Wild Wind Westward

by Vanessa Royall

  He did not know, because one never knows what might have been. Yet Elaine herself leaped to a conclusion.

  “You despise me now, don’t you?” she wailed. “You think I trapped you, and you hate me now. But…but I couldn’t let you go!” she cried. “Don’t you see? I loved you so much, and I would have died if you had gone!”

  Then she was sobbing hysterically, and it was only after Eric had carried her back to the buggy that she regained control.

  “Don’t worry about it anymore,” he told her that night, as they lay in bed. “It’s over, you did what you believed to be the right thing, and I’m sure no harm has been done. The Union army has been doing well enough without me, and I wasn’t healthy enough to fight, anyway.”

  “But the letter to New York?” mourned Elaine. “To Kristin?”

  “Did that trouble you so very much?”

  “When I tore up the letter, I didn’t know who she was. You didn’t tell me until later that she had married this Rolfson man.”

  “Elaine,” he said, after thinking a moment, “I must tell you this. We are husband and wife, and will soon have a child. I know you love me, and I love you. You need not fear for one day, for one minute, that I will abandon you. But Kristin must know that I am alive and well. This you have to understand. I must write her, and I must also settle with the army.”

  Elaine was assured now, and satisfied. “Yes,” she agreed, not meekly, but without enthusiasm.

  “If you knew that someone was worried about you, concerned that you might have perished, would you not try to contact him, tell him you were all right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Now go to sleep. The harvest will soon be upon us, and we’ll be busy dawn to dark.”

  She went to sleep beside him, chastened but—in her quiet way—triumphant. Eric lay awake, thinking. If he did write Kristin, as he had last fall, at her first address in New York, would the letter reach her at all? The Madison Hotel could not have been but a temporary stopping place to Gustav Rolfson. No, the best thing would be to telegraph, so that his message would go directly into her hand. He could do so from Gettysburg, and there—also through the telegraph office—he might learn the correct Rolfson address in New York, if the Rolfsons still lived there. But if he telegraphed from Gettysburg, the unusual gossip that a local married farmer was cabling a woman in great New York would be bruited about quickly and energetically. No, he would have to go to Harrisburg, but with the harvest coming, he could not spare the time for such a trip just now.

  Just as well. Elaine would quiet down, and cease to worry about the matter. He did not want her getting upset, now that the baby’s birth was drawing near. And he had another insight: What if Kristin thinks I am already dead?

  The summer was difficult and long. Elaine caught a chill one rainy day, developed a small fever, and had to take to her bed. She was not actually ill, but neither was she entirely well, and Dr. Cummings of the village assured her that bed rest was just the thing. “Do not worry, though,” he added. “The baby is fine, the baby is doing fine.”

  Still Eric worried, the more so because the same wet weather that sent Elaine to her room also threatened the wheat crop on which he was counting for money. Wilbur Nesterling had left farm and livestock, but little else, and Eric had planned to set aside some money and perhaps open a business in the town. He was not yet certain what it would be: hardware, possibly, because farmers would demand more machinery after the war ended; or maybe he would breed prize cattle; or maybe buy more land. The Harrisburg newspaper, which arrived in the post once a week, was full of stories about new men here in the state who were busy amassing money and influence. Sometimes Eric felt old before his time, as if life had passed him by, chances gone and opportunities lost. It had not been five years since he had fled Lesja, with nothing but a pack on his back, but sometimes it seemed like fifty.

  He read about the oilfields in Titusville, to the north, and of John D. Rockefeller, once poor, but now a man of promise.

  And he read of Benjamin Horace, called the “Pillar of Pittsburgh” by the Harrisburg reporter. Wasn’t that the man Mick Leeds had mentioned just before he died? The man Joan Leeds had taken up with?

