“Hinni! Cheekte. .!”
Mexican—now the call was clearer, sounded closer, and he recognized the voice. He had heard it sing round the campfire:
Oh, the good time has come at last,
We need no more complain, sir!
It was because of this that he and Arvid now were walking about here, side by side:
We shall be rich at once now,
With California gold, sir!
The singer of this song had packed huge gourds, enclosed in woven straw, and from those vessels he had often drunk. Drunk. .! What did the Mexican call those containers. .? He searched in vain for the word, the name. And what was the name of the man who had sung at the campfire? A small man, in a red jacket and brown pants with yellowish tassels and the broadest hat any man in creation had ever worn.
Oh, the good time has come at last — he tried to repeat the words and answer the singer, but his swollen tongue produced only a hoarse croaking. His reply did not reach far enough, did not reach his master — yes, that was his boss’s voice. And he was calling his strayed mules, not him. He was Robert Nilsson, a farm hand from Sweden, on his way to the land of gold. If he only managed to croak and bray, perhaps his boss would think it was his mules replying. But he needed water — he had drunk before from his master’s gourds. .
The voice came closer. It was next to his ear. But at that moment he himself was removed, slid away, fluttered out into the distance without being able to stop it. In the very moment when the familiar voice spoke into his ear, he was pulled away, flew into the air over the plain; he swam high above sand and grass, over the earth, above hills and cliffs, he was lifted all the way up into the heavens and all the stars gleamed and glimmered before his eyes. Now he was so high above everything that never more would he come down to earth.
But up there in heaven stood a very little man in a red jacket and broad hat; he leaned over him, and he had black eyes, kind mule eyes, and a nose that was almost as big as Karl Oskar’s. Judging by the nose it could be Karl Oskar, his brother. And he spoke like a brother.
“Poor boy! My muleteer. . I’ve been looking for you. .”
And he was on earth again and lay on his back in the buffalo grass. He had fallen down from the heavens and the stars and he held something in his arms, held it hard: with trembling hands he held onto the straw enclosure of the gourd — the calabash.
“Oh, poor fellow. . Just in time. . My muleteer. .”
Robert drank. He drank a water that stayed with him. It couldn’t flee, it was shut up in a bottle, in a gourd which he had caught in his arms—this water did not run away from him.
You can figure it out if you wish. Arvid had been dead now for three years. Of the cotter’s son from Kråkesjö manor there is no longer any sign in the sand. The wind has long ago covered him with sand.
He emigrated a long way to his grave. He found a quiet place, a silent and peaceful room in the earth.
REST IN PEACE SWEET BOY
FOR THY TROUBLES ARE OVER
But the cries of his death agony, his calls for help, his ailing — all these I have saved for you in here. How did you like it when I let you listen to them again a moment ago? Didn’t they sound as real as ever? Piercing, penetrating like that time? Haven’t I kept them well? Could you hear any difference in the cries from that first time?
“Help me, Robert! Please help me — I’m dying. .”
How many ears do you think have heard this pleading before me on this earth? But not all, by far, have kept it so well as I. Each time you hear this pleading sleep comes late to you. It was during your wait for sleep that you began to ponder your lot in life.
It’s nearly morning but you are still awake, tossing your head back and forth on the pillow, trying all sides, unable to find the one which will silence me. I understand so well that you want to get my sounds out of your head. But I assure you: I’m your most faithful comrade. You and Arvid had to part at last, but you and I shall stay together. I will never leave you!
Listen! I buzz for you through the long hours of your waking! Listen, gold seeker, where you toss on your bed!
I have preserved the sound of the wind over that plain — can you hear how it roars across those empty spaces in that country of stone and dust and thirst? And the wind roars over the earth at will throughout the night! It quickly obliterates a wanderer’s tracks and covers in short time a wretched, naked, lone finger pointing accusingly from the sand.
XX. WILDCATS OF MANY BREEDS
— 1—
On Thursday morning — as on every weekday morning — Karl Oskar was up and about before daylight. As soon as he was dressed, he raised the lid of the old Swedish chest against the wall and took out two bundles of money, which he held in his hands for a few thoughtful moments. He had done this each morning since Robert’s return.
Cash—to him it was the most annoying word in the English language. Cash — it was what he lacked. No cash, Mr. Nilsson? You must pay cash, Mr. Nilsson! How many times hadn’t he received that reply like a humiliating box on his ear when he had asked for credit in a store. No Cash? Those two words could be used to sum up a settler’s situation in Minnesota.
Yet here he was, handling two bundles of crisp cash — four thousand American dollars, fifteen thousand Swedish riksdaler! After five years on the new place, these bundles would now end all his worries about cash. But these bank notes had fallen in his lap too unexpectedly. How could a man, from one day to the next, grasp that he had become rich? That was why each morning he needed to feel his riches and see the money with his own eyes.
Karl Oskar pinched the black and green bills. Were they worth their stated value? Could he trust the gift even though he could not trust the giver?
For only one more day must he control his impatience. Tomorrow he would get the information from the bank. Although he had agreed with his neighbor to drive to Stillwater on Saturday, after the discovery of Arvid’s watch in Robert’s possession his suspicion of his brother flared up anew. By going to the bank on Friday he would cut down his uncertainty by one day; by tomorrow he would know the truth!
Karl Oskar would have to be a little late for his work on the church building this morning; he must have a talk with Robert before he set out. He put the money back in the chest and went out to do the morning chores in the stable.
Meanwhile, Kristina began to prepare breakfast. She had been thinking over what Robert had said to her yesterday, and the more she thought of it, the greater riddle it became. She had known her brother-in-law for ten years but yesterday he had seemed to her an utter stranger.
She wondered that Karl Oskar and Robert could be brothers. How could two people of such opposite natures have been begotten by the same father and carried in the same mother’s womb? As long as she had known these two men Karl Oskar had been the big brother and Robert the little brother, but there was a difference even greater than the ten years that separated them. It was their natures — their characters and dispositions — that made them so unlike. Karl Oskar was like most of the hard-working, enterprising settlers out here, but Robert was not like any other person she had ever known. There was something both stimulating and disconcerting about him; he held his own with his clever talk but at the same time he was unpredictable — no one could guess one moment what he would do the next. And at times he behaved as if he himself didn’t know what he ought to do here on earth — as if it didn’t matter one bit how he whiled away the time, as his life flowed to its end.