The Settlers

PREFACE. THE LAND THEY CHANGED

A giant tree, uprooted by a storm, fell across a path that ran along the shore of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga in Chippewa Indian country. It remained where it had fallen, an obstacle to those who used the path. No Indian had ever thought to cut it in pieces and roll it out of the way. Instead a new path was formed which bypassed the tree; instead of removing it the Indians moved the path.

As the years passed the great tree lay there and moss covered its bole. A generation of forest life elapsed, and the fallen tree began to rot. The path round it was by now well tramped, and no one remembered any longer that once it had run straight in this place. Through the years, Indians wasted much time on the longer path, but to these people time was there to be wasted.

One day a man of another race came along the path. He carried an ax on his shoulder and walked heavily, shod in boots made on another continent. With his ax he split the rotten trunk in a few places and rolled it aside. The path was again straight and now ran its earlier, shorter course. And the man with the ax who could not waste his time on a longer road, asked himself: Why had this tree been allowed to obstruct the path for so long a time that it had begun to rot?

The tiller had come to the land of the nomad; the day the white man removed the tree from the Indian path at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga two different ways of life met head on.

The era of the nomad was coming to an end in this part of the world. The people who had time enough to wait a generation while an obstacle in their path rotted away were doomed. The hunter who moved his fire and his tent according to the season and the migration of the game could count his days. In his place came the farmer, the permanent inhabitant, who built his fireplace of stone and timbered his house: he had come to stay in this place where his hearth fire burned and his house was built.

Through a treaty which the Indians were forced to accept, the land was opened for settling and claimtaking. The hunter people were forced back before the power of the transgressors. Their hunting grounds, with the graves of their forefathers, were surrendered. Virgin soil, deep and fertile, could then be turned into fruitful fields with the tillers tools. An immense country, until now lacking any order except nature’s own, was divided, surveyed, registered, mapped, and separated into counties, townships, and sections. Millions of acres of wilderness were mapped on paper in square lots, each one intended as a homestead for a settler.

The newcomers were farmers without land who came to a country with land but no farmers. They came from the Old World where they had lived under governments they themselves had not elected and which they refused to accept. They had moved away from rulers and overlords, from poverty and suppression. They had left Germany because of revolution, Ireland because of potato blight, Sweden because of religious persecution. The immigrants were the disobedient sons and daughters of their homelands, who now settled down on a land that as yet had little or no government.

The disobedient folk of the Old World were young people: three quarters of the settlers in Minnesota Territory were under thirty. They had no useless oldsters to support. The immigrants were young people in a young country. The immigrants were not held back by the authority of an older generation. For them life began anew: they depended entirely on themselves and their own strength. They broke with many of the old customs, did their chores in their own ways, and obeyed no will except their own. Here they themselves must wield authority; in the wilderness they enjoyed in full measure the new freedom to disobey.

Here were no upper or lower classes, no one had inherited special privileges and rights, no one was by virtue of his birth superior or inferior. Each one was valued according to his ability, measured by his industry. Whether a man was better than another or inferior to him depended on what he could do. The virgin forests fostered self-assurance, developed free men.

The immigrant did not wait while an obstacle in his path rotted away; he did not have time to make a detour round a fallen tree. He had come to make a living for himself and his family, he must build a house and establish a home; he must build up a new society from its very foundation.

The first immigrants to take up claims were few and lived far apart. They could not talk to each other across their fences — their houses lay miles away from one another. But from 1850 on, the influx into the Territory increased. The settlers came in large groups, small groups, families and friends, or single individuals, and settled down along the shores of the heaven-blue waters that had given the territory its name: Minnesota.

Thus, the brown nomad gave way to the white farmer, the forest animals gave up their grazing meadows to domesticated animals, the deer pastures were turned into tended fields, the tall trees were felled and made into lumber for the settlers’ houses. High and clear shone the sky above the wilderness where the immigrants founded their new domain. The far horizons in a land without limitations stimulated their minds and desire to create; all would be new here.

Great was the land and without measure, and the land broadened their dreams.

This is a continuation of a story of a group of people who left their homes in Ljuder, Sweden, and emigrated to North America.

Sweden was the land they left behind; the American republic received them; and the fertile valley near Lake Ki-Chi-Saga — between the Mississippi and the St. Croix rivers — was the land they changed.

I. NEW AXES RINGING IN THE FOREST

— 1—

One day in May Karl Oskar Nilsson was out on his claim cutting fence posts. When the height of the sun signaled noon he stopped his work to go home for dinner.

He took off one of his wooden shoes and emptied out a few dried lumps of blue clay which had chafed his heel. On his shoe was a deep gash from his ax. What luck that he wore wooden shoes today; in the morning, while shaping the first linden post, his ax had slipped and fastened in the toe of his right shoe. Had he worn leather boots the ax would have split his foot. Not that he could choose. His high boots — of finest leather, made by the village cobbler before he had left his Swedish home parish — were long since worn out and thrown away. After all the many miles he had tramped in them, in all weathers and on all types of roads during his three years in North America, they were now entirely gone. He had tried his hand at the shoemaker’s craft, as well as all other crafts, and he had mended and patched his Swedish boots, he had plugged and resoled and sewn as much as he could. But nearly all the footgear and clothing from Sweden was now useless, worn to shreds.

With his ax under his arm, he walked beside the lake on the path he had cleared, through groves of larch trees and elms, through thickets of maple and hazel bushes. It was pleasant along the path today with the multitude of newly opened leaves and all the fresh greenery. Spring was early this year in the Territory. The wild apple trees were already in full bloom and shone luminously white in the lush greenery. A mild night rain had watered the earth so that a fragrance rose from grass and flowers. Between the tree trunks the whole length of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga’s surface glittered blue.

For great stretches the lush green growth hung over the lake and no one could make out where the ground ended and the water began. Farther out the bay was full of birds — ducks, swans, and wild geese in such multitudes they might have been strewn from heaven by generous hands. From the shore could be seen a thick wall of tall elms. At first Karl Oskar had thought it was the opposite side of the lake but when he rowed out in his holed-out canoe along the shores he had discovered it was a wooded island, with still another great island beyond. He had discovered that Ki-Chi-Saga consisted of seven small lakes, connected by narrow channels so that the shores formed a confusing and ever straying coil. This was a lake landscape, a conglomeration of islets, peninsulas, points, inlets, bays, necks, headlands, isthmuses. Each islet, bay, or tongue of land had another islet, bay, or tongue of land behind it.

It took a long time for a settler to get to know this lake. Ki-Chi-Saga spread like an inundated deciduous forest where water had remained in the indentations as the ground had risen above the ancient flood. From a distance of a few miles it appeared the thickets of leaf trees on the out-jutting tongues of land grew far out in the lake.

High above the shore rose the imposing sandstone cliff resembling an Indian’s head and thus called the Indian. The cliff’s red-brown face with the deep, black eye holes was turned toward the lake, straining toward the east like a watchman over land and water.

The lake contained much that was unknown and undiscovered. The Chippewa name itself sounded strange; Ki-Chi-Saga — beautiful lake — sounded to a settler’s ears as alien as all the foreignness he must familiarize himself with and make his own.

A wide flock of doves came flying over the bay, like a darkening cloud; their shadows reflected in the clear surface like quick-moving spots.

When the doves had passed, Karl Oskar stopped and listened: the whizzing sound of bird wings was followed by another sound; he could hear the ring of an ax.

The May day was clear and calm and the sound carried far. Karl Oskar had two good ears, accustomed to discriminating between noises and sounds in the forest, and he was not mistaken. He could hear the echoing sound of a sharp ax in a tree trunk. The sounds came from the southeast and were fairly close: someone was felling a tree near the lake.

His eyebrows drew together. It could not be an Indian at work — the Indians did not fell trees with axes. It must be a white man; an intruder had come to his land.

But he had his papers as squatter for this ground; he had made two payments for his claim at the land office in Stillwater. His claim had been surveyed — it was number 35 of the section — and its borders were blazed. No one could now push him out, no one could deny him his rights. Here in his forest he had up till now heard only his own ax ringing; he would permit no other ax here.

Karl Oskar turned and retraced his steps to locate the intruder.

Last year, because of the danger of Indians, he had always carried his gun while working in the forest. It might also happen that he would come across an animal that would do for food. He often said that he did not feel fully clothed without his gun. Nowadays, however, he frequently left his weapon at home hanging on the wall, and this he had done today. Nor did he think he would need a firearm against the stranger; a man using the peaceful tool of the ax must be a peaceful man.

Karl Oskar strode toward the sound. The timberman was farther away than he had anticipated; sounds could be heard a great distance on a calm day like today. It appeared that the stranger with the ax was outside his border; no intruder was on his land.

Who could the woodsman be? He had no close neighbors; it could not be anyone he knew. He climbed a steep cliff, and now he could see that the sounds came from a pine grove near a narrow channel of the lake. A man was cutting at a straight, tall pine, his broad felling-ax glittering in the sun. The chips flew like white birds that might have been nesting in the trunk and were frightened away by the blows.

Just as Karl Oskar approached, the tree fell with a thunderous crash, crushing the smaller trees near it. The undergrowth swayed from the force of the fall.

The tree cutter held his ax in his left hand while he dried perspiration from his forehead with his right. He was a powerful man, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt, yellow, worn skin breeches, and short-legged boots. Judging by his clothes he must be an American. And he used the same type of long-handled American felling-ax with a thin, broad blade that Karl Oskar recently had got for himself.

Suspicion of any stranger was still ingrained in the Swedish settler; apprehensively he stopped a few paces from the stump of the newly felled pine. The stranger heard him and turned around. His face was lean and weather-beaten, with high cheekbones and deep hollows. Tufts of sweaty, thin hair clung to his forehead; his chin was covered with a long brown beard.

The man eyed Karl Oskar from head to toe, his alert eyes those of a person accustomed to danger.

Before Karl Oskar had time to phrase a greeting in English, the stranger said, “You’re Swedish, I guess?”

Karl Oskar stared back in astonished silence; deep in this wilderness he had encountered a stranger who spoke to him in his native tongue.

Leaning his ax against the stump, the man offered Karl Oskar his hand: “I’m Petrus Olausson, from Alfta parish in Helsingland. I’m a farmer.”

Karl Oskar Nilsson gave his name in return, and added that he was a farmer from Ljuder parish in Småland.

“I knew you were a Swede!”

“How did you know?”

“By looking at your feet!” The Helsinge farmer smiled good-naturedly and pointed to Karl Oskar’s footgear. “Your wooden shoes, man! Only Swedes wear wooden shoes!” He grinned, showing long, broad upper teeth.

Karl Oskar knew that the Americans called the Swedish settlers the wooden-shoe people.

Petrus Olausson took off his hat and uncovered a bald spot on top of his head. He seemed to be about forty, ten years older than Karl Oskar. His clothes and his speech indicated he was no newcomer to America. He used the same mixed-up language as Anders Månsson of Taylors Falls, one of the first Swedes in the Territory.

“What kind of wood do you use for your wooden shoes, Mr. Nilsson?”

Karl Oskar replied that as alder trees did not grow in this valley he used basswood, the American linden tree. It was softer than Swedish linden wood and easy to work. But he had poor tools and was unable to make comfortable, light shoes.

He looked at the newcomer’s ax next to the stump; it had an even broader and thinner blade than his own American felling-ax.

“You can work faster with American tools,” said the owner of the ax. “The Yankees do everything easier. Better take after them.”

He took Karl Oskar for a newcomer here and looked disapprovingly at the Swedish ax he was carrying, with its clumsy head and thick edge. Karl Oskar explained that it was an old split-ax he used for post-making, and added, “From Helsingland, eh? You look like an American to me.”

He need not ask Petrus Olausson his errand here; no one felled trees for the fun of it. Olausson had come to stay.

The sound of timber axes in the forest had brought together two Swedish farmers. They had met as strangers but as soon as they had inspected each other’s axes they felt they had known each other before and were now merely renewing acquaintance. They were both men of peaceful occupation, wielding the tools of peaceful labor. Karl Oskar Nilsson from Ljuder, Småland, and Petrus Olausson from Alfta, Helsingland, sat down on the stump and talked at ease, talked intimately as if for many years they had lived on neighboring homesteads in the same village.

Around the men rose the great, ageless pines, and as far as the eye could see not a human habitation was in sight. It was an unbroken, uninhabited land, these shores of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga.

“Good land,” said the Helsinge farmer. “I aim to settle at this lake.”

“You are welcome,” said Karl Oskar, and he meant it. “Plenty of room, empty of people so far.”

“Yeah, we needn’t push for space.”

Olausson pointed to a hut of branches between two fallen pines, about a gunshot’s distance from where they sat; that was his shanty. He had begun felling timber for his cabin, and as soon as it was ready his wife and children would come. He had come to this country with his family, he told Karl Oskar, in the company of the prophet Erik Janson; that was seven years ago, in 1846. They had been living in Illinois but did not like it on the flat prairie; they wanted to live in wooded country, like their home province Helsingland. Another farmer from Alfta, Johannes Nordberg, had been up looking over Minnesota, and he had come back and told them the country up here was rich growing land and suitable for settling. It was on the advice of his neighbor that Olausson had come here. Nordberg himself would never return — he had died of cholera in Andover last summer.

Karl Oskar had heard that a farmer from Helsingland by the name of Nordberg was at this lake several years ago; he pointed to an island in line with a tongue of land. There were remnants there of a hut in which Nordberg had stayed. In summertime there were hordes of Indians here, and he had probably lived on the isle to be in peace. This first land seeker’s name was linked to the place; it was still called Nordberg’s Island.

“Johannes told the truth,” said his onetime neighbor. “This is a land of plenty.”

Petrus Olausson had picked a good place for himself, with fine timber forest and rich grass meadows. And he told Karl Oskar that several more countrymen were on their way to the St. Croix Valley, attracted by Nordberg’s descriptions.

“Well, the country is getting to be known,” said Karl Oskar. “How did you happen to stake your claim next to mine?”

“I went to the land office and picked it from the map,” he said. “The east part of section 35, township 34, range 20.”

The Helsinge farmer knew how to claim land; he had been in America twice as long as Karl Oskar, who, talking with him, felt like a newcomer beside an older and more experienced settler.

“I think my wife has something cooking — would you like to eat with us?” he asked.

“How far is it to go?”

“Less than a mile. I have the northeast claim.”

“All right. Might as well see your place.”

From the top of a young pine dangled a piece of venison he had intended to fry for his dinner, but it wasn’t very warm today and the meat would keep till tomorrow.

The settlers got up from the stump. The younger man walked ahead and showed the way.

“When did you come and settle here, Nilsson?”

Karl Oskar told him that next Midsummer Eve it would be three years since he and his family had landed in New York, and they had arrived in the Territory the last day of July. In the same year, 1850, he had taken his claim here at the lake.

Without being conscious of it, Karl Oskar walked today in longer strides than usual. He was bringing home news that would gladden Kristina; after three long years of isolation they now had a neighbor.

— 2—

The two men stopped where the path left the shore and turned up the hill to the log cabin. Olausson looked about in all directions: pine forest to the west, oaks, maples, elms, and other leaf trees to the north and east, Lake Ki-Chi-Saga to the south. At their feet lay the broad meadow, partly broken, and a tended field.

“A likely place, I must say! First come gets the best choice!”

And Karl Oskar agreed — he had had good luck when he found this place. He called his settlement Duvemåla (dovecote) after his wife’s home village in Sweden. A most suitable name, thought the Helsinge farmer; here too were so many doves that they obscured the sun.

The children playing outside the cabin had seen their father and came running toward him. They came in a row, according to age: Johan, the oldest, first; next Lill-Marta; after her, Harald; and behind them toddled little Dan, who had walked upright on this earth barely a year; his small, unstable legs still betrayed him so that he fell a couple of times, delaying his run behind his brothers and sister. But he was close to the ground and did not cry when he fell.

Karl Oskar picked up his youngest son and held him gently in his arms. It wasn’t his oldest but rather his youngest child he wanted to show to his visitor; this little tyke was two-and-a-half and the only one of his brats born in America, the only one of his family who was a citizen of this country, he told Olausson. His youngest son was an American, almost the only one among the Swedish settlers in this valley. He had been baptized with the name Danjel but had already lost half of it — they called him Dan, a more suitable name for an American.

The Helsinge farmer patted the little American on the head. The boy, in fright, glared at the stranger.

“I’m Uncle Petrus, and you are Mr. Dan Nilsson. Isn’t that right, boy? You were born here and you can become President of the United States. Neither your father nor I can be President, we’re only immigrants. .”

Karl Oskar laughed, but his youngest son did not rejoice in the great future that opened before him. He began to bawl, loudly and fiercely, and clung to his father’s neck with both arms.

“He’s shy, hasn’t seen any strangers,” said Karl Oskar.

Johan felt neglected and pulled his father by the pant leg: “We saw a snake, Dad!”

“A great big’un!” added Lill-Marta, all out of breath.

“A green-striped adder, Dad!”

“He crawled under the house. .!”

“Well, snake critters will crawl out with the spring heat,” said the visitor. “Better be careful, kids!”

Four-year-old Harald stood with his index finger in his mouth and stared at the strange man who had come home with Father. Harald ran about without pants; the only garment on his little body was an outgrown shirt, so short that it reached only to his navel. Below the shirt hem the boy was naked and his wart-like little limb pointed out naked and unprotected.

Petrus Olausson quickly took his eyes from the child as if uncomfortably affected.

“Lost your pants, did you, little Harald?” asked the father.

“Mother took them. . she’s patching. .”

“He tore a big hole in his pants,” volunteered Johan.

“Poor boy — has to show all he has. .”

Karl Oskar was holding his youngest son on his right arm; he now picked up his pantless son on his left. Sitting there some of the little one’s nakedness was covered. It seemed as if the sight of the child’s male member had disturbed Petrus Olausson; he no longer looked like a mild “Uncle Petrus.” Did he pay attention to what a four-year-old showed? The child could have gone entirely naked, as far as that was concerned.

“The kids grow awfully fast; they outgrow everything. Hard to keep their behinds covered up.”

Olausson stroked his long beard and said nothing. Karl Oskar felt ashamed before the visitor that his children had to wear rags. They had hardly been able to get any new clothes at all. All four were dressed in outgrown, worn-out garments, patches on patches. After the long winter inside they had been let out in the open again, and now one could see how badly off they were. The bright spring sun revealed everything as threadbare, ragged, torn, shabby.

