The man with the load of hides wore a flaming red shirt and light yellow deerskin breeches with black fringes along the sides. But as Robert recognized his face he also remembered him in different dress: a light brown large-checkered coat with pants of the same big-patterned cloth, fitting tightly around his legs, a voluminous handkerchief dangling from his hip pocket, black patent leather shoes; he remembered the man standing on the deck of a sailing ship, leaning on the rail and spitting into the ocean while entertaining the other passengers with his stories. And one of the crowd around him was Robert.
The “American”! The American on the Charlotta!
Robert had recognized the voice he had heard tell so many stories about the New World during their crossing to America. And the face—he had seen thousands of strangers but this face was not like any other, this one he recognized.
He walked closer and asked in Swedish, “Aren’t you Fredrik Mattsson?”
The man in the red woolen shirt turned, and opened his mouth as if ready to swallow some of the fat blowflies that buzzed over his load of buffalo hides.
“God damn! A Swedish fellow!”
“You are Mattsson who crossed on the Charlotta, aren’t you?”
“That’s right! And I believe I met you before, boy?”
“On the ship . . .”
“Oh yes, we traveled on the same ship. I remember you now. Well, well—what was your name . . . ?”
Robert told him, and Fredrik Mattsson shook his hand so hard that the finger joints snapped.
“Very glad to meet you again, Robert Nilsson. It’s not every day you meet a countryman in this territory!”
Fredrik Mattsson was from Asarum parish, in the province of Blekinge, Sweden, and he had been nicknamed the “American” on the Charlotta. At their landing in New York he had disappeared. None of the other passengers knew where he had gone. Robert had eagerly listened to his stories and often wondered what had become of him. Now they had unexpectedly met again, deep in America, all the way out in Nebraska Territory.
Mattsson said that since landing in America he had never run across any of his many companions on the ship. And he was glad at last to have found a young friend from those days at sea.
“That old tub Charlotta! She must have sunk by this time!”
“After the landing, where did you go, Mr. Mattsson?”
Robert felt he must call his older countryman mister.
“Where did I go? I’ll tell you, boy! But call me Fred. All my friends in America do. And I’ll call you Bob. Now we can talk Swedish together!”
And Fredrik Mattsson from Asarum leaned against the tall wheel of the ox wagon and continued in the language he called his mother tongue, although Robert noticed that a great number of the words he used were English, or a mixture of English and Swedish, so common among his countrymen in America.
“I took a ship in New York, a clipper ship to California. She was a beautiful ship, loaded with gold seekers . . .”
“The Angelica?” said Robert.
“Oh, you noticed her too, boy!”
And Robert did indeed remember the sleek, copper-plated Angelica with her pennant fluttering in the wind: Ho! Ho! Ho! For California! Hadn’t he wished he could have boarded that ship where the men danced and sang and had a good time! They were on their way to dig gold and become free.
“I took the Angelica to Frisco,” explained Mattsson. “I stayed a year in the goldfields, but no luck for me. The best days in California are over. It’s hell to live out there. No sir! No diggin’s for me! I’ve left gold behind forever! Last year I was traveling about and happened to come here to Nebraska. Now I live in Grand City. I have a bar, and a hotel—Grand Hotel in Grand City. Now you know, Bob. And call me Fred!”
“I will, Fred!”
The hotel owner from Grand City had been out on a business trip and was now on his way home with a load of buffalo hides. He was in big business.
“What do you do around here, boy?”
Now it was Robert’s turn to explain. He and a friend from the Charlotta had also started out to dig gold in California. They had taken a job with a Mexican to look after his mules. But his friend had remained on the plains and the Mexican had died of yellow fever. Last spring Robert had lost both his friend and his boss. He had been left behind in Spring Creek, where he had stayed alone through the summer. His employer had left him what he owned; Robert had enough to live on.
“You are lucky! Did you make any money?”
“I have enough.”
“Good! Then you can live as a free gentleman in America!”
Fredrik Mattsson thought for a few moments. When he continued, his voice was even friendlier than before. He put his hand on Robert’s shoulder.
“I know what, my Swedish friend! You come with me to Grand City! You stay as my guest at the Grand Hotel!”
“Where is Grand City?”
“Fifty miles from here. Toward the east. You come with me! We Swedes should stick together! We’ll have a good time together!”
Robert could live wherever he wanted. He didn’t care where he went.
A few hours later the load of hides started out from Spring Creek with a new passenger. Robert was traveling back across the Nebraska plains. He had given up going west, he was now traveling east.
He had turned his back on the land of gold.
—2—
They drove for two days across the prairie. On the afternoon of the third day they came to a deep valley whose bottom they followed, and at dusk they had arrived at Grand City.
The town had been founded a few years earlier by a group of Mormons. The Mormons had been chased out of Missouri, said Fred, and sought freedom in Nebraska. Grand City had flourished, but soon troubles had arisen between the Mormons and new settlers of other sects who had moved in. When the inhabitants began to shoot each other, the town had stopped growing. Last summer the Mormons had been chased out of Grand City too, and since then life had been calmer. Last winter a tornado had moved most of the houses far out on the prairie. Since then business hadn’t been very good in Grand City.
