usually called 'Curly Peter,' or 'Rooshian Peter.'

The two Russians made good farm-hands, and in summer they worked out
together. I had heard our neighbours laughing when they told how
Peter always had to go home at night to milk his cow. Other bachelor
homesteaders used canned milk, to save trouble. Sometimes Peter came to
church at the sod schoolhouse. It was there I first saw him, sitting
on a low bench by the door, his plush cap in his hands, his bare feet
tucked apologetically under the seat.

After Mr. Shimerda discovered the Russians, he went to see them almost
every evening, and sometimes took Antonia with him. She said they came
from a part of Russia where the language was not very different from
Bohemian, and if I wanted to go to their place, she could talk to them
for me. One afternoon, before the heavy frosts began, we rode up there
together on my pony.

The Russians had a neat log house built on a grassy slope, with a
windlass well beside the door. As we rode up the draw, we skirted a big
melon patch, and a garden where squashes and yellow cucumbers lay
about on the sod. We found Peter out behind his kitchen, bending over
a washtub. He was working so hard that he did not hear us coming. His
whole body moved up and down as he rubbed, and he was a funny sight
from the rear, with his shaggy head and bandy legs. When he straightened
himself up to greet us, drops of perspiration were rolling from his
thick nose down onto his curly beard. Peter dried his hands and seemed
glad to leave his washing. He took us down to see his chickens, and
his cow that was grazing on the hillside. He told Antonia that in his
country only rich people had cows, but here any man could have one who
would take care of her. The milk was good for Pavel, who was often sick,
and he could make butter by beating sour cream with a wooden spoon.
Peter was very fond of his cow. He patted her flanks and talked to her
in Russian while he pulled up her lariat pin and set it in a new place.

After he had shown us his garden, Peter trundled a load of watermelons
up the hill in his wheelbarrow. Pavel was not at home. He was off
somewhere helping to dig a well. The house I thought very comfortable
for two men who were 'batching.' Besides the kitchen, there was a
living-room, with a wide double bed built against the wall, properly
made up with blue gingham sheets and pillows. There was a little
storeroom, too, with a window, where they kept guns an