“I’ve seeded flax — last year, and this year too. The kids will soon have something to cover them.”

“Well, at least they aren’t cold while summer lasts,” commented Olausson, as he threw a look at the father’s own pants, patched over and over again.

Karl Oskar walked ahead to the door with two children in his arms and two at his heels. The door opened from within and Kristina’s head covered with a blue kerchief, appeared.

“You’re late — I almost thought something had happened. .?”

“Yes, Kristina,” said Karl Oskar solemnly. “Something has happened — we have a neighbor now. .”

The Helsinge farmer stepped up and doffed his hat.

“Yes, here comes your neighbor. .”

Perplexed, Kristina remained standing in the door opening. Then she dried her fingers quickly on her apron before she took the guest’s hand. He told her his name and his home parish in Sweden.

“Svensk!!?”

“Still for the most part a Swede, I guess. We’ll be next-door neighbors, Mrs. Nilsson!”

“What a surprise! What a great surprise!”

In her confusion she forgot to ask the visitor to come in. She remained standing on the threshold until Karl Oskar, laughing, wondered if she wanted to keep them out.

Once inside, Kristina welcomed the farmer from Alfta.

“A neighbor! What a welcome visitor!”

Petrus Olausson looked about the cabin with curious eyes, as if to evaluate their belongings.

“Have you made the furnishings yourself, Nilsson?”

“Yeah — a little clumsy. .”

“No! You’re learning from the Americans. Very good! They do things handily.”

Petrus Olausson praised the beds that Karl Oskar had made of split scantlings, fastened to wall and floor; there was something authoritative in his speech and manner, one felt he was a man accustomed to giving advice and commands. There was also a hint of the forty-year-old man talking to the thirty-year-old, but more than their difference in age was the fact that he had been in America four years longer than Karl Oskar.

The Swedish settler had invited Olausson to dinner without knowing what Kristina had to put on the table. She apologized; she had nothing but plain fish soup — boiled catfish. And maple syrup, bread, and milk — not much to offer a guest. It was the time of year when food was scarce: last year’s crops were almost gone and this year’s were still growing.

Karl Oskar remembered they had cooked the last of their potatoes only a few days ago.

“We have a bone of pork left,” said Kristina. “I can make pea soup. But the peas take at least an hour to cook, they’re tough. .”

“Too long,” said Karl Oskar. “We’re hungry. .” But it annoyed him that they had nothing better than fish soup to offer their new neighbor on his first visit.

“I can make mashed turnips for the pork,” said Kristina, thinking over what supplies they had. “We have turnips out in the cellar, they cook quickly.”

Karl Oskar picked up a basket and went to fetch the turnips, accompanied by his guest. He did not want to appear to Olausson as an inexperienced settler; rather, he wanted to show how well he had managed on his claim. He told him that more difficult than obtaining food was protecting it, against heat in summer and frost in winter. To build a cellar of stone as they did in Sweden required an enormous amount of work which he hadn’t had time for yet; he had used another device to protect the vegetables from spoiling. He had dug a ditch for the turnips behind the cabin and covered it with straw and earth. Under such a roof, about ten inches thick, the roots were protected against the coldest winter.

Karl Oskar stopped before a mound and with a wooden fork cleared away the earth and the straw. When he had removed the covering he knelt and bent down over the ditch. The mound had not been opened for a few weeks, and an evil stink filled his nose. An uneasy apprehension came over him. He stuck down his hand and felt for a turnip. He got hold of something soft and slimy. When he lifted his hand into daylight he was holding a dark brown mess with a nasty smell.

“Damn it! The roots are rotten. .”

The older settler stooped down and smelled; he nodded that the turnips were indeed spoiled.

Shamefacedly, Karl Oskar rose. The turnips they had intended to offer their guest for dinner need not be boiled; down there in the ditch the roots were already mashed and prepared, a rotten mess.

“It’s on account of the early heat,” said the guest.

“I forgot to make an air hole,” explained Karl Oskar.

“Your covering is too thick,” said Petrus Olausson authoritatively. “Ten inches is too much — five inches would’ve been about right.”

“Then the turnips would have frozen last winter.”

“Not if you had covered the ditch right. You put on too much; you’re wrong, Nilsson!”

Karl Oskar’s cheeks flushed. He knew a ten-inch cover was required in order to keep the frost out. Only this spring heat had come on so suddenly he hadn’t had time to open an air hole. That was why the turnips had rotted.

With a wad of straw he wiped the mess of rotted roots from his hand. Those damned turnips weren’t worth a single dollar but he had wanted to show his senior countryman how well he preserved his food and kept it from spoiling.

And now, here he stood and received instruction from a master. It was not that he had done something wrong, he had forgotten to do the right thing. It was this that annoyed him.

They walked back to the cabin. Karl Oskar carried the empty basket, vexed and humiliated. Now what would they give their guest? He had seen in Kristina’s eyes that she was anxious to offer the best they had to their first neighbor, but not even she could prepare a meal from nothing.

However, at the door a delicious cooking aroma met them. Kristina had put the frying pan over the fire.

“I won’t bother with mashed turnips, I’ll make pancakes instead, it won’t take so long. .”

She had flour, bacon grease, milk, and sugar, as well as some of the cranberries she had preserved last year. Now they would have cranberries and pancakes for dinner.

“Please sit down, you menfolk! I’ll serve you as I make them.”

The children might be a nuisance; if they smelled the pancakes she was preparing for their guest they wouldn’t leave her any peace. She had given each of them a lump of sugar and told them to stay outside and play.

Karl Oskar’s annoyance disappeared as he inhaled the smell of the frying pancakes.

“I believe you are a wizard, Kristina!”

She piled the pancakes in a bowl and even the Helsinge farmer looked pleased and appreciative.

“This is party fare, Mrs. Nilsson! Swedish food and Swedish cooking!”

Karl Oskar was pulling up his chair, ready to sit down at table, when Petrus Olausson, behind his chair, bent his head, folded his hands, and said grace in a loud voice:

We do sit down in Jesu name,

We eat and drink upon God’s word,

God to honor, us to aid,

We eat our food in Jesu name.

Kristina, busy with her pancakes, repeated the prayer with him. She was deeply conscious of the fact that nowadays they almost always forgot to say grace. And, as parents, Karl Oskar and she ought to set a good and godly example for their children. But the settlers had begun to forget their old Swedish table prayers. Only Danjel Andreasson, her uncle, never missed saying grace. And she had told Karl Oskar that they acted like hogs rushing up to the trough to still their hunger. To forget, in this manner, the giver of all good things was un-Christian, beastly. The difference between animals and people was only this: the dumb beasts couldn’t read.

But their new neighbor prayed over the food with a voice like a minister. He must be a religious man.

When she had finished at the stove, Kristina sat down at the table where the men were doing great honor to her pancakes. The guest told her that he intended to settle down in the neighborhood with his wife and three children.

“I never thought anyone would want to live this far away,” she said.

“Well, this is rich earth, and the lake has plenty of fish.”

Karl Oskar was eager to confirm that the earth was indeed rewarding. Last year he had planted four bushels of potatoes and had received forty-eight-and-a-half bushels in yield — almost thirteen to one. And rye and barley gave good returns: the seeds were barely out of his hand before they began to swell and grow and shoot up blades in great abundance. One could spread sawdust on this earth and it would almost grow.

Kristina thought however fine the earth was, it could never take the place of people. However great its yield, it did not help against the loneliness out here.

“We are not only seeking our living in America,” Petrus Olausson went on. “We are seeking freedom in spiritual things.”

He explained that he and his wife had turned their backs on the false and dangerous Swedish Church and had followed the Bible’s clear words and truths. After this they had been so persecuted and plagued by the clergy and the authorities of the home village that they had been forced to emigrate. They had followed Erik Janson of Biskopskulla and his group to Bishop Hill, Illinois, where they were to build the New Jerusalem on the prairie. But once in America, Janson had set himself even above God and had earned the contempt of all sensible men. After enduring Janson’s tyranny for three years, Olausson had left the prophet of Bishop Hill, the year before this despot was murdered. He had gone to Andover and joined a free Lutheran church.

Petrus Olausson helped himself to a few more pancakes.

“Have you broken out of the Swedish State Church, Nilsson?”

Karl Oskar explained that he and his family had emigrated of their own free will; they had not been banished, nor had they fled as criminals. But an uncle of Kristina’s and an unmarried woman in their group had been exiled by the court for heresy.

The rugged Helsinge farmer raised his bearded chin. In Sweden he had been fined two hundred daler silver because he had read a chapter from the Bible in his own house. In Helsingland and Dalecarlia many persons had been imprisoned for reading the Bible in groups. Holy Writ, the key to eternal salvation, was that dangerous for the wretched Swedish people. But here in America he could read the Bible from cover to cover, whenever and wherever he wanted, without punishment.

“Every evening in my prayer I thank the Lord God for my new homeland,” he said emphatically. “Sweden has been ruined by her iniquitous authorities.”

A scratching sound was heard at the window behind the guest’s chair; Johan hung outside on the window sill and stared through the glass at the people eating inside. He had barely managed to climb that high and his eyes grew large at the sight of the pancakes; his mouth moved as if he too were chewing. Lill-Marta’s flaxen curls could be glimpsed below the window — she was not tall enough to look through.

“Our young’uns smell the pancakes,” said Karl Oskar.

“Only curious,” said Kristina. “I just fed them. .” The mother shook her hand windowward: how could they be so rude, looking at guests eating! The boy’s face and the girl’s curls disappeared immediately. Kristina looked uncomfortably at her guest; would he think her children didn’t have enough to eat? But he must see by their bodies that they weren’t starved. She herself never ate her fill until she knew they had sufficient. Well, perhaps a few pancakes would be left which she could give them afterward.

Petrus Olausson had returned to worldly matters and asked his host how they had managed to make a living and feed themselves on their claim for three years.

Karl Oskar replied that the first winter had been the hardest, as they had not harvested any crops that year. Then it had happened that they went hungry on occasion. But as soon as spring and warmth came, and the lake broke up and they could fish, it had become better. And during the summer they had picked wild berries and other fruit in the forest and then there was no need to starve. That fall they had harvested their first crops and got so much from the field they had had all the potatoes and bread they needed for the second winter. As they gradually broke more land their worries about food diminished. During the second and third winter they had been bothered mostly by the cold; this cabin did not give sufficient protection. For the children’s sake they had kept a fire going night and day through the coldest periods. The last winter had been so bad that the blizzards had almost turned the cabin over.

He had not figured on living in this log hut more than two or three winters; he had already laid out the framework for a more solid house. But he doubted the new house would be finished this summer. They would have to live in the cabin a fourth winter.

Kristina added that the weather was never moderate in this country, too hard one way or another. The summers were too warm, the winters too cold. It should have been spring or fall all year round, for springs and autumns were mild and good seasons. But all American weather was immoderate; the heat was hotter, the cold colder, the rain wetter, and the wind blew worse than in Sweden. And it was the same with the animals, big and little ones. Snakes were more poisonous, the rats more ferocious, the grasshoppers did more damage, the mosquitoes were bigger, and the ants angrier than at home. The wild animals in America seemed to have been created to plague humans.

“The Indians are more dangerous than the animals,” said Olausson.

Kristina thought the brown people hereabouts had behaved very peacefully. During the winters Indians had come to warm themselves at their fire and she had given them food and treated them as friends. She tried to pretend she wasn’t afraid of the wild ones, and they had never hurt her, but she was scared to death of them. They could have killed her a hundred times but she relied on God’s protection. A few times they had heard rumors of Indian attacks, but nothing had happened here so far.

“The Chippewas are friendly,” said their guest. “Some of the other tribes will steal and murder and rape the wives of the settlers.”

Kristina had finished eating; she was looking thoughtfully in front of her.

“We have forgotten to mention the worst we have gone through,” she said.

They had talked of weather and wild animals and Indians, but there remained something else: the loneliness at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to get neighbors at last!”

The words had escaped from her full heart. Occasionally a hunter or someone from the lumbering company would come to their cabin. But what pleasure was there in guests she couldn’t speak to? Months and months would pass before an outsider sat at this table and spoke her mother tongue. Now she must tell her countryman how it felt to live alone for three long years.

With no people living around, a person often felt empty and depressed, completely lost. And that hurt was worse than any physical pain; it plagued worse each lonely day that passed. And living here so long without seeing people might at last affect the mind. She knew how it was after these years; she was not telling a lie when she said that human beings could not live without other human beings.

While talking she had avoided Karl Oskar’s eyes. Now he looked at her in surprise.

“I thought you had got used to living alone, Kristina.”

“I don’t think one ever gets used to it. .”

She felt the tears in her eyes and turned her face away quickly.

Petrus Olausson had listened with great attention; now he turned to Karl Oskar.

“I’m sorry that Mrs. Nilsson feels so alone in America.”

She asked him not to call her Mrs. Nilsson — she was no American lady, only a simple Swedish farm wife. “Please call me Kristina; and can’t I call you Uncle Petrus?” Sitting here, talking Swedish with a Swede, she felt he was almost a relative.

“All right, call me Uncle! And now cheer up, Kristina! I’ll be living next door!”

She rose suddenly. “I sit here and forget myself. I must put on the coffee!”

The Helsinge farmer too rose from the table and again said a prayer:

“All praise to you, O Lord, for food and drink!”

Kristina, standing at the fireplace, her hands folded around the coffee mill, repeated the prayer after him. To her, today seemed like a Sunday in the cabin.

— 3—

Karl Oskar was anxious to show Olausson around his claim, but Kristina wanted to keep him inside and talk to him. It was a long time since she had been so talkative, she was stimulated by the neighbor’s call. Eagerly she refilled his cup before he had emptied it.

The Helsinge farmer said that very soon more Swedes would be coming to settle here. Two families would be arriving this spring, one from Helsingland and one from Östergötland, and he knew them both. In letters to his friends in Sweden, he had described this valley and urged them to move to this land of plenty. He was sure many people would be coming over from Sweden; soon it wouldn’t be lonely here any more.

This was wonderful news to Kristina, who had felt they would have to live alone forever beside the Indian lake. But she wasn’t quite convinced; why would groups of people move from Sweden to this very region where only heathens worshiped their wooden images? She suspected their new neighbor was talking of arriving countrymen only to comfort her.

“How many Swedes might there be in this valley?” queried Petrus Olausson.

Karl Oskar counted silently. Their nearest neighbor toward Taylors Falls, he told Petrus, was Kristina’s uncle, Danjel Andreasson, whose place was called New Kärragärde; he was a widower with three children. His neighbor was Jonas Petter Albrektsson, also a farmer from Ljuder, who had arrived with their group. Jonas Petter had a woman from Dalecarlia, called Swedish Anna, keeping house for him. In Taylors Falls an Öländer, Anders Månsson, lived with his old mother; also a trapper named Samuel Nöjd. At Hay Lake, near Stillwater, west of Marine, three young Swedes, who batched in their cabin, had moved in last spring; he had never met them and did not know their names. And they themselves were two grown people and four small children. If he had counted aright, there were eighteen Swedish people in the St. Croix Valley.

“And now we three families will settle here,” said the Helsinge farmer. “That makes more than thirty Swedes. We must start a congregation.”

“What kind of congregation?” wondered Karl Oskar.

“To build a God’s house! In Andover we started a parish with only twenty-two members.”

“A church parish. .?”

“Yes, we’ll build a church!”

“A church!” exclaimed Kristina, breathlessly.

“Only a little log temple, a God’s house of plain wood.”

A silence fell in the cabin. Karl Oskar looked in surprise at his guest; the settlers out here had as yet not had time to build decent houses for themselves and their livestock. He had built himself a barn, but his stable wasn’t ready yet, and this summer he intended to build a threshing barn. All the settlers still had houses to build for themselves and shelters for their cattle and their crops. How could they manage to build a church and pay for a minister?

“We mustn’t strive so much for worldly things that we forget eternity! Need for stables is no excuse to delay building a house for God!” Petrus Olausson spoke in a severe preaching voice.

“Build a church. .?” murmured Kristina, as if talking in her sleep. “It sounds impossible. .”

But Olausson went on: “America is full of false prophets swarming all over and snaring the settlers in dangerous heresies. I have seen, to my sorrow, some of my countrymen living in a pure heathenish and animal life, never listening to the Word. And some good, Christian men from my home village in Sweden got together a group and went off to the goldfields in California. They sought riches instead of the gospel truth, they looked for lumps of gold instead of the eternal life of the Holy Ghost. But they also perished within a short time because of their blindness; of twenty-eight gold seekers only four came back, and of these only one found enough gold for his future. Shouldn’t this example dampen people from worshiping Mammon?”

“I had a younger brother with me when we came here,” said Karl Oskar. “Two years ago he and a friend took off for California.”

“Have you heard from these foolish youngsters?”

“Only twice so far.”

From a box in the Swedish chest back in the corner Karl Oskar picked up a sheet of paper which he handed to Olausson: “The last letter from my brother. It came a few days ago; it was written early this year.”

Petrus Olausson read the letter aloud:

“On the California Trail January 1853

“Dear Brother Karl Oskar Nilsson,

“How are you and Kristina and the children? I am well. Arvid and I are still on the California Trail. That road is long, you know, almost as long as the road back to Sweden. We have met many adventures. When I get back I will relate to you and Kristina everything I am now leaving out of my letter.

“We are getting along well but have had our troubles. We shall make out well in the gold land, be sure of that, Karl Oskar.

“I guess you are still poking in your fields. You like it. But I will play a lone hand, as you know. I am hunting for gold and will find it. Don’t worry about me and feel no worry inside yourself. I will be back when I am a rich man. Before I will not come. Then I shall buy oxen for you and cows for Kristina.

“Arvid sends greetings to his old master and all Swedes in that part. I greet Kristina and the children.

“Your brother

Robert Nilsson.”

Kristina pointed out, “Robert has not put down his address.”

“He would have no permanent post office because he was on the trail,” explained Olausson. “He says he is on his way. The gold diggers have to climb high mountains and cross wide deserts to reach California, and they need plenty of time for that road.”

Karl Oskar looked toward the corner of the room where his brother’s old bed still stood. With great concern he said, “My brother has been gone more than two years now.”

“He said he wouldn’t be back without gold,” Kristina reminded him. “And he writes the same way.”

“Who knows if he is alive at this moment,” said Karl Oskar, thinking that of twenty-eight gold seekers only four had survived. And again he reproached himself. Couldn’t he have prevented his brother from going on this dangerous journey?

