Karl Oskar also came out and stood there by Kristina laughing to himself: Was she surprised? She could thank Fina-Kajsa for this, the old woman had suggested lending her son’s cow for the winter; the cow had once more been taken to German Fischer’s bull in Taylors Falls, and as it now appeared she was with calf, it would be a shame to butcher her. Anders Månsson and his mother had enough milk from the other cow, and as Karl Oskar had gathered plenty of hay to feed her, he could keep her through the winter; he was to bring her back to the owner at calving time next spring. The cow still gave a couple of quarts of milk a day and would not go dry for several months.
“The animal is old, of course,” he concluded.
The cow was badly saddle-backed and had an enormous stomach; she must have borne fifteen calves at least in her day. But Kristina threw her arms around the neck of the animal: she had a milch cow, even though it was only borrowed, and they would have milk for the children during most of the winter. And she patted the cow, caressed her, felt above the udder for the milk arteries, and said they were good, for an old cow: she could easily increase her milk if she were fed and cared for.
Karl Oskar was as pleased as Kristina with the cow. He thought that this time his wife had enforced her will in spite of him.
Here in Minnesota people had miserable shelters for their cattle; the Swedish settlers thought it a wonder they didn’t freeze to death during the winters. Karl Oskar led his borrowed cow to the lately vacated shanty. The cow moved into the house they themselves had occupied until a few days before. Their old home was turned into a byre! They would let the cow graze in the meadow until the snow began to fly, but they would be careful to put her in the shanty every night.
Anders Månsson was the owner of one young and one old cow. Both had American names—the young one was called Girl and this one was called Lady, which was supposed to be a title like Mrs. in America. Large-bellied Lady was a calm, easygoing, friendly animal, grazing peacefully and contentedly, never trying to run off to the woods. She became a pleasant companion to Kristina and the children in their isolation; it seemed almost that they had acquired a new member of the family, and this member contributed to the family sustenance. Lady was always called by name, like a human being, a respected woman of noble lineage. And Robert pointed out that women were scarce out here and a noble name for a cow showed how highly men valued women in North America.
—2—
The night frosts had begun. The grass stood silvery in the mornings; winter was lurking outside their timbered house.
One late afternoon, at twilight, Kristina was alone inside their log house with Lill-Märta and Harald. Karl Oskar had gone to the lake to examine some willow snares he had placed in the shore reeds near a point where the pike often played, and Johan had run after him; the boy was always at the heels of his father. Kristina poured water into a pot and hung it over the fire, as Karl Oskar would soon be back with the fish for their evening meal. She hoped he would find pike in the snares, pike tasted better than any other fish in the lake; whitefish and perch were good too, but the catfish with its round head and long beard was so ugly that the sight of it did not whet the appetite.
Lill-Märta was playing on the floor and Harald was still taking his nap in the children’s bed. Kristina was busy at the hearth with her back to the door when the girl suddenly began to scream.
“What’s the matter with you, Lill-Märta?”
The child answered with another yell, still louder.
“Did you hurt yourself, child dear?”
The girl was sitting on the floor, staring wide-eyed toward the door.
Kristina turned quickly. The door was open and two figures stood inside the threshold. She could barely see them in the dim light, and at first she couldn’t determine whether they were men or women; she saw only two skin-covered bodies which had somehow got inside. But how had they opened the door? She hadn’t heard it open, nor had there been any other noise, or sound of steps.
The startling sight near the door made her back up so quickly that she almost stepped into the fire. Then she rushed to pick up the child on the floor—her heart stopped beating and felt cramped in her breast, and fear spread over her whole trembling body, as if it had been drenched with ice water.
The two figures at the door peered at her with black-currant eyes, set deep under low foreheads. And now she recognized who the guests were: their nearest neighbors had come to pay a call.
But what did they want here? Why had they come to her?
She called to them: “Go outside!”
