My Ántonia | Page 6

car
ahead there was a family from `across the water' whose destination was
the same as ours.
`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!'
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.
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.
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.
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?'
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.
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