Chapter: THE week following Christmas brought in a thaw, and by New Year's Day all
the world about us was a broth of gray slush, and the guttered slope
between the windmill and the barn was running black water. The soft black
earth stood out in patches along the roadsides. I resumed all my chores,
carried in the cobs and wood and water, and spent the afternoons at the
barn, watching Jake shell corn with a hand-sheller.

One morning, during this interval of fine weather, Antonia and her mother
rode over on one of their shaggy old horses to pay us a visit. It was the
first time Mrs. Shimerda had been to our house, and she ran about
examining our carpets and curtains and furniture, all the while commenting
upon them to her daughter in an envious, complaining tone. In the kitchen
she caught up an iron pot that stood on the back of the stove and said:
"You got many, Shimerdas no got." I thought it weak-minded of grandmother
to give the pot to her.

After dinner, when she was helping to wash the dishes, she said, tossing
her head: "You got many things for cook. If I got all things like you, I
make much better."

She was a conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could not
humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward Antonia and
listened unsympathetically when she told me her father was not well.

"My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make music
any more. At home he play violin all the time; for weddings and for dance.
Here never. When I beg him for play, he shake his head no. Some days he
take his violin out of his box and make with his fingers on the strings,
like this, but never he make the music. He don't like this kawn-tree."

"People who don't like this country ought to stay at home," I said
severely. "We don't make them come here."

"He not want to come, nev-er!" she burst out. "My mamenka make him come.
All the time she say: 'America big country; much money, much land for my
boys, much husband for my girls.' My papa, he cry for leave his old
friends what make music with him. He love very much the man what play the
long horn like this"--she indicated a slide trombone. "They go to school
together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want Ambrosch for be
rich, with many cattle."

"Your mama," I said angrily, "wants other people's things."

"Your grandfather is rich," she retorted fiercely. "Why he not help my
papa? Ambrosch be rich, too, after while, and he pay back. He is very
smart boy. For Ambrosch my mama come here."

Ambrosch was considered the important person in the family. Mrs. Shimerda
and Antonia always deferred to him, though he was often surly with them
and contemptuous toward his father. Ambrosch and his mother had everything
their own way. Though Antonia loved her father more than she did any one
else, she stood in awe of her elder brother.

After I watched Antonia and her mother go over the hill on their miserable
horse, carrying our iron pot with them, I turned to grandmother, who had
taken up her darning, and said I hoped that snooping old woman would n't
come to see us any more.

Grandmother chuckled and drove her bright needle across a hole in Otto's
sock. "She's not old, Jim, though I expect she seems old to you. No, I
would n't mourn if she never came again. But, you see, a body never knows
what traits poverty might bring out in 'em. It makes a woman grasping to
see her children want for things. Now read me a chapter in 'The Prince of
the House of David.' Let's forget the Bohemians."

We had three weeks of this mild, open weather. The cattle in the corral
ate corn almost as fast as the men could shell it for them, and we hoped
they would be ready for an early market. One morning the two big bulls,
Gladstone and Brigham Young, thought spring had come, and they began to
tease and butt at each other across the barbed wire that separated them.
Soon they got angry. They bellowed and pawed up the soft earth with their
hoofs, rolling their eyes and tossing their heads. Each withdrew to a far
corner of his own corral, and then they made for each other at a gallop.
Thud, thud, we could hear the impact of their great heads, and their
bellowing shook the pans on the kitchen shelves. Had they not been
dehorned, they would have torn each other to pieces. Pretty soon the fat
steers took it up and began butting and horning each other. Clearly, the
affair had to be stopped. We all stood by and watched admiringly while
Fuchs rode into the corral with a pitchfork and prodded the bulls again
and again, finally driving them apart.

The big storm of the winter began on my eleventh birthday, the 20th of
January. When I went down to breakfast that morning, Jake and Otto came in
white as snow-men, beating their hands and stamping their feet. They began
to laugh boisterously when they saw me, calling:--

"You've got a birthday present this time, Jim, and no mistake. They was a
full-grown blizzard ordered for you."

All day the storm went on. The snow did not fall this time, it simply
spilled out of heaven, like thousands of feather-beds being emptied. That
afternoon the kitchen was a carpenter-shop; the men brought in their tools
and made two great wooden shovels with long handles. Neither grandmother
nor I could go out in the storm, so Jake fed the chickens and brought in a
pitiful contribution of eggs.

Next day our men had to shovel until noon to reach the barn--and the snow
was still falling! There had not been such a storm in the ten years my
grandfather had lived in Nebraska. He said at dinner that we would not try
to reach the cattle--they were fat enough to go without their corn for a
day or two; but to-morrow we must feed them and thaw out their water-tap
so that they could drink. We could not so much as see the corrals, but we
knew the steers were over there, huddled together under the north bank.
Our ferocious bulls, subdued enough by this time, were probably warming
each other's backs. "This'll take the bile out of 'em!" Fuchs remarked
gleefully.

