Unto A Good Land

by Vilhelm Moberg

  The Indians were vain, they decorated themselves with buffalo horns, they greased their hair with bear fat, they smeared red clay over their faces. At times they painted their whole bodies so red they resembled blood-stained butchers; in such things they were childish. But in other ways they were so clever one might take them for magicians; their bows were simple and useless looking—only a piece of skin stretched between the two ends of a broken-off branch—yet their arrows killed game in its tracks; Robert had once seen an Indian shoot a big buck with his bow and arrow. The brownskins’ flint arrows were short, but they sharpened them against a peculiar stone called Indian-stone until their points grew so sharp they would penetrate hide and flesh and shatter bone.

  The Indians were childish in another way—they believed dead people could eat and drink; they carried food and drink to the graves of their relatives.

  But in one way they were much wiser than the whites: they did not hoe the earth.

  Robert had once seen the picture of an Indian girl in a book; she was so beautiful he would have liked to make her his wife, could he have found her. But the young women he had seen here among the Chippewas were almost all ugly: they had short legs, clumsy bodies, broad, square faces with thick noses. The older women had such rough skin that they were almost repulsive. Yet white menfolk were said to desire Indian women. Samuel Nöjd, the fur trapper, had related that in the old days there were French trappers so burning with lust they couldn’t pass a female in the forest. They had raped every Indian woman they encountered, however ugly or old she might be. And this caused them no more concern than shooting an animal.

  However, Nöjd said, the trappers had grown less eager to attack Indian women after the Sioux had taken a gruesome revenge on one white man. They had tied him to a pole, and for a whole night they sharpened their knives in front of him, now and then calling out to him: “You may live until our knives are sharp!” At intervals they tested their knives by cutting off a piece of his skin. At daybreak the knives were sharp—and the trapper insane. Then the Indians stuck their well-honed knives into his breast, cutting loose his heart, as slowly as they could, and the man lived a long while with his heart dangling outside him like a big red blossom. This had taken place near the Indian cliff. Later the savages had buried the trapper in the cave called the mouth of the Indian-head. Every day at dawn the trapper’s agonized cries could still be heard, Samuel Nöjd concluded.

  The Sioux, who from time to time roamed through these regions, were much more cruel than the Chippewas. But Robert did not avoid the Indians because of their cruelty or their heathenish ways; rather, he admired and esteemed them for their wisdom and their easy way of living. Had he himself been given brown skin instead of white, he would not have been forced either to cut timber in the forest or grub hoe the earth.

  —2—

  The night frost grew sharper; each morning the meadow resembled a field of glittering white lilies. An intense storm had in a single day shaken the leaves from the trees, carrying them into the air like clouds of driven snow; afterward the surface of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga shone golden yellow with all the floating leaves from the naked forest on its shores. After the storm came the cold, and land and water were soon frozen hard. On the lake the mirror-clear ice crust thickened each night, and in the ground the frost dug deeper, not to release its hold until spring.

  No one could work frozen ground, and Robert put away his grub hoe for the winter. He must now help his brother cut fence rails; in the spring Karl Oskar would fence the part of his land he intended to cultivate, and thousands of rails were needed.

  Robert and Arvid visited each other every Sunday; either Robert would walk over to the settlement at Lake Gennesaret, or Arvid would come to Ki-Chi-Saga. Usually they went down to the lake shore, where they made a fire; here the two friends from Sweden could sit undisturbed in intimate talk.

  Robert had told Arvid when he first decided to leave his Swedish service and emigrate to North America. Now he again had a secret of a similar nature, and Arvid was the only one he confided in. One frosty Sunday, as they sat feeding their fire on the lake shore, he began: “Can you keep your mouth shut?”

  “I never say anything. You can rely on me.”

  “I carry a great secret—no one knows it; I’m going to run away from here as soon as I can.”

  Arvid was astonished: “What’s that you say? You want to leave your brother?”

  “Karl Oskar is not my master.”

