Arvid was afraid dust would blow into the case and stop the watch: “A helluva lot of dust! This must be hell’s dust bowl! I’m dying of thirst . . .”
Robert said he had been looking for buffalo tracks. If they could find any they would follow them to a water hole.
Arvid swallowed, and Robert swallowed, both of them kept swallowing all the time, without anything in their mouths to swallow. But all the time their thoughts were filled with the things they would have liked to drink.
Robert stretched out his ash-dry, swollen tongue and moved it across his lips, pretending to moisten them: if they only could find a buffalo cow; then he would milk her. Buffalo milk might not taste as fresh as water, but would surely slake the thirst. And buffalo milk was said to be fat and nourishing. It would give them strength to continue. If they now had luck enough to run across a cow that had lately calved . . .
“Buffalo are wild beasts!” said Arvid. “You couldn’t milk them!”
Robert stretched out full length against the hillside and immediately went to sleep. Then water came to him: in clear streams it flowed toward his face and he opened his mouth and drank. Spring-cool, refreshing water poured into his mouth, trickled down his throat. He opened his mouth wider to let in more of this comforting splendor that washed toward him. He could not open his mouth wide enough to this clear, refreshing stream.
His mouth purled like a brook. And now he recognized the stream: he was lying on his stomach near the mill brook at home, drinking its water. Into that brook he had once thrown his jacket, trying to pretend that he had drowned, for he wanted to be free of all masters and follow the running stream to the sea, to the New World.
But the mill brook water had no taste. He drank and swallowed and swallowed and drank but his thirst remained. The water pleased his eyes but did not satisfy his taste. He saw it but could not taste it. It was a peculiar stream, this one. The water ran into him—he opened his mouth wide—it poured into his throat, down into his stomach, but he could not feel a single drop within his body: the water from the mill brook did not quench his thirst however much he drank. He swallowed whole barrelfuls but it helped his thirst not a bit. At last the water felt hard as stone—scratching, tearing, piercing, burning his tongue . . .
Robert woke up: he lay with his face against a hard boulder and his tongue dangled from his mouth, licking the dry stone as a cow licks a lump of salt.
He had drunk without anything to drink.
Arvid had pushed both his hands under a thorny bush and was filling them with sand which he threw into the air. He was digging a hole in the ground, poking, scratching. What was he digging for? Why couldn’t he find it right here? A spring might exist anywhere, one never knew. If one only dug sufficiently deep. But it wasn’t easy with one’s hands only . . .
Robert sniffed the wind:
“It stinks of cadaver somewhere . . .”
“Yes, I smell it too.”
“I wonder where . . .”
They arose and set out in the direction whence the wind brought them the nauseating odor. Almost immediately they found its origin: within a stone’s throw lay the half-rotted carcass of a horse. They stopped a few paces from it and held their noses. Pieces of hide indicated the horse had been dark brown; the flesh was partly eaten away, the ribs were scraped clean, white, bent, like the peeled willow rushes of a wicker basket. The head had two deep black holes: the eyes had been picked out by carrion birds. The long teeth were exposed in a wide, eternal grin.
One hind leg had been torn apart, skinned, and lay some distance from the carcass. It was raised up, in a last, stiffened kick against the sky. The steel horseshoe glittered like silver in the sun. They noticed that the rotting horse had been newly shod.
Only a few yards from the carcass lay the broken steering shaft of a Conestoga wagon, half buried in sand. One large wheel with several inches of broad rim was buried in dust to the hub, as if suddenly having been brought to a halt as it rolled.
Sick from the stinking cadaver, Robert and Arvid were ready to turn away when Arvid exclaimed:
“Look! O Jesus my Lord!”
He shied back and pointed. Something was sticking up in the sand just in front of his feet. Something white, only an inch or two long, spindly, like a skinned birch twig—and on its end was a human fingernail. It was a finger bone poking up from the ground in front of them. Arvid had almost stepped on it.
They ran away from the place, the smell of rotten flesh pursuing them.
The boys hurried on in silence, the dust whirling round their feet. They did not walk in any definite direction, only where it was easiest for their feet. They wanted to get away from the place—away . . .
As they wandered across the plain, they felt their strength wane and they stumbled. But they must keep moving forward. They must not come to a stop. If they came to a stop they were sure they could never move on again. And one who was unable to move forward on the California Trail was also unable to move back.
Once Arvid stopped and mumbled hoarsely:
“I almost stepped on . . .” He moved his hand to his cracked lips. “Robert! It was a forefinger . . . !”
He was sure. And the finger in the sand had pointed right at them.
—5—
The sun was getting low, losing its power. It grew cooler; the shadows near hills and boulders lengthened toward evening. They staggered along drunkenly, a vise of dryness arid thirst squeezing their bodies. Their guts shrank into a knot. Their legs flagged and bent under the increasing weight of their bodies.
Arvid stumbled into a hole; he made no effort to get up. He fell headfirst and lay still:
“Without anything to drink I’m unable to go on . . .”
Robert sat down beside his comrade, taking him by the shoulder, but felt dizziness come over him; the ground around him was wavering; he must sit there until it stopped.