At noon that day the hens had not been heard from. After dinner Jake and
Otto, their damp clothes now dried on them, stretched their stiff arms and
plunged again into the drifts. They made a tunnel under the snow to the
henhouse, with walls so solid that grandmother and I could walk back and
forth in it. We found the chickens asleep; perhaps they thought night had
come to stay. One old rooster was stirring about, pecking at the solid
lump of ice in their water-tin. When we flashed the lantern in their eyes,
the hens set up a great cackling and flew about clumsily, scattering
down-feathers. The mottled, pin-headed guinea-hens, always resentful of
captivity, ran screeching out into the tunnel and tried to poke their
ugly, painted faces through the snow walls. By five o'clock the chores
were done--just when it was time to begin them all over again! That was a
strange, unnatural sort of day.





ON the morning of the 22d I wakened with a start. Before I opened my eyes,
I seemed to know that something had happened. I heard excited voices in
the kitchen--grandmother's was so shrill that I knew she must be almost
beside herself. I looked forward to any new crisis with delight. What
could it be, I wondered, as I hurried into my clothes. Perhaps the barn
had burned; perhaps the cattle had frozen to death; perhaps a neighbor was
lost in the storm.

Down in the kitchen grandfather was standing before the stove with his
hands behind him. Jake and Otto had taken off their boots and were rubbing
their woolen socks. Their clothes and boots were steaming, and they both
looked exhausted. On the bench behind the stove lay a man, covered up with
a blanket. Grandmother motioned me to the dining-room. I obeyed
reluctantly. I watched her as she came and went, carrying dishes. Her lips
were tightly compressed and she kept whispering to herself: "Oh, dear
Saviour!" "Lord, Thou knowest!"

Presently grandfather came in and spoke to me: "Jimmy, we will not have
prayers this morning, because we have a great deal to do. Old Mr. Shimerda
is dead, and his family are in great distress. Ambrosch came over here in
the middle of the night, and Jake and Otto went back with him. The boys
have had a hard night, and you must not bother them with questions. That
is Ambrosch, asleep on the bench. Come in to breakfast, boys."

After Jake and Otto had swallowed their first cup of coffee, they began to
talk excitedly, disregarding grandmother's warning glances. I held my
tongue, but I listened with all my ears.

"No, sir," Fuchs said in answer to a question from grandfather, "nobody
heard the gun go off. Ambrosch was out with the ox team, trying to break a
road, and the women folks was shut up tight in their cave. When Ambrosch
come in it was dark and he did n't see nothing, but the oxen acted kind of
queer. One of 'em ripped around and got away from him--bolted clean out of
the stable. His hands is blistered where the rope run through. He got a
lantern and went back and found the old man, just as we seen him."

"Poor soul, poor soul!" grandmother groaned. "I'd like to think he never
done it. He was always considerate and un-wishful to give trouble. How
could he forget himself and bring this on us!"

"I don't think he was out of his head for a minute, Mrs. Burden," Fuchs
declared. "He done everything natural. You know he was always sort of
fixy, and fixy he was to the last. He shaved after dinner, and washed
hisself all over after the girls was done the dishes. Antonia heated the
water for him. Then he put on a clean shirt and clean socks, and after he
was dressed he kissed her and the little one and took his gun and said he
was going out to hunt rabbits. He must have gone right down to the barn
and done it then. He layed down on that bunk-bed, close to the ox stalls,
where he always slept. When we found him, everything was decent
except,"--Fuchs wrinkled his brow and hesitated,--"except what he could n't
nowise foresee. His coat was hung on a peg, and his boots was under the
bed. He'd took off that silk neckcloth he always wore, and folded it
smooth and stuck his pin through it. He turned back his shirt at the neck
and rolled up his sleeves."

"I don't see how he could do it!" grandmother kept saying.

Otto misunderstood her. "Why, mam, it was simple enough; he pulled the
trigger with his big toe. He layed over on his side and put the end of the
barrel in his mouth, then he drew up one foot and felt for the trigger. He
found it all right!"

"Maybe he did," said Jake grimly. "There's something mighty queer about
it."

"Now what do you mean, Jake?" grandmother asked sharply.

"Well, mam, I found Krajiek's axe under the manger, and I picks it up and
carries it over to the corpse, and I take my oath it just fit the gash in
the front of the old man's face. That there Krajiek had been sneakin'
round, pale and quiet, and when he seen me examinin' the axe, he begun
whimperin', 'My God, man, don't do that!' 'I reckon I'm a-goin' to look
into this,' says I. Then he begun to squeal like a rat and run about
wringin' his hands. 'They'll hang me!' says he. 'My God, they'll hang me
sure!'"

Fuchs spoke up impatiently. "Krajiek's gone silly, Jake, and so have you.
The old man would n't have made all them preparations for Krajiek to
murder him, would he? It don't hang together. The gun was right beside him
when Ambrosch found him."

"Krajiek could 'a' put it there, could n't he?" Jake demanded.

