But Robert remained beside his boss. He made a bed next to that of the sick one. He carried water from the clear stream and was always close when Vallejos wanted to quench his fever thirst. He wouldn’t leave his boss; he brought his master water as the master once had brought him water.
After a day’s rest at Spring Creek the gold caravan continued on its way. That morning Robert stood outside the hospital tent and watched the camp break up. All desire to go with the train had left him; it was his boss he followed; the other people did not concern him. He remained with Vallejos. The old nurse explained yellow fever to him: This disease was terribly contagious! If he cared the least bit for his life he must leave this place at once! She could not understand why a healthy person would come into this tent of pestilence. “The yellow fever will sweep you off your feet! Tell me your name, boy, so I can notify your people!”
He told her his name but said nothing about relatives in this country or in the homeland. He wasn’t afraid of contagion, he did not fear Yellow Jack. On this journey he had become acquainted with death only too well to have any fear of it. What use was there in worries about one’s life? Moreover, as long as the lice kept pestering him he knew he was all right. The vermin grew fat on his body; he was still well supplied with gold lice.
The old woman — she must have a name although he had never heard anyone call her anything but Missus — insisted on getting his address in good time so she could notify his relatives that he had died on the California Trail. But Robert thought he would in time himself return and tell them of the death he had experienced.
He told the old woman that he must remain and look after his sick boss and see to it that he got all the water he wanted.
On the sixth day after taking sick, Mario Vallejos died during a violent fit of vomiting which choked off his breath. He passed away, steadfast in his faith of the gold, aged thirty-two, mourned only by his muleteer.
That same day Robert Nilsson from Sweden became a rich man.
During the last day of his life the Mexican had been clear in his mind and had talked at length, coherently, to Robert. The deathly ill man was grateful that his young companion had stayed at his side and cared for him. He handed over to Robert a small pouch he had carried fastened next to his body. The contents of this pouch, the mules, the provisions, all he owned, he now gave to his devoted muleteer.
“Farewell, son!”
Only a couple of hours later the last seizure of vomiting had overtaken him. Yellow Jack had completed his work on one more human being.
Robert had not earlier been chosen as a grave digger. Now he alone dug a grave under some trees for his master and put his body in an empty packing box in which the nurse had kept smoked ham. She was with him when he buried Vallejos, and sang a psalm in an Indian language, Robert repeated a Swedish funeral psalm he remembered from Schoolmaster Rinaldo:
. . and me in earth you offer
a cold and narrow bed. .
Something had to be read at a grave; this short psalm fitted well because the coffin was narrow, for Vallejos was a small man. Here a ritual of Indian singing and Swedish reading was performed over a dead Mexican who would not have understood a word of it. But the Lord over life and death understands all languages equally well since he made the people who spoke them.
Only some days after the funeral did Robert think of looking at the contents of the small pouch with the letters M. V. sewn onto it. In it were gold and silver coins, in five- to fifty-dollar denominations, a total of $3,150.
The sign had proven true: if many lice congregated on a person, then he was slated soon to become rich.
All Vallejos’ provisions and equipment Robert gave to the nurse’s emergency hospital, and in return for the great gift, the old woman permitted him a corner of her own “bungalow” behind the hospital tent where he could sleep. She told him he could stay as long as he wanted. He took his mules to an Irishman who supplied the trading post with buffalo meat, and the man promised to slaughter the animals immediately; Robert had become attached to them and wanted to relieve them of further suffering on the California Trail. After this he had only the pouch left of Vallejos’ possessions, but in it were gold and silver—$3,150.
Robert had lost his last master, he had buried him with his own hands. He had been left behind on the California Trail, and now he was alone.
He was free and independent, he had no animals to look after, no chores to perform for another human being, no master over him. He was alone, he was rich, he was free, and he had his life. The nurse was a good woman who fried buffalo meat for him, offered him grapes and other fruit, and gave him pills and medicines against yellow fever. He was alive and all should have been well.
But his appetite for life had not returned.
Robert remained in Spring Creek and sank down into a bottomless pit of fatigue and listlessness. The days passed without his counting them or remembering their names. People spoke to him and he replied, but the words he used were meaningless. Nothing of what took place in his surroundings concerned him. Days and nights followed each other, washed over him, one much like the other, as similar as the billows on the sea. Everything came and went as it pleased, happened as it chanced. What could he do about it? Why should he do anything about it?
Nothing hurt him any more, nothing pleased him particularly. He could neither be happy nor sad. He did not care where he lived; he neither liked nor disliked it. His body was given what it required, and it was satisfied. He had food and drink and a bed to sleep in, and he ate and drank and slept and attended to his bodily needs. What was there beyond this? Perhaps there was something, but he was unable to do it.
But now and then a feeling came over him: there was something he was supposed to be looking for; he was neglecting it by staying here. This feeling began to frighten him; everything in his life was wrong, topsy-turvy. Why didn’t he do something about it? And why didn’t it bother him?
From the mountains came a stream that flowed through Spring Creek with the cleanest and clearest water he had ever seen. It was so transparent it was almost invisible; if it hadn’t been for its motion and purling sounds a casual observer might not have noticed it. The stream glittered with light even after dark; it was filled with life, a life of light. In the evening Robert stood at the edge of the creek and watched the moving stream. An ever moving light was running away and yet remained. He came to the same spot the next evening. The stream purled and glittered, it was there before him, and at the same time it was hurrying away to mingle and mix with a greater body of water.
The stream ran by clean and empty as a young person’s days. Robert Nilsson stood beside it and simply watched. He had no strength to do anything else. It was too late for him to retrieve his life.
The summer ran past him; the prairie was already red with the sun-scorched grass. He saw how those passing through Spring Creek rested for a day and a night, then moved on. There came buffalo hunters, fur traders, and settlers, landseekers, merchants, Indian agents, swindlers and cattle thieves, honest people, and escaped murderers. But on all these men he saw the same face. It was the face he had seen on every member of the hundred-thousand train to the West: the gold-seeker’s face.
What were they after, all these God-created creatures? They were on the same errand, all of them. All of them searched for the same thing, on direct routes, or indirect; they wanted to grab for themselves everything of value in this land — animals, the earth’s growing plants and trees, everything of value on the ground and below it. They straggled and struggled, they rode, they walked, they suffered hunger and thirst, they tortured themselves, they suffered a thousand plagues, they killed themselves and others. They were after riches. They lived in the faith of gold. They were heroic — they were the resurrected gospel martyrs, they were ready to die for their faith. Each day they gave their lives to spreading the gospel of riches on this earth. They believed all people in all lands should be their disciples.