Robert gave in. He now possessed four thousand dollars of this money that had been named after the free forest cats who had no masters, and who roamed at liberty wherever they liked. Instead of the heavy, exacting gold, he had now liberty’s light and sound money in his bag. And wasn’t this the kind of money he had always been looking for?
His partner, this competent businessman, had doubled his fortune. And that very moment Robert decided how he would use this great sum of money.
He thanked his countryman with all his heart, thanked him long and well, not only for his great help in increasing his money, but also for all the stories about the gold land he had listened to in the Grand Hotel when undisturbed by guests. What he had learned he would not forget.
So the two friends emptied their farewell Skol to the last drop; for the last time the Swedish toast was used in Fred’s Tavern.
Later, in the street outside the hotel, Fredrik Mattsson from Asarum, Sweden, waved a cheerful goodbye to Robert Nilsson from the same country, as he left the Grand Hotel in Grand City on the ox wagon, the wildcats in his bag.
You’re listening, but you haven’t heard Karl Oskar return; you don’t hear well—it’s I who ruined your hearing.
It’s been a long night for you—I’ve had much to tell, have tried not to forget anything of importance.
But now my story nears its end.
It was during your last winter in the ghost town that I came back to you. Since then I’ve left you only for short intervals. I’ve buzzed and throbbed and banged and hammered so intensely that you have been forced to listen to me. And you can say what you wish, but you can thank me for the fact that you began to ponder your lot in life. I’ve kept you awake at night and given you time to think in peace when all is silent.
And at last you have returned and can play the gold seeker who struck it rich! The sound, free money in your pouch hadn’t been touched when you returned. You had decided not to spend a single dollar of it, for you wanted to give all your riches to Karl Oskar and Kristina.
Thus your trip has not been in vain, my dear gold seeker. Your money will help your brother and sister-in-law. Who could deserve the money more? Who could use it better? Who could need it more? Your brother is still young, but he has poked so hard in the earth here that he already limps—even though he won’t admit it! When he has cleared one field he begins with another, and another, and so on. He loves it. But however big his fields he will never be satisfied. Yet he too, in the end, must be satisfied with a handful of earth—as much as the mouth of a dead man can hold.
And Kristina is not nearly as strong as your brother.
She is only thirty, yet soon she will become bent and broken on this claim if she doesn’t get help. She has five brats, and will have more, she has her big household to care for, all the livestock—constant chores inside and outside. She is like a ship at sail: never entirely still, always driven by some little gust of wind. You see how worn out she is in the evenings. You can be pleased that your money will help a little to ease her burden.
You’ve returned with riches to the home of Karl Oskar and Kristina. You’ve kept the promise you made them when you left four years ago. But it cost you mightily. You returned a whole life older. And your return was not what you had imagined when you left; you expected to return with your life unspent. But now you’ve learned what life is and what death is. You’ve experienced them both, and these two ought to be the title of the story that now draws to its close.
Dear Robert! You’ve been lying awake for long hours tonight. We won’t part, you and I. Don’t think so for a moment! You yet have one master left! But now I shall release a few great drops of comfort, a few drops to ease your pain, so that you will have a few hours’ rest. This much credit you must give your sick, buzzing ear: it has taught you to value sleep as the greatest gift the Creator has to offer. When fatigue and despair rob a person of life’s strength, it is restored with sleep.
Farewell now for the moment. Sleep well, gold seeker—you who never saw California!
XXIV
WILDCAT RICHES
—1—
Karl Oskar had expected to return from Stillwater before nightfall on Friday, but at bedtime he was not yet back. Kristina put the children to bed while she herself stayed up and kept a fire going to keep supper warm for her husband.
As yet she wasn’t worried. Karl Oskar had been late on several occasions when returning from Stillwater or Taylors Falls. On the wretched, recently cleared forest roads so much could happen to delay a ramshackle ox cart, and their oxen were young and barely trained. Then it was so hot during the day with swarms of that summer plague, the mosquitoes. No one could get a moment’s peace in the forest because of these pests. She felt sorry for Karl Oskar, who must drive the team such a long way in this heat, when even well-trained animals sometimes bolted and took off because of the stinging critters.
A young ox might easily bolt in this weather, and then the driver might get hurt also. It comforted her that Karl Oskar wasn’t alone on this trip. Their neighbor, Algot Svensson, was a capable and reliable man.
Robert had gone to bed at his usual time. There was no need for him to stay up and wait for his brother. He was weak and sickly and needed his rest more than anyone else in the house.
A couple of long hours passed as Kristina waited. On the hearth stood the pot containing the corn porridge she had cooked for supper, which was beginning to smell burned. She must prepare something else for Karl Oskar, something she could make ready quickly. She found some eggs and poured water into a pot to boil them; she also cut a few thick slices of pork. Then she waited again.
It was close inside, so she went out and sat down on the oak bench near the kitchen door where it was cooler. The crickets squeaked and chirped in bushes and grass all around the house. She had become accustomed to this sound of the nights whistle pipes, but tonight she wished the screech-hoppers would keep quiet; their noise distracted her and prevented her from hearing the rumble of the ox cart down the road.
