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Page 38
We found the Shimerdas working just as if it were a week-day. Marek was
cleaning out the stable, and Antonia and her mother were making garden, off
across the pond in the draw-head. Ambrosch was up on the windmill tower,
oiling the wheel. He came down, not very cordially. When Jake asked for
the collar, he grunted and scratched his head. The collar belonged to
grandfather, of course, and Jake, feeling responsible for it, flared up.
`Now, don't you say you haven't got it, Ambrosch, because I know you have,
and if you ain't a-going to look for it, I will.'
Ambrosch shrugged his shoulders and sauntered down the hill toward the
stable. I could see that it was one of his mean days. Presently he
returned, carrying a collar that had been badly used-- trampled in the dirt
and gnawed by rats until the hair was sticking out of it.
`This what you want?' he asked surlily.
Jake jumped off his horse. I saw a wave of red come up under the rough
stubble on his face. `That ain't the piece of harness I loaned you,
Ambrosch; or, if it is, you've used it shameful. I ain't a-going to carry
such a looking thing back to Mr. Burden.'
Ambrosch dropped the collar on the ground. `All right,' he said coolly,
took up his oil-can, and began to climb the mill. Jake caught him by the
belt of his trousers and yanked him back. Ambrosch's feet had scarcely
touched the ground when he lunged out with a vicious kick at Jake's
stomach. Fortunately, Jake was in such a position that he could dodge it.
This was not the sort of thing country boys did when they played at
fisticuffs, and Jake was furious. He landed Ambrosch a blow on the
head--it sounded like the crack of an axe on a cow-pumpkin. Ambrosch
dropped over, stunned.
We heard squeals, and looking up saw Antonia and her mother coming on the
run. They did not take the path around the pond, but plunged through the
muddy water, without even lifting their skirts. They came on, screaming
and clawing the air. By this time Ambrosch had come to his senses and was
sputtering with nosebleed.
Jake sprang into his saddle. `Let's get out of this, Jim,' he called.
Mrs. Shimerda threw her hands over her head and clutched as if she were
going to pull down lightning. `Law, law!' she shrieked after us. `Law for
knock my Ambrosch down!'
`I never like you no more, Jake and Jim Burden,' Antonia panted. `No
friends any more!'
Jake stopped and turned his horse for a second. `Well, you're a damned
ungrateful lot, the whole pack of you,' he shouted back. `I guess the
Burdens can get along without you. You've been a sight of trouble to them,
anyhow!'
We rode away, feeling so outraged that the fine morning was spoiled for us.
I hadn't a word to say, and poor Jake was white as paper and trembling all
over. It made him sick to get so angry.
`They ain't the same, Jimmy,' he kept saying in a hurt tone. `These
foreigners ain't the same. You can't trust 'em to be fair. It's dirty to
kick a feller. You heard how the women turned on you-- and after all we
went through on account of 'em last winter! They ain't to be trusted. I
don't want to see you get too thick with any of 'em.'
`I'll never be friends with them again, Jake,' I declared hotly. `I
believe they are all like Krajiek and Ambrosch underneath.'
Grandfather heard our story with a twinkle in his eye. He advised Jake to
ride to town tomorrow, go to a justice of the peace, tell him he had
knocked young Shimerda down, and pay his fine. Then if Mrs. Shimerda was
inclined to make trouble-- her son was still under age--she would be
forestalled. Jake said he might as well take the wagon and haul to market
the pig he had been fattening. On Monday, about an hour after Jake had
started, we saw Mrs. Shimerda and her Ambrosch proudly driving by, looking
neither to the right nor left. As they rattled out of sight down the Black
Hawk road, grandfather chuckled, saying he had rather expected she would
follow the matter up.
Jake paid his fine with a ten-dollar bill grandfather had given him for
that purpose. But when the Shimerdas found that Jake sold his pig in town
that day, Ambrosch worked it out in his shrewd head that Jake had to sell
his pig to pay his fine. This theory afforded the Shimerdas great
satisfaction, apparently. For weeks afterward, whenever Jake and I met
Antonia on her way to the post-office, or going along the road with her
work-team, she would clap her hands and call to us in a spiteful, crowing
voice:
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