I HAD BEEN LIVING with my grandfather for nearly three years when he
decided to move to Black Hawk. He and grandmother were getting old for the
heavy work of a farm, and as I was now thirteen they thought I ought to be
going to school. Accordingly our homestead was rented to `that good woman,
the Widow Steavens,' and her bachelor brother, and we bought Preacher
White's house, at the north end of Black Hawk. This was the first town
house one passed driving in from the farm, a landmark which told country
people their long ride was over.
We were to move to Black Hawk in March, and as soon as grandfather had
fixed the date he let Jake and Otto know of his intention. Otto said he
would not be likely to find another place that suited him so well; that he
was tired of farming and thought he would go back to what he called the
`wild West.' Jake Marpole, lured by Otto's stories of adventure, decided to
go with him. We did our best to dissuade Jake. He was so handicapped by
illiteracy and by his trusting disposition that he would be an easy prey to
sharpers. Grandmother begged him to stay among kindly, Christian people,
where he was known; but there was no reasoning with him. He wanted to be a
prospector. He thought a silver mine was waiting for him in Colorado.
Jake and Otto served us to the last. They moved us into town, put down the
carpets in our new house, made shelves and cupboards for grandmother's
kitchen, and seemed loath to leave us. But at last they went, without
warning. Those two fellows had been faithful to us through sun and storm,
had given us things that cannot be bought in any market in the world. With
me they had been like older brothers; had restrained their speech and
manners out of care for me, and given me so much good comradeship. Now
they got on the westbound train one morning, in their Sunday clothes, with
their oilcloth valises--and I never saw them again. Months afterward we
got a card from Otto, saying that Jake had been down with mountain fever,
but now they were both working in the Yankee Girl Mine, and were doing
well. I wrote to them at that address, but my letter was returned to me,
`Unclaimed.' After that we never heard from them.
Black Hawk, the new world in which we had come to live, was a clean,
well-planted little prairie town, with white fences and good green yards
about the dwellings, wide, dusty streets, and shapely little trees growing
along the wooden sidewalks. In the centre of the town there were two rows
of new brick `store' buildings, a brick schoolhouse, the court-house, and
four white churches. Our own house looked down over the town, and from our
upstairs windows we could see the winding line of the river bluffs, two
miles south of us. That river was to be my compensation for the lost
freedom of the farming country.
We came to Black Hawk in March, and by the end of April we felt like town
people. Grandfather was a deacon in the new Baptist Church, grandmother
was busy with church suppers and missionary societies, and I was quite
another boy, or thought I was. Suddenly put down among boys of my own age,
I found I had a great deal to learn. Before the spring term of school was
over, I could fight, play `keeps,' tease the little girls, and use
forbidden words as well as any boy in my class. I was restrained from
utter savagery only by the fact that Mrs. Harling, our nearest neighbour,
kept an eye on me, and if my behaviour went beyond certain bounds I was not
permitted to come into her yard or to play with her jolly children.
We saw more of our country neighbours now than when we lived on the farm.
Our house was a convenient stopping-place for them. We had a big barn
where the farmers could put up their teams, and their womenfolk more often
accompanied them, now that they could stay with us for dinner, and rest and
set their bonnets right before they went shopping. The more our house was
like a country hotel, the better I liked it. I was glad, when I came home
from school at noon, to see a farm-wagon standing in the back yard, and I
was always ready to run downtown to get beefsteak or baker's bread for
unexpected company. All through that first spring and summer I kept hoping
that Ambrosch would bring Antonia and Yulka to see our new house. I wanted
to show them our red plush furniture, and the trumpet-blowing cherubs the
German paperhanger had put on our parlour ceiling.
When Ambrosch came to town, however, he came alone, and though he put his
horses in our barn, he would never stay for dinner, or tell us anything
about his mother and sisters. If we ran out and questioned him as he was
slipping through the yard, he would merely work his shoulders about in his
coat and say, `They all right, I guess.'
Mrs. Steavens, who now lived on our farm, grew as fond of Antonia as we had
been, and always brought us news of her. All through the wheat season, she
told us, Ambrosch hired his sister out like a man, and she went from farm
to farm, binding sheaves or working with the threshers. The farmers liked
her and were kind to her; said they would rather have her for a hand than
Ambrosch. When fall came she was to husk corn for the neighbours until
Christmas, as she had done the year before; but grandmother saved her from
this by getting her a place to work with our neighbours, the Harlings.
Read next: BOOK II - The Hired Girls#Chapter 2
Read previous: BOOK I - The Shimerdas#Chapter 19
Table of content of My Antonia
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your reviewYour review will be placed after the table of content of this book