  “I thought you two brothers would stay together.”

  “I shall travel far away and dig gold.”

  “Dig up gold? The hell you will! And you haven’t told anyone?”

  “Such a plan must be kept secret.”

  Robert explained: It wasn’t that his brother treated him badly, Karl Oskar neither kicked nor hit him; but the work was no different from the drudgery he had endured while a hired hand in Sweden; it was equally depressing and heavy; the days dragged along with the same monotony. He could not stand it much longer, he had never wanted to be a day laborer, he knew a shorter way to riches, and here in America no one could stop him from traveling wherever he wished.

  “Do you know where the gold lies?” Arvid asked.

  “Yes. In California. Farthest away to the west.”

  “Is California a—a broad land?”

  “Broader than Minnesota.”

  “Do you know the exact place? I mean, where the gold lies?”

  “No. I’ll have to look and ask my way, I guess.”

  “Is the gold spread all over? Or is it in one place?”

  “It’s spread all over.”

  Arvid thought about this for a while, then he said: Gold was supposed to glitter, it should be easy to see it, if one looked sharp. But if California was bigger than Minnesota, and if the gold was spread all over that broad country, then Robert might have a troublesome, long-drawn-out journey before he found it; he would have to walk over the whole country and look everywhere.

  Robert realized that Arvid did not know anything about the gold land; he had only heard the name. He must explain to his friend about that country, since he wished to share his plans for the future with Arvid.

  And so Robert began a simple explanation of California. He told Arvid all he had read and heard, besides much he had neither read nor heard but which he knew must be so, without exactly knowing how he knew it. And perhaps the things he knew in this way were the most important.

  In California the valuable metal called gold was almost as common as wood in Minnesota. Gold was used for all kinds of tools, implements, and furniture, because it was cheaper than iron or wood. Rich people used gold chamber pots. The gold grew in that country on fields called gold fields. It grew quite near the surface. Only a light hoe was needed to reach it, not a heavy ten-pound grub hoe such as he labored with here. In some places no hoe at all was required—there were those who had dug up as much as fifty thousand dollars’ worth of gold with a tablespoon. The only tool needed was a wooden bowl in which to wash the gold to remove the dirt. And if you couldn’t afford a bowl, you might wash the gold in your hat; an old, worn-out hat was all one needed to gather a fortune. And when the gold had been washed clean of earth and other dirt, until it shone and glittered according to its nature, one had only to put it in a skin pouch and carry it to the bank, and then return to withdraw the interest each month. All gold pickers with good sense did this; the others squandered their gold in gambling dens, or ruined themselves with whores.

  One needn’t pick up a great deal of gold in order to get rich. About a hundred pounds would be right, or as much as one could carry on one’s back; about two bushels would be right.

  “How big might the gold clods be?” Arvid asked.

  “They are of different weights.”

  The gold grew in pieces of all sizes, from about half a pound to twenty-five pounds weight, Robert explained. There were chunks as large as a human head, while others were tiny as dove eggs. There was also a still smaller kind,
about the size of hazelnuts, and these lumps were most prevalent and easiest to find. But they were such a nuisance to pick that he did not intend to bother with them; for himself he would choose the larger chunks, then he wouldn’t have to bend his back too often; by picking the twenty-five-pound pieces one could save one’s strength in the gold fields.

  Nor would Robert gather such a great fortune that it would be a burden to him. He wanted a medium-sized fortune that would be easy to look after and not bring him eternal damnation; he did not intend to build himself a castle, or buy expensive riding horses, or marry some extravagant woman with a desire for diamonds and pearls. He only wished to gain enough of a fortune to live for the rest of his life without drudgery, or labor, or masters.

