by Willa Cather
I
TWO years after I left Lincoln I completed my academic course at Harvard.Before I entered the Law School I went home for the summer vacation. Onthe night of my arrival Mrs. Harling and Frances and Sally came over togreet me. Everything seemed just as it used to be. My grandparents lookedvery little older. Frances Harling was married now, and she and herhusband managed the Harling interests in Black Hawk. When we gathered ingrandmother's parlor, I could hardly believe that I had been away at all.One subject, however, we avoided all evening.
When I was walking home with Frances, after we had left Mrs. Harling ather gate, she said simply, "You know, of course, about poor Antonia."
Poor Antonia! Every one would be saying that now, I thought bitterly. Ireplied that grandmother had written me how Antonia went away to marryLarry Donovan at some place where he was working; that he had desertedher, and that there was now a baby. This was all I knew.
"He never married her," Frances said. "I have n't seen her since she cameback. She lives at home, on the farm, and almost never comes to town. Shebrought the baby in to show it to mama once. I'm afraid she's settled downto be Ambrosch's drudge for good."
I tried to shut Antonia out of my mind. I was bitterly disappointed inher. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity, while LenaLingard, for whom people had always foretold trouble, was now the leadingdressmaker of Lincoln, much respected in Black Hawk. Lena gave her heartaway when she felt like it, but she kept her head for her business and hadgot on in the world.
Just then it was the fashion to speak indulgently of Lena and severely ofTiny Soderball, who had quietly gone West to try her fortune the yearbefore. A Black Hawk boy, just back from Seattle, brought the news thatTiny had not gone to the coast on a venture, as she had allowed people tothink, but with very definite plans. One of the roving promoters that usedto stop at Mrs. Gardener's hotel owned idle property along the water-frontin Seattle, and he had offered to set Tiny up in business in one of hisempty buildings. She was now conducting a sailors' lodging-house. This,every one said, would be the end of Tiny. Even if she had begun by runninga decent place, she could n't keep it up; all sailors' boarding-houseswere alike.
When I thought about it, I discovered that I had never known Tiny as wellas I knew the other girls. I remembered her tripping briskly about thedining-room on her high heels, carrying a big tray full of dishes,glancing rather pertly at the spruce traveling men, and contemptuously atthe scrubby ones--who were so afraid of her that they did n't dare to askfor two kinds of pie. Now it occurred to me that perhaps the sailors, too,might be afraid of Tiny. How astonished we would have been, as we sattalking about her on Frances Harling's front porch, if we could have knownwhat her future was really to be! Of all the girls and boys who grew uptogether in Black Hawk, Tiny Soderball was to lead the most adventurouslife and to achieve the most solid worldly success.
This is what actually happened to Tiny: While she was running herlodging-house in Seattle, gold was discovered in Alaska. Miners andsailors came back from the North with wonderful stories and pouches ofgold. Tiny saw it and weighed it in her hands. That daring which nobodyhad ever suspected in her, awoke. She sold her business and set out forCircle City, in company with a carpenter and his wife whom she hadpersuaded to go along with her. They reached Skaguay in a snowstorm, wentin dog sledges over the Chilkoot Pass, and shot the Yukon in flatboats.They reached Circle City on the very day when some Siwash Indians cameinto the settlement with the report that there had been a rich gold strikefarther up the river, on a certain Klondike Creek. Two days later Tiny andher friends, and nearly every one else in Circle City, started for theKlondike fields on the last steamer that went up the Yukon before it frozefor the winter. That boatload of people founded Dawson City. Within a fewweeks there were fifteen hundred homeless men in camp. Tiny and thecarpenter's wife began to cook for them, in a tent. The miners gave her alot, and the carpenter put up a log hotel for her. There she sometimes feda hundred and fifty men a day. Miners came in on snowshoes from theirplacer claims twenty miles away to buy fresh bread from her, and paid forit in gold.
That winter Tiny kept in her hotel a Swede whose legs had been frozen onenight in a storm when he was trying to find his way back to his cabin. Thepoor fellow thought it great good fortune to be cared for by a woman, anda woman who spoke his own tongue. When he was told that his feet must beamputated, he said he hoped he would not get well; what could aworking-man do in this hard world without feet? He did, in fact, die fromthe operation, but not before he had deeded Tiny Soderball his claim onHunker Creek. Tiny sold her hotel, invested half her money in Dawsonbuilding lots, and with the rest she developed her claim. She went offinto the wilds and lived on it. She bought other claims from discouragedminers, traded or sold them on percentages.
After nearly ten years in the Klondike, Tiny returned, with a considerablefortune, to live in San Francisco. I met her in Salt Lake City in 1908.She was a thin, hard-faced woman, very well-dressed, very reserved inmanner. Curiously enough, she reminded me of Mrs. Gardener, for whom shehad worked in Black Hawk so long ago. She told me about some of thedesperate chances she had taken in the gold country, but the thrill ofthem was quite gone. She said frankly that nothing interested her much nowbut making money. The only two human beings of whom she spoke with anyfeeling were the Swede, Johnson, who had given her his claim, and LenaLingard. She had persuaded Lena to come to San Francisco and go intobusiness there.
"Lincoln was never any place for her," Tiny remarked. "In a town of thatsize Lena would always be gossiped about. Frisco's the right field forher. She has a fine class of trade. Oh, she's just the same as she alwayswas! She's careless, but she's level-headed. She's the only person I knowwho never gets any older. It's fine for me to have her there; somebody whoenjoys things like that. She keeps an eye on me and won't let me beshabby. When she thinks I need a new dress, she makes it and sends ithome--with a bill that's long enough, I can tell you!"
Tiny limped slightly when she walked. The claim on Hunker Creek took tollfrom its possessors. Tiny had been caught in a sudden turn of weather,like poor Johnson. She lost three toes from one of those pretty littlefeet that used to trip about Black Hawk in pointed slippers and stripedstockings. Tiny mentioned this mutilation quite casually--did n't seemsensitive about it. She was satisfied with her success, but not elated.She was like some one in whom the faculty of becoming interested is wornout.