Grandmother broke in excitedly: "See here, Jake Marpole, don't you go
trying to add murder to suicide. We're deep enough in trouble. Otto reads
you too many of them detective stories."

"It will be easy to decide all that, Emmaline," said grandfather quietly.
"If he shot himself in the way they think, the gash will be torn from the
inside outward."

"Just so it is, Mr. Burden," Otto affirmed. "I seen bunches of hair and
stuff sticking to the poles and straw along the roof. They was blown up
there by gunshot, no question."

Grandmother told grandfather she meant to go over to the Shimerdas with
him.

"There is nothing you can do," he said doubtfully. "The body can't be
touched until we get the coroner here from Black Hawk, and that will be a
matter of several days, this weather."

"Well, I can take them some victuals, anyway, and say a word of comfort to
them poor little girls. The oldest one was his darling, and was like a
right hand to him. He might have thought of her. He's left her alone in a
hard world." She glanced distrustfully at Ambrosch, who was now eating his
breakfast at the kitchen table.

Fuchs, although he had been up in the cold nearly all night, was going to
make the long ride to Black Hawk to fetch the priest and the coroner. On
the gray gelding, our best horse, he would try to pick his way across the
country with no roads to guide him.

"Don't you worry about me, Mrs. Burden," he said cheerfully, as he put on
a second pair of socks. "I've got a good nose for directions, and I never
did need much sleep. It's the gray I'm worried about. I'll save him what I
can, but it'll strain him, as sure as I'm telling you!"

"This is no time to be over-considerate of animals, Otto; do the best you
can for yourself. Stop at the Widow Steavens's for dinner. She's a good
woman, and she'll do well by you."

After Fuchs rode away, I was left with Ambrosch. I saw a side of him I had
not seen before. He was deeply, even slavishly, devout. He did not say a
word all morning, but sat with his rosary in his hands, praying, now
silently, now aloud. He never looked away from his beads, nor lifted his
hands except to cross himself. Several times the poor boy fell asleep
where he sat, wakened with a start, and began to pray again.

No wagon could be got to the Shimerdas' until a road was broken, and that
would be a day's job. Grandfather came from the barn on one of our big
black horses, and Jake lifted grandmother up behind him. She wore her
black hood and was bundled up in shawls. Grandfather tucked his bushy
white beard inside his overcoat. They looked very Biblical as they set
off, I thought. Jake and Ambrosch followed them, riding the other black
and my pony, carrying bundles of clothes that we had got together for Mrs.
Shimerda. I watched them go past the pond and over the hill by the drifted
cornfield. Then, for the first time, I realized that I was alone in the
house.

I felt a considerable extension of power and authority, and was anxious to
acquit myself creditably. I carried in cobs and wood from the long cellar,
and filled both the stoves. I remembered that in the hurry and excitement
of the morning nobody had thought of the chickens, and the eggs had not
been gathered. Going out through the tunnel, I gave the hens their corn,
emptied the ice from their drinking-pan, and filled it with water. After
the cat had had his milk, I could think of nothing else to do, and I sat
down to get warm. The quiet was delightful, and the ticking clock was the
most pleasant of companions. I got "Robinson Crusoe" and tried to read,
but his life on the island seemed dull compared with ours. Presently, as I
looked with satisfaction about our comfortable sitting-room, it flashed
upon me that if Mr. Shimerda's soul were lingering about in this world at
all, it would be here, in our house, which had been more to his liking
than any other in the neighborhood. I remembered his contented face when
he was with us on Christmas Day. If he could have lived with us, this
terrible thing would never have happened.

I knew it was homesickness that had killed Mr. Shimerda, and I wondered
whether his released spirit would not eventually find its way back to his
own country. I thought of how far it was to Chicago, and then to Virginia,
to Baltimore,--and then the great wintry ocean. No, he would not at once
set out upon that long journey. Surely, his exhausted spirit, so tired of
cold and crowding and the struggle with the ever-falling snow, was resting
now in this quiet house.

I was not frightened, but I made no noise. I did not wish to disturb him.
I went softly down to the kitchen which, tucked away so snugly
underground, always seemed to me the heart and center of the house. There,
on the bench behind the stove, I thought and thought about Mr. Shimerda.
Outside I could hear the wind singing over hundreds of miles of snow. It
was as if I had let the old man in out of the tormenting winter, and were
sitting there with him. I went over all that Antonia had ever told me
about his life before he came to this country; how he used to play the
fiddle at weddings and dances. I thought about the friends he had mourned
to leave, the trombone-player, the great forest full of game,--belonging,
as Antonia said, to the "nobles,"--from which she and her mother used to
steal wood on moonlight nights. There was a white hart that lived in that
forest, and if any one killed it, he would be hanged, she said. Such vivid
pictures came to me that they might have been Mr. Shimerda's memories, not
yet faded out from the air in which they had haunted him.