It was almost midnight before Kristina heard the sound she had been waiting for. She went back into the kitchen and blew fire into the dying embers; the food would be ready as soon as Karl Oskar had unyoked the oxen and stabled them. She heard no voices; their neighbor must have left below the meadow and taken a short cut to his home.
After a few moments she heard the familiar footsteps outside the door. Only a few minutes more and the eggs would be boiled and the pork fried. Karl Oskar came in.
She greeted him with the words that many times before had met him when he returned:
“You’re late . . .”
He flung his hat unto its accustomed nail on the wall, drew in his breath, and said that on the way home they had hit a stump in the road, turned over the cart, and broken the axle. Algot Svensson had gone to the new homestead at Hay Lake and borrowed tools so they could cut a tree and put in a new axle. This had delayed them several hours. His cart wasn’t good enough for long trips.
She was just lifting the boiling pot off the fire and she turned around quickly; his voice sounded strange. He spoke with an effort, in short, stuttering words as she had never before heard him talk. What was the matter with him? The broken axle couldn’t have affected him that seriously.
He walked past her into the big room before she could see his face, and now she remembered his most important errand today. But she had not intended to ask him anything before he had eaten; hungry men needed food first of all.
Karl Oskar usually went directly to the table and sat down to eat when he came home hungry. Wonderingly, she went into the big room after him. He had lit a candle; his face was stern, his features frozen.
“What is it, Karl Oskar . . . ?”
His face was spotted, marked by his dirty fingers wiping off perspiration. He had driven his team a long way on a hot day and he had turned over, but he was not hurt. Why, then, wasn’t everything all right?
Kristina noticed that he held somethin
g in his hands. With a sudden, angry thrust he threw it away—flung it all the way into the fireplace corner toward the old spittoon she had just cleaned. It was a bundle of paper which fluttered in the air as it flew past her; around and inside the spittoon a heap of green bills lay strewn.
“We can throw those on the dunghill!”
“The money . . . ?”
“Wildcat money!”
“Paper money . . . ?”
“Useless! Money for wildcats!”
“Aren’t they real . . . ?”
“This money isn’t worth a shit! ‘Good for nothing’ they said at the bank!”
Karl Oskar sat down on a chair, heavily.
“ ‘These bills ain’t worth a plugged nickel!’ the man at the bank said!”
He tried to repeat what the man had said, the English words of the banker that still rang in his ears.
Today, he told her, when he had gone to the bank at Stillwater, one clerk after another had come to inspect the money. At last they had called out the head man of the bank and he had inspected the bills at length. It was he who had said: Wildcat money! Good for nothing!
The Indiana State Bank of Bloomfield, which had issued the money, had long ago gone broke. That was probably why its name hadn’t been on the list in the Swedish newspaper. Bills on that bank were no longer in circulation in this part of the country, the banker had said, only far out in the wild West. And he had added, that even there it must be Swedish immigrants and other newcomers who were cheated by that kind of money.
He had said he was sorry for Karl Oskar, and the clerks had said the same, but they couldn’t accept his money. They had advised him never to take bills unless he knew about the bank that issued them. And he had stood there like a fool when they handed the money back to him. He suspected the American bankers had had a good laugh behind his back, laughing at a trusting, ignorant Swedish settler.
He was seldom with business people and he had never heard of wildcat money; it was money issued by banks that lacked securities and were unable to redeem it.
Kristina was glued to the spot staring at the fireplace corner, which was covered with the bills. Only last night she had ironed out these bills and removed the spots from them.
She tried to understand; how could the bills be false? Anyone in Sweden making false money was arrested by the sheriff and put into prison. She asked: Were such swindlers allowed to be on the loose in America? Had the banks themselves the right to cheat people with useless bills?
Karl Oskar replied that as long as there was no order in currency anyone could start a bank and print bills. There was full freedom in this country. And wildcat money was a suitable name; the bankers who had printed these bills were of the same ilk as their namesake; they were robbers, as treacherous as the wild beasts lurking in the bushes, endangering their children.
Kristina sank down on a chair, her head filled with a throbbing confusion. Dazed and bewildered she tried to understand. Last Monday evening a fortune had come into their home. This was Friday—and here it was back in the house again. But now the money lay strewn like refuse in the spittoon in the corner.
It was a false fortune, wildcat riches.
She had forgotten the frying pan—an odor of burned pork came through the door from the kitchen. It had entirely gone out of her mind that she had been preparing supper for Karl Oskar.
But he smelled it.
“You’re burning the pork!”
He rushed to the kitchen and pulled the pan off the fire, then returned to her in the big room. He didn’t care enough about food to eat; he wasn’t hungry tonight. He started walking back and forth across the floor, he pounded his fists against his chest; it was as if he wanted to punish himself for his foolishness.
“I had made up my mind I wouldn’t let him fool me any more! I had my doubts all the time! But he won—he made a fool of me!”
