He said that from now on she would not need to sew and struggle; since she now had money she could buy dresses for herself of the finest cloth she could find in the stores. She laughed in reply. The first things she intended to buy with her money were not silk and velvet to deck herself in; there were a thousand things she needed much more.
Her one great concern during these days had almost been forgotten at Robert’s unexpected return. For a few weeks she had known she was again pregnant. With this certainty she had also discovered that suckling did not prevent pregnancy; she was still giving the breast to Ulrika, and yet, meanwhile, Karl Oskar had got her with child. And the birth would take place in the winter, the most inconvenient time of the year.
But after what had happened Monday night she had almost forgotten her new discomfort.
She threw a glance at the Swedish chest as if wishing to assure herself that it still stood in its place. She said that first of all they must get that great sum of money to a safe place. They couldn’t have it lying here in the house. Any day now Karl Oskar would have to go to Stillwater and put the money in the bank.
Riches had come to their house, but for her nothing had changed from one day to the next. She still had her chores, which she couldn’t suddenly run away from. But when she had had time to gather her thoughts about the immense bundles of large bills, she had begun to figure how best to use them. Dizzying visions about what they now could afford paraded through Kristina’s mind. Above everything else she wanted help with her work, hired help to relieve her. The money would be a hedge against the fatigue which at times almost crushed her, particularly at the beginning of a new pregnancy; then she had to sit down and rest in the midst of a chore because everything turned black before her eyes.
She wished indeed to thank her returned brother-in-law for every blessed moment of rest his gift might bring her.
“You are a generous and good man, Robert.”
“You have always been kind and good to me, Kristina.”
Even if Karl Oskar was not entirely free from doubts about his brother’s money bundles, because he did not fully trust paper money in America, no one could make Kristina waste a single thought on the possibility that Robert had returned and brought them false or useless money.
“I guess board and room costs a lot back there in the goldfields?” she asked.
It was unbelievably expensive, Robert told her, turning his right ear toward her. A meal cost ten dollars, the poorest lodging fifteen dollars a night, and a pair of pants fifty dollars. All were out after gold and no one was willing to do ordinary chores. The governor himself had to cook his own food and wash his dishes because his servants had fled to the goldfields. No one in California would work for anyone else, however high the pay. The gold diggers had to do everything for themselves; they couldn’t get a shirt washed at any price; they sent their dirty laundry by ship across the Pacific Ocean to China. It was their only way to get something clean to cover themselves with — the people of Asia washed for the people of America, the dirt of one continent was rinsed off on another.
“To think they freight dirty laundry to China! It sounds crazy!”
She tried to draw him out of his reticence about his experiences in California:
“You must have had a hard time out there? What luck you got away with your life!”
“Got away with. .?” Robert repeated Kristina’s words slowly, while his wide-open eyes looked at her thoughtfully. “You think I got away with it. .?”
Her hand around the cutting shears came to a standstill, she stopped her shears in the middle of the cloth. A quiver in his voice had startled her.
“Life, Kristina! It’s worth nothing on the Trail! Nothing at all!”
“Nothing. .? How is that possible. .?”
“Life has no greater value than a grain of sand. No one cares about his life. But all care for gold. Do you know why, Kristina?”
“No. .?”
“I’ll tell you a story.”
And he began. . A man in one of the wash gangs suddenly died. He had been in good health in the morning when he walked down to the river, but as he was cradling gold a fever suddenly overtook him and killed him, and when his gang returned home in the evening they carried his corpse on a couple of posts. They would bury him next morning. They dug a grave in the sand close to a rock and sent to the nearest camp for a minister to read and sing over the corpse. For a coffin they used an empty box which had contained smoked hams. The box was too short for the dead man, who had been tall, and they had to bend his knees. There was no lid for the coffin so they covered the corpse with a red shirt.
When the coffin had been lowered into the grave the dead man’s comrades gathered around the grave, took off their hats, and bowed their heads. Everyone looked at the ground, all were silent, the way it was in a church. And the minister, who was also a gold digger, took out his Bible and began to read the ritual.
But when he had read only one short Bible verse he stopped in silence. He only stood and stared at the ground. He turned the pages of the book a little, but he didn’t read any more. He only stood still and stared into the open grave. The men who had dug the grave for their dead comrade wondered what was wrong with the minister. His hesitation would drag out the funeral if he didn’t read faster. They were all in a hurry, it was a warm day, they were thirsty and wanted to have something to drink as soon as it was over.
But the minister never completed the service. He read no more Bible verses. Suddenly he hurled the Bible away into the bushes, its leaves fluttering in the wind, and threw himself face down on the ground; with both hands he began to dig in the sand at the edge of the grave.
The men thought at first that the minister had had a sunstroke and lost his mind. But then they noticed he was picking up something and putting it into the pocket of his frock. As soon as they realized what it was, they too threw themselves into the grave, scratching and digging with their fingers as fast as they could. For they had discovered the same thing the minister had seen when he began reading over the corpse: nuggets were glittering down there.
The minister, when he first made the discovery, didn’t know how to keep the secret from the other men, for of course he wanted to be alone with the gold. At last he couldn’t hold back any longer.
Soon a great fight broke out over the nuggets in the grave. The box with the corpse was overturned and trampled to bits, and the men used the pieces as weapons. Then they tore into each other with their fists, and finally knives and guns came out. It ended with the minister being shot to death and one of the mourners being pierced through the heart with a knife. Several others were badly wounded. The survivors made peace and divided the gold from the grave among them.
So there turned out to be three funerals instead of one. The old grave was turned into a gold mine, a huge one, and the three graves were dug some distance away. Now they had no minister to perform the ritual, since he too was a corpse, and there was no reading over the graves. Instead they fired four revolver shots. The survivors wanted thus to honor and reward the dead comrades who had fallen in an honest fight for gold, concluded Robert.
While he had been telling the story Kristina had held her wool shears motionless.
“What a terrible story!”
“Karl Oskar thinks I’m always lying,” said Robert “It’s best to keep silent while he’s around. But I know you believe me, Kristina.”
She believed every word — while he talked. Only when he had finished did wonder and doubt cross her mind.