“Buffalo are wild beasts!” said Arvid. “You couldn’t milk them!”
Robert stretched out full length against the hillside and immediately went to sleep. Then water came to him: in clear streams it flowed toward his face and he opened his mouth and drank. Spring-cool, refreshing water poured into his mouth, trickled down his throat. He opened his mouth wider to let in more of this comforting splendor that washed toward him. He could not open his mouth wide enough to this clear, refreshing stream.
His mouth purled like a brook. And now he recognized the stream: he was lying on his stomach near the mill brook at home, drinking its water. Into that brook he had once thrown his jacket, trying to pretend that he had drowned, for he wanted to be free of all masters and follow the running stream to the sea, to the New World.
But the mill brook water had no taste. He drank and swallowed and swallowed and drank but his thirst remained. The water pleased his eyes but did not satisfy his taste. He saw it but could not taste it. It was a peculiar stream, this one. The water ran into him — he opened his mouth wide — it poured into his throat, down into his stomach, but he could not feel a single drop within his body: the water from the mill brook did not quench his thirst however much he drank. He swallowed whole barrelfuls but it helped his thirst not a bit. At last the water felt hard as stone — scratching, tearing, piercing, burning his tongue. .
Robert woke up: he lay with his face against a hard boulder and his tongue dangled from his mouth, licking the dry stone as a cow licks a lump of salt.
He had drunk without anything to drink.
Arvid had pushed both his hands under a thorny bush and was filling them with sand which he threw into the air. He was digging a hole in the ground, poking, scratching. What was he digging for? Why couldn’t he find it right here? A spring might exist anywhere, one never knew. If one only dug sufficiently deep. But it wasn’t easy with one’s hands only. .
Robert sniffed the wind:
“It stinks of cadaver somewhere. .”
“Yes, I smell it too.”
“I wonder where. .”
They arose and set out in the direction whence the wind brought them the nauseating odor. Almost immediately they found its origin: within a stone’s throw lay the half-rotted carcass of a horse. They stopped a few paces from it and held their noses. Pieces of hide indicated the horse had been dark brown; the flesh was partly eaten away, the ribs were scraped clean, white, bent, like the peeled willow rushes of a wicker basket. The head had two deep black holes: the eyes had been picked out by carrion birds. The long teeth were exposed in a wide, eternal grin.
One hind leg had been torn apart, skinned, and lay some distance from the carcass. It was raised up, in a last, stiffened kick against the sky. The steel horseshoe glittered like silver in the sun. They noticed that the rotting horse had been newly shod.
Only a few yards from the carcass lay the broken steering shaft of a Conestoga wagon, half buried in sand. One large wheel with several inches of broad rim was buried in dust to the hub, as if suddenly having been brought to a halt as it rolled.
Sick from the stinking cadaver, Robert and Arvid were ready to turn away when Arvid exclaimed:
“Look! O Jesus my Lord!”
He shied back and pointed. Something was sticking up in the sand just in front of his feet. Something white, only an inch or two long, spindly, like a skinned birch twig — and on its end was a human fingernail. It was a finger bone poking up from the ground in front of them. Arvid had almost stepped on it.
They ran away from the place, the smell of rotten flesh pursuing them.
The boys hurried on in silence, the dust whirling round their feet. They did not walk in any definite direction, only where it was easiest for their feet. They wanted to get away from the place — away. .
As they wandered across the plain, they felt their strength wane and they stumbled. But they must keep moving forward. They must not come to a stop. If they came to a stop they were sure they could never move on again. And one who was unable to move forward on the California Trail was also unable to move back.
Once Arvid stopped and mumbled hoarsely:
“I almost stepped on. .” He moved his hand to his cracked lips. “Robert! It was a forefinger. .!”
He was sure. And the finger in the sand had pointed right at them.
— 5—
The sun was getting low, losing its power. It grew cooler; the shadows near hills and boulders lengthened toward evening. They staggered along drunkenly, a vise of dryness arid thirst squeezing their bodies. Their guts shrank into a knot. Their legs flagged and bent under the increasing weight of their bodies.
Arvid stumbled into a hole; he made no effort to get up. He fell headfirst and lay stilclass="underline"
“Without anything to drink I’m unable to go on. .”
Robert sat down beside his comrade, taking him by the shoulder, but felt dizziness come over him; the ground around him was wavering; he must sit there until it stopped.
Arvid rose to his knees and began to dig in the sand with his hands. He made a scoop of his fingers and dug holes a foot or more in depth. Below the surface the ground was darker and felt cooler. If he should find water here — then he could throw himself on his stomach and. .
Robert followed the motions with his eyes, unable to understand. What was Arvid doing? What was he digging for? The holes he dug were immediately filled up and obliterated. With his scoop he caught nothing but dust, and it poured back between his fingers and became part of the ground again. Yet Arvid continued without stopping, digging in hell’s dust bowl.
“It’s all my fault. . The mules ran away because my knots were too loose. .”
Dizziness had for a moment so overtaken Robert that he did not know what Arvid was talking about. Mules that had run away — loose knots in a halter — how did that concern him? Only one thing concerned him now.
He understood their predicament but couldn’t understand how they had got into it. They were in a dust bowl; they were wandering about alone in a desolate region where the ground, the hills, the boulders were nothing but dust, small whirling hard grains. Were they in a desert where everything had been burnt by the fire of the sun? What were they doing here? What were they looking for in this wide, empty space? Why had they come here? What were they looking for in a region that had nothing to offer? They had reached a land of nothingness, and it now closed in about them, terrifyingly. It had caught them in its ravenous jaws. There they sat, like prisoners in a trap.
Arvid went on scooping and scratching with his hands in the sand, like a dog covering its dung with earth.
It wasn’t gold he was digging for now.
XVIII. THE MISSING GOLD SEEKER
— 1—
Wednesday morning Karl Oskar left at the usual hour for work on the church building. A few days earlier Kristina had taken down her loom and now was busy cutting cloth for garments. As soon as Karl Oskar left, she spread the linen over the table in the big room and began to measure, mark, and baste. Seven in the family needed new clothes; no longer was she able to patch upon the patches of the old. She had been sitting at the loom during the winter, now she was sitting at the sewing during the summer. She was not an expert seamstress but the garments must do however they turned out. The children were growing fast so she measured generously in order that they wouldn’t outgrow their clothes too soon. For the boys’ clothing she allowed three extra inches for sleeves and pants.
When Robert had dressed and eaten his breakfast, he sat down near Kristina and watched her cutting and basting. It seemed he was willing enough to talk to her when they were alone; he was more reticent with Karl Oskar.