  Robert wanted to weigh up for himself a hundred pounds of the California gold; then he would return completely satisfied. Perhaps he might even return to Sweden and buy himself a manor house. He had heard of two farm hands from Småland who had dug gold in California and then returned home and bought great estates. They had each brought home a sack of gold, which they had exchanged for Swedish coin. But Robert thought he would be satisfied with a smaller estate, about two hundred acres or so; the larger ones required too much attention and could easily become a burden to their owners. Robert would get himself an overseer; and he would pay his hands well—a thousand daler a year, and they would be let off work at six o’clock, Saturdays at five.

  “You are good to them,” said Arvid.

  “Having served as farm hand myself I know what they deserve,” said Robert modestly.

  “And . . . was it your thought to travel alone to California?”

  “No. That’s what I wanted to tell you: the two of us should go together.”

  There should be two, because the road was so awfully long. And two would find the gold much more easily than one. True enough—gold glittered and shone, but four eyes could see twice as much as two; and two would be safer against robbers and thieves.

  “Are you coming with me, Arvid?”

  It was the same question Robert had once before asked his friend, one night long ago in a stable room in their homeland. Then it had concerned North America, and so great had been Arvid’s surprise at Robert’s daring and ingenuity that he had been speechless for a long moment. Now the question concerned a journey to the land of gold in North America, and that land also lay so far away that the sun needed extra hours to reach it in the mornings.

  Robert repeated his question: “Are you coming with me, Arvid?”

  “I want to—that you must know. But I’m in Danjel’s service.”

  “He cannot keep you here! Not in America.”

  “But I owe my master for the journey here.”

  Danjel Andreasson had paid the expense for his servant’s emigration, and Arvid felt it would be dishonest to leave him before he had repaid Danjel through his work. But he too knew full well that no master could keep him longer than he wanted to stay; no servant law was in force here, no sheriff fetched runaway farm hands.

  “You can pay Danjel what you owe him when you come back from California!” said Robert. “You can just hand him a chunk of gold.”

  Yes, returning from the gold fields Arvid would be so well-to-do that he need never again lift his hand in work, neither with ax, hoe, nor any other tool. He had only to carry his gold to the bank and each month withdraw sufficient interest to pay his expenses; there would be plenty of money to pay Danjel.

  Moreover, the two youths had once and for all promised each other to stick together in America.

  “I haven’t forgotten that promise,” said Arvid, deeply moved. “I want to follow you, that you must know. But I must talk to Danjel before I shake your hand on it.”

  Robert already felt sure he could persuade Arvid to go with him to California.

  “You mustn’t whisper a word to anyone! I don’t intend to tell Karl Oskar until the day before I leave!”

  He had already figured out the way to take: They would board the Red Wing next time the packet steamer came to Stillwater, then the boat would carry them down the Mississippi to St. Louis, the same way they had traveled last summer. By helping to load wood and wash dishes, they would not have to pay a cent for their transportation on the Red Wing. From St. Louis they could walk dryshod all the way to California, following the great highways that led to the West.

  “Isn’t there any—any ocean in between?” Arvid asked with some concern.

  Robert assured him there was not; only solid land, mostly dry, sandy stretches where they could walk comfortably to the home of the gold in the New World.

  Robert had long been listening to his left ear, its persistent humming and ringing urging him on: Come! Come! A new land far away called him again, and having obtained his friend’s promise of company, he would soon follow the call.

  But the winter was to interfere with his plans; the frost grew in intensity, soon the whole St. Croix River was covered with solid ice. The Red Wing’s bell no longer was heard in Stillwater; indeed, no craft would be seen on the river until next spring when the ice had broken up; the inhabitants of the St. Croix Valley were separated from the outside world by the frozen river.

  For the rest of the winter Robert was shut up in Minnesota Territory.

  —3—

  Early one Sunday morning, Robert picked up his brother’s gun and went into the forest. New-fallen snow, three or four inches deep, covered the ground; it was fine hunting weather. Not far from the cabin he came on the tracks of an elk, and hunting fever seized him. The elk could not be very far away—Karl Oskar had not yet shot an elk—think if he could shoot this big animal and be the first one to bring home all the meat!