  Life was unfair. And the newspaper story was effulgent:

  …Prescient is the word for Mr. Horace. Through commendable, eagle-eyed foresight, and the aid of United States Congressman Angus Creedmore of Pittsburgh, Horace was able to insert a reservations clause in the Pennsylvania application of the Federal Homestead Act, whereby certain leases…

  Lesja! thought Eric, leaning forward to read more astutely. He suspected immediately that Benjamin Horace was, at heart, a kin of the Rolfsons. And he was not far from right in this conclusion. The words, the arrangements, were phrased in complex, legalistic language. But what remained when the dross of lawyer’s jargon was stripped away could not but startle Eric, who had known Thorsen and Johanson, Thorvaldsen and Amundsen, the outwardly respectable but thievingly rotten men of his homeland. “For the good of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” concluded the article, “and to forestall exploitation by one man of our resources, as has happened in Titusville, potential leasing of mineral rights in the west and south are to be overseen by Benjamin Horace…”

  Then, Eric asked himself, did not the individual landowner control the rights to minerals that might lie beneath his very feet?

  Representative Angus Creedmore asserted that this was not at all the case, due to the special reservation he had inserted into the language of the Pennsylvania Homestead Act, “for the overall benefit of the Commonwealth and her people.”

  A map accompanied the article, showing areas under the presumptive jurisdiction of this clever Mr. Horace. These areas swept all the way from Pittsburgh east to the Shenandoah Valley.

  “Elaine,” asked Eric, “did your father acquire this farm through the Homestead Act?”

  “No,” she answered, knitting baby clothing, sitting up in bed, “no, he bought it outright from the widow of a previous owner. It’s not a Homestead farm.”

  Without really knowing why, Eric breathed a sigh of relief, and went to the window, to watch the rain fall dully, heavily, on the already battered, overripe, unharvestable wheat.

  The rain fell that day, and continued to fall through the night and all through that week. By the time it ceased, and the sun broke through the clouds, tender kernels of wheat had been shaken from their stalks, almost as if the rain itself had been a gigantic threshing flail. There would be no wheat harvest at all, and Eric turned the pigs and the cows into the ruined fields, to forage at will. If the animals grew fat, at least he might sell them for cash money. But not, certainly, cash money sufficient to open a business?

  Eric realized, at that moment how profoundly he had changed. Had he remained in Norway, he would have lived peacefully, happily, from year to year, content in the knowledge that his land gave him a life. Now he saw that he wanted life and the land—although this was not his land, really—and much, much more. In him now, fully matured, was the motivation that fueled and fired the Rolfsons, and everyone like them.

  He remembered his vow to Kristin, and to himself:

  I will be like the Rolfsons and their kind…I will look upon the world as they do, and bend it to my will.

  “Don’t ever say that!” she had cried.

  How naive. They had both been so young then, had had such precious little knowledge of the world and its ways.

  “I will get even with the Rolfsons if it is the last thing I do,” he had sworn then. And he swore it again now.

  But he had no idea exactly how to achieve such an ambition. Soon he would have another mouth to feed, and a com crop still to harvest in the fall.

  According to the custom of the region Dr. Cummings was summoned for births only in the most drastic of circumstances. Mildred Wenthistle, midwife, supervised at all such occasions, assisted by her daughters, Bonnie and Flo, who were being groomed for the calling. Eric was not to worry, they t
old him in no uncertain terms, but had best mend a fence or curry a horse or perform some other useful task that would keep him out of their way.

  “It is going to be complicated enough anyway,” Mrs. Wenthistle said. “Your wife is quite frightened, and it’s clear for all to see that the baby is large.”

  She made the remark without inflection, but Eric saw—or thought he saw—a certain tightness, a flicker of concern, around her eyes.

  But he obeyed. He sat with Elaine briefly, held her hand, kissed her, and withdrew. Bonnie Wenthistle closed the door behind him.

  “Where you gonna be, Eric?” she asked, familiarly. She was a big, bold, lusty girl and he had caught her eye on him many a time. “So I can tell yuh when the baby’s born,” Bonnie added, with a slow smile. “Why? Was yuh thinkin’ of somethin’ else?”

  “No, Bonnie,” he said, disappointing her. “I’ll be down beyond the shed, driving pipe for a well. If I can pump water out of the ground, I won’t have to carry it from the creek.”

  “I always said you was a real smart man, Eric. That’s what I always say to all my friends. Maybe you can show me one day how to drive that pipe, all right?”