It had begun to grow dark when my household returned, and grandmother was
so tired that she went at once to bed. Jake and I got supper, and while we
were washing the dishes he told me in loud whispers about the state of
things over at the Shimerdas'. Nobody could touch the body until the
coroner came. If any one did, something terrible would happen, apparently.
The dead man was frozen through, "just as stiff as a dressed turkey you
hang out to freeze," Jake said. The horses and oxen would not go into the
barn until he was frozen so hard that there was no longer any smell of
blood. They were stabled there now, with the dead man, because there was
no other place to keep them. A lighted lantern was kept hanging over Mr.
Shimerda's head. Antonia and Ambrosch and the mother took turns going down
to pray beside him. The crazy boy went with them, because he did not feel
the cold. I believed he felt cold as much as any one else, but he liked to
be thought insensible to it. He was always coveting distinction, poor
Marek!

Ambrosch, Jake said, showed more human feeling than he would have supposed
him capable of; but he was chiefly concerned about getting a priest, and
about his father's soul, which he believed was in a place of torment and
would remain there until his family and the priest had prayed a great deal
for him. "As I understand it," Jake concluded, "it will be a matter of
years to pray his soul out of Purgatory, and right now he's in torment."

"I don't believe it," I said stoutly. "I almost know it is n't true." I
did not, of course, say that I believed he had been in that very kitchen
all afternoon, on his way back to his own country. Nevertheless, after I
went to bed, this idea of punishment and Purgatory came back on me
crushingly. I remembered the account of Dives in torment, and shuddered.
But Mr. Shimerda had not been rich and selfish; he had only been so
unhappy that he could not live any longer.





OTTO FUCHS got back from Black Hawk at noon the next day. He reported that
the coroner would reach the Shimerdas' sometime that afternoon, but the
missionary priest was at the other end of his parish, a hundred miles
away, and the trains were not running. Fuchs had got a few hours' sleep at
the livery barn in town, but he was afraid the gray gelding had strained
himself. Indeed, he was never the same horse afterward. That long trip
through the deep snow had taken all the endurance out of him.

Fuchs brought home with him a stranger, a young Bohemian who had taken a
homestead near Black Hawk, and who came on his only horse to help his
fellow-countrymen in their trouble. That was the first time I ever saw
Anton Jelinek. He was a strapping young fellow in the early twenties then,
handsome, warm-hearted, and full of life, and he came to us like a miracle
in the midst of that grim business. I remember exactly how he strode into
our kitchen in his felt boots and long wolfskin coat, his eyes and cheeks
bright with the cold. At sight of grandmother, he snatched off his fur
cap, greeting her in a deep, rolling voice which seemed older than he.

"I want to thank you very much, Mrs. Burden, for that you are so kind to
poor strangers from my kawn-tree."

He did not hesitate like a farmer boy, but looked one eagerly in the eye
when he spoke. Everything about him was warm and spontaneous. He said he
would have come to see the Shimerdas before, but he had hired out to husk
corn all the fall, and since winter began he had been going to the school
by the mill, to learn English, along with the little children. He told me
he had a nice "lady-teacher" and that he liked to go to school.

At dinner grandfather talked to Jelinek more than he usually did to
strangers.

"Will they be much disappointed because we cannot get a priest?" he asked.

Jelinek looked serious. "Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their father
has done a great sin," he looked straight at grandfather. "Our Lord has
said that."

Grandfather seemed to like his frankness. "We believe that, too, Jelinek.
But we believe that Mr. Shimerda's soul will come to its Creator as well
off without a priest. We believe that Christ is our only intercessor."

The young man shook his head. "I know how you think. My teacher at the
school has explain. But I have seen too much. I believe in prayer for the
dead. I have seen too much."

We asked him what he meant.

He glanced around the table. "You want I shall tell you? When I was a
little boy like this one, I begin to help the priest at the altar. I make
my first communion very young; what the Church teach seem plain to me. By
'n' by war-times come, when the Austrians fight us. We have very many
soldiers in camp near my village, and the cholera break out in that camp,
and the men die like flies. All day long our priest go about there to give
the Sacrament to dying men, and I go with him to carry the vessels with
the Holy Sacrament. Everybody that go near that camp catch the sickness
but me and the priest. But we have no sickness, we have no fear, because
we carry that blood and that body of Christ, and it preserve us." He
paused, looking at grandfather. "That I know, Mr. Burden, for it happened
to myself. All the soldiers know, too. When we walk along the road, the
old priest and me, we meet all the time soldiers marching and officers on
horse. All those officers, when they see what I carry under the cloth,
pull up their horses and kneel down on the ground in the road until we
pass. So I feel very bad for my kawntree-man to die without the Sacrament,
and to die in a bad way for his soul, and I feel sad for his family."

We had listened attentively. It was impossible not to admire his frank,
manly faith.

"I am always glad to meet a young man who thinks seriously about these
things," said grandfather, "and I would never be the one to say you were
not in God's care when you were among the soldiers."