As they came closer Robert saw that the town had been built in a gravel pit; the walls of the pit surrounded Grand City on all sides. It was a place fortified by nature. The houses, all along one street, were of varying shapes and construction: some of stone, some shed-like, some covered with tent roofs, even shanties of branches and twigs, roofed with leaves and turf. And the street at the bottom of the pit had caved in in many places; in one such hole lay a pile of boards that once must have been a house.
Robert also noticed big caves in the gravel walls surrounding the town. Someone had been busy there—what kind of digging had taken place?
“The Mormons kept poking for their Bible,” explained Fred.
Their first prophet, Joseph Smith, had found the Book of Mormon, written on plates of gold, while he was digging in a sand pit in Vermont. An angel had shown him where to look for the truth concerning the last revelation. Smith had been a capable man with a good head; a pity that he had been lynched up in Illinois by people who were jealous of him. While the Mormons were in Grand City their local boss had received a revelation from an angel; the tablets Smith had found did not contain all the truth; several chapters of the Book of Mormon, indeed, the most important chapters, were buried in the sandhills hereabouts. And on this prophet’s instigation the Mormons had started to dig. They dug day and night, they poked through every hill near town. They sifted every grain of sand but had not found a single written word. It had been a false angel, a liar angel, who had fooled the local prophet.
A cloud of dust enveloped the wagon as they drove their lazy team along the one street of the town. Robert looked at the sand pit walls: the upper layers hung far out beyond the lower ones; at any time they might cave in. And the walls were pierced by holes which the first settlers had dug in their search for the eternal truth about life and death. The undermined walls could cave in and in a few moments bury the wh
ole of Grand City.
One house in the center of the town had a sign painted on it in somewhat shaky letters—GRAND HOTEL. The house was built of stone with a rather flat roof of bark. It was so low that it resembled a cellar house. The door had a sign in chalk: If you want anything, walk in!
Fred Mattsson jumped down from the load; he welcomed his old friend and countryman, Bob Nilsson to the Grand Hotel in Grand City; he had all kinds of guest rooms for gentlemen—his was not only the biggest hotel in town, it was the only one.
The hotel had been closed while its owner was away on business. Now he opened the door with some caution; the upper hinge was loose and dangling, and in spite of his care it fell on his boot as he stepped across the threshold; he kicked it aside.
They walked through a narrow hall, dark as a cellar. The hall ended in a few stone steps which led up to a bare room. This was the Grand Hotel’s best guest room, and here the Swedish guest could stay. Inside was a real bed, nailed together of heavy boards, with a mattress and fairly clean sheet, pillow, and blanket. The only other furniture was a table and a chair at the window. The walls were decorated with buffalo horns; even this room indicated they were in buffalo country.
A room for a gentleman, said the host, a room for a man of means in America. Now Robert must rest while he went down and cooked dinner for them. They would have their dinner in the main dining room. Unfortunately, the Grand Hotel was without personnel at the moment. Before he left on his business journey he had been forced to let his chef go, his last employee. This man had been ordered never to get drunk until after dinner, but he had never obeyed. The host himself had always had to save the steaks from burning. And one day the cook had taken the wrong bottle and poured castor oil in the bean soup. The guests had all spent the night in the privy. In the morning they had all moved out, accusing him, the owner, of trying to poison them, and refusing to pay their bills. That was why he had kicked out his chef; that bean soup had cost him two hundred dollars.
About an hour later Robert came down to enjoy Fred’s promised dinner. The “main” dining room was a widening in the hall with an iron stove in a corner. It had a long table at which twenty guests could sit down to a meal. Fred was frying buffalo steaks on the stove and served them with a red, peppery sauce; he called it chili Colorado. The meat was good but the sharp sauce burned Robert’s tongue. The host had put both knife and fork at his plate; almost every day, said Fred, some guest arrived who asked for both these tools. After the buffalo steak he served pancakes which he called tortillas. He had learned to cook these in the California goldfields.
Fredrik Mattsson from Asarum poured whiskey from a fat bottle and handed his guest a large tumbler of the dark-brown fluid.
“Let’s drink a Swedish Skol! Good luck, boy!”
Robert was not accustomed to the strong liquor, which scratched like a scrubbing brush in his throat and burned in his stomach afterward. The hotel dining room had a closed-in and dank smell. Robert couldn’t help saying that he felt as if he were sitting in a cellar.
“Yes, Grand Hotel was built for a potato cellar!” said Fred proudly.
And the host told him the story of his hotel, an amazing and proud story. The house itself was a historical building; it was the oldest house in town, four years old. He intended to put a sign on the front of his house indicating its venerable age.
When Grand City had been founded, four years ago, the first inhabitants had needed a place to store their potatoes. This house had been built for potato storage. But as the town grew and attracted cattle thieves, ruffians, and murderers, it had become more important to have a safe place to put them rather than the potatoes. It was worse to have thieves on the loose than to eat spoiled potatoes. By and by they were hanged, of course, depending on time and opportunity, but it usually took a day or two before official execution could be performed, and in the meantime the criminals were kept in this jail. In this very spot where they now were sitting, many men had spent the last hours of their life.
