The First Willa Cather Megapack

by Willa Cather

  One day when he was helping Davis top a haystack, Davis got angry at the dog for some reason and kicked at it. Serge threw out his arm and caught the blow himself. Davis, angrier than before, caught the hatchet and laid the dog’s head open. He threw down the bloody hatchet and, telling Serge to go clean it, he bent over his work. Serge stood motionless, as dazed and helpless as if he had been struck himself. The dog’s tail quivered and its legs moved weakly, its breath came through its throat in faint, wheezing groans and from its bleeding head its two dark eyes, clouded with pain, still looked lovingly up at him. He dropped on his knees beside it and lifted its poor head against his heart. It was only for a moment. It laid its paw upon his arm and then was still. Serge laid the dog gently down and rose. He took the bloody hatchet and went up behind his master. He did not hurry and he did not falter. He raised the weapon and struck down, clove through the man’s skull from crown to chin, even as the man had struck the dog. Then he went to the barn to get a shovel to bury the dog. As he passed the house, the woman called out to him to tell her husband to come to dinner. He answered simply, “He will not come to dinner today. I killed him behind the haystack.”

  She rushed from the house with a shriek and when she caught sight of what lay behind the haystack, she started for the nearest farm house. Serge went to the barn for the shovel. He had no consciousness of having done wrong. He did not even think about the dead man. His heart seemed to cling to the side of his chest, the only thing he had ever loved was dead. He went to the haymow where he and Matushka slept every night and took a box from under the hay from which he drew a red silk handkerchief, the only “pretty thing,” and indeed, the only handkerchief he had ever possessed. He went back to the haystack and never once glancing at the man, took the dog in his arms.

  There was one spot on the farm that Serge liked. He and Matushka used often to go there on Sundays. It was a little, marshy pool, grown up in cattails and reeds with a few scraggy willows on the banks. The grass used to be quite green there, not red and gray like the buffalo grass. There he carried Matushka. He laid him down and began to dig a grave under the willows. The worst of it was that the world went on just as usual. The winds were laughing away among the rushes, sending the water slapping against the banks. The meadow larks sang in the corn field and the sun shone just as it did yesterday and all the while Matushka was dead and his own heart was breaking in his breast. When the hole was deep enough, he took the handkerchief from his pocket and tied it neatly about poor Matushka’s mangled head. Then he pulled a few wild roses and laid them on its breast and fell sobbing across the body of the little yellow cur. Presently he saw the neighbors coming over the hill with Mrs. Davis, and he laid the dog in the grave and covered him up.

  About his trial Serge remembered very little, except that they had taken him to the court house and he had not found the State. He remembered that the room was full of people, and some of them talked a great deal, and that the young lawyer who defended him cried when his sentence was read. That lawyer seemed to understand it all, about Matushka and the State, and everything. Serge thought he was the handsomest and most learned man in the world. He had fought day and night for Serge, without sleeping and almost without eating. Serge could always see him as he looked when he paced up and down the platform, shaking the hair back from his brow and trying to get it through the heads of the jurymen that love was love, even if it was for a dog. The people told Serge that his sentence had been commuted from death to imprisonment for life by the clemency of the court, but he knew well enough that it was by the talk of that lawyer. He had not deserted Serge after the trial even, he had come with him to the prison and had seen him put on his convict clothing.

  “It’s the State’s badge of knighthood, Serge,” he said, bitterly, touching one of the stripes. “The old emblem of the royal garter, to show that your blood is royal.”

  Just as the six o’clock whistle was blowing, the guard returned.

  “You are to go to your cell tonight, and if you don’t do no better in the morning, you are to be strung up in the dark cell, come along.”

  Serge laid down his hammer and followed him to his cell. Some of the men made little book shelves for their cells and pasted pictures on the walls. Serge had neither books nor pictures, and he did not know how to ask for any, so his cell was bare. The cells were only six by four, just a little larger than a grave.

  As a rule, the prisoners suffered from no particular cruelty, only from the elimination of all those little delicacies that make men men. The aid of the prison authorities seemed to be to make everything unnecessarily ugly and repulsive. The little things in which fine feeling is most truly manifest received no respect at all. Serge’s bringing up had been none of the best, but it took him some time to get used to eating without knife or fork the indifferent food thrust in square tin bowls under the door of his cell. Most of the men read at night, but he could not read, so he lay tossing on his iron bunk, wondering how the fields were looking. His greatest deprivation was that he could not see the fields. The love of the plains was strong in him. It had always been so, ever since he was a little fellow, when the brown grass was up to his shoulders and the straw stacks were the golden mountains of fairy land. Men from the cities on the hills never understand this love, but the men from the plain country know what I mean. When he had tired himself out with longing, he turned over and fell asleep. He was never impatient, for he believed that the State would come some day and explain, and take him to herself. He watched for her coming every day, hoped for it every night.