After dinner it was decided that young Jelinek should hook our two strong
black farmhorses to the scraper and break a road through to the
Shimerdas', so that a wagon could go when it was necessary. Fuchs, who was
the only cabinet-maker in the neighborhood, was set to work on a coffin.

Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we admired it, he told us
that he had shot and skinned the coyotes, and the young man who "batched"
with him, Jan Bouska, who had been a fur-worker in Vienna, made the coat.
From the windmill I watched Jelinek come out of the barn with the blacks,
and work his way up the hillside toward the cornfield. Sometimes he was
completely hidden by the clouds of snow that rose about him; then he and
the horses would emerge black and shining.

Our heavy carpenter's bench had to be brought from the barn and carried
down into the kitchen. Fuchs selected boards from a pile of planks
grandfather had hauled out from town in the fall to make a new floor for
the oats bin. When at last the lumber and tools were assembled, and the
doors were closed again and the cold drafts shut out, grandfather rode
away to meet the coroner at the Shimerdas', and Fuchs took off his coat
and settled down to work. I sat on his work-table and watched him. He did
not touch his tools at first, but figured for a long while on a piece of
paper, and measured the planks and made marks on them. While he was thus
engaged, he whistled softly to himself, or teasingly pulled at his
half-ear. Grandmother moved about quietly, so as not to disturb him. At
last he folded his ruler and turned a cheerful face to us.

"The hardest part of my job's done," he announced. "It's the head end of
it that comes hard with me, especially when I'm out of practice. The last
time I made one of these, Mrs. Burden," he continued, as he sorted and
tried his chisels, "was for a fellow in the Black Tiger mine, up above
Silverton, Colorado. The mouth of that mine goes right into the face of
the cliff, and they used to put us in a bucket and run us over on a
trolley and shoot us into the shaft. The bucket traveled across a box
canon three hundred feet deep, and about a third full of water. Two Swedes
had fell out of that bucket once, and hit the water, feet down. If you'll
believe it, they went to work the next day. You can't kill a Swede. But in
my time a little Eyetalian tried the high dive, and it turned out
different with him. We was snowed in then, like we are now, and I happened
to be the only man in camp that could make a coffin for him. It's a handy
thing to know, when you knock about like I've done."

"We'd be hard put to it now, if you did n't know, Otto," grandmother said.

"Yes, 'm," Fuchs admitted with modest pride. "So few folks does know how
to make a good tight box that'll turn water. I sometimes wonder if
there'll be anybody about to do it for me. However, I'm not at all
particular that way."

All afternoon, wherever one went in the house, one could hear the panting
wheeze of the saw or the pleasant purring of the plane. They were such
cheerful noises, seeming to promise new things for living people: it was a
pity that those freshly planed pine boards were to be put underground so
soon. The lumber was hard to work because it was full of frost, and the
boards gave off a sweet smell of pine woods, as the heap of yellow
shavings grew higher and higher. I wondered why Fuchs had not stuck to
cabinet-work, he settled down to it with such ease and content. He handled
the tools as if he liked the feel of them; and when he planed, his hands
went back and forth over the boards in an eager, beneficent way as if he
were blessing them. He broke out now and then into German hymns, as if
this occupation brought back old times to him.

At four o'clock Mr. Bushy, the postmaster, with another neighbor who lived
east of us, stopped in to get warm. They were on their way to the
Shimerdas'. The news of what had happened over there had somehow got
abroad through the snow-blocked country. Grandmother gave the visitors
sugar-cakes and hot coffee. Before these callers were gone, the brother of
the Widow Steavens, who lived on the Black Hawk road, drew up at our door,
and after him came the father of the German family, our nearest neighbors
on the south. They dismounted and joined us in the dining-room. They were
all eager for any details about the suicide, and they were greatly
concerned as to where Mr. Shimerda would be buried. The nearest Catholic
cemetery was at Black Hawk, and it might be weeks before a wagon could get
so far. Besides, Mr. Bushy and grandmother were sure that a man who had
killed himself could not be buried in a Catholic graveyard. There was a
burying-ground over by the Norwegian church, west of Squaw Creek; perhaps
the Norwegians would take Mr. Shimerda in.

After our visitors rode away in single file over the hill, we returned to
the kitchen. Grandmother began to make the icing for a chocolate cake, and
Otto again filled the house with the exciting, expectant song of the
plane. One pleasant thing about this time was that everybody talked more
than usual. I had never heard the postmaster say anything but "Only
papers, to-day," or, "I've got a sackful of mail for ye," until this
afternoon. Grandmother always talked, dear woman; to herself or to the
Lord, if there was no one else to listen; but grandfather was naturally
taciturn, and Jake and Otto were often so tired after supper that I used
to feel as if I were surrounded by a wall of silence. Now every one seemed
eager to talk. That afternoon Fuchs told me story after story; about the
Black Tiger mine, and about violent deaths and casual buryings, and the
queer fancies of dying men. You never really knew a man, he said, until
you saw him die. Most men were game, and went without a grudge.

