The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (best reads .TXT) 📕

her head. “No; very sick. He knows nothing,” she said quietly, folding her hands over her drawn-work.

Thea learned that Wunsch had been out all night, that this morning Mrs. Kohler had gone to look for him and found him under the trestle covered with dirt and cinders. Probably he had been trying to get home and had lost his way. Mrs. Tellamantez was watching beside the unconscious man while Mrs. Kohler and Johnny went to get help.

“You better go home now, I think,” said Mrs. Tellamantez, in closing her narration.

Thea hung her head and looked wistfully toward the blanket.

“Couldn’t I just stay till they come?” she asked. “I’d like to know if he’s very bad.”

“Bad enough,” sighed Mrs. Tellamantez, taking up her work again.

Thea sat down under the narrow shade of one of the trestle posts and listened to the locusts rasping in the hot sand while she watched Mrs. Tellamantez evenly draw her threads. The blanket looked as if it were over a heap of bricks.

“I don’t see him breathing any,” she said anxiously.

“Yes, he breathes,” said Mrs. Tellamantez, not lifting her eyes.

It seemed to Thea that they waited for hours. At last they heard voices, and a party of men came down the hill and up the gulch. Dr. Archie and Fritz Kohler came first; behind were Johnny and Ray, and several men from the roundhouse. Ray had the canvas litter that was kept at the depot for accidents on the road. Behind them trailed half a dozen boys who had been hanging round the depot.

When Ray saw Thea, he dropped his canvas roll and hurried forward. “Better run along home, Thee. This is ugly business.” Ray was indignant that anybody who gave Thea music lessons should behave in such a manner.

Thea resented both his proprietary tone and his superior virtue. “I won’t. I want to know how bad he is. I’m not a baby!” she exclaimed indignantly, stamping her foot into the sand.

Dr. Archie, who had been kneeling by the blanket, got up and came toward Thea, dusting his knees. He smiled and nodded confidentially. “He’ll be all right when we get him home. But he wouldn’t want you to see him like this, poor old chap! Understand? Now, skip!”

Thea ran down the gulch and looked back only once, to see them lifting the canvas litter with Wunsch upon it, still covered with the blanket.

The men carried Wunsch up the hill and down the road to the Kohlers’. Mrs. Kohler had gone home and made up a bed in the sitting-room, as she knew the litter could not be got round the turn in the narrow stairway. Wunsch was like a dead man. He lay unconscious all day. Ray Kennedy stayed with him till two o’clock in the afternoon, when he had to go out on his run. It was the first time he had ever been inside the Kohlers’ house, and he was so much impressed by Napoleon that the piece-picture formed a new bond between him and Thea.

Dr. Archie went back at six o’clock, and found Mrs. Kohler and Spanish Johnny with Wunsch, who was in a high fever, muttering and groaning.

“There ought to be someone here to look after him tonight, Mrs. Kohler,” he said. “I’m on a confinement case, and I can’t be here, but there ought to be somebody. He may get violent.”

Mrs. Kohler insisted that she could always do anything with Wunsch, but the doctor shook his head and Spanish Johnny grinned. He said he would stay. The doctor laughed at him. “Ten fellows like you couldn’t hold him, Spanish, if he got obstreperous; an Irishman would have his hands full. Guess I’d better put the soft pedal on him.” He pulled out his hypodermic.

Spanish Johnny stayed, however, and the Kohlers went to bed. At about two o’clock in the morning Wunsch rose from his ignominious cot. Johnny, who was dozing on the lounge, awoke to find the German standing in the middle of the room in his undershirt and drawers, his arms bare, his heavy body seeming twice its natural girth. His face was snarling and savage, and his eyes were crazy. He had risen to avenge himself, to wipe out his shame, to destroy his enemy. One look was enough for Johnny. Wunsch raised a chair threateningly, and Johnny, with the lightness of a picador, darted under the missile and out of the open window. He shot across the gully to get help, meanwhile leaving the Kohlers to their fate.

Fritz, upstairs, heard the chair crash upon the stove. Then he heard doors opening and shutting, and someone stumbling about in the shrubbery of the garden. He and Paulina sat up in bed and held a consultation. Fritz slipped from under the covers, and going cautiously over to the window, poked out his head. Then he rushed to the door and bolted it.

“Mein Gott, Paulina,” he gasped, “he has the axe, he will kill us!”

“The dresser,” cried Mrs. Kohler; “push the dresser before the door. Ach, if you had your rabbit gun, now!”

“It is in the barn,” said Fritz sadly. “It would do no good; he would not be afraid of anything now. Stay you in the bed, Paulina.” The dresser had lost its casters years ago, but he managed to drag it in front of the door. “He is in the garden. He makes nothing. He will get sick again, may‑be.”

Fritz went back to bed and his wife pulled the quilt over him and made him lie down. They heard stumbling in the garden again, then a smash of glass.

“Ach, das Mistbeet!” gasped Paulina, hearing her hotbed shivered. “The poor soul, Fritz, he will cut himself. Ach! what is that?” They both sat up in bed. “Wieder! Ach, What is he doing?”

The noise came steadily, a sound of chopping. Paulina tore off her nightcap. “Die Bäume, die Bäume! He is cutting our trees, Fritz!” Before her husband could prevent her, she had sprung from the bed and rushed to the window. “