The Settlers (33 page)

He measured several times, but he couldn’t make the distance across the broad continent an inch shorter; they did not yet have one third of the way to the Pacific behind them. And the distance before them was two and a half times longer! Last year they had traveled one month through the country to Minnesota, this year from Minnesota to Missouri, and they were not yet halfway through America! Not even a third!

At this discovery Robert grew very serious. With a pencil and a map on an empty box he had obtained his first general view of the New World. It made him dizzy. He felt as if he had been kicked in his behind and flung back a couple of thousand miles. Arvid would be scared to death if he were to know how great a distance they had left to go; he had better keep the discovery to himself.

He folded the map quickly and said truthfully, “We have a goodly part left—America is broad!”

But where was the road to California? They must ask someone.

Robert and Arvid resumed their wandering through the town. Whom should they ask? Robert chose with great deliberation among the people they met on the street. Here came men riding sleek horses, dressed from head to foot in soft deerskin, with ten-inch-wide belts from which dangled revolvers and knives. But these riders sat so loftily on the horses—how could a walker dare stop them? Instead Robert turned to the crowd on foot, more simply dressed people; he asked those who had neither revolvers nor knives in their belts, feeling in some way on equal footing with them.

The road to California . . . ? Some replied at length, others in few words, but all replied willingly and kindly. Some smiled, thinking perhaps the question was a joke, some looked serious or surprised.

“To get to California is more complicated than you think.”

This was the general reply; some said about the same thing in different words: to travel to the goldfields was not an easy undertaking. And concerning the road there was no definite information; on this all agreed. When Robert had asked half a dozen people and added together their replies, he came to the conclusion that
no road had been built—nay, not even staked out—to California!

The gold seekers found their way, as best they could, along different routes which had a name in common: the California Trail. People traveled in large parties, a thousand persons or more; the distance was over two thousand miles, and the crossing took four months—a whole summer.

But there was no specific road to the goldfields.

“No road . . . ?”

Disappointed, Robert repeated the words to himself: that was the silliest thing he had ever heard! In the Old Country, roads ran to the smallest hamlets where only potatoes and grain grew in the fields, but here a road was not even surveyed to the fields which produced gold! Nothing in the world could be more important than to build a wide, even road on which people could travel in comfort to the gold land!

“They could be lying to us,” suggested Arvid. “They might like to get there before us and take the gold?”

“No road!” repeated Robert without listening to his companion. “Of course there must be a road to the goldfields!”

Arvid thought for a few minutes, more intensely than was his custom; then he said: “If there is no road to California we might have trouble finding the place, or what do you think, Robert?”

They must stay in this town for a while and think over their situation. It was late in the afternoon and they began to look for a cheap boardinghouse. On the outskirts of town they found a place where they could sleep for twenty-five cents apiece. They could hardly expect to find cheaper lodgings in a big town like St. Louis. Their host was a fat Irishman who showed them their bunks in the Jameson Lodging House: mattresses filled with rotten straw, spread on the floor and for cover, torn horse blankets. Four men had to sleep on one mattress. Their sleeping companions had already gone to bed, two bearded horse grooms who slept with their boots on, even though a notice on the wall pleaded with gentlemen guests to please remove their boots before going to bed. The place smelled of manure, whether from the bedding or the sleepers.

Robert and Arvid reluctantly unstrapped their rucksacks. This was a poor lodging, but to them it smelled in some way of home since it exuded such a strong odor of stable; once they had lodged together in the stable room at Nybacken.

Their host was talkative and when he heard that the Swedish boys were on their way to California he was ready with good advice; he himself had a brother who had set out on the Trail last spring, so he could tell them all they needed to know.

There
was
a road to the gold land, in fact, three different roads—the Overland Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, and one trail between these two, following sometimes one and sometimes the other. Most travelers used the Overland Trail, which started at Independence, Missouri.

“You must go to Independence and join the golden army!”

Robert had looked only casually at his map with its many western states and territories, all of them void of place-names, it seemed. Now he asked how far it was to Independence. The Irishman said that this town lay two hundred miles to the west of St. Louis.

Robert felt as if he had got another kick in the behind throwing him still farther back across the American continent. Two hundred miles!

Mr. Jameson continued. It was too late for them to join the caravan of gold seekers this summer, a whole month too late. It was May now, the train to California had left Independence in April and was on its way west. A new caravan would not leave until next spring. When the buffalo grass turned green next spring, then the gold seekers would gather again.

And so Robert and Arvid discovered they must join others with the same intention. But this spring it was too late to sign up in the gold army; it had already left. New grass must sprout on the prairie before they could join. They would lose a whole year.

Their host wished them goodnight and good sleep and left. They sat down on their mattress and opened their rucksacks, still full of the bread and cured pork Kristina had packed for them, and ate. The food prevented Arvid from talking; for him to talk while eating would have been as sacrilegious as swearing in church. But Robert too sat silent now as he chewed. What he had just heard required some thought.

While peeling potatoes on the boat, they had figured that their twenty-five dollars would take care of their food and lodging for a month’s travel from St. Louis to California. For they had hoped to reach the goldfields in a month, and once there they would have no further need for money.

And now this—they couldn’t get there for a whole year.

When Arvid had finished eating he took hold of the nickel chain on his vest and pulled his watch from its pocket. He said that whatever else happened on this journey, he wouldn’t sell his cylinder watch. They might have to go without food but he wouldn’t part with his watch even if they starved. It was his inheritance and could not be touched. And Arvid’s watch showed ten minutes after nine this May evening of 1851, in Mr. Jameson’s manure-smelling lodging in the town of St. Louis, Missouri, where they had paid 25 cents apiece for sleeping accommodations. Gentlemen please take off their boots in bed!