  In the morning the work went no better. They watched him all the time and he could do nothing. At noon they took him into the dark cell and strung him up. They put his arms behind him and tied them together, then passed the rope about his neck, drawing arms up as high as they could be stretched, so that if he let them “sag” he would strangle, and so they left him. The cell was perfectly bare and was not long enough for a man to lie at full length in. The prisoners were told to stand up, so Serge stood. At night his arms were let down long enough for him to eat his bread and water, then he was roped up again. All night long he stood there. By the end of the next day the pain in his arms was almost unendurable. They were paralyzed from the shoulder down so that the guard had to feed him like a baby. The next day and the next night and the next day he lay upon the floor of the cell, suffering as though every muscle were being individually wrenched from his arms. He had not been out of the bare cell for four days. All the ventilation came through some little auger holes in the door and the heat and odor were becoming unbearable. He had thought on the first night that the pain would kill him before morning, but he had endured over eighty-four hours of it and when the guard came in with his bread and water he found him lying with his eyes closed and his teeth set on his lip. He roused him with a kick and held the bread and water out to him, but Serge took only the water.

  “Rope too tight?” growled the guard. Serge said nothing. He was almost dead now and he wanted to finish for he could not hoop barrels.

  “Gittin so stuck up you can’t speak, are you? Well, we’ll just stretch you up a bit tighter.” And he gave the stick in the rope another vicious twist that almost tore the arms from their sockets and sent a thrill of agony through the man’s whole frame. Then Serge was left alone. The fever raged in his veins and about midnight his thirst was intolerable. He lay with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out. The pain in his arms made his whole body tremble like a man with a chill. He could no longer keep his arms up and the ropes were beginning to strangle him. He did not call for help. He had heard poor devils shriek for help all night long and get no relief. He suffered, as the people of his mother’s nation, in hopeless silence. The blood of the serf was in him, blood that has cowered beneath the knout for centuries and uttered no complaint. Then the State would surely come soon, she would not let them kill him. His mother, the State!

  He fell
into a half stupor. He dreamed about what the baba used to tell about the bargemen in their bearskin coats coming down the Volga in the spring when the ice had broken up and gone out; about how the wolves used to howl and follow the sledges across the snow in the starlight. That cold, white snow, that lay in ridges and banks! He thought he felt it in his mouth and he awoke and found himself licking the stone floor. He thought how lovely the plains would look in the morning when the sun was up; how the sunflowers would shake themselves in the wind, how the corn leaves would shine and how the cobwebs would sparkle all over the grass and the air would be clear and blue, the birds would begin to sing, the colts would run and jump in the pasture and the black bull would begin to bellow for his corn.

  The rope grew tighter and tighter. The State must come soon now. He thought he felt the dog’s cold nose against his throat. He tried to call its name, but the sound only came in an inarticulate gurgle. He drew his knees up to his chin and died.

  And so it was that this great mother, the State, took this willful, restless child of her’s and put him to sleep in her bosom.

  “THE FEAR THAT WALKS BY NOONDAY.”

  “Where is my shin guard? Horton, you lazy dog, get your duds off, won’t you? Why didn’t you dress at the hotel with the rest of us? There’s got to be a stop to your blamed eccentricities some day,” fumed Reggie, hunting wildly about in a pile of overcoats.

  Horton began pulling off his coat with that air of disinterested deliberation he always assumed to hide any particular nervousness. He was to play two positions that day, both half and full, and he knew it meant stiff work.

  “What do you think of the man who plays in Morrison’s place, Strike?” he asked as he took off his shoes.

  “I can tell you better in about half an hour; I suppose the ‘Injuns’ knew what they were about when they put him there.”

  “They probably put him there because they hadn’t another man who could even look like a full back. He played quarter badly enough, if I remember him.”

  “I don’t see where they get the face to play us at all. They would never have scored last month if it hadn’t been for Morrison’s punting. That fellow played a great game, but the rest of them are light men, and their coach is an idiot. That man would have made his mark if he’d lived. He could play different positions just as easily as Chum-Chum plays different roles—pardon the liberty, Fred—and then there was that awful stone wall strength of his to back it; he was a mighty man.”

  “If you are palpitating to know why the ‘Injuns’ insist on playing us, I’ll tell you; it’s for blood. Exhibition game be damned! It’s to break our bones they’re playing. We were surprised when they didn’t let down on us harder as soon as the fellow died, but they have been cherishing their wrath, they haven’t lost an ounce of it, and they are going into us today for vengeance.”

  “Well, their sentiments are worthy, but they haven’t got the players.”

  “Let up on Morrison there, Horton,” shouted Reggie, “we sent flowers and sympathies at the time, but we are not going to lose this game out of respect to his memory: shut up and get your shin guard on. I say, Nelson, if you don’t get out of here with that cigarette I’ll kick you out. I’ll get so hungry I’ll break training rules. Besides, the coach will be in here in a minute going around smelling our breaths like our mammas used to do, if he catches a scent of it. I’m humming glad it’s the last week of training; I couldn’t stand another day of it. I brought a whole pocket full of cigars, and I’ll have one well under way before the cheering is over. Won’t we see the town tonight, Freddy?”

  Horton nodded and laughed one of his wicked laughs. “Training has gone a shade too far this season. It’s all nonsense to say that nobody but hermits and anchorites can play foot ball. A Methodist parson don’t have to practice half such rigid abstinence as a man on the eleven.” And he kicked viciously at the straw on the floor as he remembered the supper parties he had renounced, the invitations he had declined, and the pretty faces he had avoided in the last three months.