“He says he’ll give you a pair of oxen when he gets back,” said Olausson, handing back the letter to Karl Oskar.

The latter expressed no opinion about that promise. But he asked the older settler:

“He writes something I don’t understand—‘play a lone hand’? What does he mean?”

“Your brother wants to go his own way.”

“Well, he certainly did when he left for California. .”

Karl Oskar put the letter back in the Swedish chest, and turned to Olausson. “Let’s look at the livestock,” he suggested.

While Kristina cleaned up after the meal, the men went out to look over the frontier farm. Karl Oskar wanted to show his neighbor what he had done during three years as squatter.

To the north side of the cabin he had started a stable, as yet only half finished. A cow and a heifer each stood in a stall. From the German Fisher in Taylors Falls they had three years ago bought a pregnant cow, and her calf had now grown into this heifer which had just taken the bull. With two cows they would have milk all year round. The cow was called Lady — after a borrowed animal they had had the first winter — and the heifer was called Miss.

“When she calves we’ll have to call her Missus,” laughed Karl Oskar.

The stable, he pointed out, would have plenty of room for more stalls whenever they got more animals. The men looked at the sheep pen: two ewes with three lambs, already a little flock of five. Sheep were satisfying animals, easy to take care of, and their wool was always needed for socks and other clothing. Two pigs poked in the pigpen; of all the animals pigs were the easiest to buy, and they fed in the forest as long as the ground was bare. Pork was indeed the cheapest food. One corner of the stable was to be used for a chicken coop, but the roosting perch was still unoccupied; a laying hen cost five dollars.

In the empty coop Karl Oskar kept his new American tools. He showed with pride the cradle, its five wooden fingers attached to the scythe handle, so much more efficient than the old Swedish scythes. The cradle was heavy and difficult to handle but once he had learned to use it he couldn’t get along without it. Then the grub hoe with an ax on one edge and a hoe on the other — a most ingenious device; while clearing ground and removing roots one need only turn this tool to switch from one kind of work to the other.

Olausson voiced his approval of Karl Oskar’s imitating the Americans and using their clever inventions.

When they walked out to inspect the fields, Olausson eyed the furrows of the meadow:

“You’ve broken a sizable field.”

“About ten acres. I plowed up most of it the first year.”

By now he would have had three times as big a field if he had had a hundred dollars to buy a team of oxen. When he borrowed a team from the timber company he had to pay five dollars a day. He was short of cash and this was his greatest obstacle. Much of the field he had broken himself with his grub hoe.

Olausson’s respect for Karl Oskar rose after seeing the tools and the field; this man was not a beginner working in the earth, he was not in need of an older farmer to tell him what to do.

Karl Oskar showed him his winter rye, almost ready to head, lush and healthy. The spring rye had just been sown, and next to it was the field where he intended to plant potatoes. Next fall he planned to sow wheat for the first time, that new kind of bread grain the Americans harvested in such quantities. Wheat had not been used much by the farmers in Småland, but it was said to be suitable for the fertile soil here. He thought it would be a fine thing to harvest his own wheat. In Sweden they had paid a great deal for the soft, white flour, and had only used it for holiday bread.

“I sure will like to taste my own wheat bread!”

Olausson advised him to raise Indian corn, which could be used as food for both people and livestock. The corn gave a fifty-fold return down in Illinois.

“You must plant the corn on high ground! It needs dry land,” he added, and pointed up the hill.

Karl Oskar thought to himself that he knew best where his field was dry and where it was wet. But he put aside the thought and led Olausson a bit up the hill to a grove of tall leafy trees. Shaded by enormous sugar maples lay the foundation for his new house.

“Here’s where I’ll build our new home! I’ll have a real house here!”

He pointed to the foundation. The house would be forty feet from gable to gable, eighteen feet wide, with two stories. They would have four or five times as much space as they now had in the cabin. And this time he wouldn’t build with fresh logs as he had done earlier; the logs had dried out and left cracks that let in cold and wind in winter. But for his new house he had felled the timbers during the two winters past and had dressed the logs on all sides so that they had dried out well. He had intended to build the house this summer, but he must first raise a threshing shed so he needn’t do his threshing down on the lake ice as he had done last winter. But next year his house would rise here under the shade of the maples. From the windows here on the south side he would be able to look out over his fields and the lake; they would be able to see all the way to those islets out there.

As he talked Karl Oskar became excited; he would not let the visitor interrupt. He talked about the house which didn’t as yet exist, about roof and walls not yet raised, about the view from windows still imaginary. He touched the sills, the heavy timbers he alone had put in, he touched them as if caressing them: here would be the main room, here a bedroom on each gable, and just here — all this space for a large kitchen. And, pointing up toward the sky, up there would be a second floor with two large or four small rooms, as yet he hadn’t decided which. .

Petrus Olausson had paced off the foundation: “Too much of a house! Remember I told you so, Nilsson! You can’t build that much!”

Kristina had told him the same thing, but a woman couldn’t understand much about building, he had thought. Now, when his new neighbor raised the same objection, he became thoughtful. Perhaps he had laid out too big a house, perhaps it would be too much for him to build. Possibly he might have to shorten the foundation timbers. .

But there was still something to show Olausson, something near the east gable. There, six or eight feet beyond the sill, Karl Oskar pointed downward with the look of one disclosing a great secret:

“Look here! See that thing growing there? It is from Sweden!”

In a little dug-up bed a small plant, six or seven inches tall and tied to a stake, poked its head up from the black soil. The plant had a few small dark-green leaves, and the bed around it was well tended.

“It came from home!”

Olausson bent down and pinched the leaves of the tender plant. “An apple seedling, eh?”

“A real fine tree! An Astrakhan apple tree!”

“From Sweden? Well, well. .”

It was for his wife’s sake he had planted the seedling, said Karl Oskar. She longed for home at times and it would be a pleasure and something to divert her thoughts to have a growing plant from Sweden to tend and look after. He had written to her parents for seeds from an Astrakhan apple tree, and they had arrived a year ago last fall, glued to a sheet of paper and well preserved. And so he had planted them here at the east gable of their new home, at a depth five times their own thickness, as they used to do when planting trees at home. And this seedling had come up; it was growing slowly, but it was growing.

It was Kristina’s apple tree, she took care of it. With this tiny plant, as yet so puny and tender, they had in a way moved something living from their old homeland.

“You might get some other kind of apples when you plant a seed,” said Olausson.

“Yes — sometimes you get crab apples. We’ll see!”

Karl Oskar had now shown his neighbor the fruit of all his work. Petrus Olausson could see that they had improved themselves during their first three years on the claim. If Petrus only listened to what Kristina had said about their loneliness out here, he might think all they did was walk about and sigh for company, doing nothing beyond getting their food from day to day.

The men went back to the cabin. Kristina wanted to warm up whatever coffee was left in the pot, but Uncle Petrus couldn’t stay away any longer from his timber felling.

He had looked about closely, he said, and he had seen how much work they had done on their claim and what great improvements they had made. This was the beginning of a fine farm. But as a fellow Christian he wanted to add something before he left: work alone was not enough for a human being; daily prayers were also needed. As neighbors they ought to get together to help instruct each other in religious matters and share other useful thoughts.

“We’ll see each other often, I hope! And my dear Swedish fellow Christians: don’t dig yourself down in worldly matters so that you forget eternity!”

— 4—

When Karl Oskar and Kristina went to bed that evening they began to talk about this day which had become unlike all other days on their lonely claim.

“I think I like him,” said Kristina.

“He seems a capable man with good ideas. He’ll do here.”

“He talked as godly as a minister.”

“But he wants to have you do things his way. He wants to correct others. I don’t like that.”

“He meant well when he spoke that way. .”

“I don’t need a guardian — I’m old enough. .”

“Yes, of course, but we must try to get along with them.”

“They can take care of theirs and we’ll look after ours. Then we’ll get along as neighbors. .”

“He must have thought we were heathens, not saying grace,” said Kristina, after a pause.

Karl Oskar yawned loudly. He turned over on his side to go to sleep. In his deep fatigue after a long day’s work he was glad to surrender to rest. But when he had walked a great deal, as today, he felt the old injury to his left leg, and it took longer for sleep to come. Tonight his leg ached persistently.

Kristina gathered her thoughts for her evening prayer. Petrus Olausson’s exhorting words at his departure still rang in her ears. And as she thought about them, they sounded as a warning to her from God himself.

In this out-of-the-way place they neglected their spiritual needs. But someone coming from the outside and looking at them with a stranger’s eyes could see how things were with them; they put religion aside. They neglected their souls and jeopardized their salvation. They were so busy gathering food for their table that they could not take even a moment to say grace. They hurried hither and yon from morning to night, and were so rushed one might think they feared they had not time to reach their graves. For in the grave they would end up at last. Here they labored, striving, and were so overloaded with daily chores that both their bodies and souls were submerged in worldly concerns. They lived the fleeting life of the moment and forgot that eternity awaited them.

Kristina sinned every day in many ways, gathering on her back an ever greater burden of sin. In Sweden, she had been relieved of this burden once a month through the sacrament, the Holy Communion. But now she had not been a guest at the Lord’s table for three years. During this whole time she had not once cleansed herself in the Savior’s blood.

From time to time she would talk of religious matters with her Uncle Danjel and confess her anxiety about her sin burden. But he considered himself so great a sinner that he was unable to help anyone else; each one must worry about his own soul. But Danjel did pray for her.

Karl Oskar at her side turned and tried to find a more comfortable position: “If those screech-hoppers out there ever could shut up!”

Outside, the crickets had started their unceasing noise. The penetrating sound screeched like an ungreased wagon wheel moving at a dizzying speed. The hoppers were never seen, but their noise was worse. These ungodly creatures had wings it was said, but unable to fly, they used them for their eternal complaint.

Kristina wondered what could make the poor critters wail like this all night through, as if they were suffering eternal torture. And she would lie and listen to that sound until it echoed within herself, the torture of her own anxiety responding to the crickets’ wailing.

“Karl Oskar,” she said, “you have a good remembering. .”

“Yes?” he said sleepily. “What about?”

“Do you recall when we last had the sacrament?”

“The last Sunday before we left home.”

“That was three years in April. Three years since we last received absolution.”

He turned to her and sought her face in the dark but his eyes could not see her. He sounded surprised: “Are you lying there worrying about Communion?”

“I’m worrying about our sin burdens. They have gathered on our backs for a long time.”

“We live in a wilderness, Kristina,” he replied, “with no churches or temples; we can’t get to a minister or to our own church. It can’t be helped if we’ve had to be without the sacrament for three years. No one can take what he can’t reach. God must know this and overlook it. .”

“Perhaps he will forgive us. . I don’t know. .”

No one could know if they were forgiven because they lived so far away from the church, she said. And Karl Oskar had not given much thought to this shriving. To tell the truth, he hadn’t had time to miss the monthly Communion since he arrived here, and perhaps that wasn’t so good of him.

“We’ve dug ourselves down in worldly doings,” continued his wife. “We live only in the flesh. We forget our souls which will live through eternity. We forget death.”

“I know I’ll come to an end eventually. But one can’t go around and worry about death all day long. If I did, I wouldn’t get anything done.”

If there was anything he could do about death, well, then it would be different, added Karl Oskar. If he himself could do anything to escape death, then he would do it, of course. But as it was, the hour of death was sure, he must come to an end sometime, death would take him without mercy. So it was no use to worry and fret about it. All one could do was lie down and give up one’s breath when the time came, lie nicely on one’s back and draw the last breath. So the old ones did; on their deathbeds they did not pay much attention to death, since it was inescapable. They usually thought more of their funerals. Death was one and the same for all, equally unmerciful to all, but the funerals could be different — different splendor for different people. And those who had received little praise or honor in life often wished to be honored as corpses.

“But there must be moments when you think of eternity, what comes afterward, Karl Oskar?”

What was the matter with Kristina and her religious question this evening? He didn’t know what more to say. But it was true, he did forget his prayers. A settler with endless concerns about keeping alive had little time to think of eternity.

Karl Oskar replied, with some hesitation, that he didn’t really understand eternity. His head couldn’t make out something that had neither beginning nor end. His mind could not grasp something that was to last forever. All he could wish was that God might have given him a better mind.

Kristina clung to this wish of his; Karl Oskar did seem humble tonight, at least more submissive than he usually was. She often felt that he lived arrogantly and trusted more in himself than in God.

Out there, on the other side of the window, the crickets screeched and wailed unceasingly. There was a host of them around the house tonight, their noise coming from the grass, from the boughs of the trees. But those peculiar bugs were hidden from human eyes. They were the night’s whistle pipes, blowing away as if calling an alarm and warning against threatening dangers.

The long, drawn-out wailing of those invisible creatures turned Kristina’s thoughts to eternity’s torture.

“Karl Oskar — if you should come to an end this very night — do you believe all would be well with you?”

It was a minute before his reply came: “If I didn’t believe so — what would you want me to do about it, Kristina?”

Now he was the questioner. And she had no reply.

“What do you want me to do for my soul? I can’t get absolution for my sins. What else?” It was all he could say. They were in the same predicament. She had asked in order to be helped; he had no help to give. Their situation was the same. What could they do about it?

After this Kristina lay silent and did not ask any more questions.

“We must get some sleep,” said Karl Oskar. “Tomorrow brings new chores — we will be useless if we don’t get some sleep.”

He was right, it wouldn’t help to lie awake. They needed strength for the morrow. They must get up and labor through another day of their earthly life. It was man’s lot here on earth: to labor through each day in turn. And they must have rest so they could begin the new day with fresh confidence. The evening fatigue always depressed her spirits, but she would have them back again in the morning after sleep and rest.

Kristina could soon tell from her husband’s deep breathing that he was asleep. But she continued to lie awake.

— 5—

A thousand days and more had passed since Kristina had heard the ringing of church bells.

That was in another world, the Old World. In her parental home, in another Duvemåla, she had heard them from the distant church steeple. Every Saturday evening, with their clear tone, they rang in the Holy Day peace, every Sunday morning they vibrated over the village, calling the people together. And the villagers gathered on the church green and looked up and hearkened when the church bells began to peal: the men lifted their hats, the women curtsied. People heard the bells as a voice from above; they paid reverence to their Creator.

At home, each time something of importance happened, the church bells would ring: in war and pestilence, for forest fires or houses burning, at death and the crowning of kings, at marriage festivities and for funeral sorrow — man, made of earth, was brought back to earth with the pealing of church bells.

At all life’s great happenings and holidays in the Old World, Kristina had heard the church bells ring. In them she had heard the Creator’s voice, when he was in his holy temple, and their sound was the voice of the Holy Day. But for a thousand days now she had not heard that voice.

Here in the New World Sunday was like a weekday with all the sounds of a weekday. In North America, too, churches had been built, but she lived so far from them that the sound of their bells did not reach her. They rang from many steeples in this broad land but were never heard at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga. Nor could she listen to God’s servant speaking in her language from a pulpit or altar, she could not hear the organ’s pealing, the tones of the psalms, her fellowmen’s voices in prayer and singing. For a thousand days she had heard nothing but the forest silence.

She had moved away from church bells, from altar and organ, to the land of the heathens where repulsive idols were worshiped.

But God had not forgotten her, had not lost track of her. He would find her whenever he wished. She was and remained a life, sprung from the Creator’s hand, and he needed no church bells to reach her. And today she had heard his voice. She was convinced that he had called her with a message: she must not forget the immortal soul he had given her.

And so at last Kristina said her prayer to the Almighty, who was before the mountains, and would be after them. She prayed fervently for an answer to her question: what must they do — she and her husband — to save their poor souls? How should they manage so as not to lose their eternal salvation in this unChristian land where they had come to start life anew?

And she thanked God for the past day and the message he had brought her through a stranger — this day when Karl Oskar had heard a new ax ringing in the forest.

II. THE WHORE AND THE THIEF

— 1—

It seemed to Kristina that their third winter might last forever. The cold was unmercifully severe. On the inner side of the door was a circle of rough nail heads which were constantly covered with hoarfrost. The nail heads, shining like a wreath of white roses on the door, were the winter’s mark of sovereignty over the people who lived here; they were prisoners in their own home, locked in by the cold. The warming fire on the hearth did not have the strength to wilt the frost roses on their door.

The dark, shining, nail heads in the wood became the first visible sign of liberation; the cold had been forced to recede beyond the threshold. And what a joy to Kristina when she awakened one night and heard the sound of dripping water outside, melting snow dripping from the eaves. It ran and splashed the whole night through and she could hardly go to sleep again, so happy was she. Every drop from the roof was a joy to her heart; she thanked God for the spring that was near.

Since Ulrika of Västergöhl had married the Baptist minister Mr. Henry O. Jackson and moved to Stillwater, Kristina had no intimate friends in the neighborhood. Ulrika’s visits were infrequent. Kristina herself was tied to her home by her own children and she hesitated to visit Ulrika because of the long and difficult road to Stillwater. In two years she had only once been to see Ulrika in her new home. That had been a winter day, and she had ridden with Uncle Danjel on his ox sled. It had been miserably cold, and in spite of all the clothing she had bundled around herself, she had felt as if she was sitting naked on the sled. They had brought along warm stones for their feet and had stopped several times on the way to rewarm them. Even so Kristina still had a frostbitten toe as a reminder of her visit to Stillwater on the slow ox sled.

During the last year, however, the lumber company had cut a new road all the way to Ki-Chi-Saga. Now the settlers could get a ride on the company’s ox wagons, and when Kristina decided to journey to Stillwater this spring, she decided to use this transportation. Her errand was partly to visit Ulrika and partly to buy necessities. During the winter she had stopped suckling Dan. She now had no child at her breast, and as Karl Oskar could feed the little one, she could stay overnight with Mr. and Mrs. Jackson.

One pleasantly mild spring day she set out on the ox wagon to Stillwater. During this journey she had no need for warm stones, today she need not worry about getting her toes frostbitten as she sat on the wagon. The sun had warmed the forest, which seemed friendly and inviting along the newly cut road. And the company’s ox wagon rolled steadily on its heavy, iron-bound wheels, quite different from the settlers’ primitive jolting carts. Today Kristina traveled in comfort; the ride was a pleasure rather than an ordeal.

The Baptist congregation in Stillwater had built a new house for their pastor, next to the little white timbered structure that served as the church. Ulrika saw Kristina through the window and came out on the stoop to welcome her. On her arm Kristina carried the lidded shingle basket which she had brought from Sweden.

