|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 97
I found Cuzak a most companionable fellow. He asked me a great many
questions about my trip through Bohemia, about Vienna and the Ringstrasse
and the theatres.
`Gee! I like to go back there once, when the boys is big enough to farm the
place. Sometimes when I read the papers from the old country, I pretty
near run away,' he confessed with a little laugh. `I never did think how I
would be a settled man like this.'
He was still, as Antonia said, a city man. He liked theatres and lighted
streets and music and a game of dominoes after the day's work was over.
His sociability was stronger than his acquisitive instinct. He liked to
live day by day and night by night, sharing in the excitement of the
crowd.--Yet his wife had managed to hold him here on a farm, in one of the
loneliest countries in the world.
I could see the little chap, sitting here every evening by the windmill,
nursing his pipe and listening to the silence; the wheeze of the pump, the
grunting of the pigs, an occasional squawking when the hens were disturbed
by a rat. It did rather seem to me that Cuzak had been made the instrument
of Antonia's special mission. This was a fine life, certainly, but it
wasn'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 didn'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.
`At first I near go crazy with lonesomeness,' he said frankly, `but my
woman is got such a warm heart. She always make it as good for me as she
could. Now it ain't so bad; I can begin to have some fun with my boys,
already!'
As we walked toward the house, Cuzak cocked his hat jauntily over one ear
and looked up at the moon. `Gee!' he said in a hushed voice, as if he had
just wakened up, `it don't seem like I am away from there twenty-six
year!'
III
AFTER DINNER THE NEXT day I said good-bye and drove back to Hastings to
take the train for Black Hawk. Antonia and her children gathered round my
buggy before I started, and even the little ones looked up at me with
friendly faces. Leo and Ambrosch ran ahead to open the lane gate. When I
reached the bottom of the hill, I glanced back. The group was still there
by the windmill. Antonia was waving her apron.
At the gate Ambrosch lingered beside my buggy, resting his arm on the
wheel-rim. Leo slipped through the fence and ran off into the pasture.
`That's like him,' his brother said with a shrug. `He's a crazy kid.
Maybe he's sorry to have you go, and maybe he's jealous. He's jealous of
anybody mother makes a fuss over, even the priest.'
I found I hated to leave this boy, with his pleasant voice and his fine
head and eyes. He looked very manly as he stood there without a hat, the
wind rippling his shirt about his brown neck and shoulders.
`Don't forget that you and Rudolph are going hunting with me up on the
Niobrara next summer,' I said. `Your father's agreed to let you off after
harvest.'
He smiled. `I won't likely forget. I've never had such a nice thing
offered to me before. I don't know what makes you so nice to us boys,' he
added, blushing.
`Oh, yes, you do!' I said, gathering up my reins.
He made no answer to this, except to smile at me with unabashed pleasure
and affection as I drove away.
My day in Black Hawk was disappointing. Most of my old friends were dead
or had moved away. Strange children, who meant nothing to me, were playing
in the Harlings' big yard when I passed; the mountain ash had been cut
down, and only a sprouting stump was left of the tall Lombardy poplar that
used to guard the gate. I hurried on. The rest of the morning I spent
with Anton Jelinek, under a shady cottonwood tree in the yard behind his
saloon. While I was having my midday dinner at the hotel, I met one of the
old lawyers who was still in practice, and he took me up to his office and
talked over the Cutter case with me. After that, I scarcely knew how to
put in the time until the night express was due.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|