Chapter: FOR several weeks after my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from the
Shimerdas. My sore throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a cold
which made the housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was glad to
have a day of rest. One night at supper Fuchs told us he had seen Mr.
Shimerda out hunting.

"He's made himself a rabbit-skin cap, Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar that
he buttons on outside his coat. They ain't got but one overcoat among 'em
over there, and they take turns wearing it. They seem awful scared of
cold, and stick in that hole in the bank like badgers."

"All but the crazy boy," Jake put in. "He never wears the coat. Krajiek
says he's turrible strong and can stand anything. I guess rabbits must be
getting scarce in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the cornfield
yesterday where I was at work and showed me three prairie dogs he'd shot.
He asked me if they was good to eat. I spit and made a face and took on,
to scare him, but he just looked like he was smarter'n me and put 'em back
in his sack and walked off."

Grandmother looked up in alarm and spoke to grandfather. "Josiah, you
don't suppose Krajiek would let them poor creatures eat prairie dogs, do
you?"

"You had better go over and see our neighbors to-morrow, Emmaline," he
replied gravely.

Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs were clean beasts and
ought to be good for food, but their family connections were against them.
I asked what he meant, and he grinned and said they belonged to the rat
family.

When I went downstairs in the morning, I found grandmother and Jake
packing a hamper basket in the kitchen.

"Now, Jake," grandmother was saying, "if you can find that old rooster
that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we'll take him
along. There's no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda could n't have got hens
from her neighbors last fall and had a henhouse going by now. I reckon she
was confused and did n't know where to begin. I've come strange to a new
country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good thing to have, no
matter what you don't have."

"Just as you say, mam," said Jake, "but I hate to think of Krajiek getting
a leg of that old rooster." He tramped out through the long cellar and
dropped the heavy door behind him.

After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled ourselves up and
climbed into the cold front wagon-seat. As we approached the Shimerdas' we
heard the frosty whine of the pump and saw Antonia, her head tied up and
her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her weight on the
pump-handle as it went up and down. She heard our wagon, looked back over
her shoulder, and catching up her pail of water, started at a run for the
hole in the bank.

Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he would bring the
provisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went slowly up the icy
path toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs of smoke came from
the stovepipe that stuck out through the grass and snow, but the wind
whisked them roughly away.

Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seized grandmother's
hand. She did not say "How do!" as usual, but at once began to cry,
talking very fast in her own language, pointing to her feet which were
tied up in rags, and looking about accusingly at every one.

The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove, crouching over as if
he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the floor at his feet, her
kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and smiled, but, glancing up at
her mother, hid again. Antonia was washing pans and dishes in a dark
corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a gunnysack
stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered he threw a grainsack over the
crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the cave was stifling, and it
was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung over the stove, threw out a
feeble yellow glimmer.

Mrs. Shimerda snatched off the covers of two barrels behind the door, and
made us look into them. In one there were some potatoes that had been
frozen and were rotting, in the other was a little pile of flour.
Grandmother murmured something in embarrassment, but the Bohemian woman
laughed scornfully, a kind of whinny-laugh, and catching up an empty
coffee-pot from the shelf, shook it at us with a look positively
vindictive.

Grandmother went on talking in her polite Virginia way, not admitting
their stark need or her own remissness, until Jake arrived with the
hamper, as if in direct answer to Mrs. Shimerda's reproaches. Then the
poor woman broke down. She dropped on the floor beside her crazy son, hid
her face on her knees, and sat crying bitterly. Grandmother paid no heed
to her, but called Antonia to come and help empty the basket. Tony left
her corner reluctantly. I had never seen her crushed like this before.

"You not mind my poor mamenka, Mrs. Burden. She is so sad," she whispered,
as she wiped her wet hands on her skirt and took the things grandmother
handed her.

The crazy boy, seeing the food, began to make soft, gurgling noises and
stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time with a sack of
potatoes. Grandmother looked about in perplexity.

"Have n't you got any sort of cave or cellar outside, Antonia? This is no
place to keep vegetables. How did your potatoes get frozen?"

"We get from Mr. Bushy, at the post-office,--what he throw out. We got no
potatoes, Mrs. Burden," Tony admitted mournfully.

When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and stuffed up the
door-crack again. Then, quietly as a shadow, Mr. Shimerda came out from
behind the stove. He stood brushing his hand over his smooth gray hair, as
if he were trying to clear away a fog about his head. He was clean and
neat as usual, with his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He took
grandmother's arm and led her behind the stove, to the back of the room.
In the rear wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much bigger
than an oil barrel, scooped out in the black earth. When I got up on one
of the stools and peered into it, I saw some quilts and a pile of straw.
The old man held the lantern. "Yulka," he said in a low, despairing voice,
"Yulka; my Antonia!"

Grandmother drew back. "You mean they sleep in there,--your girls?" He
bowed his head.

Tony slipped under his arm. "It is very cold on the floor, and this is
warm like the badger hole. I like for sleep there," she insisted eagerly.
"My mamenka have nice bed, with pillows from our own geese in Bohemie.
See, Jim?" She pointed to the narrow bunk which Krajiek had built against
the wall for himself before the Shimerdas came.

