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Your grandmother’s snake-cane would n’t more than tickle him. He could stand right up and talk to you, he could. Did he fight hard?” Ántonia broke in: “He fight something awful! He is all over Jimmy’s boots. I scream for him to run, but he just hit and hit that snake like he was crazy.” Otto winked at me. After Ántonia rode on he said: “Got him in the head first crack, did n’t you?
I remembered her tripping briskly about the dining-room on her high heels, carrying a big tray full of dishes, glancing rather pertly at the spruce traveling men, and contemptuously at the scrubby ones—who were so afraid of her that they did n’t dare to ask for two kinds of pie. Now it occurred to me that perhaps the sailors, too, might be afraid of Tiny.
Harling came to the Opera House to hear the Commencement exercises, and I looked at her most of the time while I made my speech. Her keen, intelligent eyes never left my face. Afterward she came back to the dressing-room where we stood, with our diplomas in our hands, walked up to me, and said heartily: “You surprised me, Jim. I did n’t believe you could do as well as that.
She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. “Are n’t you afraid of snakes?” “A little,” I admitted, “but I’d like to stay anyhow.” “Well, if you see one, don’t have anything to do with him. The big yellow and brown ones won’t hurt you; they’re bull-snakes and help to keep the gophers down. Don’t be scared if you see anything look out of that hole in the bank over there. That’s a badger hole.
“I told him nobody wanted to drownd themselves, but if we did n’t have rain soon we’d have to pump water for the cattle. “‘Oh, cattle,’ he says, ‘you’ll all take care of your cattle! Ain’t you got no beer here?’ I told him he’d have to go to the Bohemians for beer; the Norwegians did n’t have none when they thrashed. ‘My God!’ he says, ‘so it’s Norwegians now, is it? I thought this was Americy.’
The Colonel is long-winded, but then I expect he’s lonesome. I don’t think he cares much for Ordinsky, either. He said once that if I had any complaints to make of my neighbors, I must n’t hesitate.” One Saturday evening when I was having supper with Lena we heard a knock at her parlor door, and there stood the Pole, coatless, in a dress shirt and collar.
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.
The little ones could not speak English at all—did n’t learn it until they went to school. “I can’t believe it’s you, sitting here, in my own kitchen. You would n’t have known me, would you, Jim? You’ve kept so young, yourself. But it’s easier for a man. I can’t see how my Anton looks any older than the day I married him. His teeth have kept so nice. I have n’t got many left.
But a young fellow who liked a good time did n’t save anything in Vienna; there were too many pleasant ways of spending every night what he’d made in the day. After three years there, he came to New York. He was badly advised and went to work on furs during a strike, when the factories were offering big wages. The strikers won, and Cuzak was blacklisted.
This was a fine life, certainly, but it was n’t the kind of life he had wanted to live. I wondered whether the life that was right for one was ever right for two! I asked Cuzak if he did n’t find it hard to do without the gay company he had always been used to. He knocked out his pipe against an upright, sighed, and dropped it into his pocket.
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