Arvid rose to his knees and began to dig in the sand with his hands. He made a scoop of his fingers and dug holes a foot or more in depth. Below the surface the ground was darker and felt cooler. If he should find water here—then he could throw himself on his stomach and . . .
Robert followed the motions with his eyes, unable to understand. What was Arvid doing? What was he digging for? The holes he dug were immediately filled up and obliterated. With his scoop he caught nothing but dust, and it poured back between his fingers and became part of the ground again. Yet Arvid continued without stopping, digging in hell’s dust bowl.
“It’s all my fault . . . The mules ran away because my knots were too loose . . .”
Dizziness had for a moment so overtaken Robert that he did not know what Arvid was talking about. Mules that had run away—loose knots in a halter—how did that concern him? Only one thing concerned him now.
He understood their predicament but couldn’t understand how they had got into it. They were in a dust bowl; they were wandering about alone in a desolate region where the ground, the hills, the boulders were nothing but dust, small whirling hard grains. Were they in a desert where everything had been burnt by the fire of the sun? What were they doing here? What were they looking for in this wide, empty space? Why had they come here? What were they looking for in a region that had nothing to offer? They had reached a land of nothingness, and it now closed in about them, terrifyingly. It had caught them in its ravenous jaws. There they sat, like prisoners in a trap.
Arvid went on scooping and scratching with his hands in the sand, like a dog covering its dung with earth.
It wasn’t gold he was digging for now.
XVIII
THE MISSING GOLD SEEKER
—1—
Wednesday morning Karl Oskar left at the usual hour for work on the church building. A few days earlier Kristina had taken down her loom and now was busy cutting cloth for garments. As soon as Karl Oskar left, she spread the linen over the table in the big room and began to measure, mark, and baste. Seven in the family needed new clothes; no longer was she able to
patch upon the patches of the old. She had been sitting at the loom during the winter, now she was sitting at the sewing during the summer. She was not an expert seamstress but the garments must do however they turned out. The children were growing fast so she measured generously in order that they wouldn’t outgrow their clothes too soon. For the boys’ clothing she allowed three extra inches for sleeves and pants.
When Robert had dressed and eaten his breakfast, he sat down near Kristina and watched her cutting and basting. It seemed he was willing enough to talk to her when they were alone; he was more reticent with Karl Oskar.
He said that from now on she would not need to sew and struggle; since she now had money she could buy dresses for herself of the finest cloth she could find in the stores. She laughed in reply. The first things she intended to buy with her money were not silk and velvet to deck herself in; there were a thousand things she needed much more.
Her one great concern during these days had almost been forgotten at Robert’s unexpected return. For a few weeks she had known she was again pregnant. With this certainty she had also discovered that suckling did not prevent pregnancy; she was still giving the breast to Ulrika, and yet, meanwhile, Karl Oskar had got her with child. And the birth would take place in the winter, the most inconvenient time of the year.
But after what had happened Monday night she had almost forgotten her new discomfort.
She threw a glance at the Swedish chest as if wishing to assure herself that it still stood in its place. She said that first of all they must get that great sum of money to a safe place. They couldn’t have it lying here in the house. Any day now Karl Oskar would have to go to Stillwater and put the money in the bank.
Riches had come to their house, but for her nothing had changed from one day to the next. She still had her chores, which she couldn’t suddenly run away from. But when she had had time to gather her thoughts about the immense bundles of large bills, she had begun to figure how best to use them. Dizzying visions about what they now could afford paraded through Kristina’s mind. Above everything else she wanted help with her work, hired help to relieve her. The money would be a hedge against the fatigue which at times almost crushed her, particularly at the beginning of a new pregnancy; then she had to sit down and rest in the midst of a chore because everything turned black before her eyes.
She wished indeed to thank her returned brother-in-law for every blessed moment of rest his gift might bring her.
“You are a generous and good man, Robert.”
“You have always been kind and good to me, Kristina.”
Even if Karl Oskar was not entirely free from doubts about his brother’s money bundles, because he did not fully trust paper money in America, no one could make Kristina waste a single thought on the possibility that Robert had returned and brought them false or useless money.
“I guess board and room costs a lot back there in the goldfields?” she asked.
It was unbelievably expensive, Robert told her, turning his right ear toward her. A meal cost ten dollars, the poorest lodging fifteen dollars a night, and a pair of pants fifty dollars. All were out after gold and no one was willing to do ordinary chores. The governor himself had to cook his own food and wash his dishes because his servants had fled to the goldfields. No one in California would work for anyone else, however high the pay. The gold diggers had to do everything for themselves; they couldn’t get a shirt washed at any price; they sent their dirty laundry by ship across the Pacific Ocean to China. It was their only way to get something clean to cover themselves with—the people of Asia washed for the people of America, the dirt of one continent was rinsed off on another.
“To think they freight dirty laundry to China! It sounds crazy!”
She tried to draw him out of his reticence about his experiences in California:
“You must have had a hard time out there? What luck you got away with your life!”