  She went back inside the house, and Eric walked down to his prospective well. He had acquired the pipes on credit in Gettysburg early in the summer, before rain destroyed the wheat crop he’d been counting on. The pipe was of good quality, made of lead, one inch in diameter, and he had one hundred feet of it, although he was certain he would strike water long before he went to such a depth. So far, however, he had already driven forty feet into the earth, and had found no trace of water.

  He began the task, as always, by pulling up the pipe he had already driven, and inspecting the driving wedge, making certain it had not been damaged on rocky soil. Above the wedge he affixed a heavy metal cylinder with holes in it, like a sieve. Periodically he would attach a hand pump to the top of the pipe, testing if he had yet found water. If he had, the water would have seeped through the cylinder, found its way into the pipe, and would be drawn to the surface by the suction of the hand pump. But so far this had not occurred; Eric had found no water.

  Satisfied that the wedge was in good shape, he sent forty feet of pipe down again, to the depth he had already reached, and screwed on another four-foot length, which protruded above ground. Over the edge of this piece he placed a thick iron cylinder, like a metal sleeve over the pipe. Its wide flat end lay over the top of the pipe, and it was this ram that he began striking with a sledge hammer, driving the pipe increment by increment farther into the earth. When he had driven the protruding piece of pipe down to the level of the ground, he would screw on another length and set to work again.

  Fifty feet. No water.

  Sixty.

  Seventy.

  He stopped, mopped his brow, took off his shirt in the bright, warm September sunshine.

  In the house poor Elaine was screaming. The sound frightened him, unsettled him. He went to the house, ostensibly for water.

  “Everything’s all right,” said Bonnie Wenthistle, pale.

  A curtain of sheets had been strung up, hiding Eric’s view of the bed. Elaine was moaning. It did not seem “all right” to him.

  “I can get Dr. Cummings. I’ll just saddle my horse and ride on over.”

  Mrs. Wenthistle herself emerged from behind the sheets.

  “No cause for alarm,’’ she said, cheerful and hearty.

  That was the problem; she was always cheerful and hearty.

  “Go back to work,” she told him “Take your mind off it. This is no place for a man, anyway.”

  Eric obeyed, going back outside. But he saddled his horse anyway, just in case. He went back to the well, and lost himself in the rhythmic, monotonous slamming of the sledgehammer on the ram. Driving was difficult for a time, as if he were passing through a rocky stratum far below the surface, then suddenly the wedge sank into a soft layer, and each blow of the sledge sent it one or two feet deeper.

  Ninety feet.

  Ninety five.

  He fastened the pump, and tested. Still no water. He had only five feet of pipe remaining, and certainly he could not afford more. Ill luck He had chosen a bad site. Well, there was nothing to do but drive the last five feet, and, if water did not appear, pull up all of the pipe and try a well at another spot.

  In the silence, as he fastened the last section of pipe, he could hear Elaine in pain. The sound tore his heart, and he took up the sledgehammer again, swinging it furiously, slamming it down upon the ram, to blot out the cries he could do nothing about.

  Ninety six feet.

  Ninety seven.

  Ninety eight.

  He lifted the hammer to strike again, then paused. An odd sensation. He felt a change in the atmosphere, a subtle alteration in the atoms of the living air. The earth did not shift beneath him; it only seemed that way. Yes, he thought there is water in the pipe. He removed the ram and picked up the pump, ready to fasten it to the end of the pipe. But as he grasped the pipe, it seemed to quiver in his hand. Eric had time to think What’s this? when this came shooting out of the earth, a thin shining current of bursting black power, rising in the blue air, rising above the trees, curving in a long graceful pattern, catching the wind, spreading out like a beaded black plume against the sun.

  Eric fell back, momentarily astounded, unthinking, not realizing what was happening.

  “Eric, Eric!” called Bonnie Wenthistle, running out of the house.

  Oil, Eric thought, conscious now of what he perceived, but still incredulous.

  The black tide continued to shoot out of the earth, falling everywhere like rain, frightening the pigs and chickens.