“I can see you’re out on big business,” said Ulrika. “But first you must have something in your belly!”

Pastor Jackson’s house had one large and one smaller room, a good-sized kitchen with a storeroom, and an ample cellar under the house. The large room was used only during the day; Ulrika sometimes called it the sitting room and again the living room. The smaller room was a bedroom and in it stood the largest bed Kristina had ever seen; it was as broad as two ordinary beds put together. On the wall above the couple’s bed hung a framed picture with a maxim in gilded letters: The Lord Gives Us the Strength!

This house had one room for use all day long, and one for use at night, one room to sit in and one to lie down in! Since Ulrika of Västergöhl had become Mrs. Henry O. Jackson she lived like an upper-class woman.

Ulrika urged Kristina to sit down on the soft sofa in the living room. She wanted to show her something strange which she had acquired since Kristina’s previous visit. On the wall hung a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Jackson as bride and groom, but it was not a painted picture of her and Henry, and that was the strange thing about it. She and Henry had been placed in the picture by an apparatus. It was like a miracle. Mr. Paul Hanley, a member of the Baptist congregation and now Elin’s employer, had bought the apparatus; he was one of the directors of the lumber company and a rich man; he wanted to have a picture of them in their bridal outfit. To take a photograph, he had called it. It was a new invention. They had stood in front of the machine, quite still, for a few moments, while Mr. Hanley had gone to the other side of it with a cloth over his head and manipulated something. And so, quite by magic, they had got their likenesses printed on a thick paper, as nice as any painted picture. And their likenesses did not scale off or fade away but had remained there on the wall, exactly as they were now, for a whole year. They would stick to the paper for all eternity, Mr. Hanley had told them.

Next to the groom, who wore a knee-long coat and narrow pants, stood Ulrika in her white bridal gown of muslin and a wide-brimmed hat, her very first hat.

Below the picture of the bridal couple, a notice from the St. Paul Pioneer was cut out and glued to the wall. The paper had printed a piece about the Jackson wedding:

Baptist Church Is Scene of First Wedding

The first marriage in the history of the Stillwater Baptist Church took place Saturday, when Miss Ulrika of Vastergohl became the bride of the Reverend Henry O. Jackson, minister of the Baptist congregation. The bride belongs to the very old noble family of

Vastergohl

in Sweden.

The Reverend R. E. Arleigh who teaches at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul read the service.

Attendants were Cora Skalrud, bridesmaid; Betty Jean Prescott, maid of honor; Paul Hanley and Bob Orville, both best men.

A reception at the new home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry O. Jackson in Stillwater followed the ceremony.

Ulrika translated for Kristina, telling her that the man who had come to write about the wedding for the Pioneer had asked her if she belonged to a noble family in Sweden. The Swedes he had met previously in America had all been counts and barons. But she had felt that her ancestry was none of his business, and to his rude question she had, of course, replied that she came from such an old noble family that it could be traced back to the time when Father Adam and Mother Eve walked about with their behinds bare in Paradise. Whether it was because of her English, which wasn’t quite perfect yet, or because the writer had taken her seriously — whatever the reason — this writing man had printed in his paper that she had been born into an ancient noble family in Sweden.

And as she had been the first Swedish bride in the St. Croix Valley, it somehow seemed as if it were required of her to have a noble name. It was an honor to her homeland, perhaps. Anyway, it didn’t hurt her to be taken for a noble Swedish lady. The aristocratic ladies in Sweden were of course quite uppity, but as far as she knew they did not have bad reputations. And she didn’t feel their good names were besmirched when the paper raised her to noble status.

Ulrika prepared dinner for Kristina, sure that she was hungry after her long ride. She treated her to an omelet, warm from the oven, made of ten strictly fresh eggs which had been given to Henry for a sermon in Marine a few days ago.

“Henry is serving as priest in Franconia today,” said Ulrika. “He won’t be back until late. You must stay the night with us!”

“Come with me to the store and help me buy,” pleaded Kristina. “I can’t talk to the clerks.”

“I’ll be glad to be your interpreter, of course. But you must speak to Americans so you learn the language!”

Through her marriage to an American, Ulrika had become so familiar with English that she could understand it well and equally well make herself understood.

Kristina knew the meaning of a few English words but never tried to say anything in the foreign language. She was afraid of ridicule; the Americans laughed at the clumsy Swedes who attempted to use English. But Karl Oskar paid no attention, he just talked on.

“There’s something in this tongue that stops me,” she would say.

“Nothing except inexperience,” he would reply.

But when she wanted to use the English words she had to twist and turn her lips and loosen her tongue, insisted Kristina. She felt as if she were playacting, making a fool of herself, when she used English. Her tongue was not made for this strange language. And if she listened to others speaking it, she got a headache; it did not suit her ears either.

“Let’s go and get the shopping done with,” said Ulrika.

Kristina rose and picked up her basket, while Ulrika went to the wall mirror in the living room to put on her hat. It was indeed beautiful and amply decorated; a tall plume swayed from the front of the hat — as elegant as the plume of a soldier on parade; the top and the brim were heaped with multi-colored feathers and flowers, and long, red, silken ribbons dangled down the back. She fastened the enormous hat under her chin with a broad, green band, which she tied in a large bow at her right ear.

“In Sweden I had no right to wear a hat,” said Ulrika. “But in America I’ve become a free person.”

She wore her fashionable American hat with her head held high on her straight neck, proud and unafraid. The way she stood there now she was not unlike some noble lady in Sweden; the hat was the final touch to a woman’s transformation in North America.

Kristina tied on her old, worn, black silk kerchief which her parents had given her as a bridal gift and which she had worn now for eight years.

“Don’t you think I should put on a hat too and lay aside my old kerchief?”

“No! You need no hat! You were honestly married when you came here — but unmarried Ulrika needed one!”

Ulrika added that liberty was not in the hat, exactly, but rather in the right to wear it. On her wedding day, two years ago on May 4, she had put on her hat for the first time. That was the day she had declared her independence. Now she celebrated the Fourth of May the way the Americans celebrated the Fourth of July.

And so they went on their way to do Kristina’s shopping. Their route took them along the street which followed the river. During the spring months the St. Croix was covered with floating timbers, log beside log all the way to the bend of the river. Stillwater smelled of pitch and fresh lumber. In some places on the town’s main street the two women waded through sawdust to their ankles. As they walked, they met men in flaming red woolen shirts tucked under broad leather belts, most of whom swung elegant canes. They appeared to be proud, cocky men; Ulrika called them lumberjacks. Almost every male inhabitant of Stillwater had something to do with lumber.

And almost every second man they met doffed his hat courteously to Ulrika; she was the minister’s wife, she was well known in this town.

“Menfolk in America are so courteous and educated,” said Kristina.

“Here they value womenfolk,” replied Ulrika. “In that hellhole Sweden a man will use a woman as a hired hand in daytime and as a mattress at night. In between she isn’t worth a shit!”

How had she herself been valued in the old country? Other women — married and unmarried — had spat at her. But the married men had come to her for their pleasure. They had used sweet words, then. Then she was good enough. Good enough even for his honor the church warden of Åkerby himself. But going to church on Sundays he did not recognize her. And he was one of those who had been against her participation in the sacraments. He was himself an adulterer, but men could whore as much as they wanted without being denied the holy sacraments. In Sweden the sixth commandment was in effect for women only; they must obey the catechism written by that man Luther. But perhaps in that country the men only followed the lead of the king himself, who whored with sluts from the theater, and the crown prince, who from his earliest years had been considered the foremost rake in the kingdom.

At Harrington’s General Store Kristina, with Ulrika as interpreter, bought so many articles and necessities that her old shingle basket almost overflowed. The two women carried it between them, each holding her side of the handle. When they returned to the parsonage, Elin was waiting for them on the stoop; she had brought a message for Pastor Jackson from her employer, Mr. Hanley.

Kristina had not seen Ulrika’s daughter for two years and was greatly impressed with the change in her. She was only nineteen but looked and acted like a grown woman. She had a well-shaped body and her fresh skin shone with health. But she did not resemble her mother; she had black hair and dark eyes. She must take after her father, whoever he was; that secret Ulrika had never divulged. Elin had a position as an ordinary maid in town, yet here she was, dressed in a starched, Sunday-fine dress with large flowers, and this in the middle of the week, during working hours. No one would now recognize the shy little girl who once had been with them on the emigrant wagon to Karlshamn. Then she had worn a discarded old skirt Inga-Lena, Danjels wife, had given her, and carried a berry basket, and looked so forlorn. Today she looked like a young manor girl.

Kristina herself wore her best dress today, and it was worn and moth-eaten in places. At the sight of Ulrika’s daughter she felt as if she were decked out in rags. She had put on her best finery, and Elin was in her working clothes, yet Kristina felt poor in comparison with the maid of the American rich people. Many things were topsy-turvy in the New World.

Elin spoke English to her mother, making Kristina feel awkward and pushed aside, excluded from their talk. And then, too, Elin at first acted as if they never had seen each other before. Although then she admitted that it was true, they had come together from Sweden. Had the girl really grown that uppity? It looked suspiciously so. Kristina might have asked her if she had outgrown the skirt Inga-Lena had given her to cover her body during the journey to America. But the girl, of course, didn’t know any better.

After Elin left, Ulrika carried on at length with great pride about her daughter, who was, she said, capable and learned quickly. Mr. and Mrs. Hanley had increased her wages to twelve dollars a month, and they served fare that was better than holiday food in Sweden, where maids and hired hands had to be satisfied with herring all year round. But the girl caused her mother great concern because she was so beautiful; men were after her and played up to her, and Ulrika wasn’t sure if they had marriage in mind. In Sweden a beautiful girl of poor parents was nothing more than prey for lustful menfolk, and even out here there was surely an occasional pant-clad animal out hunting. But this much she had made up her mind about: her innocent little girl would not be prey for such a human beast. Elin’s maidenhead was not to be wasted in advance — like her own — without joy, but would be an honest man’s reward in the bridal bed.

Ulrika set the coffee table in the living room. They sat down on the sofa again under the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Jackson which Kristina greatly admired. Pastor Jackson had been the first kind and helpful person she had met in America. When they had arrived on the steamboat, and were sitting down by the river in a cold rain, their brats whining, all of them wet through and through, hungry and homeless, without shelter or roof — then it was that Pastor Jackson had taken charge of their whole helpless group, had brought them to his home, prepared food, fed them, made up beds for them to rest on overnight, and helped them continue their journey the following morning. And to think that one of the women in their group had become his wife!

“You have been given a kind and good husband, Ulrika.”

“Yes, Henry is gentle. He never uses a woman for a slave.”

“But how could you and he understand each other in the beginning, before you learned English?”

“Well,” said Ulrika, “a man and a woman always find a way if they like each other. We made signs and pointed and used our hands in the beginning.”

She handed Kristina the plate with the buttercakes to be dunked in their coffee. American men were easy for an experienced woman to handle; they were so quick to offer marriage. Four men had proposed and offered her their name before Henry came along. Good, upright, American men.

“Ulrika,” said Kristina reflectively, “before the marriage I guess you told your husband the truth about your life in Sweden, and he holds nothing against you, according to what you say?”

“No. And I hold nothing against him.”

“Against him? Do you mean that he too — the pastor. .?”

“Yes, he led a wretched life; sinful like mine.”

“That I wouldn’t have thought,” said Kristina, greatly surprised.

“I told you once, ‘Henry is nothing but a great sinner forgiven by God. We’re alike, he and I!’ Don’t you remember that?”

Kristina remembered. But she had understood this to mean that Pastor Jackson had been born in sin, like all people.

“Oh no! In his old body he lived in deep sin! One was no better than the other, Henry and I!” Ulrika held her cup firmly and looked steadily at Kristina. “Henry used to steal. The same as I whored. Those two actions even up.”

Kristina opened her mouth quickly. She closed it again without speaking.

Ulrika continued: “Henry was in prison in England. For stealing.”

He had had the same unhappy childhood in England as she had had in Sweden. She had lost her parents when four, he when three years of age. She was sold at auction to the lowest bidder, to be brought up, Henry had been put in a foundling home. Her foster father had raped her and taught her whoring, in the orphanage Henry had learned to steal. He stole food to satisfy his hunger. At the age of fourteen he had escaped from the home and continued to steal his food until he was caught and put in prison for three years. When he was released he had signed up on a ship to America. In New York he had lived among thieves and whores until he met a Baptist minister who converted him. He was baptized and given help to study for the ministry. For fifteen years now he had been a pastor.

Kristina listened, confused and embarrassed, and at first without taking much store in what she heard. But Ulrika couldn’t have made up all these tales.

“Henry is an old thief — I’m an old whore. We’re two of a kind and very happy together!”

Kristina thought Ulrika would feel hurt if she now tried to excuse her and her husband: “All that is now passed, all of it,” she stammered.

“Yes, Henry and I have been immersed and live now in new bodies. We’re forgiven by God. We’re reborn. Our hearts are cleansed.”

“I’ll never forget your husband’s kindness when we landed here. I couldn’t believe he was a churchman. He was so kind and helpful.”

Pastor Jackson of Stillwater was as different from the church officials at home as his rough-timbered church across the yard was different from Ljuder’s stone church.

“Henry has suffered,” said Ulrika. “People who have suffered are kind to other people.”

Jackson was a nobler and stronger Christian than she, and she wanted to make that clear. He was a help to her when the temptation of her old body came upon her. She couldn’t pretend to be better than she was. The old serpent tempted her; at times she could feel him tickle her weak flesh.

When she married Jackson, no man had been in bed with her for four long years. It was not easy for her to hold herself until after the wedding; she almost crept near Henry before that time. But she wanted so to wait until after the ceremony, to show him that she had conquered her old sinful flesh. And he had not tempted her — he was not that kind of raw and selfish man. And in this way he had helped her endure and preserve her new body innocent until the bridal ceremony was over.

When at last the time had come to pull on the bridal shift she had felt like a virgin. She couldn’t quite explain it, but she almost felt like a girl going to woman for the first time when at last they got down to business. And in her new body, rebaptized and all, she really was a virgin, untouched by men. She was still in her best years, and it had felt so wonderful to be able to use her body for the purpose for which it had been created, now that God had joined them together.

Henry himself had had hardly any experience at all when they married. He had slept a few times with ordinary waterfront whores in New York but that had been fifteen years ago. So she had had to instruct him and guide him. He had really had so little experience that he could be called a beginner at bed play.

“Jackson pushed in too fast in the beginning, that was the trouble. .”

Before Kristina had time even to suspect what Mrs. Jackson was describing, with this last sentence, Ulrika had jumped up; she had just dunked a second butter cake in her coffee and had barely swallowed a bite of it when she suddenly groaned loudly and rushed to the kitchen, her hands on her stomach.

What was the matter with Ulrika? But before Kristina could ask, her friend had returned to the living room. She dried her mouth with the back of her hand, jolly and happy as ever:

“Excuse me for running out!”

“Did you get something in your windpipe?”

“No, it was only my ‘priest.’ He’s on his way now.”

Kristina looked out through the window but could see no one outside. “Is Mr. Jackson coming?” she asked.

“No, not Henry. I meant the priest I’m going to bring into the world. I went out to reek a little.”

“Reek a little?”

Ulrika sat down again at the coffee table: “I’m in the family way, you see.”

Ulrika used the English words and it was a few moments before Kristina understood. Ulrika went on to explain. She had decided long ago that her first son should be a minister, the same as his father. With a son in the pulpit she would be redeemed in the eyes of Dean Brusander at home, he who had excluded her from his congregation.

“I haven’t had my regulars for two months and I puke like a she-cat. I’m pregnant.”

In Sweden when a woman was pregnant she was said to be on the thick, and it sounded as if she were afflicted with a shameful disease, said Ulrika. That was why she used the English words for her condition, it sounded fine and elegant in some way. Furthermore, this was the first time she was married to the father of a child of hers, and it seemed strange to her, but not unpleasant.

“I wish you all luck!” said Kristina. “I’ll carry your first-born to baptism as you carried my last-born.”

“I’m sorry, but he won’t be baptized until he is grown. We intend to immerse our brats in our own religion.”

That was true, the Baptists did not christen their babies. Kristina was apt to overlook the fact that Ulrika had embraced a new religion.

“You’re tardy with your pregnancy,” said Kristina. “You’ve been married two years now.”

“Yes, it’s taken so long I was getting worried. I myself have borne four brats in my life but I was beginning to wonder if Henry was useless. Having born the others outside wedlock, I’m anxious to have a few real ones too.”

Kristina sighed; the childbed Ulrika impatiently looked forward to she herself feared. Each month she trembled lest her period stop. And her apprehension had increased since Dan stopped suckling; she thought she had noticed that suckling was an obstacle.

Ulrika added that she had already bespoken a midwife, a Norwegian woman, Miss Skalrud, who had been maid of honor at her wedding. Miss Skalrud usually helped the women of their congregation at childbirth, and she had promised to help the little one through the portal into this world.

Toward evening Pastor Jackson returned from his journey to Franconia. He carried his bag with books and pamphlets and also a parcel which turned out to contain five pounds of wheat flour and three pounds of fresh butter, his wages for the sermon. In the doorway, he took his wife in his arms and patted her devotedly on the cheek with his big, hairy hand.

“Ollrika, my dear, forgive me! I’m late. My dearest Ollrika — and we have a dear guest. .!”

The pastor welcomed his wife’s good friend warmly. With blessing-like gestures he took Kristina’s hands and smiled at her, the same good, kind smile she remembered.

Ulrika’s husband had put on weight since Kristina had last seen him. His cheeks had filled out, his pants were tight around the waist, his stomach had begun to protrude. Ulrika had said, “I cook good food for Henry, don’t forget it!”

The Jacksons spoke to each other in English, and Kristina again was left out. Once more she felt like a deaf-mute, excluded from the company. But Pastor Jackson was not one of those who would laugh at her, he talked to her through his wife. Was everything well with them on the claim, how were the children, had they enough food, was there anything he could help them with? And she replied through Ulrika that all was well at home, that several new neighbors were moving in this summer, beginning with a farmer from Sweden with his wife and three children.

But after a while it became rather tiresome to speak to another person through a third one. Nor was she sure her own words always were interpreted correctly. Kristina wished dearly that she could use the English language, if for no other reason than to be able to talk to Pastor Jackson directly; he was her true friend. Without understanding a single one of his words she felt the warmth from them in her heart.