“Do you think Robert meant to cheat you?”
“See for yourself! He tried! Look in the corner! His hellish lying! He’s unable to say a single word that’s true! Where do you think he has his gold? It’s inside his head—where no one can get to it!”
“I can’t believe Robert had some evil intent in mind when he gave us the money,” said Kristina firmly.
“You still think well of him?” exclaimed Karl Oskar in a hardening voice. “A liar can just as easily cheat! Don’t you know Robert by now?”
Kristina had just begun to know Robert. She had never thought of him as being evil or deceitful, and after her talk with him today under the sugar maples she knew better than before that he was not a bad person who wished to cheat them with false money. Even though he did lie he was not a cheater. He was not one who would want to skin anyone. On the contrary, he himself was trusting and easily cheated. She wondered if it wasn’t possible that Robert himself had been cheated by those bankers who had printed the bills.
“He must know they’re useless!” said Karl Oskar. “He must have tried to use the same kind of money himself! He must have found out the bills were useless and then decided they were good enough for us!”
“No! I don’t believe that of Robert!”
“He felt ashamed of returning empty-handed, of course!”
Karl Oskar looked toward the gable room.
“I’m going to call him—then you can hear what he has to say for himself!”
“It’s the middle of the night!” She took him by the arm. “He’s weak and ailing—leave him alone till tomorrow morning.”
“Well, as you say . . .”
“You need to calm down too . . .”
“But you can be sure I’ll have a talk with him in the morning!”
“Don’t do anything rash,” Kristina pleaded. “Robert might have an explanation for his wildcat money.”
“I’m sure he has! He can always dream up some lie. That’s easy for him!”
Karl Oskar walked back and forth, flailing his long arms; the movement of his body gave him some outlet for his anger. But Kristina sat crushed and silent until the corners of her mouth began to twitch.
“Is there anything one can trust here in America . . . ?”
“We mustn’t take this too hard, Kristina . . .” He lowered his voice, changing his tone completely. Looking at his wife he could judge it was now time to talk differently.
“No—no more crying about this! We aren’t richer than before, but neither are we poorer. We haven’t lost anything! Not a single nickel! Nothing has changed for us.”
He could also have said that in one way he almost felt satisfied. He had been right when he refused to believe in easy riches in America. For five years he had struggled and been harassed by his lack of cash—and the first time he had gone to a bank to put in some cash he had been told it was worthless. It was as though justice today had been meted out between the settler who improved his lot through honest work and the good-for-nothing speculator, or whatever his name, who tried to get rich without work.
Kristina heard the words; as rich or as poor as before—no change . . . But for her something had changed.
She had never for a moment doubted but that their fortune was real, and she had already speculated on what the big bills would bring them. During those days and nights since Robert’s return she had thought of how their life on the claim would change. Stimulated by the thought of riches she had already begun to live this new life. She had filled their naked rooms with new furniture, with new clothing for all of them, of better cut and fit than she could manage by her own sewing. She had traveled to visit her friend Ulrika in Stillwater on a new spring wagon pulled by horses; she had already engaged a maid to help in her chores—she had indeed found aid for her overwhelming fatigue. She had bought thousands of things for the house and her dear ones during this wonderful June week when for four days she was rich.
The time of wealth had lasted from Monday to Friday. And now? Through the open door came the everlasting complaint of the crickets squeaking like an ungreased wheel, that
turned at dizzying speed out there in the grass.
This familiar sound of the summer night seemed at this moment a sound of derision: Monday night—but now it’s Friday! Where are your riches now, Kristina? In the spittoon? Have you so much money in this house that you spit on it? For four days, Kristina, you were rich, but it was not yours, it belonged to the wildcats—perhaps they are enjoying it now, tearing it to pieces in their lairs and holes! Tearing to pieces all the things you had counted on. For a wildcat is much stronger and smarter than you. You’re only a poor woman! Trusting Kristina! So sorry for you! But you have known all along that this wilderness is full of evil, lurking creatures.
Yes, for Kristina something had changed. It was true, all they had gained out here during five years remained. They had not lost anything. Yet she felt as if this night she had suddenly become terribly poor.
—2—
Saturday morning Robert entered the kitchen as Kristina was busy starting the fire. His hair was ruffled and stood straight up, his cheeks were gray in the early morning light. He went over to the water bucket and took down the scoop from its nail on the wall. Just as he had finished drinking, Karl Oskar came in from his chores in the stable. He took his brother by the arm.
“Come, I want to show you something.”
They went into the big room, Kristina behind them. Now it would come—she had been lying awake during the night, anxiously worrying about the morning meeting of the two brothers.
Karl Oskar pointed to the fireplace corner with the bills spread over the spittoon; they lay where he had flung them last night on his return.
“Here! You can have your spending money back! It might be useful when you go to the privy!”
He spoke loudly, anger vibrating in his voice, but Robert did not seem to understand what he was driving at. He put his hand behind his healthy ear and turned it toward his brother to hear better.
The Settlers Page 40