The postmaster, going home, stopped to say that grandfather would bring
the coroner back with him to spend the night. The officers of the
Norwegian church, he told us, had held a meeting and decided that the
Norwegian graveyard could not extend its hospitality to Mr. Shimerda.

Grandmother was indignant. "If these foreigners are so clannish, Mr.
Bushy, we'll have to have an American graveyard that will be more
liberal-minded. I'll get right after Josiah to start one in the spring. If
anything was to happen to me, I don't want the Norwegians holding
inquisitions over me to see whether I'm good enough to be laid amongst
'em."

Soon grandfather returned, bringing with him Anton Jelinek, and that
important person, the coroner. He was a mild, flurried old man, a Civil
War veteran, with one sleeve hanging empty. He seemed to find this case
very perplexing, and said if it had not been for grandfather he would have
sworn out a warrant against Krajiek. "The way he acted, and the way his
axe fit the wound, was enough to convict any man."

Although it was perfectly clear that Mr. Shimerda had killed himself, Jake
and the coroner thought something ought to be done to Krajiek because he
behaved like a guilty man. He was badly frightened, certainly, and perhaps
he even felt some stirrings of remorse for his indifference to the old
man's misery and loneliness.

At supper the men ate like vikings, and the chocolate cake, which I had
hoped would linger on until to-morrow in a mutilated condition,
disappeared on the second round. They talked excitedly about where they
should bury Mr. Shimerda; I gathered that the neighbors were all disturbed
and shocked about something. It developed that Mrs. Shimerda and Ambrosch
wanted the old man buried on the southwest corner of their own land;
indeed, under the very stake that marked the corner. Grandfather had
explained to Ambrosch that some day, when the country was put under fence
and the roads were confined to section lines, two roads would cross
exactly on that corner. But Ambrosch only said, "It makes no matter."

Grandfather asked Jelinek whether in the old country there was some
superstition to the effect that a suicide must be buried at the
cross-roads.

Jelinek said he did n't know; he seemed to remember hearing there had once
been such a custom in Bohemia. "Mrs. Shimerda is made up her mind," he
added. "I try to persuade her, and say it looks bad for her to all the
neighbors; but she say so it must be. 'There I will bury him, if I dig the
grave myself,' she say. I have to promise her I help Ambrosch make the
grave to-morrow."

Grandfather smoothed his beard and looked judicial. "I don't know whose
wish should decide the matter, if not hers. But if she thinks she will
live to see the people of this country ride over that old man's head, she
is mistaken."





MR. SHIMERDA lay dead in the barn four days, and on the fifth they buried
him. All day Friday Jelinek was off with Ambrosch digging the grave,
chopping out the frozen earth with old axes. On Saturday we breakfasted
before daylight and got into the wagon with the coffin. Jake and Jelinek
went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from the pool of blood in
which it was frozen fast to the ground.

When grandmother and I went into the Shimerdas' house, we found the
women-folk alone; Ambrosch and Marek were at the barn. Mrs. Shimerda sat
crouching by the stove, Antonia was washing dishes. When she saw me she
ran out of her dark corner and threw her arms around me. "Oh, Jimmy," she
sobbed, "what you tink for my lovely papa!" It seemed to me that I could
feel her heart breaking as she clung to me.

Mrs. Shimerda, sitting on the stump by the stove, kept looking over her
shoulder toward the door while the neighbors were arriving. They came on
horseback, all except the postmaster, who brought his family in a wagon
over the only broken wagon-trail. The Widow Steavens rode up from her farm
eight miles down the Black Hawk road. The cold drove the women into the
cave-house, and it was soon crowded. A fine, sleety snow was beginning to
fall, and every one was afraid of another storm and anxious to have the
burial over with.

Grandfather and Jelinek came to tell Mrs. Shimerda that it was time to
start. After bundling her mother up in clothes the neighbors had brought,
Antonia put on an old cape from our house and the rabbit-skin hat her
father had made for her. Four men carried Mr. Shimerda's box up the hill;
Krajiek slunk along behind them. The coffin was too wide for the door, so
it was put down on the slope outside. I slipped out from the cave and
looked at Mr. Shimerda. He was lying on his side, with his knees drawn up.
His body was draped in a black shawl, and his head was bandaged in white
muslin, like a mummy's; one of his long, shapely hands lay out on the
black cloth; that was all one could see of him.

Mrs. Shimerda came out and placed an open prayer-book against the body,
making the sign of the cross on the bandaged head with her fingers.
Ambrosch knelt down and made the same gesture, and after him Antonia and
Marek. Yulka hung back. Her mother pushed her forward, and kept saying
something to her over and over. Yulka knelt down, shut her eyes, and put
out her hand a little way, but she drew it back and began to cry wildly.
She was afraid to touch the bandage. Mrs. Shimerda caught her by the
shoulders and pushed her toward the coffin, but grandmother interfered.

"No, Mrs. Shimerda," she said firmly, "I won't stand by and see that child
frightened into spasms. She is too little to understand what you want of
her. Let her alone."