— 2—

Ulrika made a bed on the living room sofa for Kristina. She would leave early next morning on the lumber company’s ox wagon.

When the sun came up and Kristina had eaten breakfast, she thanked her friend for the hospitality and made ready to pick up her basket of groceries. Ulrika, to her surprise, brought her another basket, new and made of willow. A cloth was spread over it.

“A small present from the two of us, Kristina!”

Behind Ulrika stood Pastor Jackson, nodding eagerly as if he understood the Swedish words.

Mysterious cackling and chirpings could be heard from the basket. Kristina lifted a corner of the cloth and peeked. In the bottom of the basket sat a live brown-and-white speckled hen. But hers was not the only life in the basket: tiny chicks poked their heads through the wings of the mother, the little beaks shining like pink flower buds.

Kristina cried out joyfully. “Chickens! A hen!”

“We hope you like them! She’s hatched twelve, a whole dozen!”

Pastor Jackson smiled his kind smile: “Twelve young chickens!”

Ulrika said, “Henry is as proud of the chicks as if he himself had hatched them. The hen was given to him by a young couple in Taylors Falls as payment for a marriage service.”

Kristina choked, weeping with joy. If there was anything she had missed on the claim it was chickens. Now her throat was so full she couldn’t say thank you the way she would have wished; she could only mumble.

Ulrika gave her a small bag of rice for chicken feed: “Be careful with the basket! The little lives are delicate.”

Pastor Jackson picked up the grocery basket and Ulrika the basket with the hen and chicks, and the two of them accompanied Kristina to the lumber office at the end of the street. It was almost an hour before the wagon was loaded, but her friends remained with her until the driver was ready to start. When the wheels had already begun to roll, Ulrika called to her once more: she must be careful with the newly hatched feather-lives there on the driver’s seat.

Each time Ulrika had come to visit Kristina in her home she had brought gifts to her and the children. Once Kristina had complained of rats and rodents in their cabin that gnawed at the food and spoiled much of it for them, and next time Ulrika had brought a cat. The cat was a good mouser, but after a time they had found him in a bush near the house, bitten to death; some wild animal had torn out his throat.

And now she was driving home with Mr. and Mrs. Jackson’s most welcome gift. During the whole journey she sat with the basket on her knee and held on to it with both her hands, listening in quiet joy to the hen’s cackling and the peeps and chirps of the chicks. When the wheels rolled over stumps, or down into holes in the forest road, and her seat fell and rose, she clutched the basket more firmly.

In trees and bushes, along the whole stretch of the road, Kristina heard the spring birds of the forest, but she was unaware of them; their song was drowned by the determined chirping from the domestic birds on her knee. A hen, chickens, eggs! An egg each Sunday, eggs for cooking during the week! Egg bouillon, egg milk, egg pancakes! This was what the chirp from the chickens meant. Boiled eggs, fried eggs, eggs in omelets, eggs in the pan, eggs, eggs, eggs!

If she now had decent luck so that at least half of the twelve chicks were pullets! A rooster was good for only one meal, devoured at one sitting, but hens’ eggs would be food year in, year out.

Kristina’s thoughts turned gratefully to Ulrika and her husband. Her friends in the Stillwater parsonage had proved themselves her friends in every need. The Jacksons were the kindest people she knew in the world, despite the fact that both had led such wretched lives in their homelands. Here they had turned into new beings, they had become transformed in America. She had herself seen how Ulrika had blossomed in this country.

The same thing had happened to a great number of the immigrants. When they no longer had masters over them but could live their own lives as they wished, they became different people. When they could make their own decisions and need not obey others, they became new beings.

Kristina recognized that she herself had changed some out here; she valued people differently. In Sweden she had gone along with the common opinion and valued those whom others valued, looking down on those whom others looked down on. And at home there were those of a higher class whose opinions one should heed, for their ideas and actions were considered the right ones. But here she knew of no particular persons who were held up as examples; in this country, it seemed, people did not care what anyone thought or said about others.

And since no one out here was considered better than anyone else, each one must form his own opinions. She herself must stick to what she felt for others and knew of their deeds. She must make judgments that she considered right. Thus it came about that she now valued people differently. In this way she explained to herself the feelings she had about her friends in Stillwater.

Kristina had visited in a home where the husband had been a thief and the wife a whore. But this couple were her honest, devoted, indispensable friends. Outside her family, her best friends in America were the former thief and the former whore.

III. PLANNING AND PLANTING

— 1—

As soon as Petrus Olausson had raised his log house, his wife and children arrived. His wife’s name was Judit. She was a tall, rather lean, woman with small, quick, sharp eyes, a strong nose, and a severely compressed mouth which seemed distorted — the right corner was pulled up higher than the left. The couple had a girl fourteen years old and twin boys barely twelve.

Kristina felt a little shy with her neighbor the first time she came to call; her tongue was slow to converse with her. Judit Olausson, in her black, tight-fitting dress with a white starched lace collar which came all the way up to her chin, did not seem like an ordinary settler’s wife but rather like a matron on a well-to-do farmstead. There was something austere and commanding about her, whether it came from her penetrating look or the wry mouth; Kristina did not feel on equal footing with her neighbor. Olausson’s wife was also fifteen years older than she.

Later in the spring two families from Småland settled at Fish Lake on the east side of the valley. It was a great distance from this lake to Ki-Chi-Saga and the names of the newcomers were not known, nor which parish they came from.

But with the Olaussons’ arrival Karl Oskar and Kristina at last had close neighbors. The settlers gave each other a hand when need be; Karl Oskar lent Olausson a few tools, although the newcomer had brought along more implements than Karl Oskar had owned when he staked his claim. And it seemed the Helsinge farmer also was fairly well supplied with cash.

Petrus Olausson immediately suggested that the families hereabouts meet every Sunday at each house in turn to enjoy the comfort of religion and help each other with matters.

At these Sunday meetings, Olausson read from the Bible and gave a brief explanation of the passage he had read. Each time he mentioned the punishment he would have suffered in Sweden had he there attempted to explain the Bible.

He told them about the persecution he had experienced at the time he and his wife were Erik Janson’s apostles. The prophet had one day come to their home at Alfta to sell wheat flour — he was called Wheat-flour Jesus. At that time Janson was of a world-renouncing mind and adhered strictly to the Bible, considering all other religious books to be false. Because of this, the clergy had asked for his imprisonment and sent the sheriff after him. For several weeks they had hidden him under their barn floor. Three or four times a day they had carried food to him and later they had followed him to North America. The prophet from Biskopskulla had founded Bishop Hill, Illinois, where he intended to build the New Jerusalem. And Erik Janson had seemed to his followers as humanity’s great light, sent by God to restore Christianity. Here in America he would found a new and cleansed Lutheran Church.

His teachings had been honest and humble in the beginning, but he soon became puffed up with self-righteousness and destroyed himself thereby. No longer was he God’s representative on earth, he set himself above God. On the Illinois prairie he treated his people worse than the Americans treated their slaves; he ruled them as if they were his personal possessions. When a married man wanted to sleep with his wife he must first report his desire to Janson. And when the prophet gracefully had condescended to the bedding, then it must take place in full view of the whole congregation. Such was the shameless man’s pleasure. When people grew sick or old or useless for work, he simply commanded them to lie down and die. If the sick did not obey him and failed to die the same day, they were excluded from the colony.

The overbearing man brought on his own evil end: a murderer’s bullet.

And Petrus Olausson spoke of the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church, of Baptism and Methodism, and explained the differences in the religions which decided where a human was to spend eternity — in Heaven or in Hell. To Kristina the whole seemed confusing and difficult to understand. But she understood how easily a person could become ensnared in a false religion which would lead to eternal damnation. God himself had not given clear instructions about the right road, and an ignorant, simple sinner like herself could not find it without guidance. That was why ministers were essential.

Man did not obey God when obeying authority, said Olausson, and that too sounded strange and confusing to her. As a child she had been taught that no authority existed except that which derived its power from God. But her previous instruction, it now seemed, was a falsification of the Swedish clergy, according to the Helsinge farmer. The sheriff who had chased Erik Janson under the barn floor and put Bible-reading persons in prison on bread and water had not received his office from God but from the Crown. The provincial governor was a successor to Pilate, who had sentenced Christ to crucifixion. And nowhere in the Bible did it say that God had ordained sheriffs to plague Christian people who read the Bible in their homes. The sheriffs in Sweden were successors to the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus at the order of civil authorities.

In her catechism, however, Kristina had learned that she ought to respect and obey authority for the Lord’s sake, and she often felt that her neighbor was mistaken.

Petrus Olausson urged the Swedish settlers in the valley to get together and build a church without delay. Karl Oskar pointed out that they also needed a schoolhouse; their children were growing up and they needed Christian schooling unless the parents wanted them to become heathens. Johan was already of school age and Lill-Marta only a year younger. He and Kristina had tried to teach the brats as best they could, but they had no Swedish spelling book and no catechism. Karl Oskar had taught Johan the letters of the alphabet from the Swedish almanac, but it was not very good for spelling since it had so few words in it. The boy learned too slowly in this way, and Karl Oskar was not much of a teacher. And both Johan and Lill-Marta would soon need to learn the contents of other books as well; it would be useful for both the boy and the girl to be able to read and write.

Karl Oskar had often discussed the building of a schoolhouse with Danjel Andreasson. There were three children in New Kärragärde, older than their own, whom their father had instructed so far.

The Olaussons too, had instructed their children, first and foremost in the true Lutheran religion, in order to instill in them from tender years the pure faith. Olausson thought they could use the church they intended to build as a schoolhouse, but Karl Oskar thought they should not wait — building a church might take several years — and they could not get along without a schoolhouse for so long, or their children would have become too old to go to school.

There were many matters for the settlers to attend to. They must build and build again — temples for God, houses for people, schoolhouses for children, shelters for the cattle, barns for the crops, storehouses, implement sheds. Karl Oskar had laid the foundation for a new living house which he hoped to have roofed by next year, and that was only a poor beginning. As he thought of the coming years he could see himself constantly occupied with eternal carpentry, eternal sill-laying for new buildings.

— 2—

In order to please Kristina, Karl Oskar had named his new home Duvemåla, and had written to his wife’s home for apple seeds and had planted an Astrakhan apple tree for her: this was his remedy for her homesickness. He wanted to know if it had helped and asked her if she still suffered as much as before. She replied that she thought perhaps her longing for home had died down a little.

Now Kristina could say: I live again at Duvemåla, this is my home, I hold it dear, here I will stay as long as I live. And she was pleased with the little seedling that had grown from the apple seeds. She looked after it constantly and tended the small plant as if it were a delicate living being.

Thus far all was well. But neither the name, Duvemåla, nor the seedling could divert her thoughts from her old home. On the contrary, they now turned more often to her native country.

Even during the night she would return in her dreams, in which she moved back to her homeland, with husband and children. Happily there, she wondered over her foolishness ever to have undertaken the long journey out into the world. What business had she had far away in America? She had a good home here. Well, anyway, everything had turned out all right, all of them were unharmed, back in their old village. She might even dream that the whole emigration had been an evil nightmare.

But in the morning she always awakened in America.

Kristina tried persistently to suppress this longing, this desire for and loss of something she would never have again. She wanted to conquer her weakness and be as strong as Karl Oskar. She had made her home here forever, she must learn to feel at home, become part of the foreign country. But in this, her will would not obey her; something in her soul refused to obey.

And spring in Minnesota, with its dark evenings, was her difficult season; then she yearned for the land with evenings of another hue. She longed for Sweden as much as ever, but she kept this from her husband. She must carry this incurable soul-ache in secret, hide it like a shameful disease, as people hid scabby and scurvy sores on their bodies.

How many times hadn’t Kristina wished that she could write a letter to her parents! But Swedish women were not taught to write. Perhaps if she herself had insisted, when she was little, she might have learned to write. But how could she have known what was in store for her? As a little girl she could not have imagined that her life would be spent on another continent. Nor had anyone else at home imagined that a woman of their village would move so far away from her relatives that she needed to write letters to her parents. Her fate had not been anticipated by the village school laws.

Now she was separated from her dear ones; not a word from her could reach them except through another person. After Robert had left for California, Karl Oskar had written a few short letters for her to her parents. Robert had helped her to express her thoughts, but Karl Oskar had difficulty in forming the sentences and capturing her feeling in writing. The letters became the same, almost word for word: she was well, all was well with them, her father and mother must not worry about their daughter, her daily thoughts were with them in her dear old Duvemåla. These last were the truest words in the letters.

It was always her father who answered, as her mother too, being a woman, could not write, and he wrote equally short letters, using direct biblical words: their daughter must put her trust in the Lord in North America, she must bring up her children in the Lord’s ways and with strict discipline, as she herself had been brought up in her home, she must obey the Ten Commandments and live irreproachably so that they might meet in Heaven.

His final words confirmed her belief that she never again would see her parents and brothers and sisters on this earth. And she asked dejectedly: Why must the world be so immensely large? Why must the roads across it be so dreadfully long?

Kristina suffered because the world was so large that she never again would meet her relatives from the homeland in life.

— 3—

When the tall drifts round the cabin melted away in the spring, the landscape seemed empty and bare. Without their winter covering the log walls appeared in all their wretchedness. Now their home looked like a simple outhouse, a hay barn or a shed. There was nothing to indicate that this was a human habitation. A flower garden was what was needed.

Flowers cheered one up and were a decoration outside a home, and company for one when alone. When she was first married, Kristina had planted a flower bed against the wall of their house in Korpamoen — resedas, asters, sunflowers, larkspur, lavender, daisies, and other flowers.

This spring she would prepare a flower bed in front of her new home. She hoed a patch under the south window, and decided to try to get the same kind of flowers she had planted at home, if they were obtainable here.

Mr. Abbott, the Scottish storekeeper in Taylors Falls, had all kinds of seeds for sale. And shortly before Whitsuntide she had an opportunity to ride to Taylors Falls with Jonas Petter and Swedish Anna. Like her they were going to the Scotsman for their holiday purchases.

All three had finished their shopping and were sitting on the wagon, ready to return home, when Kristina remembered that she had forgotten the flower seeds. She jumped off and walked back to the store alone.

Mr. Abbott, behind the counter, greeted her with a lift of his white cap and adjusted the pencil behind his right ear; he was much more courteous to women than to men. The tall Scot was one of Ulrika’s rejected suitors. But a couple of years ago he had married the daughter of the German Fisher, and his wife had borne him a daughter who already managed to crawl about on the floor, both behind the counter and in front of it.

Kristina had become acquainted with him and was able to buy from him, even though they did not understand each other’s language, since he usually guessed what she wanted and would point to the shelves where his wares were displayed. But she did not know where he kept his seeds, nor did she know what they were called in English. Perhaps flowers had the same names in both languages. She tried the foreign tongue for the first time:

“I wanta planta blooms. . blommer. .”

The storekeeper listened without changing expression. He did not understand her and answered in words she in turn did not understand. In vain she looked around the shelves for seed bags. He must keep them in a drawer — but which one?

She grew embarrassed and annoyed at herself; was she unable to buy a few seeds for her own patch? She would take any kind, whatever he had, for it would be futile to stand here and ask for aster, lion-hearts, and other Swedish flowers she wanted. The question now was, could she get any seeds at all?

Then she saw a paper hanging from a shelf with a red flower painted on it. Relieved, she pointed to the paper and exclaimed:

“I wanta this! Blommer!

Mr. Abbotts face lighted up:

“Ah — you want seed, Mrs. Nelson?”

But she knew the meaning of the word “seed.” Karl Oskar had bought seed for their field, she did not want rye or barley.

“No! No! Not seed! I wanta blommer!

Mr. Abbott brought out a heap of small bags and spread them on the counter; he opened one of them to show her that it was seed. Well, perhaps it was the right kind; she could see the seeds with her own eyes, but the English printed on the bags she could not read; she must buy blindly.

Kristina fingered the small bags and chose five. As far as she could see, there was different printing on each one, so at least she would have five kinds of flowers.

She told Karl Oskar when she came home that she had blindly bought five kinds of flower seed for her patch under the window. She thought it would be amusing to see what she had picked; she hoped some of them would be the same varieties she had grown in Korpamoen.

Her new flower bed lay against the long front side of the house, on the south facing the sun; they would surely grow here. And she cleaned the earth well, picking away roots and weeds before she put the seed in the ground. She pushed it down in rows, one kind to each row, filled the holes with earth, evened out the bed, flattened it with a piece of board, so that it looked neat and orderly.

Flowers would grow near the house, they would be at the entrance, the place of honor. Flower beds belonged to a home. No one planted flowers in front of a barn, a stable, or a pigpen; a flower bed distinguished a home from animal shed.

Here her flowers would grow right under the window so they would catch her eye as soon as she looked out. And people would see from a distance that human beings lived in this cabin of rough timbers.

When Kristina finished her planting and had her flower bed in order she felt she had moved a little patch of ground from her homeland to the settlement at Ki-Chi-Saga.

— 4—

Minnesota’s hot season was approaching. Each day the sun felt warmer. The earth dried out, and Kristina watered her flower bed every evening. Flowers responded to the care given them, they grew better if they were watched and cared for, they appreciated water and attention. And flowers changed from one day to another; in the morning sun they proudly raised their heads, in fog and rain their heads were bent, sad and depressed; as with people, their appearance often changed.

Karl Oskar kept busy hoeing turf on the new-broken field; with a team he could have plowed and enlarged his field faster. Here lay the whole meadow with wild grass which was good only for hay. How much more wouldn’t it give him if it were cultivated! It had been lying here in fallow ever since the day of Creation. Now the tiller had arrived, and the time for the earth to give bread to people. At the house wall Kristina had planted her own little field. The flower bed would amuse her, and perhaps lessen her thoughts of longing. She needed something different to occupy her here, something to shatter her homesickness.

Each morning as Kristina rose she looked out at her flower bed: had they come up yet? The days went by but nothing was seen aboveground. It took time. . but she asked Karl Oskar what he thought; was it possible that Mr. Abbott had sold her old seeds that wouldn’t grow? He assured her that he had bought seed grain and seeds for rutabagas and carrots and parsnips and all had come up.

Then Karl Oskar too began to look at the flower bed. Each day he seemed more thoughtful. And one morning he said to his wife:

“Come and have a look at your claim, Kristina!”

In a headlong jump she was out of bed: small, awlsharp blades were shooting up from the earth. In the early sun they glittered like grain shoots. These were not tender flower stems; what she saw were shoots of grass.

