Shimerda, and
was buried in the Norwegian graveyard. Peter sold off everything, and left
the country--went to be cook in a railway construction camp where gangs of
Russians were employed.
At his sale we bought Peter's wheelbarrow and some of his harness. During
the auction he went about with his head down, and never lifted his eyes.
He seemed not to care about anything. The Black Hawk money-lender who held
mortgages on Peter's live-stock was there, and he bought in the sale notes
at about fifty cents on the dollar. Every one said Peter kissed the cow
before she was led away by her new owner. I did not see him do it, but
this I know: after all his furniture and his cook-stove and pots and pans
had been hauled off by the purchasers, when his house was stripped and
bare, he sat down on the floor with his clasp-knife and ate all the melons
that he had put away for winter. When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek drove up in
their wagon to take Peter to the train, they found him with a dripping
beard, surrounded by heaps of melon rinds.
The loss of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr. Shimerda.
When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty log house and sit
there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until the winter snows
penned him in his cave. For Antonia and me, the story of the wedding party
was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel's secret to any one, but
guarded it jealously--as if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that
night long ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to give us a
painful and peculiar pleasure.
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