The Settlers (31 page)

“You gave me five dollars when I left,” said Robert. “I am paying you back with interest.”

Kristina had not yet touched the bundle in her lap; she only sat and stared at it as if it were a bird that suddenly had flown into the kitchen and perched on her knee. Now she handed the bills to Karl Oskar.

He counted his wife’s money also; the bills were exactly like the ones in his own bundle, and there were also twenty of them.

“Four thousand dollars in cash . . .” He spoke as in a deep trance. “Four thousand in cash . . . !”

And Robert called this pocket money.

“I promised to share with you when I came back from California.”

Karl Oskar Nilsson looked askance at his younger brother. He was deeply embarrassed, feeling that he had been wrong, but he could not force himself to admit it.

His sight
must
be failing; he must try to see aright again. He held a couple of the bills against the candle flame, turned them, rubbed them between his thumb and forefinger, let the light shine on them again, thumbed them again: were they real money? Wasn’t the whole thing some swindle?

Robert smiled. “You can see the money comes from the Indiana State Bank. If you think I lie . . .”

He added that he had delivered four sacks full of nuggets to the bank in Bloomfield. He had asked for smaller bills—fifty and twenty dollars—but the bank didn’t have enough on hand to let him have all he wanted; they were printing new notes as fast as they could. A great many gold diggers had returned from California and turned in their sacks at the same bank. It would probably take a couple of months before all he owned could be exchanged for ready cash.

“You mean you have more . . . ?” Karl Oskar’s voice was thick.

“Of course! Much more!”

Robert had given his brother and sister-in-law four thousand dollars in cash. And as yet they had not said one word of thanks. Karl Oskar and Kristina could not thank him, they could say nothing at all, because they were overwhelmed by such a gift.

This was something they must think through, it took time, they must get their bearings.

“Now go out and buy what you need, Kristina!”

She grabbed Robert’s hand with both her own, tears gushing. “You told the truth . . . You have had luck . . . You give us all this . . . God bless you, Robert . . . !”

“Now don’t let’s talk of gold any more.” He yawned and grinned broadly, seeming thoroughly tired of the subject. “I can’t tell you how sick of it I am—I’ve got too much of the damn stuff!”

Kristina leaped up. “I must make your bed! You must be dead tired . . .”

She had noticed him moving his hand to his left ear time and again; he had had an ache in that ear ever since his master, Aron of Nybacken, had boxed it so hard that something sensitive inside it had broken.

“Does your ear still bother you?” she asked compassionately.

“Yes, it carries on something awful in there.”

And in a lower voice, as if wishing to share a confidence with Kristina, he said something strange she was to remember afterward: “My ear can talk! Do you understand . . . ? You should only hear what it tells me during the nights!”

—2—

Robert went to bed, but Karl Oskar and Kristina sat up late on this strange, confusing evening.

Karl Oskar spread the forty hundred-dollar bills before him—they covered most of the table. He sat and stared at this new tablecloth of green and black.

Four thousand American dollars were worth the same as fifteen thousand Swedish riksdaler. Before he emigrated he had sold his farm, Korpamoen, for fifteen hundred riksdaler. Ten times that sum was now spread before him. On the table in his kitchen this evening lay the value often farms. A fortune!

The money spread under his eyes could change their whole life.

If only there wasn’t something wrong with his sight. If these green-black papers on the table were what they were supposed to be. For he couldn’t entirely believe . . . he wasn’t quite convinced . . . It had happened too suddenly. Would this evening, with the turn of a hand, bring to an end his five years’ struggle for cash?

“I felt right away that Robert wasn’t lying this time,” said Kristina.

“We mustn’t lose our heads,” insisted Karl Oskar. “We can’t be sure.”

“Do you still doubt him?”

“The bills might be worthless.”

“Do you think your brother is a counterfeiter?”

No, he didn’t mean his brother had printed the bills himself. But there was so much confusion about money in America. Some states were flooded with bills entirely without value, printed by banks that had opened only to swindle people. Robert’s bills were well printed and consequently suspicious. They must be cautious.