  “Five minutes to three!” said the coach, as he entered, pounding on the door with his cane. Strike began to hunt frantically for the inflater, one of the tackles went striding around the room seeking his nose protector with lamentations and profanity, and the rest of the men got on their knees and began burrowing in the pile of coats for things they had forgotten to take out of their pockets. Reggie began to hurry his men and make the usual encouraging remarks to the effect that the universe was not created to the especial end that they should win that foot ball game, that the game was going to the men who kept the coolest heads and played the hardest ball. The coach rapped impatiently again, and Horton and Reggie stepped out together, the rest following them. As soon as Horton heard the shouts which greeted their appearance, his eyes flashed, and he threw his head back like a cavalry horse that hears the bugle sound a charge. He jumped over the ropes and ran swiftly across the field, leaving Reggie to saunter along at his leisure, bowing to the ladies in the grand stand and on the tally-hos as he passed.

  When he reached the lower part of the field he found a hundred Marathon college men around the team yelling and shouting their encouragement. Reggie promptly directed the policemen to clear the field, and, taking his favorite attitude, his feet wide apart and his body very straight, he carelessly tossed the quarter into the air.

  “Line ’em up, Reggie, line ’em up. Let us into it while the divine afflatus lasts,” whispered Horton.

  The men sprang to their places, and Reggie forgot the ladies on the tally-hos; the color came to his face, and he drew himself up and threw every sinew of his little body on a tension. The crowd outside began to cheer again, as the wedge started off for north goal. The western men were poor on defensive work, and the Marathon wedge gained ground on the first play. The first impetus of success was broken by Horton fumbling and losing the ball. The eleven looked rather dazed at this, and Horton was the most dazed looking man of them all, for he did not indulge in that kind of thing often. Reggie could scarcely believe his senses, and stood staring at Horton in unspeakable amazement, but Horton only spread out his hands and stared at them as though to see if they were still there. There was little time for reflection or conjecture. The western men gave their Indian yell and prepared to play; their captain sang out his signals, and the rushing began. In spite of the desperate resistance on the part of Reggie’s men, the ball went steadily south, and in twelve minutes the “Injuns” had scored. No one quite knew how they did it, least of all their bewildered opponents. They did some bad fumbling on the five-yard line, but though Reggie’s men fell all over the ball, they did not seem to be able to take hold of it.

  “Call in a doctor,” shouted Reggie; “they’re paralyzed in the arms, every one of ’em.”

  Time was given to bandage a hurt, and half a dozen men jumped over the ropes and shot past the policemen and rushed up to Reggie, pitifully asking what the matter was.

  “Matter! I don’t know! They’re all asleep or drunk. Go kick them, pound them, anything to get them awake.” And the little captain threw his sweater over his shoulder and swore long and loud at all mankind in general and Frederick Horton in particular. Horton turned away without looking at him. He was a younger man than Reggie, and, although he had had more experiences, they were not of the kind that counted much with the men of the eleven. He was very proud of being the captain’s right-hand man, and it cut him hard to fail him.

  “I believe I’ve been drugged, Black,” he said, turning to the right tackle. “I am as cold as ice all over and I can’t use my arms at all; I’ve a notion to ask Reggie to call in a sub.”

  “Don’t, for heaven’s sake, Horton; he is almost frantic now; believe it would completely demoralize the team; you have never laid off since you were on the eleven, and if you should now when you have no visible hurt it would frighten them to death.”

&nb
sp; “I feel awful, I am so horribly cold.”

  “So am I, so are all the fellows; see how the “Injuns” are shivering over there, will you? There must be a cold wave; see how Strike’s hair is blowing down in his eyes.”

  “The cold wave seems to be confined to our locality,” remarked Horton in a matter-of-fact way; but in somewhat strained tones. “The girls out there are all in their summer dresses without wraps, and the wind which is cutting our faces all up don’t even stir the ribbon on their hats.”

  “Y-a-s, horribly draughty place, this,” said Black blankly.

  “Horribly, draughty as all out doors,” said Horton with a grim laugh.

  “Bur-r-r!” said Strike, as he handed his sweater over to a substitute and took his last pull at a lemon, “this wind is awful; I never felt anything so cold; it’s a raw, wet cold that goes clear into the marrow of a fellow’s bones. I don’t see where it comes from; there is no wind outside the ropes apparently.”

  “The winds blow in such strange directions here,” said Horton, picking up a straw and dropping it. “It goes straight down with force enough to break several camels’ backs.”

  “Ugh! it’s as though the firmament had sprung a leak and the winds were sucking in from the other side.”

  “Shut your mouths, both of you,” said Reggie, with an emphatic oath. “You will have them all scared to death; there’s a panic now, that’s what’s the matter, one of those quiet, stupid panics that are the worst to manage. Laugh, Freddie, laugh hard; get up some enthusiasm; come you, shut up, if you can’t do any better than that. Start the yell, Strike, perhaps that will fetch them.”