| VI
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| ONE AFTERNOON WE WERE having our reading lesson on the warm,
grassy bank where the badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight,
but there was a shiver of coming winter in the air.
I had seen ice on the little horsepond that morning,
and as we went through the garden we found the tall asparagus,
with its red berries, lying on the ground, a mass of slimy green.
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| Tony was barefooted, and she shivered in her cotton
dress and was comfortable only when we were tucked
down on the baked earth, in the full blaze 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
the badger was in her part of the world, and how men kept
a special kind of dog, with very short legs, to hunt him.
Those dogs, she said, went down into the hole after the badger
and killed him there in a terrific struggle underground;
you could hear the barks and yelps outside. Then the dog
dragged himself back, covered with bites and scratches,
to be rewarded and petted by his master. She knew a dog
who had a star on his collar for every badger he had killed.
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| The rabbits were unusually spry that afternoon. They kept
starting up all about us, and dashing off down the draw as if
they were playing a game of some kind. But the little buzzing
things that lived in the grass were all dead--all but one.
While we were lying there against the warm bank, a little
insect of the palest, frailest green hopped painfully out of
the buffalo 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 antennae quivering, 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 gaily and indulgently in Bohemian.
Presently he began to sing for us--a thin, rusty little chirp.
She held him close to her ear and laughed, but a moment
afterward I saw there were tears in her eyes. She told me that
in her village at home there was an old beggar woman who went
about selling herbs and roots she had dug up in the forest.
If you took her in and gave her a warm place by the fire,
she sang old songs to the children in a cracked voice, like this.
Old Hata, she was called, and the children loved to see her
coming and saved their cakes and sweets for her.
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| When the bank on the other side of the draw began to throw a narrow
shelf of shadow, we knew we ought to be starting homeward; the chill
came on quickly when the sun got low, and Antonia's dress was thin.
What were we to do with the frail little creature we had lured
back to life by false pretences? I offered my pockets, but Tony
shook her head and carefully put the green insect in her hair,
tying her big handkerchief down loosely over her curls.
I said I would go with her until we could see Squaw Creek,
and then turn and run home. We drifted along lazily, very happy,
through the magical light of the late afternoon.
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| All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them.
As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were
drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any
other time of the day. The blond cornfields were red gold,
the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows. The whole prairie
was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed.
That hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending,
like a hero's death--heroes who died young and gloriously.
It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day.
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| How many an afternoon Antonia and I have trailed along the prairie
under that magnificence! And always two long black shadows flitted
before us or followed after, dark spots on the ruddy grass.
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| We had been silent a long time, and the edge of the sun sank
nearer and nearer the prairie floor, when we saw a figure
moving on the edge of the upland, a gun over his shoulder.
He was walking slowly, dragging his feet along as if he had no purpose.
We broke into a run to overtake him.
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| `My papa sick all the time,' Tony panted as we flew.
`He not look good, Jim.'
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| As we neared Mr. Shimerda she shouted, and he lifted his head
and peered about. Tony ran up to him, caught his hand and pressed
it against her cheek. She was the only one of his family who could
rouse the old man from the torpor in which he seemed to live.
He took the bag from his belt and showed us three rabbits he had shot,
looked at Antonia with a wintry flicker of a smile and began to tell
her something. She turned to me.
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| `My tatinek make me little hat with the skins, little hat for winter!'
she exclaimed joyfully. `Meat for eat, skin for hat'--she told off
these benefits on her fingers.
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| Her father put his hand on her hair, but she caught his wrist
and lifted it carefully away, talking to him rapidly.
I heard the name of old Hata. He untied the handkerchief,
separated her hair with his fingers, and stood looking
down at the green insect. When it began to chirp faintly,
he listened as if it were a beautiful sound.
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| 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 examining it, he turned to me with his far-away look
that always made me feel as if I were down at the bottom of a well.
He spoke kindly and gravely, and Antonia translated:
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| `My tatinek say when you are big boy, he give you his gun.
Very fine, from Bohemie. It was belong to a great man, very rich,
like what you not got here; many fields, many forests, many big house.
My papa play for his wedding, and he give my papa fine gun,
and my papa give you.'
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| I was glad that this project was one of futurity. There never
were such people as the Shimerdas for wanting to give away
everything they had. Even the mother was always offering me things,
though I knew she expected substantial presents in return.
We stood there in friendly silence, while the feeble minstrel
sheltered in Antonia's hair went on with its scratchy chirp.
The old man's smile, as he listened, was so full of sadness,
of pity for things, that I never afterward forgot it.
As the sun sank there came 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 jacket and raced
my shadow home.
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