Kristina felt a hundred-dollar bill. “They’re creased and crumpled—they look like good ones.”

When she found time she would iron out the big bills and remove the grease spots and dirt. Such big bills ought to be clean and smooth. Then she was sure they would pass for their full value.

“I had better go to the bank in Stillwater and ask them,” said Karl Oskar. “But I can’t get away before Saturday. Then we’ll know what Robert’s money is worth.”

Today was Monday; he had promised to go with Algot Svensson to the land office in Stillwater on Saturday to witness his neighbor’s right to his claim. He would take the bills with him to the bank and ask their value and if the bank was willing to accept them. Before the end of the week he would know. And before that time they must not mention to a single soul the four thousand dollars which had found its way into his home so unexpectedly.

Kristina said that this was riches. First of all they must now find a good place for safekeeping. Everything else they would think about by and by . . . Forty bills, each one worth a hundred dollars! If they had had a single one of these bills when they had arrived five years ago then it would have saved them many troubles and privations. And if they had had this sum in Sweden they would never have needed to emigrate . . . It was strange to think of that.

“Dare we keep the money in the house?”

Karl Oskar thought there would be no danger; no one would search for riches here. Robbers and thieves knew that whatever else they might find in a settler’s house, it would not be cash.

With loving hands Kristina gathered the bills together into one big bundle, wrapped them in her silken kerchief, and put them down in the bottom of her Swedish chest. It was the safest place she could think of. And yet it would be difficult for her to sleep tonight—what a worry to have fifteen thousand riksdaler in cash in the house! They must be careful with the fire tonight.

Karl Oskar went out to the stable to look after a sick calf; he should have done it earlier but this evening he had forgotten both people and animals. He gave the calf some milk in a bucket and looked to see that his livestock was all right; one never knew: some animal might get tangled up in its chain and choke itself to death. Never would he go to bed of an evening without first checking that all was well with the animals in his stable.

When he returned Kristina had already gone to bed. In this new house they each had a bed on opposite walls of the big room. He started to undress although it would be a long time before he could go to sleep tonight. His head buzzed with questions: What about this money? Was it real or not? And how had Robert got his hands on it? He couldn’t have earned that much through work; had he actually found gold? Kristina had said that a little child could have such luck . . . Well, that could be true. And in California one might dig gold in the earth as easily as potatoes here in Minnesota. If one had luck. Luck! While he had slaved here on his claim every working day for four years and not been able to save a cent of cash, Robert had dug up a few lumps of gold which in one turn had made him rich—so rich that he never need do another days work in his whole life. At least that was what he said. Could it be the truth? It didn’t seem right, if it had happened that way. He had never believed in success except through honest work; luck and good fortune could aid for a while, but the only permanent reward came from honest work. If Robert had told the truth, then he—Karl Oskar—had been wrong in his thinking.

He always tried to keep a clear head. And he must do the same this time. He must not be fooled. In America one heard so many tales of swindles. During the last year so many good-for-nothings had arrived in the Territory; they didn’t want to break the land, only speculate in it. They wanted to be rich without working, just like Robert. They were parasites, vermin, trying to live off the settlers, like bloodsucking lice lived on the human body. It always irritated him to hear of these lazy speculators who had descended on them and who wouldn’t leave. As yet there was no real order in the Territory; the land was too vast, the farmers too few, and the speculators and the swindlers too many.

He said goodnight to his wife, who still lay awake in her bed. He had barely put his head against the pillow before a thought came to him which made him quickly sit up again. The paper!
Hemlandet!
He could find out right now!

Why hadn’t he thought of that at once? Every week the Swedish paper had a column—Bank Swindles—which enumerated the banks that printed and issued valueless or below-par money. Recently he had counted twelve banks in the column. Wasn’t one of them an Indiana bank? Wasn’t the Indiana State Bank of Bloomfield listed in the paper?