The two Indians remained immobile inside the threshold. In her fear, she had forgotten they couldn’t understand a word she said.
Harald awoke and sat up in his bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. With the girl in her arms Kristina cautiously stole back to the children’s bed in the corner, she walked slowly backward, she dared not turn her back to the Indians. With one child in her arms she stood protectingly in front of the other.
“What do you want? Please go outside!”
Uncomprehending, the Indians remained, and again she remembered that she spoke to deaf ears: What use was there in talking to savages who didn’t understand her?
“Karl Oskar! Karl Oskar! Come quick!”
She kept on calling, she yelled as loud as she could, she must yell loud enough for him to hear her down at the lake. Karl Oskar wasn’t far away, perhaps he was already on his way back, he ought to hear her calls. . . .
Then she stopped calling; she might anger them by yelling, it might be better to keep quiet and pretend she wasn’t afraid of them. If she only knew their errand. What could they want of her?
The unwelcome guests did not leave, they moved from the door toward the hearth, and in the light of the fire Kristina had a good look at them.
The Indians were dressed in soft brown-red skins, and their feet were shod in the same kind of hides. Their faces were deceptively alike, except that one had a flat nose. Their cheeks were beardless. On their cheekbones were painted red, bloodlike streaks, and black hair hung in tufts from their heads, gleaming as if greased with fat. Both Indians had red animal tails dangling from the backs of their necks, they looked as if they had live squirrels sitting behind their ears. From their squirrel tails to their moccasins, they looked furry and ragged; they hardly resembled human beings. And they had sneaked into the house on soft paws like wild beasts.
The Indians looked around the cabin, they inspected the pot over the fire, the chest, the clothes hanging on the wall. Meanwhile they spoke in low voices to each other; their words sounded like short, guttural grunts.
She could not take her eyes off their red-streaked faces. Their eyes burned like black coals under their brows, they looked cruel and treacherous. Long knives hung at their sides; they might stick their knives into her and the children, any moment. The Indian with the pushed-in nose seemed to her the more dangerous of the two.
Kristina kept silent now, she no longer called for help, no use frightening her children. She stood at the corner of the bed, as far from the intruders as possible, with her two little ones pressed close to her. The children too kept silent, their round eyes staring at the strange, uncouth creatures.
They had left the door open; could she pick up Harald and the girl and escape through the door? Would she dare run past the two savages?
The flat-nosed Indian pointed to Karl Oskar’s gun which hung on the gable wall above the clothes chest; now both Indians stood looking at the gun with their backs toward Kristina. Now she must run by them out of the house! She gathered her strength, took a firm hold of her children, measured the distance with her eyes . . . it was only a few steps. . . .
But suddenly the Indians turned toward her again. They had managed to lift Karl Oskar’s muzzle-loader off the pegs; both held the gun, one had the butt, the other the barrel.
What did they want with the gun? It was loaded. What were they about to do, did they want to steal it? Why didn’t Karl Oskar come? Wh
at was he doing all this time?
Now the flat-nosed Indian alone held the shooting piece; he lifted the weapon to firing position, level with his shoulder; he stood with his back to the gable end of the house and aimed toward Kristina!
He intended to fire—he was going to shoot her and the children! She was looking right into the gun barrel, and there was no place to flee now; she pushed against the logs but she couldn’t creep through the wall. She stood petrified, a target.
“No! No!” she screamed.
She wanted to tell them they could have the gun, if only they wouldn’t shoot her and the children. The children! Quickly she pushed them behind her; now she protected them with her own body, now the bullet must first go through her. If she only could have called to them: Don’t shoot! Let us live! Don’t kill us here now!
But they wouldn’t understand her.
The flat-nosed Indian again held the butt, while the other one held up the barrel, helping his friend to aim the heavy weapon. It was clear they wanted to try the gun by firing a shot; the flat-nosed Indian was fingering the hammer, trying to cock it.