Robert and Arvid, once having shared the same stable room, had sworn to stick together forever, never to separate. Now they crept under the same horse blanket: they had traveled far into the world, almost to the center of America, and they needed to stick together. Tonight they felt again like comrades in service, sharing a stable room. They were once again a couple of farm hands—and far from the Land of Gold.

—2—

Later in the summer they began to dig in the earth again—but not for gold. They got work on a farm near town whose owner wanted a potato cellar dug. Their pay was seventy-five cents a day plus board, and in the farm kitchen they could eat as much meat and potatoes and beans as they wanted. But their room was a ramshackle shed where they were worse housed than in the stable room they had lived in in Sweden. The cracks between the boards were so wide that the wind blew through unhindered. But there were no bedbugs in the walls as there had been at Nybacken, where each morning they had awakened with fresh bites on their necks; this shed was so miserable that no vermin wanted to live there.

The boys were farm hands again. They had set out to dig for gold, but when they dug into the ground they found only sand and gravel, clay and rocks. Arvid, however, couldn’t help looking at his spade now and again, letting the dirt pour slowly from the blade: perhaps . . . perhaps . . . ! But never a glowworm spark of anything glittering. Robert counseled his friend to be patient, as they couldn’t get any farther this year they must remain here and keep alive until spring. Next year they would find something different on their spades!

Arvid worried that they might be delayed so long that all the gold would be gone before they got there. Robert reassured him. In an American newspaper he had read that a very learned man, Mr. Horace Greeley, had said that California had at least two thousand million dollars’ worth of gold. As yet only two hundred million had been dug up; there was still eighteen hundred million left. Did Arvid think that with so much there would not be enough for him? Did he want more than eighteen hundred million dollars?

When the potato cellar was finished, they were put to work helping with the harvesting and the threshing; this kept them busy during the fall, and when winter came they were put to cutting wood. Now their wages dropped to fifty cents a day, but they could still eat as much meat and potatoes and beans as before. They might have liked their jobs if they had been better housed, but when winter came the sharp wind blew through the cracks of their shed and plagued them miserably, so that they crept close together at night to keep warm.

The winter continued and the cold increased, and Arvid began to complain. Why had they traveled so far to sleep in this rotten shed? It had been warmer in the stable room at Nybacken. Had they immigrated to America in order to lie here and freeze and suffer at night? Robert comforted him; they must be patient through the winter; then all suffering and evil would be over. And what they were doing furthered their plans; they were working their way to the gold land. They had peeled their way on the river, here they had dug their way along in summer, and now they were cutting their way to California. Every single ring of the ax brought them closer to the gold land by earning money for them. And they would get there if they had to creep and crawl the whole two thousand miles!

The younger boy always found words that cheered the older one. And they continued to saw and split and stack wood in tall piles. In the evenings it might happen that Arvid asked: how much gold was still left in California—how many millions? But one evening when they returned to their cold shed after a day of work, Arvid sank down on the bunk, his hands to his face:

“I can’t stand it any longer! I want to go home!”

He began to cry: he wanted to return to Minnesota, to his service with Danjel Andreasson, to the people from Sweden he knew. He had thought about it for a long while and he had made his decision: he didn’t want to go on to California. He didn’t care about the gold any more. He would give up the riches—it didn’t matter to him if he were rich or poor. He would just as soon be poor if he only could be with people he could take to and whom he knew. He didn’t want to work for an American farmer any more and have to live in this shed; he had had it much better with Danjel. As long as he must remain a farm hand anyway . . .

“But I can’t find the way back . . . I can’t ask in English . . . Won’t you come with me, Robert . . . ? Let’s go back, please, Robert!”

“No, Arvid! I won’t return! Never!”

“But I can’t go back alone . . . I can’t manage . . . Please, Robert, come with me!”

“No! I want to see California!”

His friend’s weeping and pleading bothered Robert but his mind could not be changed. He would go on; he would not return to his brother in Minnesota until he had found gold and could return as a rich man.

And he reminded Arvid of their mutual promise, a promise for all times and all circumstances:
whatever happened, the two of them must always stick together!
Didn’t he remember the Sunday when they had made a bonfire at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga? They had been sitting there at the fire, warming their blue-frozen hands, and they had sworn that they would be comrades forever here in America, they would never part company!

Would Arvid now fail his comrade, and his oath?

They talked about it until late that evening—until at last they agreed again and shook hands on the promise: when the prairie was green with next spring’s grass they would continue west on the California Trail.

Yes—I heard it so well: I heard you and Arvid agree. The two Swedish farm boys would never part in America.

I want to see California! you said. You wouldn’t change your mind. You persuaded him to stick to his promise. You can’t deny you did.

But you must know that already that first winter you had begun to doubt; your eyes had been opened, you had seen the road before you—you hesitated and thought, shouldn’t we turn back? Your eyes were no longer blinded by the gleaming gold two thousand miles away. For you knew already you hadn’t set out to look for gold! That wasn’t your reason. You took off to get rid of masters, all masters in the world. But you did not know what you were looking for instead. Something you had heard in a song . . . ?

And it was that first winter that I began to buzz and annoy you—perhaps because of the cold wind in the shed. Since then you have never been able to silence me for long; you have been forced to endure my sounds. And during your woodcutting winter in St. Louis that yellow, evil-smelling fluid began to run again; it is always an ominous sign.

And I have recorded and still keep Arvid’s voice: I can hear his words whenever I wish—that time, and that, and that! Please, Robert! he pleaded, like a little child. Please, Robert! Almost the same words, later. We come to that soon.