Then had come a time in Grand City’s history when law and order had been set aside. There had not been enough men to attend to that business; no one could expect men to jail themselves and stay in prison. For a year or so the jail had been abandoned for lack of officials. The last prisoner had been strung up, or perhaps he had escaped, and no new criminals could be supplied.
Then came the church period of Grand City’s history. After the Mormons, a group of Seventh-Day Adventists had arrived. They needed a church and rented the empty jail. The potato cellar was turned into the lord’s temple. The pulpit stood here in the dining room; when Fred tore it down he had used the planks for a counter in his bar. Here in this old potato cellar the Seventh-Day Adventists had once made themselves ready to ascend into heaven—the Last Day, they had decided, would occur on New Year’s Eve 1850, and all members of the congregation had gathered in here. They had sold all their possessions, everyone was dressed in white muslin robes; they had done their earthly chores and were ready for the ascension. But the Last Day had been postponed indefinitely, and since the Seventh-Day Adventists already had given away everything they owned on earth without gaining admittance to heaven, some problems about money had arisen. The confusion increased when the pastor ran away with the wife of the church warden.
And the crafty Mormons, who preached their doctrine forcefully, took advantage of the other sect’s predicament: they drove them out of the church and used the building themselves.
After a time of great strife in Grand City’s church life a period of peace and order reigned. Even though the town at that time was without jail or potato cellar it had five church buildings, all Mormon.
The host inhaled deeply, spat to the left and then to the right, and poured more whiskey for his guest and for himself before he continued.
This peaceful period was nearing its end when he came to this town. He had arrived in time to attend a Mormon wedding here in the church. A rich and highly trusted member was marrying eight women at one time. It was an average Mormon wedding and he had participated in the festivities.
The eight brides had been lined up in a row outside on the street, decked in white clothing, their hair curled, all ready. In front of the brides sat the bridegroom, like a company commander on a fine horse, in tails and stovepipe hat. The congregation had raised a triumphal arch across the street, and back and forth under this arch men rode among the guests and fired salutes with rifles and revolvers until the whole town was enveloped in a cloud of powder smoke. When the ceremony was about to commence the brides walked under the arch to meet the groom. Each bride in turn walked up, the groom pulled her up beside him in the saddle and rode off to the house where the bridal chamber had been prepared. After a time the groom came riding back alone; now his first wife was no longer a maid but a Mormon wife. The marriage had been consummated. Then the groom picked up his next bride, rode away, and turned this maid into wife.
In four hours the groom had finished his ride—eight times back and forth. In four hours he had consummated his marriage with eight wives. And that Mormon was a small, weak-looking man, but he had been gifted with heavenly strength to perform his manly duty. He could almost be compared to Brigham Young himself.
But this wedding turned out to be the undoing of the Mormons. It caused bad blood among other men in town, who had long envied the Mormons their women. There was already a great lack of women in the West before this sect had come with their polygamy. One man could take ten wives while a hundred men couldn’t get a single woman. A small war broke out in Grand City. The Mormons used Colt revolvers and could fire five shots without reloading, but some of the other men had Sam Colts newest invention, which fired six shots. And with Colt’s six-shooters they drove the whole Mormon group out of town.
Now the churches stood empty and Fred had used the opportunity to take over the biggest building in town. He had opened a hotel and bar in the old Mormon temple, and the onetime potato cellar was now really in its glory.
/> Well, wasn’t that a proud history of this house? In three years it had been potato cellar, jail, church, and hotel! Could Robert name any famous building in the world that had had so glorious a past? And in so short a time! This house was an example to newcomers of progress here in the West. It took brains, of course, and some fighting, but survivors did have a future.
That was how Fred Mattsson had become the owner of the Grand Hotel in Grand City.
“I can thank Sam Colt’s six-shooter, of course,” he added. “Sam is the greatest living American. Do you know that he made his first revolver when he was fourteen! Think what the West would have been without him! It simply wouldn’t have had any future at all if men had had to stop and reload at every shot!”
Robert’s head spun from the whiskey he had drunk; suddenly he felt drowsy and listened only vaguely to Fred.
But then a tornado had hit Grand City last year, Fred went on. Three fourths of the houses in town had blown away—thirty, forty miles out on the prairie. And in many cases the inhabitants had sailed away with their houses. The town had again come to a standstill; indeed, it had gone through difficult times. But Grand Hotel remained and it was one house the West would boast about in the future.
Robert was yawning; the sturdy meal and the strong liquor had practically put him to sleep in his chair. His host urged him to go to bed and rest for a while. After all, he was a guest in the hotel. Fred himself would now open his bar for the evening. His return had been awaited impatiently in the town, and his old steady customers would begin to arrive any moment now. He had been closed for two weeks—tonight there would be a throng at his counter.
—3—
Robert slept a few hours and awoke with a burning thirst. He was not accustomed to American whiskey; he had a taste of stale herring brine in his throat.
The Settlers Page 37