“Got away with . . . ?” Robert repeated Kristina’s words slowly, while his wide-open eyes looked at her thoughtfully. “You think I got away with it . . . ?”
Her hand around the cutting shears came to a standstill, she stopped her shears in the middle of the cloth. A quiver in his voice had startled her.
“Life, Kristina! It’s worth nothing on the Trail! Nothing at all!”
“Nothing . . . ? How is that possible . . . ?”
“Life has no greater value than a grain of sand. No one cares about his life. But all care for gold. Do you know why, Kristina?”
“No . . . ?”
“I’ll tell you a story.”
And he began . . . A man in one of the wash gangs suddenly died. He had been in good health in the morning when he walked down to the river, but as he was cradling gold a fever suddenly overtook him and killed him, and when his gang returned home in the evening they carried his corpse on a couple of posts. They would bury him next morning. They dug a grave in the sand close to a rock and sent to the nearest camp for a minister to read and sing over the corpse. For a coffin they used an empty box which had contained smoked hams. The box was too short for the dead man, who had been tall, and they had to bend his knees. There was no lid for the coffin so they covered the corpse with a red shirt.
When the coffin had been lowered into the grave the dead man’s comrades gathered around the grave, took off their hats, and bowed their heads. Everyone looked at the ground, all were silent, the way it was in a church. And the minister, who was also a gold digger, took out his Bible and began to read the ritual.
But when he had read only one short Bible verse he stopped in silence. He only stood and stared at the ground. He turned the pages of the book a little, but he didn’t read any more. He only stood still and stared into the open grave. The men who had dug the grave for their dead comrade wondered what was wrong with the minister. His hesitation would drag out the funeral if he didn’t read faster. They were all in a hurry, it was a warm day, they were thirsty and wanted to have something to drink as soon as it was over.
But the minister never completed the service. He read no more Bible verses. Suddenly he hurled the Bible away into the bushes, its leaves fluttering in the wind, and threw himself face down on the ground; with both hands he began to dig in the sand at the edge of the grave.
The men thought at first that the minister had had a sunstroke and lost his mind. But then they noticed he was picking up something and putting it into the pocket of his frock. As soon as they realized what it was, they too threw themselves into the grave, scratching and digging with their fingers as fast as they could. For they had discovered the same thing the minister had seen when he began reading over the corpse: nuggets were glittering down there.
The minister, when he first made the discovery, didn’t know how to keep the secret from the other men, for of course he wanted to be alone with the gold. At last he couldn’t hold back any longer.
Soon a great fight broke out over the nuggets in the grave. The box with the corpse was overturned and trampled to bits, and the men used the pieces as weapons. Then they tore into each other with their fists, and finally knives and guns came out. It ended with the minister being shot to death and one of the mourners being pierced through the heart with a knife. Several others were badly wounded. The survivors made peace and divided the gold from the grave among them.
So there turned out to be three funerals instead of one. The old grave was turned into a gold mine, a huge one, and the three graves were dug some distance away. Now they had no minister to perform the ritual, since he too was a corpse, and there was no reading over the graves. Instead they fired four revolver shots. The survivors wanted thus to honor and reward the dead comrades who had fallen in an honest fight for gold, concluded Robert.
While he had been telling the story Kristina had held her wool shears motionless.
“What a terrible story!”
“Karl Oskar thinks I’m always lying,” said Robert “It’s best to keep silent while he’s around. But I kno
w you believe me, Kristina.”
She believed every word—while he talked. Only when he had finished did wonder and doubt cross her mind.
“If this is the truth then they live like wild beasts in California.”
“No one cares about his life. But all care about gold!”
“They’re out of their minds if they value gold higher than their lives.”
Robert leaned toward her and spoke in a lowered voice, as if confiding a great secret to her:
“The gold diggers are people who want to die.”
“Ah, nonsense! They must want to live and get rich and enjoy their riches.”
“But why should they give their lives for nuggets if they didn’t want to die? They would rather lie in their graves than give up the gold.”
“You talk so strangely, Robert.”
She forgot her sewing and looked into his drawn, wan face. The skin was taut across his forehead and cheeks and it looked as if the bones beneath were trying to push through.
“But you yourself? Did you go to California because you didn’t wish to live any longer? To kill yourself?”
“I meant the others. It was different with me. My real errand was not to dig gold . . .”
And he looked beyond her, out through the window, at the tall maples outside, as he added, emphatically, “I did care for life. But I didn’t know this until afterward.”
“Afterward . . . ?”
His speech was full of riddles. But now he gave no further explanation; he rose and went to the kitchen, where he picked up the scoop to drink. The bucket was empty; he hung it on his arm and went toward the spring. He moved with tardy, clumsy steps; he no longer had a young person’s quick and easy walk.
When he returned with the bucket filled, Kristlna could hear him panting from exhaustion.
“You needn’t carry in water if you don’t feel up to it. The bucket is heavy enough for a healthy person.”
“I’ll manage.”
She said that it was good luck they had found such a fine and large spring which gave healthy and clear water in abundance, and tasted so good. The spring was invaluable to them, even though they had to walk a good bit to it.
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