“That’s what I thought!” she exclaimed, annoyed. “He gave me old seed — only weeds are coming up!”

“Weeds do not grow in rows,” said Karl Oskar calmly.

“In rows?” A new thought struck her. “You don’t mean I’ve planted. .?”

She bent down and looked closely. He was right: the grass grew in row after row — in five long rows.

“Exactly where I planted the seeds! Good Lord, what’s this. .?”

Karl Oskar pointed and explained: “Here at the edge grows timothy, the next row is clover. .”

“My Lord, how I’ve been fooled!”

Kristina had planted fodder grass instead of flowers in her garden bed. And when Karl Oskar mentioned clover she realized what had happened: when she asked for seeds in Mr. Abbott’s store she had pointed to a paper with a red flower — a clover blossom!

Neither asters nor resedas came up outside her window, neither daisies, nor sunflowers, neither larkspur nor lavender. Clover plants grew there, stands of timothy, and other grasses, rough, reddish, American fodder grass, unknown to her. But these plants she need not cultivate — they grew wild in abundance around the house, they stood yard-high everywhere, there were such quantities of them they could not save half.

“Laugh at me, Karl Oskar! Poke fun at me! I’m a fool. .”

Why had she been so dumb as to try to speak English when she knew she couldn’t? Why hadn’t she asked Jonas Petter or Swedish Anna to help her buy the flower seeds? And where had her senses been when she was planting — she knew the difference between flower seeds and grass seed. She had thought the flower seeds looked unusual, but then, everything in America was different. .

It was a little annoying, said Karl Oskar, but nothing to take seriously. He too in the beginning had made mistakes when he bought things. The English language was so confusing, it was hazardous to speak it, some words were so mixed up in that tongue. He had had great trouble when he bought seed rye: as long as the rye grew in the field it was called crop but as soon as it was harvested and threshed it was called grain, even though it was rye all the time. She was not the only one to make a mistake.

But Kristina was a perfectionist. Therefore, it was of no comfort to her that Karl Oskar could make similar mistakes. It did not worry her so much that she made a fool of herself to others, but she felt a fool in her own eyes, dejected, and that was worse.

“Someone like me ought to stay home. I ought not to poke my nose beyond the claim. I am so stupid in English I ought not to mix with other people.”

“But this mistake is easily remedied!” exclaimed Karl Oskar.

She could plant the bed with new seeds; he would buy the right ones for her next time he had an errand in Taylors Falls or Stillwater.

But after all her worry and concern for the plants she had thought would become flowers, she did not wish to start all over again this summer.

She pulled up the grass plants, each and every one, hoed the bed, and planted cabbage instead.

She should have learned this much by now: it was, and remained forever, difficult to transplant the homeland in foreign soil. A person could not change countries and make a foreign place into home overnight. Perhaps she would not even live long enough to do that.

One thing was sure — it would be some time before she again tried to speak English.

IV. GUESTS IN THEIR OWN HOUSE

— 1—

Spring brought potent growing weather; it was dry during seeding and planting time, then when the fields were prepared a generous rain fell for several days without letup; it poured down in sheets from low-hanging, pregnant clouds. The cabin’s sod roof began to leak and the Nilssons brought out all available vessels to catch the drip. The roof had never leaked before, but this was the most persistent downpour they had experienced in Minnesota.

During one of the rainy nights Karl Oskar was awakened by his wife touching his elbow: “Someone is knocking on the door!”

He sat up in bed and listened. Out there in the black night the rain was pouring down, beating against the window. It dripped from the ceiling and splashed in the vessels on the floor. But above the sounds of the rain came a heavy banging against the door.

“There’s someone out there — it woke me,” said Kristina.

Karl Oskar pulled on his pants and lit a candle on the table. Who would come at this hour of the night? Someone must have lost his way and was seeking shelter from the rain.

Kristina too slipped out of bed and pulled on her petticoat. She whispered, “Ask who it is before you open!”

It might be one of the new neighbors in need of help. But they could expect unfriendly callers day or night and must not be taken unawares; their door was always well bolted at night.

Before Karl Oskar had time to ask, a man’s voice was heard through the cloor: “I’m a lone wanderer. Please give me shelter, good people!”

These pleading words were in Swedish and that was enough for Karl Oskar; he pushed back the heavy bolts.

A man in a long, black coat and a black, broad-brimmed hat stumbled across the threshold, his legs unsteady. His coat was covered with mud and soaked through with rain; it hung on him limply. Water splashed in his boots with every step. He sank down on a chair, collapsing like an empty sack, and breathed heavily, “Much obliged. Thank you, my good Swedes.”

Utterly confused, Karl Oskar and Kristina eyed their unexpected night caller, a thin young man with a pale, narrow face and large blue eyes. He carried a handbag of shining black leather, and his muddy clothes were of fine quality. He had white, well-cared-for hands, like those of a scrivener or a nobleman. The stranger looked like a gentleman, not a trapper or a settler. Why was he wandering about in the wilderness in this ungodly weather?

The man removed his hat, and the water ran in runnels from the brim; his hair, too, was thoroughly wet and clung to his skull. From his coat and pants water ran onto the floor and formed puddles round his chair.

Kristina pulled on her night jacket. “You’re out in evil weather,” she said.

“Where do you come from?” asked Karl Oskar.

“I’ve walked from St. Paul.” He panted for breath, exhausted from fatigue. “I’m worn out. .”

It was evident to both of them that he was in a sorry condition.

“Make a fire so he can dry himself!” said Kristina.

Karl Oskar pushed aside the kettles and bowls, earthen crocks and cauldron lids, which stood on the floor half filled with water, and made a passage to the fireplace. He found some dry kindling behind the chimney and soon a great fire blazed on the hearth. It lit up the room so that he could see the stranger more clearly. What he saw shocked him: on the man’s forehead and on his neck were horrible, bleeding spots.

“You’re bleeding! Has someone stabbed you?”

“I was attacked by many enemies. .”

“Enemies! Where? In the forest?”

“I was asleep. . they came over me. . in a whole swarm. . they pierced me with their arrows. .”

“The redskins? Are they on the warpath?”

A few weeks earlier a message had come from Fort Snelling that the Sioux had been active in Carver County along the Minnesota River. Some of the settlers had fled to St. Paul. But a few days later they had heard that the rumor was false. They were, however, still uneasy; before the second message had arrived they had been prepared to hide in the forest.

Kristina listened intently, turned her eyes quickly to the sleeping children. “The Indians! Are they coming this way. .?”

“No. . it wasn’t the Indians. I was attacked by. . mosquitoes. .”

The stranger pushed his chair to the fire and began to pull off his boots; the water splashed round his feet; on one boot the leather had burst at his big toe, which stuck out through the hole.

“A swarm of thousands of mosquitoes attacked me in the forest,” he explained. “They made these wounds with their sharp stingers. .”

Kristina breathed more easily; she was familiar with those torture bugs. She preferred them to Indians on the warpath, their faces smeared with red paint.

The guest took off his dripping coat as well. His pants were torn, his shirt stuck out through a hole in the back.

The poor man must be hungry, thought Kristina, and she took some of the barley porridge left from their own supper and put the kettle over the fire. She poured fresh milk into a bowl, and put out bread and syrup.

Their guest’s appearance and way of talking indicated he was an upper-class man, and Karl Oskar did not use the familiar “du” in talking to him. Not wanting to seem curious, he told the man his own name and the place in Sweden he came from, hoping the stranger would do as much. His suspicion of strangers would not leave him.

“My name is Erland Törner,” the man said. “I was born in Östergötland.”

“Are you here to claim land?”

“No. I am a minister in the Swedish Church.”

“What’s that. .?”

“A minister!”

The exclamation came from Kristina. She almost dropped the jar of maple syrup. “A minister from Sweden? Did I hear aright?”

“Yes, I am sent by the Church at home.”

Karl Oskar stared at the man whose feet in worn-out socks rested on the hearth. This country was a gathering place for all sorts of people; a great many crooks and swindlers found their way here, as well as lazy, useless people who wanted to live off others. He was not one to believe an unknown person’s words right off. Here, in the middle of the night, had come to his house a stranger, a man who wandered about in the wilderness without errand; he had arrived muddy, his clothing torn, covered with blood, the toes sticking out of his boots, a hole in his behind, telling them he was a man of the Church from Sweden, consecrated by the bishop to preach. A real minister, not one of those American ministers who apparently were a breed of their own. How could this man expect to be believed right off?

But Kristina had no doubts. She had wondered about his long black coat and his black leather bag and his way of talking. She should have understood at once that he was a churchman. And now she spoke to him as to an entirely different person, respect and reverence in her voice. “When did you leave home, Mr. Pastor?”

“Half a year ago.”

And it seemed he had guessed Karl Oskar’s suspicion — he searched in his bag and found a thick paper. “I’m entirely unknown to you, my dear countrymen. Here are my papers to prove what I said.”

He handed the paper to Karl Oskar, who learned from it that their guest was Pastor Lars Paul Erland Törner, born at Västerstad, Östergötland, in the Kingdom of Sweden, May 16, 1825. The pastor was two years younger than himself.

“We did not doubt you, Mr. Pastor!” Karl Oskar assured him quickly.

“Mr. Pastor, you must change your wet clothes!” said Kristina.

The young minister had begun to revive; he smiled at her. “Don’t call me Mister, Mrs. Nilsson! Pastor is enough.”

“And don’t call me Mrs. My name is Kristina. I’m not of the upper class!”

“But here in America all married women are called Mrs.”

This she must know, he added, there was no difference here between nobles and ordinary people; all were equal. And that was why he liked it so much in this country. God had never created different classes, only people.

“Here, Pastor, are some dry clothes,” said Karl Oskar.

He had found the wadmal suit the village tailor had made for him at the time of his emigration. He had now worn it for three years, on weekdays and Sundays, for he no longer had any special Sunday clothing. Most of the settlers wore equally poor clothes.

“If you can wear them, they’re the best I have. .”

“Thank you, Mr. Nilsson. Any dry clothing is blessed clothing.”

The young minister changed in front of the fire and his host hung up the drenched garments to dry.

Karl Oskar had a full, strong body, while Pastor Törner was lean and spindly; he did not nearly fill the clothes he put on. Around the minister’s thin legs the settler’s pants almost stood by themselves, stiff and unbending, and his hands disappeared entirely in the long coat sleeves. The roomy garments enveloped the thin body and hung on it as if it were a post.

To Kristina, their guest looked like a scarecrow in Karl Oskar’s coat and pants. It was almost a dishonor to the Church to clothe a minister this way; it was a degradation for one anointed for the Holy Church. She was tempted to laugh; she could not help but visualize the decked-out figure in a pulpit! But she must control herself; it meant nothing how Christ’s servant was dressed. Christ himself had no real clothes, only a poor mantle. He did not even own boots, no shoes or footgear of any kind, but walked barefoot like a beggar. And his disciples were dressed even more poorly than the settlers of this valley.

She filled the washbowl and handed it to the minister so that he might wash off the blood on his neck and forehead. And now that she knew who he was she began to worry that the food she offered him was too poor; could one really treat a minister to warmed-up porridge?

She curtsied: would the pastor partake of their simple supper?

“Mrs. Nilsson, you could not offer food to a more grateful being than myself!”

Pastor Törner sat down at the table and turned up the right coat sleeve so that his hand was free to use the spoon. Then he filled his plate to the brim with barley porridge.

His hosts sat down a few paces from the table; they wanted to be courteous. Kristina could not quite believe what was taking place in her home this night. A man of the Church, who had stood in the pulpit and before the altar in Sweden, who had officiated at baptisms, weddings, funerals, and Holy Communion, had come to their house in the wilderness, and was sitting at their table, wearing Karl Oskar’s clothes, and eating the remnants of their supper. It seemed like a miracle.

“I got wet to the skin as I was crossing a creek,” said the young minister.

“The streams are overflowing with all this rain,” said Karl Oskar.

“I lost my way, then I happened onto a field and realized I must be near a settlement. God has led me to this hospitable home.”

With his last words Kristina suddenly held her breath. She was working up to a question.

Karl Oskar sat in amazement. Three kinds of people emigrated from Sweden: the poor and landless ones, those who preached religious opinions differing from the state Church, and those who had committed crimes. A minister was never poor, he had a home and a salary, he was well off. And he preached the right religion. So the question was, had he done something wrong? Why otherwise would a minister emigrate?

He dared a direct question: “Why did you come to America?”

“Because of the emigrants.”

“Because of us. .”

“Yes. I wish to help look after the souls of my countrymen. That’s why I left my homeland and resigned my position there.”

Pastor Törner had eaten with ravenous appetite and having scraped up the last spoonfuls of porridge from his plate, he began to talk. In his parish at home he had preached against the so-called Church Resolution, which decreed heavy punishment for those poor souls who, through negligence of the clergy, became ensnared in heresy. Fines, prison sentences on bread and water, exile — these measures, he said, did not bring any strayed souls back to the fold of the Church. You could not force people onto the right road by severe civil laws, but only through Christ’s mild gospel. For sermons of this kind he had been rebuked by bishop and chapter. By the Church’s grace he had been permitted to resign, and when some farm families from his parish emigrated to America, he had joined them as their pastor. He had not wished to have them or their fellow emigrants become prey to the many false teachings that were sweeping North America. In this country he aimed to give spiritual aid to his landsmen wherever he found them.

And he added, with a look at the sleeping children, “I am sent to prevent your children from growing up heathens in this foreign land.”

He rose from the table. Kristina’s eyes were fixed on him. This thin, pale young man, with little strength to endure physical tribulations, had traveled the same long, hazardous road and had sought them out in their new settlement to help them in their spiritual vexations.

He had come to the right place; he had himself said that God had shown him the way through the wilderness to their home.

And now she realized fully the miracle that had taken place tonight.

— 2—

Karl Oskar and Kristina got little sleep that night; they sat up talking to the young minister.

“I was told in St. Paul that Swedes were living near this lake,” he said.

“There are only a few of us as yet,” said Karl Oskar.

“I’ll look up all of them.”

“You say you resigned your position at home — who is paying you now?”

“No one. Kind people feed and shelter me, as you’re now doing in this home.”

Karl Oskar said that he thought that as a minister had spent much money on expensive schooling he ought to receive definite pay for pastoral duties.

“There’s nothing stated about that in the gospels. Paid positions for pastors are human inventions.”

God had nowhere ordained wages for ministers, continued Pastor Törner. The Bible said nothing about it. And Jesus promised no pay to his apostles when he sent them out to preach among all the people of the world. The apostles lived in great poverty. Christ had not designated parishes or bishoprics for them. He appointed no chapters, set forth no ecclesiastical domains. The establishment of positions for gospel preachers came about long after his life here on earth, when those in worldly power had taken over and falsified his teachings. In the present age, the official positions (the state offices) were the greatest hindrance to spreading the gospel among the people. But within a hundred years these positions would undoubtedly be discarded throughout the world, even in backward Sweden. In that country, religious persecutions had become so intense that protests had been raised by other, more enlightened, countries.¹

Karl Oskar and Kristina thought their guest was a most unusual minister.

“Have people in these settlements forgotten the Ten Commandments? Have they God’s Word with them here to read?” he asked.

From their Swedish chest Kristina fetched the two books which, together with the almanac, had accompanied them from their home village: Karl Oskar’s confirmation Bible and her confirmation psalmbook.

“I see that all is well in this house!”

Pastor Törner had visited several Swedish settlements where God’s Word was missing. In one settlement of nine families on the Illinois prairie he had been unable to find more than two Bibles; all the settlers had been physically healthy and thriving, but although he had been pleased with their worldly success he had felt depressed by their spiritual poverty; he had encountered grown men and women who remembered no more than two or three of the Commandments but he had aided them to the best of his ability. One poor old man, tottering on the edge of his grave, knew not one of the Commandments. And many were filled with hatred against Sweden and the Lutheran religion and lived happily in their conviction that the devil had ordained the authorities in that country in order to assure for himself all the souls there, without interference.

Pastor Törner had encountered no slackness in morals among his countrymen out here, he was glad to relate. He had already baptized many newborn children in the Swedish settlements, but only two had been born out of wedlock, and they had been begotten on board ship during the crossing, so those sins had not been committed here in America.

Kristina had long been sitting with a question on her lips, the anxious question, so important to her:

“Could you, Mr. Pastor. . would you be kind enough to prepare us for the Holy Communion. .?”

“With greatest pleasure, Mrs. Nilsson! I carry the Lord’s token with me in my bag. I distribute these means of grace to all who ask for them.”

“We have not enjoyed it for more than three years.”

“Couldn’t I hold communion for all the Swedes in this neighborhood at the same time?” wondered the young minister. “It would strengthen their spiritual solidarity.”

“We live so far apart here,” said Karl Oskar.

“And we have no church,” said Kristina.

Pastor Törner smiled kindly and waved his hands in Karl Oskar’s long sleeves, brushing away their objections with the greatest of ease. He had held communion in dense forests, on the open prairie, in log cabins and kitchens, in sheds and stables and cellars, on ox wagons, on riverboats — and a few times even in a church! What need had he, a poor God’s servant, of a gilded pulpit, an expensively decorated altar, when the founder of Christianity himself had preached from a naked mount, and his disciples from dim dungeons! Should he consider himself above Jesus?

He looked about in the room: “Could I be permitted to use this home for a communion?”

Karl Oskar and Kristina looked worriedly at each other, then they answered, both at the same time: “Our home can be used, of course. . if our simple log cabin is good enough. . of course we will. .”

“Thank you! Then we will invite the people and set the Lord’s table here in this house!”

And the minister waved his long sleeves with increased liveliness; it was already decided, then!

But it was late, their guest was tired and needed rest. Kristina said she would make a bed for Johan and Harald on the floor and let the minister sleep in their bed.

“Don’t awaken the boys for my sake, Mrs. Nilsson!” he insisted. “Last night I slept under a pine tree. I’ll sleep on the floor, as long as I’m under a roof.”

Kristina then offered her own and Karl Oskar’s bed and suggested they sleep on the floor. She had an old mattress cover they could fill with hay. Karl Oskar took the cover and went out to the barn where there was hay from last year. Outside, the rain still fell in streams. In the barn, he filled the mattress with the dusty old hay and carried it inside and prepared a bed on the floor against the hearth.

“An excellent bed for me!” said the young pastor.

