He walked closer and asked in Swedish, “Aren’t you Fredrik Mattsson?”
The man in the red woolen shirt turned, and opened his mouth as if ready to swallow some of the fat blowflies that buzzed over his load of buffalo hides.
“God damn! A Swedish fellow!”
“You are Mattsson who crossed on the Charlotta, aren’t you?”
“That’s right! And I believe I met you before, boy?”
“On the ship. .”
“Oh yes, we traveled on the same ship. I remember you now. Well, well — what was your name. .?”
Robert told him, and Fredrik Mattsson shook his hand so hard that the finger joints snapped.
“Very glad to meet you again, Robert Nilsson. It’s not every day you meet a countryman in this territory!”
Fredrik Mattsson was from Asarum parish, in the province of Blekinge, Sweden, and he had been nicknamed the “American” on the Charlotta. At their landing in New York he had disappeared. None of the other passengers knew where he had gone. Robert had eagerly listened to his stories and often wondered what had become of him. Now they had unexpectedly met again, deep in America, all the way out in Nebraska Territory.
Mattsson said that since landing in America he had never run across any of his many companions on the ship. And he was glad at last to have found a young friend from those days at sea.
“That old tub Charlotta! She must have sunk by this time!”
“After the landing, where did you go, Mr. Mattsson?”
Robert felt he must call his older countryman mister.
“Where did I go? I’ll tell you, boy! But call me Fred. All my friends in America do. And I’ll call you Bob. Now we can talk Swedish together!”
And Fredrik Mattsson from Asarum leaned against the tall wheel of the ox wagon and continued in the language he called his mother tongue, although Robert noticed that a great number of the words he used were English, or a mixture of English and Swedish, so common among his countrymen in America.
“I took a ship in New York, a clipper ship to California. She was a beautiful ship, loaded with gold seekers. .”
“The Angelica?” said Robert.
“Oh, you noticed her too, boy!”
And Robert did indeed remember the sleek, copper-plated Angelica with her pennant fluttering in the wind: Ho! Ho! Ho! For California! Hadn’t he wished he could have boarded that ship where the men danced and sang and had a good time! They were on their way to dig gold and become free.
“I took the Angelica to Frisco,” explained Mattsson. “I stayed a year in the goldfields, but no luck for me. The best days in California are over. It’s hell to live out there. No sir! No diggin’s for me! I’ve left gold behind forever! Last year I was traveling about and happened to come here to Nebraska. Now I live in Grand City. I have a bar, and a hotel — Grand Hotel in Grand City. Now you know, Bob. And call me Fred!”
“I will, Fred!”
The hotel owner from Grand City had been out on a business trip and was now on his way home with a load of buffalo hides. He was in big business.
“What do you do around here, boy?”
Now it was Robert’s turn to explain. He and a friend from the Charlotta had also started out to dig gold in California. They had taken a job with a Mexican to look after his mules. But his friend had remained on the plains and the Mexican had died of yellow fever. Last spring Robert had lost both his friend and his boss. He had been left behind in Spring Creek, where he had stayed alone through the summer. His employer had left him what he owned; Robert had enough to live on.
“You are lucky! Did you make any money?”
“I have enough.”
“Good! Then you can live as a free gentleman in America!”
Fredrik Mattsson thought for a few moments. When he continued, his voice was even friendlier than before. He put his hand on Robert’s shoulder.
“I know what, my Swedish friend! You come with me to Grand City! You stay as my guest at the Grand Hotel!”
“Where is Grand City?”
“Fifty miles from here. Toward the east. You come with me! We Swedes should stick together! We’ll have a good time together!”
Robert could live wherever he wanted. He didn’t care where he went.
A few hours later the load of hides started out from Spring Creek with a new passenger. Robert was traveling back across the Nebraska plains. He had given up going west, he was now traveling east.
He had turned his back on the land of gold.
— 2—
They drove for two days across the prairie. On the afternoon of the third day they came to a deep valley whose bottom they followed, and at dusk they had arrived at Grand City.
The town had been founded a few years earlier by a group of Mormons. The Mormons had been chased out of Missouri, said Fred, and sought freedom in Nebraska. Grand City had flourished, but soon troubles had arisen between the Mormons and new settlers of other sects who had moved in. When the inhabitants began to shoot each other, the town had stopped growing. Last summer the Mormons had been chased out of Grand City too, and since then life had been calmer. Last winter a tornado had moved most of the houses far out on the prairie. Since then business hadn’t been very good in Grand City.
As they came closer Robert saw that the town had been built in a gravel pit; the walls of the pit surrounded Grand City on all sides. It was a place fortified by nature. The houses, all along one street, were of varying shapes and construction: some of stone, some shed-like, some covered with tent roofs, even shanties of branches and twigs, roofed with leaves and turf. And the street at the bottom of the pit had caved in in many places; in one such hole lay a pile of boards that once must have been a house.
Robert also noticed big caves in the gravel walls surrounding the town. Someone had been busy there — what kind of digging had taken place?
“The Mormons kept poking for their Bible,” explained Fred.
Their first prophet, Joseph Smith, had found the Book of Mormon, written on plates of gold, while he was digging in a sand pit in Vermont. An angel had shown him where to look for the truth concerning the last revelation. Smith had been a capable man with a good head; a pity that he had been lynched up in Illinois by people who were jealous of him. While the Mormons were in Grand City their local boss had received a revelation from an angel; the tablets Smith had found did not contain all the truth; several chapters of the Book of Mormon, indeed, the most important chapters, were buried in the sandhills hereabouts. And on this prophet’s instigation the Mormons had started to dig. They dug day and night, they poked through every hill near town. They sifted every grain of sand but had not found a single written word. It had been a false angel, a liar angel, who had fooled the local prophet.
A cloud of dust enveloped the wagon as they drove their lazy team along the one street of the town. Robert looked at the sand pit walls: the upper layers hung far out beyond the lower ones; at any time they might cave in. And the walls were pierced by holes which the first settlers had dug in their search for the eternal truth about life and death. The undermined walls could cave in and in a few moments bury the whole of Grand City.
One house in the center of the town had a sign painted on it in somewhat shaky letters — GRAND HOTEL. The house was built of stone with a rather flat roof of bark. It was so low that it resembled a cellar house. The door had a sign in chalk: If you want anything, walk in!
Fred Mattsson jumped down from the load; he welcomed his old friend and countryman, Bob Nilsson to the Grand Hotel in Grand City; he had all kinds of guest rooms for gentlemen — his was not only the biggest hotel in town, it was the only one.