| BOOK I The Shimerdas |
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| I |
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| I FIRST HEARD OF Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great
midland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and
mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents,
who lived in Nebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the
`hands' on my father's old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for
my grandfather. Jake's experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never
been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in
a new world. |
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| We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of
the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys offered him: candy,
oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch-charm, and for me a `Life of Jesse James,' which I
remember as one of the most satisfactory books I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were
under the protection of a friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to
which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our confidence. He
seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had been almost everywhere; in his
conversation he threw out lightly the names of distant states and cities. He
wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged.
Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an
Egyptian obelisk. |
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| Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a
family from `across the water' whose destination was the same as ours. |
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| `They can't any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all she can say is
"We go Black Hawk, Nebraska." She's not much older than you, twelve
or thirteen, maybe, and she's as bright as a new dollar. Don't you want to go ahead and
see her, Jimmy? She's got the pretty brown eyes, too!' |
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| This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down to `Jesse
James.' Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases
from foreigners. |
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| I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the long day's
journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had crossed so many rivers
that I was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was
still, all day long, Nebraska. |
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| I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat, for a long while when we reached
Black Hawk. Jake roused me and took me by the hand. We stumbled down from the
train to a wooden siding, where men were running about with lanterns. I
couldn't see any town, or even distant lights; we were surrounded by utter
darkness. The engine was panting heavily after its long run. In the
red glow from the fire-box, a group of people stood huddled together on the platform,
encumbered by bundles and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor
had told us about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and she carried a
little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a baby. There was an old man, tall
and stooped. Two half-grown boys and a girl stood holding oilcloth bundles, and
a little girl clung to her mother's skirts. Presently a man with a lantern approached them
and began to talk, shouting and exclaiming. I pricked up my ears, for it was
positively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue. |
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| Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called out: `Hello, are you
Mr. Burden's folks? If you are, it's me you're looking for. I'm Otto
Fuchs. I'm Mr. Burden's hired man, and I'm to drive you out. Hello, Jimmy,
ain't you scared to come so far west?' |
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| I looked up with interest at the new face in the lantern-light. He might have stepped
out of the pages of `Jesse James.' He wore a sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a
bright buckle, and the ends of his moustache were twisted up stiffly, like little
horns. He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a
history. A long scar ran across one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up
in a sinister curl. The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown as an
Indian's. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked about the platform in his
high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was a rather slight man, quick
and wiry, and light on his feet. He told us we had a long night drive ahead of
us, and had better be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm-wagons were
tied, and I saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for
us. Jake got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the
bottom of the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo hide. The immigrants rumbled
off into the empty darkness, and we followed them. |
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| I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and I soon began to
ache all over. When the straw settled down, I had a hard
bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and
peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks
or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in
the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the
material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but
land--slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we
went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the
world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's
jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar
mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there
was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me
from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or
along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits
behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I
don't think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that
earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that
night: here, I felt, what would be would be. |
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