But Kristina would not give in: they could not allow a man of the Church to sleep on the floor, in the fireplace corner, as beggars and hoboes did at home. They could not remain in their own bed and send God’s anointed to the shame-corner. It would be degrading to the Church; they would commit a grave sin. No, their best bed, their own, must be given to the guest. And she spread a clean sheet on it.

Their guest explained that he really was not a churchman, since he no longer held a position in the Church, but as their bed was offered him with a good heart he would accept.

And Pastor Törner undressed and lay down in the settler couple’s bed, where he fell into a deep sleep within a few minutes.

“Poor man,” said Kristina. “He was completely worn out.”

And so they themselves again went to bed. This time they lay on the hay mattress, in the chimney corner, while the minister from Sweden snored heavily in their bed. Karl Oskar still wondered about him; he had given up a good position in the homeland and was wandering here through the wilderness, without food or shelter. Otherwise, his talk and general behavior seemed to indicate that he had his senses intact.

Kristina felt a blessed assurance in her heart; a stranger had come to them in the night and promised her the Lord’s Supper. One night in early spring she had in her anxiety directed a question to the Almighty: What should they do about their sins here in their isolation? What must they do to save their souls?

Tonight she had been given an answer.

— 3—

Before Pastor Törner awakened the following morning, Kristina had found thread and a needle and mended the torn places in his coat and the hole in the seat of his pants. To have a minister walk about with pants that had a hole in the behind was a disgrace to the Church which she must at once erase. Then she brushed and cleaned his muddy clothes.

When the pastor awoke and put on his suit he hardly recognized it. He praised Kristina: “Give a woman a needle and thread and as much cloth as she needs and she can turn herself into a queen and her home into a palace!”

Kristina smiled. She was walking about in such old rags it would be a long time before she looked like a queen. But it would be a shame if a woman with a needle and thread couldn’t baste together a few holes in a garment.

After breakfast Pastor Törner made ready to continue on his way. He opened his black leather bag, which contained a flask of communion wine, a small sack of communion bread, a couple of white, newly starched minister’s collars, and a dozen small jars of a remedy for fever and chills. This was quinine and the price for each jar was seventy-five cents. In his bag the pastor carried remedies for both soul and body.

Another minister from Sweden, Pastor Hasselquist in Galesburg, Illinois, had come across the medicine and sent it along by Pastor Törner for those Swedish settlements where fevers and chills constantly plagued the people. Pastor Hasselquist had also hoped his colleague might earn a little by selling the medicine. But the settlers had little cash, and most of the time he had to leave the jars without payment. Many of them needed quinine for their bodies as much as they needed communion wine for their souls. He presented Kristina with a jar of the remedy as a small reward for bed and board.

He promised to return within a short time and set the date for the communion in their house. But first he wanted to call on the other Swedish settlers in the St. Croix Valley.

Karl Oskar walked a bit on the road with Pastor Törner to show him the way to their nearest neighbor, Petrus Olausson from Helsingland.

Gradually it stopped raining, and in the late morning the sun came out. Kristina picked up the mattress she and Karl Oskar had slept on; the cover seemed moist to her, perhaps it had got wet when Karl Oskar went to fetch the hay, and she wanted to dry it. She carried the mattress to the barn and emptied it near the door. She had barely finished when she let out a piercing scream. Something that looked like a dry tree branch had come out of the mattress with the hay, but she had paid scant attention to it; now she saw that it was a wriggling, living thing she had shaken out.

Karl Oskar, who was just returning, was near the stoop when he heard his wife’s cries from the barn. He ran to her as fast as he could.

“A snake! Karl Oskar, a snake!”

Kristina shrieked as if someone had stuck a knife into her. She stood with the empty mattress cover in her hands, staring at the hay wads inside the door.

“What happened? Have you hurt yourself?”

She pointed in front of her: “That thing. . it was in the mattress. . in the hay. .!”

Karl Oskar, standing beside her, saw in the hay a snake, extended to its full length. It was light gray with brown stripes and thick rings on its tail. A rattler!

The sight of the reptile had frightened Kristina so, she was unable to move from the spot. Karl Oskar grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. “Get out of his reach! He might strike!”

He pushed her still farther away, while he looked for something to kill it with. “Be careful! The snake might throw himself at you!”

As yet he had never killed a rattler. He had seen such snakes, curled up in low places, but none had attacked him and he had not disturbed them. They were not so easy to dispatch as the snakes in Sweden which only crawled on the ground. Rattlers were more dangerous — they could raise themselves on their tails and throw themselves at a person as fast as an arrow from a bow. But this evil thing must not escape; if it crawled under the barn they would live in eternal fear of it.

Under the oak at the side of the barn was a pile of fence posts. He grabbed one, and took down the scythe which hung in the tree. He held the scythe in front of him in his left hand and the post in his right. Thus armed he stole slowly, with bent back, toward the reptile at the barn door.

The rattler was still lying quite still in the hay; it seemed drowsy in the sun.

“Karl Oskar! Don’t go so close! Be careful!”

It was Kristina’s turn to urge caution. She had found a rake which she held in front of her; couldn’t she help him kill the nasty creature?

Karl Oskar was a few steps from the snake when the animal raised its head. Its tongue, red and shining like a flower pistil, shot out of its jaws — the reptile was showing its stingers where death lurked. And now the rattling sound was heard from the tail rings — the warning signal; the rattler had begun to coil to throw itself against its enemy.

Karl Oskar jumped at the same time as the reptile; he threw himself forward at the very last second. With the scythe he met the snake halfway, pressed the back of the scythe against the snake, and pushed it to the ground. But the wriggling monster fought wildly and furiously, twisting and turning itself under the pressure, throwing its head back and forth until the scythe steel tinkled. The tongue’s red pistil shot forth, it hissed and sizzled like a boiling kettle. Against the soft hay the flexible snake body with its sinuous motions struggled to get away from the scythe-hold.

Now the monstrous creature raised its head against the barn sill, and this gave Karl Oskar an opportunity to use his second implement; with a few heavy blows of the post he crushed the rattlers’ head against the sill.

“The Lord is protecting you, Karl Oskar! You risked your life!”

Kristina stood behind him, the rake in her hand, her lips blue-white, every limb trembling.

“Don’t be afraid! I’ve killed him now!”

Karl Oskar lifted the rattler with the point of the scythe; the crushed head hung limp. Then he stretched out the snake on the ground to its full length. The first rattler he had killed was also the biggest one he had seen. It was over five feet long and had seven rattles. He had heard that this kind of snake got its first rattle at the age of three and from then on one each year; this one must be an old devil.

“That sting-eel was a little dazed and sluggish; if he had been quicker he could have killed me!”

Karl Oskar’s hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. Kristina felt her legs give way; she sank down on her knees in the hay, timidly eyeing the dead snake. The critter’s upturned stomach was greenish and glittered prettily in the sun. The wild animals in North America were dangerous and beautiful.

“He purred like a spinning wheel,” she said.

“That was the rattles. They’re two inches thick!”

Karl Oskar pushed the scythe end into the jaws of the snake: “He has teeth like a dog! Sharp as awls! Wonder if he was blind — they say rattlers are so full of poison they go quite blind during the summer.”

And Kristina knew that if a rattler bit a person in a blood vessel that ran directly to the heart, that person would die on the spot.

Her voice almost failed her as she tried to say:

“The snake was in the mattress I was emptying. .”

Karl Oskar looked at the cover she had thrown on the ground, he looked at the rattler he had carried into their house with the hay last night. When he had filled the mattress, in the dark barn — if his hands had happened to. .

They were both silent for several minutes.

What was there to say about what had happened during the night? They had shared their bed with the most poisonous snake in North America. They had slept their sweet sleep with death underneath them in the bed.

“. . to think. . that we’re all right. .” he said in a low voice.

“Perhaps we’re saved because we gave shelter to a man of the Church,” said she.

With the scythe Karl Oskar cut off the tail with the seven rattles, which he wanted to keep as a souvenir. But Kristina could not understand how he could want to keep anything of the evil creature. Even though it lay dead in front of her, it still inspired fear in her.

Nevertheless, she could hardly take her eyes away from the glittering, color-changing snake body. Something so obnoxious, so slimy and repulsive, one ought not to look at willingly. But she couldn’t help it. There was something strangely fascinating about the old serpent. The tempter, the devil himself, had assumed this animal’s shape. It was the Evil One who had sneaked into their house last night — the Evil One had crept all the way into their bed.

Never had Kristina so surely and manifestly experienced God’s protecting hand over them.

— 4—

Pastor Törner returned two weeks later. It was then decided that he would come back to the settlement of Duvemåla the following Sunday and hold the first communion for the Swedish settlers in the St. Croix Valley.

Kristina at once began preparations. A great honor would be bestowed upon them; their home would be used as a temple. Their table, which Karl Oskar had made of a rough oak log, would be raised to the dignity of an altar. Their simple log cabin would be turned into a holy room. In their own home Karl Oskar and she would be the Lord’s table guests.

She read in the Bible about the first Lord’s Supper, the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, when the disciples asked Jesus where he would go to prepare to eat the Passover: he sent two of them into Jerusalem where they were to follow a man who carried a pitcher: “Follow him into the house where he entereth in. And ye shall say unto the goodman of the house, The Master saith unto thee, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples? And he shall show you a large upper room furnished: there make ready.”

Where is the guestchamber? When Jesus wanted to institute the Holy Supper, he, too, had looked for a place in Jerusalem where they could meet, as Pastor Törner had looked for a house among the settlers where he could give the sacrament for the first time. And in their cabin, at the Indian lake, Ki-Chi-Saga, the miracle would take place. They could not offer a great upper room, ready and furnished, as those in Jerusalem had at the first communion. They had only the single room in which they lived, in which they ate and slept and sheltered their children. But for the holy act she must put her home in order, clean it to the best of her ability.

Kristina scrubbed the floor more carefully than ever before, she washed the furniture and polished her utensils. Against the ceiling beams, and above the fireplace, she laid maple and elm boughs; the rich, fresh leaves made the room look festive. She pasted gray wrapping paper over the roughest and ugliest parts of the log walls. She picked the most beautiful wild flowers she could find but she had no vase to put them in. Her eyes fell on the spittoon at the door; she emptied it, washed it, filled it with flowers, and put it on the shelf above their table. No guest would recognize their old spit-cup elevated thus, filled with flowers and decorated with greenery.

On Saturday evening she inspected the room carefully: it was as fresh and green as a summer pavilion. Everything was in order. But what to do with the children, if it should rain and they couldn’t be outside? With all the guests, there would he no room for them inside, and they might disturb the service. They could not leave them in the barn, now that they knew rattlesnakes might be there. But if it rained they must be under a roof. They would have to shut them in the cowshed during the Holy Communion. In their worn rags they were not much to show to the guests anyway.

But the weather turned out to be blessed: Sunday dawned with clear skies. Now the children could stay outside, and no one would bother to inspect their clothes too closely. She saw to it that Karl Oskar was Sunday-clean; she handed him a newly washed and ironed shirt, a wooden spoon filled with soft soap, and a bowl of lukewarm water, and then he went outside in the yard and cleaned up. Of suitable communion clothes he had none, he must wear the same clothing he had long worn to work in.

Kristina herself had her black dress of which she had been so careful that it still looked nice.

On Sunday morning Pastor Törner arrived at the log cabin on foot, carrying his black leather bag with the sacred bread and the wine, and a parcel with his minister’s surplice. This had become wrinkled, as he had bundled it up, and Kristina warmed her iron to press it.

As she reverently handled the ministerial garment, a thought came to her. She had not been churched after her last childbed, and Dan was more than two-and-a-half years old. The boy was so big that she no longer could give him the breast, even though she had wanted to do so in order to delay a new pregnancy. Should she ask the young pastor to church her? But perhaps by now so much time had elapsed that it was too late. A wife ought to be churched before she knew her husband carnally, and in that respect it was more than two years too late in her case. Should she now ask the pastor if it was too late for her?

She felt ashamed to ask him. Perhaps he would be greatly upset that she delayed two-and-a-half years after the childbed. She remembered her mother saying that it would have the same effect as churching if a woman shook a minister’s hand. And she had shaken hands with this young pastor each time he had come to their house. Could this be sufficient? Why couldn’t it be counted the same as churching? She did not know. But as long as Pastor Törner remained in the neighborhood, she would continue to shake his hand whenever she had the opportunity.

The communion guests had begun to arrive, and as they entered the cabin, Pastor Törner wrote down their names in turn. He recorded that Danjel Andreasson of New Kärragärde was present, accompanied by his two sons, Sven and Olof, who were of confirmation age and today for the first time would go to the Lord’s table. Jonas Petter and his housekeeper, Swedish Anna, had also arrived on Danjel’s ox cart. From Taylors Falls came Mother Fina-Kajsa and her son, Anders Månsson. The old woman was perky and talkative but looked unkempt, her gray, matted hair in tufts. Anders Månsson was shaved and combed, but his eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed shy and depressed; he seldom showed himself among people. Petrus Olausson and his wife, Judit, had brought along their daughter, who, like Danjel’s boys, was to participate in her first communion.

With Karl Oskar and Kristina, there were twelve communicants in all. All the Swedes in the valley who had received an invitation had come, except one: Samuel Nöjd, the trapper in Taylors Falls. He had said to Swedish Anna, who had brought him the message, that he did not wish to participate in any of the foolery or spectacles of the priests. He had hoped, out here, to be left in peace by those black-capped sorcerers who in Sweden had plagued him with their catechism and religious examinations. Swedish Anna had replied that Jesus had also redeemed his soul with his dear blood, but this Samuel Nöjd had denied; his soul was not to be redeemed by anybody, whatever the price, for he was a free, thinking human being.

The sturdy, red-hued Swedish Anna was greatly disturbed over the blasphemer Nöjd and his way of living: recently, he had taken in an Indian woman to live with him, and what he did to her, each and every one could imagine. He was known to be heathenish, and now he was also carnally mixing with the heathens.

Swedish Anna was considered a deeply religious woman and she was looked up to by her countrymen for her irreproachable morals. Kristina had a deep respect for this woman from Dalecarlia. Swedish Anna was a kind-hearted woman, but kept so strictly to the true religion that she had difficulty in enduring Ulrika after she had turned Baptist, but Kristina defended Ulrika when Swedish Anna called her a hypocrite and a slovenly woman.

Danjel Andreasson praised his niece for having decorated the cabin so nicely: it was attractive and made up to look like a real church, he said.

The table stood in the middle of the room, and Karl Oskar had put planks on sawhorses for the people to sit on. When all were seated there was no place for him, so he went to the woodshed and brought in the chopping block for a chair. The fresh planks smelled pungently of pine and pitch. On the foodboard Kristina had spread her only tablecloth of whole linen, ironed and shining white. There stood the pitcher with the Communion wine, and one of Karl Oskar’s huge brännvin glasses which was to be used as a communion cup. On a small plate lay the communion bread, thin, flat, dry breads, not unlike cookies.

Pastor Törner took his place at the end of the table where the family Bible lay open. His cheeks were newly shaven and shiny, and his thick, light hair was combed straight back. As he stood there in his newly ironed surplice and white collar, Karl Oskar and Kristina could not imagine that this was the same man who on that rainy night had sought shelter in their cabin, dripping like a wet dog, his clothes torn, muddy, his face bloody with mosquito bites.

Today the sun shone through the windows and through the open door into the settlers’ home, and in there the Lord’s table stood prepared. The immigrants were to partake of their first communion in the new country.

The young minister pointed out that there had been twelve communicants when Jesus gathered his apostles for the first Lord’s Supper in Jerusalem, there were twelve here today when he would now distribute Christ’s flesh and blood to his countrymen in the wilderness. In his wine flask here on the table he had only very little left of the dear sacrament, which therefore must be divided with great economy to make it last for all. There would hardly be more than a sip, a small teaspoon for each one. Bread, however, he had in sufficiency.

They were ready to begin and the pastor gave the number of the opening psalm. Just then Dan, the baby, came rushing in from outside, yelling at the top of his voice. The boy stopped in the doorway and howled. Kristina jumped up and took him in her arms. The child had done both his needs in his pants. She turned to the minister, greatly vexed: this was most embarrassing — would he forgive her but she must first look after. .

She took the boy outside and cleaned him and dried his behind. Then she let him run without pants — it was warm enough. Dan was a troublesome child; he still whined and complained because he no longer could have her breast; but while she was still suckling him he had grown several sharp teeth, and when he was hungry and impatient he would bite into her nipples until she yelled with pain. Now she put a small piece of maple sugar into his mouth to make him keep quiet and be on his way.

Pastor Törner had been waiting patiently while she attended to the boy; he only smiled at the little one as he cried and carried on. She very much liked this minister who never showed any severity. He seemed to realize that a small, innocent child, only lately a suckling, could not wait to do his business until the service was over.

Now the pastor took up the psalm: “For thy wounds, O Jesus dear, for thy anguish and thy suffering. .” He himself sang with a powerful, vibrant voice, but his communicants in the cabin had trouble with their singing. They had only a few psalmbooks — three or four people jostled for each one — and it was a long time since they had attempted psalm singing.

The minister read the text:

“. . And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. .”

At the sound of the holy words the participants sat stone still as if bound to their seats. These settlers, who at home had attended services almost every Sunday, had not listened to a sermon in years. And now they heard God’s Word again, in their native tongue, spoken by a minister, spoken well and beautifully. They listened, tense and still.

“I speak to settlers,” continued the minister, “to people who have left their homes in the Old World to build new homes in a new continent; that is why I have chosen the text from the seventeenth chapter of the Acts. More than eighteen hundred years ago these words were uttered by St. Paul to the Greeks in the judicial place in the town of Athens, but they have a meaning to the immigrant Swedes of Minnesota today: wherever human beings live on the earth, they are of the same blood, the same race, and the Lord lives near them. He is not far from us at this moment, in this settler home.”

Twelve immigrant Swedes listened, packed together in the small log cabin. Twelve pairs of eyes were riveted upon the young minister at the head of the table. The twelve listened, and their lips parted, their mouths opened, as if their ears were unable alone to catch the speaker’s words.

“God has decided to what distances on the earth people shall travel and move their habitations!” The minister made a sweeping gesture with his hands, as if wanting to measure the journeys length. “I speak to men and women who have traveled over one third of the earth’s circumference, who have moved from one continent to another, in order to found new homes in these wild forests. You, my countrymen gathered here, have participated in an emigration covering a greater distance than ever before in human history!”