At a look from grandfather, Fuchs and Jelinek placed the lid on the box,
and began to nail it down over Mr. Shimerda. I was afraid to look at
Antonia. She put her arms round Yulka and held the little girl close to
her.

The coffin was put into the wagon. We drove slowly away, against the fine,
icy snow which cut our faces like a sand-blast. When we reached the grave,
it looked a very little spot in that snow-covered waste. The men took the
coffin to the edge of the hole and lowered it with ropes. We stood about
watching them, and the powdery snow lay without melting on the caps and
shoulders of the men and the shawls of the women. Jelinek spoke in a
persuasive tone to Mrs. Shimerda, and then turned to grandfather.

"She says, Mr. Burden, she is very glad if you can make some prayer for
him here in English, for the neighbors to understand."

Grandmother looked anxiously at grandfather. He took off his hat, and the
other men did likewise. I thought his prayer remarkable. I still remember
it. He began, "Oh, great and just God, no man among us knows what the
sleeper knows, nor is it for us to judge what lies between him and Thee."
He prayed that if any man there had been remiss toward the stranger come
to a far country, God would forgive him and soften his heart. He recalled
the promises to the widow and the fatherless, and asked God to smooth the
way before this widow and her children, and to "incline the hearts of men
to deal justly with her." In closing, he said we were leaving Mr. Shimerda
at "Thy judgment seat, which is also Thy mercy seat."

All the time he was praying, grandmother watched him through the black
fingers of her glove, and when he said "Amen," I thought she looked
satisfied with him. She turned to Otto and whispered, "Can't you start a
hymn, Fuchs? It would seem less heathenish."

Fuchs glanced about to see if there was general approval of her
suggestion, then began, "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," and all the men and
women took it up after him. Whenever I have heard the hymn since, it has
made me remember that white waste and the little group of people; and the
bluish air, full of fine, eddying snow, like long veils flying:--

  "While the nearer waters roll,
  While the tempest still is high."



Years afterward, when the open-grazing days were over, and the red grass
had been ploughed under and under until it had almost disappeared from the
prairie; when all the fields were under fence, and the roads no longer ran
about like wild things, but followed the surveyed section-lines, Mr.
Shimerda's grave was still there, with a sagging wire fence around it, and
an unpainted wooden cross. As grandfather had predicted, Mrs. Shimerda
never saw the roads going over his head. The road from the north curved a
little to the east just there, and the road from the west swung out a
little to the south; so that the grave, with its tall red grass that was
never mowed, was like a little island; and at twilight, under a new moon
or the clear evening star, the dusty roads used to look like soft gray
rivers flowing past it. I never came upon the place without emotion, and
in all that country it was the spot most dear to me. I loved the dim
superstition, the propitiatory intent, that had put the grave there; and
still more I loved the spirit that could not carry out the sentence--the
error from the surveyed lines, the clemency of the soft earth roads along
which the home-coming wagons rattled after sunset. Never a tired driver
passed the wooden cross, I am sure, without wishing well to the sleeper.