  I should put a cap on the pipe, he thought.

  “Eric!” cried Bonnie, rounding the corner of the barn, and gaping at the scene.

  What luck, he thought. Oil. This was something he did not need her eyes to see, nor her hardworking mouth to talk about all over the countryside.

  “Lord, Eric,” she cried, as he struggled to get a cap over the end of the pipe, “Lord Gawd almighty, you sure know how to drive a pipe!”

  He struggled with the cap, wet and black and glistening. And ecstatic. In a moment he was happier still.

  “Come, see,” she told him. “You have a daughter. She’s beautiful. And Elaine is fine.”

  IX

  Time, quite suddenly, became an enemy. There was no way, for long, to contain the news that oil had been found. Consequently Eric had to think hard and work fast. He did not know the quality of the substance that had come spurting out of the earth, nor did he know how much of it there was. He did understand from reading, however, that oil was found in pools beneath the earth, and that these pools could cover miles of underground expanse. The pool he had penetrated might just as easily be reached by drilling on the Ordways’ farm, or the Renners’, or the Fensterwalds’. These were homesteads, and Eric was very mindful of the Creedmore Reservation in the Pennsylvania Homestead Act. He knew another thing, too, with crystal clarity: striking oil was a stroke of fortune that would never come again.

  He needed help, and advice. He needed the best of both, and quickly.

  Two days after the baby was born—he and Elaine had agreed on the name Elizabeth—Eric Gunnarson sold three cows and five hogs. “I need the cash,” he said to the owner of the slaughterhouse. “I have to run up to Harrisburg.” The owner nodded sagely, paying out the bills. “Reckon you’ll give it a good try, but let me tell you something. There’s very little likelihood a poor farmer is a-goin’ ta get the better of them bigwigs what knows how to operate. You’ll go up there with your hat in your hand, and you’ll come sulkin’ back here with your tail between your legs.”

  “Don’t bet on that” Eric said.

  First he stopped at the tailors and ordered a good suit of clothes.

  Then he bought a horse, a fine black stallion, and also purchased an expensive saddle. He ordered his initials, E. G., embossed in gold on the saddlebags. The lesso
ns of Colonel Scott Randolph had not been lost on Eric: in order to play the part, one must look the part.

  “I must go up to Harrisburg for several days,” he told Elaine, as she lay nursing little Elizabeth. The child had dark hair, like her mother, and the same exquisite complexion. But she had Eric’s penetrating blue eyes.

  “Oh, darling, why?” asked Elaine.

  “It’s about the oil.”

  “We don’t need the oil. We have the farm.”

  “I’m afraid we’ll be cheated out of both, if I don’t find legal help now.”

  “Must you go?”

  “Yes. You’ll be all right. I’ve hired Bonnie to see to you and to keep house. Her brother, Melvin, will see to the rest of the animals.”

  “Are you sure you ought to have sold the others?”

  “If I do what I intend to do about the oil,” Eric said, kissing her good-bye, “neither one of us will ever milk a cow or collect an egg or slop a hog again.”

  “I wonder. I’m worried.”

  “Don’t be.”

  He gave Melvin Wenthistle instructions regarding the feeding of the stock, and prepared to leave. Melvin was an eager, but somewhat dull-witted boy, needful of caution.

  “Whatever you do,” Eric told him, “don’t take the cap off that pipe in the barnyard.”

  “Huh? Why not?”

  “Because there’s money in there.”

  A slow dumb grin of shrewdness spread across Melvin’s wide white face. “G’wan, Eric,” he said. “What do you think I am, stupid? Money in a pipe, that’s a good one. G’wan. How many pails of slop did you say the hogs get, again?”

  In Harrisburg, Eric immediately sought the telegraph office, located next to the postal station. Buoyed by the knowledge that he had not found his friend’s name on the roster of the Gettysburg dead, mindful, too, of the promise he had made to Scott Randolph, Eric cabled the address he had been given long ago: Randolph Security and Trust, Boston, Massachusetts.

  REQUEST INFORMATION WHEREABOUTS COL. RANDOLPH NY 27TH.