Grandmother sighed. "Sure enough, where _would_ you sleep, dear! I don't
doubt you're warm there. You'll have a better house after while, Antonia,
and then you'll forget these hard times."

Mr. Shimerda made grandmother sit down on the only chair and pointed his
wife to a stool beside her. Standing before them with his hand on
Antonia's shoulder, he talked in a low tone, and his daughter translated.
He wanted us to know that they were not beggars in the old country; he
made good wages, and his family were respected there. He left Bohemia with
more than a thousand dollars in savings, after their passage money was
paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New York, and the railway
fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected. By the time they paid
Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and oxen and some old farm
machinery, they had very little money left. He wished grandmother to know,
however, that he still had some money. If they could get through until
spring came, they would buy a cow and chickens and plant a garden, and
would then do very well. Ambrosch and Antonia were both old enough to work
in the fields, and they were willing to work. But the snow and the bitter
weather had disheartened them all.

Antonia explained that her father meant to build a new house for them in
the spring; he and Ambrosch had already split the logs for it, but the
logs were all buried in the snow, along the creek where they had been
felled.

While grandmother encouraged and gave them advice, I sat down on the floor
with Yulka and let her show me her kitten. Marek slid cautiously toward us
and began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I knew he wanted to make his
queer noises for me--to bark like a dog or whinny like a horse,--but he did
not dare in the presence of his elders. Marek was always trying to be
agreeable, poor fellow, as if he had it on his mind that he must make up
for his deficiencies.

Mrs. Shimerda grew more calm and reasonable before our visit was over,
and, while Antonia translated, put in a word now and then on her own
account. The woman had a quick ear, and caught up phrases whenever she
heard English spoken. As we rose to go, she opened her wooden chest and
brought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long as a flour sack and
half as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight of it, the crazy boy
began to smack his lips. When Mrs. Shimerda opened the bag and stirred the
contents with her hand, it gave out a salty, earthy smell, very pungent,
even among the other odors of that cave. She measured a teacup full, tied
it up in a bit of sacking, and presented it ceremoniously to grandmother.

"For cook," she announced. "Little now; be very much when cook," spreading
out her hands as if to indicate that the pint would swell to a gallon.
"Very good. You no have in this country. All things for eat better in my
country."

"Maybe so, Mrs. Shimerda," grandmother said drily. "I can't say but I
prefer our bread to yours, myself."

  [Illustration: Mrs. Shimerda gathering mushrooms in a Bohemian forest]

Antonia undertook to explain. "This very good, Mrs. Burden,"--she clasped
her hands as if she could not express how good,--"it make very much when
you cook, like what my mama say. Cook with rabbit, cook with chicken, in
the gravy,--oh, so good!"

All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about how easily good
Christian people could forget they were their brothers' keepers.

"I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and sisters are hard to keep.
Where's a body to begin, with these people? They're wanting in everything,
and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give 'em that, I guess. Jimmy,
here, is about as able to take over a homestead as they are. Do you reckon
that boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?"

"He's a worker, all right, mam, and he's got some ketch-on about him; but
he's a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world; and
then, ag'in, they can be too mean."

That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we opened the package
Mrs. Shimerda had given her. It was full of little brown chips that looked
like the shavings of some root. They were as light as feathers, and the
most noticeable thing about them was their penetrating, earthy odor. We
could not determine whether they were animal or vegetable.

"They might be dried meat from some queer beast, Jim. They ain't dried
fish, and they never grew on stalk or vine. I'm afraid of 'em. Anyhow, I
should n't want to eat anything that had been shut up for months with old
clothes and goose pillows."

She threw the package into the stove, but I bit off a corner of one of the
chips I held in my hand, and chewed it tentatively. I never forgot the
strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little
brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so
jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some
deep Bohemian forest {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

 For several weeks Jim doesn't hear anything from the Shimerdas because he's inside sick. One day Otto says that he saw Mr. Shimerda hunting, wearing the one winter coat that the whole family shares. Apparently the family is so poor that they eat prairie dogs, so the next day Grandmother decides to bring over food and chickens. When they arrive, Mrs. Shimerda speaks accusingly to them in Bohemian and shows them how little food they have. The dugout house is dingy and sad. When Jake brings in the food, Mrs. Shimerda begins to weep. Grandmother is appalled to discover that the girls sleep in a small cave in the dirt wall, and Mr. Shimerda, with Antonia translating, explains that in the old country they were a very respectable family. They still have some money left, and once it is spring, they will be ready to build a nice farm. They are just having trouble their first winter. Grandmother gives them some advice. Before they leave, Mrs. Shimerda measures out a pint of some pungent, earthy substance to give to the Burdens. On the way back, Grandmother comments on how lacking in sense and resources the Shimerdas seem. When she looks at what Mrs. Shimerda gave her, she doesn't know what it is and throws it out. Jim tastes a bit of it, and only much later in life realizes that the food was dried mushrooms that the Shimerdas carried over from their homeland.