  The elk tracks led past the Indian-head, and Robert stopped a moment to look up at the cliff. The stone Indian stared back at him with his unchanging, black eye holes. As long as this cliff had existed—for thousands of years—those deep, inscrutable eyes had looked out over the forest; the Indian stood guard for his brown-skinned people, an eternal watchman over the hunting grounds hereabouts. But his green wreath was now withered, the bushes on top of his head had lost their leaves, the wind whipped the naked, dry branches; only above the Indian’s left ear some limbs still carried their leaves—like eagle feathers stuck behind his ear.

  Every time Robert looked at the enormous face of this cliff, a strange sensation of uneasiness stole over him; there was something threatening in the stone Indian’s eternal immobility; he felt like a sneaking intruder on the age-old hunting grounds of the savages.

  Suddenly he crouched, holding his breath: he had discovered a living Indian close by.

  Below the cliff, hardly a gunshot from where he stood, a human figure huddled in the top of a small birch. His face was turned away from Robert, but he could see skinny legs, partly covered by tattered skins which fluttered in the wind. And near his hands Robert could clearly see a bent branch—the Indian’s bow!

  For a long minute he grew cold and hot in quick succession. An Indian lurking in the tree, with his bow and sharp arrows! Whom could this sly brownskin be waiting for? White intruders who trespassed on his hunting grounds? Was he waiting for Robert? Was that why he had climbed the birch? The Indians were said to surprise their prey from treetops. . . .

  Robert held on to his gun butt with trembling fingers. Apparently he had discovered the Indian before being seen himself; why not fire first? But if he missed? An Indian could shoot a score of arrows in a minute. And already Robert could feel them penetrate his body—twenty arrows all over his body! Hadn’t he seen one single Indian arrow kill a huge buck? If he should miss—he could see himself dead.

  But perhaps the Indian too was after elk. Perhaps he too had seen the fresh tracks? If he were waiting for game, then Robert might be able to sneak away before being seen. As yet there had been no threatening move.

  Robert threw himself down in the snow and began hitching himself away on his elbows, his gun above his head. In this way he moved some twenty yards
until he reached a thicket, behind which he crouched cautiously; now the man in the tree could not see him. He wasn’t sure if an arrow had pursued him—a bow did not give a report like a gun, and he didn’t hear too well.

  He waited a few minutes but nothing happened. Carefully he separated the branches to peek through: the Indian was still sitting in the tree, he didn’t seem to have moved the least bit, he still held his bow in the same position. Indians could sit for hours in a tree, as immobile as stones; he must still be waiting, watching the trail below the cliff.

  Robert was now sure the Indian had not yet seen him, and if he could get away a little farther he would be beyond reach of an arrow.

  As he began to steal away he heard a rustle in the thicket. He listened. Was it the wind? Or a rabbit? Or was it an arrow? He heard the sound again; some branches moved close by his head where he lay on the ground. It must have been an arrow striking in the thicket, the Indian must have discovered him when he peeked through a moment before.

  For a third time there was a rustle in the bush, the branches quivered; now he could clearly hear the whizz of an arrow through the air!

  He grew panicky; his heartbeats throbbed in his ears, he felt choked. He aimed the gun in the general direction of the Indian and fired. The report echoed loudly against the cliff, the shot must have been heard for miles. It was so loud that it deafened him and echoed inside his eardrums. What had he done? He had fired the gun in fright, without exactly knowing why. Now all the Indians in the vicinity would be warned, now they would all come after him!

  Seized by an overwhelming fear, Robert took to his heels. He ran as if the devil were after him. He ran toward the cabin the shortest way he knew, he slunk between the trunks of a thick stand of timbers; he was conscious of leaving tracks behind for his pursuers to follow, but he was too scared to look back; the Indians could run twice as fast as white men, and they had fresh snow tracks to follow. But Robert dared not look to find out if they followed him; he did not stop to consider that if an Indian had pursued him he would immediately have been overtaken.