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Page 33
`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 travelled 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 didn'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 neighbour 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 neighbours
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 everyone 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.'
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