Pressed against the wall, Kristina crouched over her children, she couldn’t move any farther, she was trembling and weak with fright. The poor children—she couldn’t ask the savages to spare them, they wouldn’t understand. But Someone else understood and would listen to her; she stammered forth a prayer: “Dear God! If I die now, what will become of my children? My little, innocent children? Dear God, help me!”
Lill-Märta and Harald, squeezed between her body and the wall, began to whimper. But the visitors paid no attention to Kristina and the children, they were busy with the gun. Now both of them were fingering the hammer. The gun had a hard action. Kristina followed their motions with wide-open, frozen eyes. And she saw they had managed to cock the gun. Then she didn’t see anything more.
Black and red clouds covered her eyes. She closed them, her whole body numb with terror. Karl Oskar! What are you doing out there? Why don’t you come?
Karl Oskar! Perhaps he had encountered the Indians before they came in! Could they have done him any harm? Was that why he didn’t come? Suppose he were lying out there . . .
“Dear sweet God! Help him! Help us!”
Kristina closed her eyes and waited. She waited for the shot, she waited for the lead bullet. . . . She must die. This was the end for her on earth. And she prayed incoherently and silently that her merciful Father would receive her, wretched, sinful creature that she was, and let her children live unharmed in this world: the poor children . . . dear God, let them live, my poor children. . . .
Her trembling lips moved, but she kept her eyes closed and waited, waited through an eternity. It was silent in the house. She heard, nothing. As yet no shot had been fired from the gun. It remained silent.
Kristina kept her eyes closed and waited. . . . Until a child’s voice said: “Open your eyes, Mother! Why do you keep your eyes shut?”
Then she opened her eyes and looked about her, all around the cabin, as if awakening from a long, bad dream. Lill-Märta sat on the floor with her playthings as before, and little Harald stood in the open door and looked out. No one else was in sight. She was alone in the house with her children. The callers had gone: the two Indians had gone their way with the gun. They had come into the house soundlessly, they had left in equal silence—stolen away on their soft moccasins like animals slinking back into the forest. They had not fired a shot. . . .
But when she tried to walk, she felt the floor sway under her: the planks sank steeply under her feet, she took one step into a depth—she fell full length to the floor and knew nothing more.
—3—
Karl Oskar came in, Johan at his heels; he carried a few pike strung through the gills on a branch; he threw the fish on the floor in front of the hearth. It was cold inside the cabin and he wondered why the door had been left open. Then he discovered Kristina, stretched out on the floor at the other end of the room.
He hurriedly soaked a towel in the water pail and laid it on his wife’s forehead. In a few minutes she opened her eyes and sat up, confused and questioning: What was it? Why was she on the floor?
“You fainted,” Karl Oskar said.
She still felt dizzy, she put her hand to her forehead and began to remember: Karl Oskar had returned—at last!
“What were you doing? Why did you stay away so long?”
“So long? I was only gone a short while.”
He looked at his watch: he had examined the snares and moved them a bit, but he hadn’t been gone a half hour.
“A half hour?” Kristina was surprised. In that time she had suffered death, spent time in eternity. “I called you.” Her dulled senses were clearing: “The Indians came. Two awful ones! They took your gun.”
Karl Oskar looked at the wall—the gun was still there where he had hung it. As Kristina noticed this, she said: “I was so confused—I thought they stole the gun. But they cocked it.”
Karl Oskar took down his muzzle-loader and examined it; he couldn’t see that anyone had touched it.
“Did they handle it?”
“They aimed it.”
“At you? Oh Lord in Heaven!”
“I thought they would shoot me and the children.”
“God, they must have frightened you! No wonder you fainted!”
She related what had taken place in the cabin the few minutes he was gone. And as Karl Oskar listened, a cold perspiration broke out on his forehead. While he had been gone less than half an hour, the greatest disaster he could imagine had nearly befallen him: he might have returned to find wife and children dead on the cabin floor.