He could find out this very moment about Robert’s riches in hundred-dollar bills. He had saved every copy
of Hemlandet.
He had put them away on a shelf in the cupboard within arm’s reach of his bed.

He almost called out to Kristina: We needn’t wait till I go to Stillwater on Saturday! We can find out right away if we have become rich tonight! Or—if we are as poor as before.

But from his wife’s even breathing he could hear she had already gone to sleep. He mustn’t disturb her. If she were to learn the truth, the truth as he suspected it to be, she would take the disappointment so hard that she wouldn’t go to sleep again. Let her rest, let her be rich for one night. Tomorrow would be soon enough for her to learn, if it were so. But he himself must know the truth this evening.

Cautiously, silently, Karl Oskar rose from his bed. He lit a candle and stood in his nightshirt before the cupboard. From the shelf he took the accumulated copies of
Hemlandet,
every one of them, put them on the table, pulled up a chair, and began to read.

The latest paper had come on Friday. He found the headline: Bank Swindles. In that column the Indiana State Bank was not listed. But in the adjoining column his eyes fell on a notice about counterfeit twenty dollar gold pieces that the public was warned about: they were easy to recognize, the world
gold
above the head of the figure representing Liberty was present on the false coin. But this did not concern him; it was not a question of stamped coins, it was bills . . .

Danjel Andreasson had once last year been cheated with a five dollar coin that a hog buyer from St. Paul had fooled him with. This coin had even been stamped IN GOD WE TRUST and that was why he had accepted it. Afterwards Danjel had been greatly disturbed that counterfeiters announced on their coins that they had faith in God. He had never thought that in America—the Lord’s Promised Land—such dishonest people existed who would invoke God’s name in their own counterfeiting.

Karl Oskar picked up the next copy. He went through issue after issue of the paper and read all the lists of banks which cheated people with valueless bills. He found the names of only two banks in Indiana. But the one which had printed Robert’s bills—the Indiana State Bank of Bloomfield—he did not see. That bank was not listed.

With a deep sigh he blew out the candle: the bills must be real then. Robert had probably told the truth.

When he crept into his bed for the second time this evening and pulled the blanket over him, Kristina awoke.

“Karl Oskar—are you asleep?”

She had been dreaming that she was washing and ironing hundred-dollar bills. She had moved the ironing board out into the barn and there she had pressed the long green bills, so large they had hung over the sides of the board! Karl Oskar too had been in her dream: he had the big shovel and shoveled so fast that the bills flew all over the place and up against the roof of the barn. She dreamed that they had harvested a whole crop of hundred-dollar bills and now were about to thresh them—she ironed and ironed while perspiration ran off her body.

“I was so glad when I awoke. For after all, I had dreamed the truth!”

For it was still this Monday evening when the gold seeker had returned; when he stepped across their threshold and had brought riches into their house.

XIV

BUT THE RETURNED GOLD SEEKER DOES NOT SLEEP

What does Robert’s injured ear tell him during the night?

His left ear buzzes and rings and keeps him awake. As soon as he puts his head on the pillow in the evening the ear begins to roar and thunder, it sings and rings and tinkles, songs are heard, bells toll, shots are fired. The buzz and the roar can be of such intensity that it sounds like a storm at sea in there. In bed at night his heart moves up and throbs in his ear. Each beat feels like a wasp’s sting, like a knife point. It is difficult to sleep when one feels the heart-sting in one’s ear with each beat.

It cracks and crackles, it peeps and weeps and wails. It is too crowded with a heart in there—it swells and pushes, it boils and seethes and aches. He has one heart inside his chest and another in his ear, and the ear-heart stings him many times a minute as he counts its beats.

The gold seeker lies awake and counts the beats. They are his own sounds, those he keeps hidden in there. No one can hear them except he himself; they belong to him only; what his left ear tells him at night is his secret.

It has been aching since that day when he lay on his back under the open sky, whistling and singing, although he had been told to dig a ditch. His master had come upon him and lifted the biggest hand he had ever seen on a human being. The enormous, heavy fist had hit him smack on his left ear.