"
We had listened attentively. It was impossible not to admire his frank,
manly faith.
"I am always glad to meet a young man who thinks seriously about these
things," said grandfather, "and I would never be the one to say you were
not in God's care when you were among the soldiers."
After dinner it was decided that young Jelinek should hook our two strong
black farmhorses to the scraper and break a road through to the
Shimerdas', so that a wagon could go when it was necessary. Fuchs, who was
the only cabinet-maker in the neighborhood, was set to work on a coffin.
Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we admired it, he told us
that he had shot and skinned the coyotes, and the young man who "batched"
with him, Jan Bouska, who had been a fur-worker in Vienna, made the coat.
From the windmill I watched Jelinek come out of the barn with the blacks,
and work his way up the hillside toward the cornfield. Sometimes he was
completely hidden by the clouds of snow that rose about him; then he and
the horses would emerge black and shining.
Our heavy carpenter's bench had to be brought from the barn and carried
down into the kitchen. Fuchs selected boards from a pile of planks
grandfather had hauled out from town in the fall to make a new floor for
the oats bin. When at last the lumber and tools were assembled, and the
doors were closed again and the cold drafts shut out, grandfather rode
away to meet the coroner at the Shimerdas', and Fuchs took off his coat
and settled down to work.
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