“Oh Lord my God! What an escape!”
Kristina said: First she had called him. Then she had prayed God to help her, and He had listened to her prayer and sent the savages away from their house without harming her or the children. Never before in her life had she realized so fully as today how all of them were under the protection of their Creator.
“They left the gun. I don’t understand it. What did they want in here?”
Karl Oskar suggested that the Indians were curious: they hadn’t come to murder anyone, they only wanted to see how the new settlers lived. But they handled shooting irons like children—the gun might easily have gone off and killed her!
“This must never happen again,” he said.
They had had a serious warning today. She must bolt the door carefully whenever he was out, even if only for a short time. And they must rig up a loud bell so she could call him when there was danger.
“I hope you didn’t hurt yourself?”
“No. I feel perfectly well again.”
She had looked very pale when he saw her lying on the floor, but now her color had come back. She busied herself with her chores, they must have their evening meal at last. She stirred up the fire under the pot and Karl Oskar went outside for more wood.
She sat down to clean the fish. But as she stuck the knife into the first pike belly, she felt a jerking convulsion grip her: an intense pain began in the small of her back and spread through her whole lower body. It felt as if she had stuck the knife into her own belly instead of into the fish.
When Karl Oskar came back with the wood, he saw she had grown pale again, her very lips were bluish. And her hand with the knife trembled as she cut the entrails from the pike.
“Is something wrong?”
“Nothing much. It’ll soon be over.”
“But you’ve pain?”
“It will soon pass.”
She went on cleaning the fish, she cleaned all the pike, and the pain abated. She had told Karl Oskar the truth—the pain had passed.
But what she hadn’t said was that it would soon be upon her again; she had recognized the pain.
And it did come back—an hour later, when they sat around the chest lid eating their supper. The same pain returned, radiating from the small of her back, shooting and cutting through her lower body. This time it lasted
longer than before. Her appetite was gone, but she forced herself to swallow a few bites of the boiled fish.
Karl Oskar looked uneasily at his wife: “How do you feel, Kristina?”
“I don’t feel so well, after the fainting spell.”
“Eat! That will bring back your strength.”
She tried for a moment to persuade herself that it was only the aftereffect of fainting. And the pain eased, but in a little while it came again for a third time, and now it seized her so violently that she had to let a few moans escape her lips. She panted and drew in her breath with difficulty.
“Take some drops!” Karl Oskar urged.
He found the bottle of Hoffman’s Heart-Aiding Drops, which Kristina had hidden with great care; he poured a tablespoonful and gave it to her. She swallowed the drops without a word. But by now she knew: no drops would help her, this would not pass, this would come back many times, and more intense each time it came—until it was over. She remembered it well; after all, she had experienced it four times before. And she regretted immediately having taken the heart-aiding drops, they couldn’t help her in any way; those drops had been wasted on her; they might better have been used for the children, when they ailed. Foolish of her. . . . Why had she believed something would help? The first time might have been a mistake—but now. . . . Why didn’t she tell Karl Oskar the truth?
“It’s my time, Karl Oskar.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes. It couldn’t be anything else.”
He looked at her in foolish surprise. “But—isn’t it too soon?”
“Fourteen days too soon.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought. . . . Then we must get someone right away!”
He had just finished pulling off his boots, now he pulled them on again quickly. Where could he find a woman to help? Who out here could act as midwife? At home she had had both her mother and mother-in-law at her childbeds. But here—a married woman, a settler woman who spoke their language—there was hardly a one. An unmarried woman who had never borne children would not be good for much. He had had it in mind to suggest to Kristina—as long as she herself hadn’t mentioned it—that they ought to bespeak a woman to help her in childbed, before it was too late. Fina-Kajsa was too old, her hands trembled, and her head wasn’t always clear. He had thought of Swedish Anna, who was a widow and had reached ripe age—she should be able to help a life into the world.
Unto A Good Land Page 33