edgeof the cattle-pond, having a quiet pipe before supper. Antonia called himto come quick and look. He did not say anything for a minute, butscratched 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! Iwould n't want to do any business with that fellow myself, unless I had afence-post along. Your grandmother's snake-cane would n't more than ticklehim. He could stand right up and talk to you, he could. Did he fighthard?"

  Antonia broke in: "He fight something awful! He is all over Jimmy's boots.I scream for him to run, but he just hit and hit that snake like he wascrazy."

  Otto winked at me. After Antonia rode on he said: "Got him in the headfirst crack, did n't you? That was just as well."

  We hung him up to the windmill, and when I went down to the kitchen Ifound Antonia standing in the middle of the floor, telling the story witha great deal of color.

  Subsequent experiences with rattlesnakes taught me that my first encounterwas fortunate in circumstance. My big rattler was old, and had led tooeasy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probably lived therefor years, with a fat prairie dog for breakfast whenever he felt like it,a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot thatthe world does n't owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size, in fightingtrim, would be more than any boy could handle. So in reality it was a mockadventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, as it probably was formany a dragon-slayer. I had been adequately armed by Russian Peter; thesnake was old and lazy; and I had
Antonia beside me, to appreciate andadmire.

  That snake hung on our corral fence for several days; some of theneighbors came to see it and agreed that it was the biggest rattler everkilled in those parts. This was enough for Antonia. She liked me betterfrom that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with me again. Ihad killed a big snake--I was now a big fellow.