 Parts XIII - XVI Part XIII In a few weeks the weather warms and there is a thaw. Antonia and her mother come to the Burden house to visit. Mrs. Shimerda admires their home and complains about her lack of resources, getting Mrs. Burden to give her a pot out of pity. She seems to try this strategy with several other things in the house with no success. Antonia tells Jim that her father is sick because he misses their old country. She says that he refuses to play his violin in the United States, even when she begs him. Jim, annoyed with Mrs. Shimerda's rudeness despite being rescued by the Burdens, says that perhaps he should never have come. Antonia admits that he did not want to, and that her mother convinced him to do it. Her mother wanted to come to help give Ambrosch and Antonia more opportunities. Ambrosch, it seems, was an important part of the family. When the Shimerdas' leave, Jim confesses that he hopes Mrs. Shimerda never visits again. His grandmother seems much more patient, and says that it's difficult to know what desperation can do to a person, and she suggests that Mrs. Shimerda is more concerned about her children than looking merely to improve herself. The warm weather lasts a few more weeks, and convinces the livestock that spring has arrived. But a big snowstorm hits in the middle of January. The Burdens are forced to dig their way out of the house, and they dig tunnels through the snow to the barn to fetch eggs and care for the animals. Part XIV On the morning of the 22nd, Jim wakes up to his grandmother wailing. He finds out that Mr. Shimerda has killed himself, and that the Shimerda family is struggling to deal with the loss. Apparently, Mr. Shimerda shot himself in his family barn, and Ambrosch found him. Ambrosch came to the Burden house for help, and Jake and Otto were the next people on the scene. Otto says that Mr. Shimerda took extra care to wash and prepare himself after dinner, and that he took his gun and told his daughter that he was going out to hunt rabbits. Then he went to his barn, laid down in the cot that he usually slept in, and shot himself. Jake speculates that Krajiek might have done it and arranged the scene to look like a suicide, but Otto and Grandfather point out that the evidence suggests otherwise. Jake found Krajiek's hatchet and claims that the blade of the weapon fit the wound in Mr. Shimerda's face, but Otto mentions that he saw evidence of the blast on the ceiling. Otto is sent to town for the priest and the coroner, and Mrs. Burden says that she would like to bring food and comfort to the Shimerdas. She mentions that Mr. Shimerda appeared not to be thinking of Antonia, who was now left without protection from her brother and mother. Both Mr. and Mrs. Burden set out for the Shimerdas' home, along with Jake and Ambrosch, who stayed the night. Jim is left alone in the house, and he does his best to care for the house in their absence. He becomes convinced that Mr. Shimerda's spirit has come to rest in the house, and he tries to pay his respects to Mr. Shimerda by remembering everything that he knows about him. Eventually, the rest of the Burden family returns. Jake tells Jim about the Shimerda house, and how no one can touch the body until the coroner has examined the scene. Jake says that the body has frozen solid, and that the family keeps visiting it to pray. Jake says that Ambrosch had been very worried about finding a priest because he was concerned about his father's soul, and that the family would have to pray hard to help get their father's soul out of purgatory. Part XV When Otto returns from town, he says that the coroner will arrive later that day, but that the priest will be delayed because he was off visiting another part of the parish and, apparently, the trains are not running. A young Bohemian, Anton Jelinek, comes with Otto back to the Burdens. Anton says that he would have come to visit the Shimerdas earlier except for the demands of his work and education. Anton confesses that he also believes that Mr. Shimerda has committed a sin and that he needs excessive prayer to help his soul out of purgatory. Mr. Burden disagrees and explains that he believes that people can't help the dead that way. Anton says that he disagrees because of what he has seen. Curious, the family asks him to explain. He tells a story about his experience as a boy in a war with the Prussians, walking around a military camp with a priest, administering communion to the soldiers sick and dying of cholera. He says that neither he nor the priest were affected by the illness, and he believes that the sacrament protected him. Anton is put to work clearing a path through the snow to the Shimerdas', while Otto sets about making a coffin for Mr. Shimerda. Otto tells the story of working on a mine in Colorado where he was asked to make a coffin for a small Italian man who had tried diving into a canyon and hadn't survived. Mrs. Burden remarks that coffin-making is a valuable and rare skill, and Otto says that he wonders sometimes if anyone will be around to make one for him. Jim notices that Otto seems to enjoy making the coffin and working with the wood, and Jim admires his craftsmanship. Mr. Bushy, the postmaster, stops in that day to get warm on his way to the Shimerdas. He mentions that news has spread of the suicide, and several other neighbors arrive soon, hoping for gossip and information about the planned burial site. There is some speculation that Mr. Shimerda might be buried in a Norwegian graveyard that is close. Jim notices an unusual talkativeness among his family and their visitors. Mrs. Burden finds out that the Norwegian graveyard has decided to refuse to allow Mr. Shimerda to be buried there, and she is upset about their decision. In the evening, the coroner stops by the Burden house to stay on his way back to town, and he echoes Jake's view that Krajiek was acting like a guilty man. The evidence was clear, but Krajiek's behavior seemed to suggest that he felt responsible. The discussion returns to Mr. Shimerda's burial place, and Jim finds out that Mrs. Shimerda is insisting that her dead husband be buried at the very tip of the southwest corner of their land. Friends and neighbors, Jim learns, have explained that a road will eventually be built there, and she continues to insist. Part XVI Anton and Ambrosch dig Mr. Shimerda's grave where Mrs. Shimerda insists that it be. Jim visits the Shimerdas with the rest of his family, and meets Antonia for the first time since her father's death. She runs to him and cries on his shoulder, while Mrs. Shimerda watches the people arrive. Many of the women shelter from the falling snow in the Shimerdas' house, and people seem to want to hurry the burial because of the threat of another storm. Jim catches a glimpse of Mr. Shimerda's body before he is put in the coffin; the head is bandaged to hide the gunshot wound. Mrs. Shimerda puts an open prayer-book against the body, and the family comes to the body one by one and makes the sign of the cross on the bandaged head. Yulka holds back until her mother pushes her up to the body, trying to force her to touch it, but Mrs. Burden intervenes. Mr. Burden signals for the coffin to be nailed shut. The coffin is loaded on a wagon and taken to the grave, where the people gather. Anton confers with Mrs. Shimerda and then asks Mr. Burden to say a prayer in English for Mr. Shimerda. He says a short prayer, mentioning that it was not appropriate for people to concern themselves with God's decision about Mr. Shimerda's soul, and that the widow and her children needed extra care in his absence. Mrs. Burden asks Otto to start a hymn, and he does. Jim, the narrator, briefly mentions the fate of the grave at the corner of the property. The roads that would later be built cross near the grave, but swerve to avoid it. The grave is marked by a small cross, and is overgrown with grass that isn't tended. Jim says that it is his favorite place in the area.

