O Pioneers!, Willa Cather [simple ebook reader txt] 📗

never in any doubt as to which day of the week it was. Ivar hired himself out in threshing and cornhusking time, and he doctored sick animals when he was sent for. When he was at home, he made hammocks out of twine and committed chapters of the Bible to memory.

Ivar found contentment in the solitude he had sought out for himself. He disliked the litter of human dwellings: the broken food, the bits of broken china, the old washboilers and teakettles thrown into the sunflower patch. He preferred the cleanness and tidiness of the wild sod. He always said that the badgers had cleaner houses than people, and that when he took a housekeeper her name would be Mrs. Badger. He best expressed his preference for his wild homestead by saying that his Bible seemed truer to him there. If one stood in the doorway of his cave, and looked off at the rough land, the smiling sky, the curly grass white in the hot sunlight; if one listened to the rapturous song of the lark, the drumming of the quail, the burr of the locust against that vast silence, one understood what Ivar meant.

On this Sunday afternoon his face shone with happiness. He closed the book on his knee, keeping the place with his horny finger, and repeated softly:⁠—

He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills;
They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild asses quench their thirst.
The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted;
Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house.
The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies.

Before he opened his Bible again, Ivar heard the Bergsons’ wagon approaching, and he sprang up and ran toward it.

“No guns, no guns!” he shouted, waving his arms distractedly.

“No, Ivar, no guns,” Alexandra called reassuringly.

He dropped his arms and went up to the wagon, smiling amiably and looking at them out of his pale blue eyes.

“We want to buy a hammock, if you have one,” Alexandra explained, “and my little brother, here, wants to see your big pond, where so many birds come.”

Ivar smiled foolishly, and began rubbing the horses’ noses and feeling about their mouths behind the bits. “Not many birds just now. A few ducks this morning; and some snipe come to drink. But there was a crane last week. She spent one night and came back the next evening. I don’t know why. It is not her season, of course. Many of them go over in the fall. Then the pond is full of strange voices every night.”

Alexandra translated for Carl, who looked thoughtful. “Ask him, Alexandra, if it is true that a sea gull came here once. I have heard so.”

She had some difficulty in making the old man understand.

He looked puzzled at first, then smote his hands together as he remembered. “Oh, yes, yes! A big white bird with long wings and pink feet. My! what a voice she had! She came in the afternoon and kept flying about the pond and screaming until dark. She was in trouble of some sort, but I could not understand her. She was going over to the other ocean, maybe, and did not know how far it was. She was afraid of never getting there. She was more mournful than our birds here; she cried in the night. She saw the light from my window and darted up to it. Maybe she thought my house was a boat, she was such a wild thing. Next morning, when the sun rose, I went out to take her food, but she flew up into the sky and went on her way.” Ivar ran his fingers through his thick hair. “I have many strange birds stop with me here. They come from very far away and are great company. I hope you boys never shoot wild birds?”

Lou and Oscar grinned, and Ivar shook his bushy head. “Yes, I know boys are thoughtless. But these wild things are God’s birds. He watches over them and counts them, as we do our cattle; Christ says so in the New Testament.”

“Now, Ivar,” Lou asked, “may we water our horses at your pond and give them some feed? It’s a bad road to your place.”

“Yes, yes, it is.” The old man scrambled about and began to loose the tugs. “A bad road, eh, girls? And the bay with a colt at home!”

Oscar brushed the old man aside. “We’ll take care of the horses, Ivar. You’ll be finding some disease on them. Alexandra wants to see your hammocks.”

Ivar led Alexandra and Emil to his little cave house. He had but one room, neatly plastered and whitewashed, and there was a wooden floor. There was a kitchen stove, a table covered with oilcloth, two chairs, a clock, a calendar, a few books on the window-shelf; nothing more. But the place was as clean as a cupboard.

“But where do you sleep, Ivar?” Emil asked, looking about.

Ivar unslung a hammock from a hook on the wall; in it was rolled a buffalo robe. “There, my son. A hammock is a good bed, and in winter I wrap up in this skin. Where I go to work, the beds are not half so easy as this.”

By this time Emil had lost all his timidity. He thought a cave a very superior kind of house. There was something pleasantly unusual about it and about Ivar. “Do the birds know you will be kind to them, Ivar? Is that why so many come?” he asked.

Ivar sat down on the floor and tucked his feet under him. “See, little brother, they have come from a long way, and they are very tired. From up there where they are flying, our country looks dark and flat. They must have water to drink and to bathe in before they can go on with their