And his countrymen listened. It was a sermon all of them understood well: it was about themselves. They had forsaken that part of the earth where their forebears had lived for thousands of years, to wander to another part of the globe where they still were aliens. This sermon explained the fate which the Creator in his inscrutable wisdom had prepared for them — the fate of emigrants.

Karl Oskar recalled his parting from Dean Brusander, who had depicted North America as a sky-high Babylon of sin and who had told him that, through his emigration, he broke the Ten Commandments. It was a comfort now to learn from another minister that their emigration was not contrary to God’s will; rather, it sounded as if God had planned and arranged for their move.

Kristina thought that the pastor there at the end of the table was himself a proof that the Lord had not forsaken them in a foreign country. She knew who had sent him to their distant dwelling; the Almighty knew the roads even in the unbroken Territory.

She listened to the minister intently, but also with half an ear to the yard outside; if the kids only didn’t start yelling or coming in to disturb them! They had been told to keep as quiet as mice. But through the open door she could hear the brood-hen cackling, persistently. What an awkward sound, coming like that between the words of a sermon! It was a fine hen, this present from Ulrika; already she had deserted her chicks and started to lay. Now she must have laid an egg in some bush behind the cabin; she could hear it in the tone of the hen’s cackling: she wanted to announce that she had just laid an egg. Why couldn’t she have waited to lay that egg until a little later in the day, after the sermon. .

“The Lord has decided where people shall live. To you emigrating Swedes he has indicated Minnesota. The brown-skinned sons of the wilderness have ruled this land for centuries. But the Almighty sweeps away one race from the surface of the earth and plants another. You are the new race to build the land. But it is your duty, my dear countrymen who are born in a Christian land and know the Ten Commandments, to treat these heathens as brethren. Indians, too, are our neighbors; they are not of the same color as we, but they have the same Creator. Be kind and patient with the vanishing race. .”

The hen outside cackled ever more lustily. Kristina turned in her seat; it sounded as if the obnoxious creature had made up her mind to drown the minister’s voice! Had ever a pastor endured such a hen cackle during a sermon?

Kristina was grateful for the new egg, but if she could have imagined that the critter would have made so much noise for the sake of an egg, she would have locked the hen in the barn before they began. What must the minister think? He was so kind, he wouldn’t reprimand her for not keeping her feathered livestock under control.

He continued his sermon, without appearing in the least disturbed by the critter, and none of the other listeners paid any attention to the hen. But now the cackling was right outside the door. The hen was accustomed to come here for food when the door was open. And the door was open now. . If the hen should come tripping into the room. . Once she had flown up on the table — suppose the beast repeated that maneuver! What would they do? It would reflect on them. Oh, if that shameless creature would only stay outside. .!

The service continued, and the hen did not come in, God be praised. And it seemed no one except Kristina had heard its cackling. Soon she too was able to close her ears to the bird’s chatter and entirely immerse herself in the minister’s words.

In the cabin it was as still as if everyone had stopped breathing; no noise or sound in the whole world could disturb this, the settlers’ service, in Karl Oskar’s and Kristina’s home. And soon the communion would begin, and they would sit down at their own table and receive Christ’s flesh and blood, which would lift the three-years burden of their sins. Today they were guests in their own house.

— 5—

“Kneel and read after me the confession of your sins!”

Twelve people knelt around the table. Twelve had gathered around Jesus at the first supper, and Pastor Törner had seen a deep significance in the fact that the number of guests here was the same as it had been at the institution of the Sacrament: Christ’s Church would be built here in the wilderness.

The minister read the confession. The kneeling men, women, and children each read after him in his or her own way, some loudly and openly, some in low and mumbling voices. Child voices repeated the words clearly, vibrantly; thick male voices halted and stammered:

“. . and I have in all my days — from my childhood, even until this moment — many and bitter sins committed. .”

The communion guests knelt on the floor, their hands folded over their breasts, their heads bowed. Married couples knelt side by side, and children next to their parents. It was crowded for the twelve around the table, but no one pushed for space; they pressed their arms close to their bodies, kneeling in a circle around the table. It was intensely warm outside, and with the crowding it began to grow hot inside. Drops of perspiration appeared on foreheads and cheeks. A breath of wind from the door felt blissfully cool. From the outside no more sounds were heard from two-legged or four-legged livestock. But in the midst of the confession, suddenly lusty child laughter reached them from the yard.

“. . thine holy words I have often neglected and avoided. .”

Some were behind in their reading, and the young minister repeated the words slowly, so that the stragglers would catch up.

One of the participants needed no one to read the words for him — Danjel Andreasson. He knew the confession word for word, and he knelt there on the floor as if reading to himself, as if he were alone in the cabin. Thousands of times he had repeated these confessional words, both aloud for others and silently for himself, and each syllable was familiar to his tongue.

At a sound from the door, Danjel turned his head. But it was only the wind stirring. Did he expect some other caller? At his last communion, in the old country, he himself had distributed the holy sacrament, and it had taken place in the night, in his own home, because he had been denied the sacrament by the clergy. And while he had been thus occupied, a noise had been heard at the door. He had gone to open it, and in had come the dean and the sheriff, who forcefully had scattered the guests at the Lord’s table. All had been fined or imprisoned, he himself exiled. When he confessed his sins in Sweden he violated law and authority.

Danjel Andreasson was exiled from his homeland, but not from the Kingdom of God.

And now he was here in the new land which the Lord had promised him. He need not now fear any disturbers of the peace. Here no worldly authority would interfere with their gathering. What he heard from the door was only the cool summer wind which blew over the grass and the trees. It was not the noise of a sheriff, not the hard, commanding voice of authority, silencing the voice of conscience in the name of the law, writing ordinances for people’s souls. It was the Lord’s own voice Danjel Andreasson heard in the sounds from outside — it was God’s free wind, blowing hither and yon over the earth of his new homeland.

Kristina was kneeling to the left of her uncle Danjel and to the right of her husband. Karl Oskar got mixed up in his confession, he read haltingly and fell behind. And Kristina herself found that in a few places she had forgotten the words. She caught herself making mistakes.

“. . I have had lust to evil: I have been vain; I have sought the wicked and sinfull world. . I have been greedy, covetous, short in compassion, gluttonous. .”

With tense breath and trembling lips she enumerated all the sins and transgressions she had committed. While repeating the words after the minister, she was overwhelmed by the multitude of her wrongdoings. Contrition overtook her, repentance burned in her breast. But only through repentance could she become worthy of participation in this sacrament. And while she repeated the confession, and her lips moved, she prayed a wordless prayer within her: “O Lord, give me repentance. .! Help me repent enough. .!”

Karl Oskar’s bowed head was close to hers. His face was quite unlike itself today; it was hard and solemn, severe and closed. Had he repented enough, did he repent deeply enough now, was he worthy? She would have liked to whisper to him: You must not confess your sins with your lips only! You must not enumerate them the way you reel off the chores you’ve performed, at the end of each day! You must confess from your heart! You must feel forced to do it! Unable to refuse! You must feel your sin burden as so heavy that you’re unable to struggle another step without forgiveness! You must be consumed with hunger for the bread, thirst for the wine, yearning for forgiveness!

“Whosoever eateth of this bread and drinketh from this cup, he receiveth the Lord’s body and blood. .”

You must repent, Karl Oskar, repent, repent, repent! You who receiveth. . but I myself. .? Do I repent sufficiently. .?

“My grievous and many sins press me hard and are like unto a burden too heavy. .”

Kristina’s limbs began to tremble. Her knees began to shake as she held them bent against the floorboards. For a moment she was on the verge of falling forward. Perhaps her hearts repentance was not complete. Perhaps it was not sufficient to kneel at the Lord’s altar. Perhaps she should bend still lower, feel greater humiliation, throw her face against the ground, lay herself at the Lord’s feet, become dust and ashes under the Creator’s tread. .

The confession was over. The floorboards began to sway under her.

“Show thy Grace to me, wretched sinner that I am, and receive thy dear son Jesus Christ’s innocent suffering and death as a full payment for all my sins!”

The minister asked, “Do you ask with a repentant heart the forgiveness of your sins?”

Kristina’s reply was a faint whisper only, barely audible to herself, but it was a whisper that shook her whole being: “Yes. . yes. . you know it, Lord. . I’ve prayed to you for this moment. For long, long, I’ve wished it. I’ve waited and wished and prayed. You know how I’ve wished forgiveness through the sacrament. And you have heard my prayer. . you came to me here in my home — during the night. . Now I am ready — I am prepared to approach thy table, to be thy guest. . I come. .”

She leaned her forehead against the edge of the table so as not to fall. Her surroundings began to blur, she felt so dizzy. She could hear the minister’s voice, but not what he said. She heard psalm-singing, but not the words of the psalm. Human bodies were close to her, but she recognized them no longer. For now she was alone. She was alone in the world with her Savior, who on the cross had paid her sin debt with the blood which flowed from his spike wounds:

Behold, behold, all ye present. .

How sorely Jesus suffers. .

The words of the psalm completed the contrition. They cut through her breast, opened it wide, and exposed her repentant heart. Trembling and dizziness were upon her. Now she must submit, become dust; she had a sensation of fainting. . fainting away. .

So as Jesu’ suffering was,

No one’s suffering ever was. .

Then came the sobs which shook her, the first tears, trickling. People around her cried, loudly, steadily; to the right and to the left of her they sobbed and wept. But she did not hear them, she was absorbed in her own tears, surrendered to her own weeping, blissfully unresistible. So overpowering a weeping had not come on her since she was a little child.

And so it took place, while dissolved in tears, kneeling there as if separated from all other people, liberated from all earthly things, as if she were the only human being in the whole creation — thus Kristina, for the first time since her emigration, partook of the Lord’s Holy Supper.

Afterward she felt dazed and exhausted. Her limbs still trembled but it felt good in both body and soul to tremble this way. And on her face, her tears now dried by themselves — now the Savior dried them all from her cheeks. Her breast was still full and tense, her breathing still hot — but it was now only with joy that her heart overflowed.

Kristina had been a guest in her own house. And afterward she felt lighter of heart, more satisfied, than she had ever been since arriving in North America.

NOTE

1. “The situation had become so serious that the United States and several European countries sent protests to Sweden concerning the persecutions. .” George M. Stephenson: The Religious Aspect of Swedish Immigration, p. 143.

V. MAN AND WOMAN IN THE TERRITORY

— 1—

About midsummer the little Swedish colony at Ki-Chi-Saga was increased by two new families; Lars Sjölin and his wife Ellida, a childless couple from Hassela, Helsingland, took land at the lakeside below Petrus Olausson’s claim, across from Nordberg’s Island. They were both in their forties. From Kettilstad in Östergötland came Algot Svensson and his wife Manda, who settled on a piece of land to the west of Duvemåla. They were about the same age as Karl Oskar and Kristina and had five small children. It was further known that several families had come from Småland and were squatting along the southern shores of the lake, and that still more Smålanders were on their way.

Immigrants from three Swedish provinces had found new homes around the big Indian lake. Karl Oskar and Kristina had Helsingland neighbors to the southeast and Östergötland neighbors to the west. Now they speculated where people would come from to claim the still unoccupied piece of land to the north of them.

They became acquainted with their new neighbors from Östergötland at once. Algot Svensson was a kind, small man, rather taciturn, the kind of settler who made little noise. His wife, Manda, on the contrary, was sociable, jolly, ever ready to talk. She related that she came from an old, well-to-do farmer family and that her parents had rejected her for marrying the hired hand on the farm. Manda Svensson had brought with her from Sweden two loom reeds, one of which she now presented to Kristina, who did not own one. The winter before, Karl Oskar had made with great difficulty a primitive loom, but he had been unable to make the reed, and there was no reedmaker among the settlers. Kristina almost jumped with joy at the gift from her neighbor. Through Ulrika’s efforts she had last year obtained a spinning wheel from Stillwater; it had been made for her by the Norwegian, Thomassen, who was both shoemaker and spinning-wheel maker. She had already spun last year’s flax, and with the blessed reed she could weave new clothing for them next winter; no one in the family had any longer an unpatched garment to put on.

Hard winter work awaited Kristina, while Karl Oskar labored most intensely during the warmer seasons. He was working on his threshing barn, which he hoped to have ready when the crops were ripe so that he could flail them under shelter. In years before, the ice had been his threshing floor, and the crops had lain unthreshed until the lake was ready to put down its floor; meanwhile, the pestiferous rats, mice, and other rodents had taken a sizable toll from his rye and barley. By putting up a threshing barn he would save many loaves for his family.

Now he split shakes for the barn roof, cut and worked the timbers for his new main house, dug on the foundation for his cellar, put up fences, mowed and dried grass and put the hay in stacks. All these chores must be done before the crops were ripe, when harvesting would take all his time.

When he was preparing the ground for the winter wheat field his southeast neighbor came and filled his ears with praise of the Indian corn. A word of advice from Petrus Olausson seemed like a command: let the field lie over winter and plant corn next spring!

Olausson had already planted this wonderful grain on his claim, he had begun banking the plants when they were an inch tall, and now they grew an inch a day in this heat. Corn would give up seventy bushels an acre. But he must choose the right kind of seed, the big kind, which gave ten ears to each plant, and three or four hundred kernels to each ear! Several thousand grains from one seed, many thousandfold! Because of sinful man, God had cursed the ground, but over one of the grains he had let flow his blessing — over the Indian corn! And corn was the healthiest and tastiest of foods for people and animals; bread was baked of corn, porridge and soup was cooked from it, pancakes made, a potent drink brewed, sugar distilled; livestock and hogs were fattened on it. Corn bread was the healthiest ever, it had in it some purgative power which gave the body its blessed opening; bread from Indian corn was the best remedy against hard bowels.

It was called lazy-man’s grain because the Indians cultivated it in their small patches, letting their poor women tend it alone. Karl Oskar wondered why God had so richly blessed the heathens’ corn above the grains of Christian people.

Petrus Olausson said that the name lazy-man’s grain did not suit the corn since it did not grow by itself, like hair on a head or nails on toes and fingers; it needed constant attention — weeding, hoeing, banking. But a well-cared-for field of corn at the peak of its growth was the most beautiful sight God had created on this earth.

Until Olausson raised corn none of the Swedes in the valley had tried this grain. They stuck to their old crops and were suspicious of new kinds. For what good could be expected from the Indians’ wretched farming? It was like dealing with the Evil One directly.

But after Karl Oskar had seen his neighbor’s cornfield he decided to plant some himself next year. He was never afraid of new ventures. And why shouldn’t a Christian Swede follow the heathens’ example, if it was good and useful? Why shouldn’t he grow the wild ones’ grain?

If the hot Minnesota summers made the corn grow an inch a day, the humid heat sucked one’s strength. In the evenings Karl Oskar fell asleep, completely worn out. A settler was said to get used to the heat after a few years, but to him it was the same ordeal summer after summer. The heat squeezed and sucked the sweat from his body until he felt completely dried out. The nights were the worst; the heat interfered with breathing and prevented sleep; hot, humid air penetrated his nose and mouth and made breathing heavy and cumbersome. It was as if wet wool wads had been put into his mouth. His lungs worked slowly and laboriously and his heart felt like a heavy invisible lump in his breast.

The cabin became unbearably sultry during the nights, so when Karl Oskar was unable to sleep, he walked outside and lay down on the ground behind the house. Here he had no bedding other than the cool grass, no cover except the dark night sky with the tiny star lights. Stretched out on this grass mattress he would at last go to sleep although only to dream tortuous dreams of choking.

— 2—

The shakes were ready to be put on the new threshing barn and Karl Oskar had asked Jonas Petter and Anders Månsson to help him. He himself placed the shakes in straight rows, Jonas Petter nailed them down, and Månsson acted as handyman, fetching and carrying up and down the ladder. On the roof, the sun burned like a branding iron; up there it was too hot even to fry bacon, said Jonas Petter; the sun would burn it to cinders.

The men had to quench their thirst every quarter of an hour; they drank gallons of cold buttermilk to which had been added fresh, cool spring water. Once every hour they rested in the shade of the maples, stretched out dazed and indifferent. Even Jonas Petter held his tongue for long periods, obviously not himself.

The Ölander, Månsson, was stingy with words in any company. His eyelids were swollen and there was also a swelling over his cheekbones; he did not look well. Time and again he went on a binge and ended “flat on his back,” his mother said. He neglected his claim because he was busy emptying whiskey kegs, and this spring he had had to sell a cow to pay his debts.

Jonas Petter had said to him, “Take a wife! Then you’ll have so much to do at night that you’ll have neither time nor strength to drink in the daytime! But if you must drink — do it in the morning when you’re sober!”

Anders Månsson had proposed to Ulrika but she had married another man. And how many women remained to propose to?

The Ölander said, “In this country a man is forced to live single.”

“A hell of a shame that a young buck like you must remain a bachelor!”

But Jonas Petter knew how things were — what could a man do here in the Territory, with one woman to twenty men? Nineteen of the twenty had to lie alone, sighing, lusting, suffering. Here men slept in their lonely beds night after night, year in, year out, until white moss grew on their tool.

Those who couldn’t stand it forever, continued Jonas Petter, must do as Samuel Nöjd did, he had taken an Indian girl to live with him. She was skinny as a bird and had a dirty face but had a pretty good shape. Jonas Petter himself had seen several Indian wenches a white man could get hopped up about. Their black eyes burned with something that roused a fire in one’s loins. But it was forbidden on the Tablets of Stone for a Christian Lutheran to spill his seed in the chambers of heathendom’s daughters. But perhaps the Tablets of Stone were not in force in a wild land with a scarcity of women. When God made Eve he told Adam he was giving him the help a man needed. According to the Bible, then, every man had a right to have a woman in his bed. And the Bible said nothing about a man and a woman having the same color skin in order to lie in bed together.

Karl Oskar said that as far as he was concerned he couldn’t have bed play with an Indian woman however long he might have to go without.

“If you had to, you would do it!” insisted Jonas Petter.

Anders Månsson said, “I know white men who have made children in brown women.”

“They’re all right in the hole, although too tight,” said Jonas Petter; “Yet, they drop their brats like rabbits; perhaps their children come on the thin, narrow side.”

Jonas Petter had figured out a remedy for the lack of women in the Territory: they ought to write to the authorities in Sweden and ask for a shipload of women. All men who lived alone must sign a petition, and then they would send it to Dean Brusander of Ljuder Parish. He could announce from the pulpit that unmarried girls were in demand as wives for the settlers of this women-empty country. He would have no trouble getting a shipful of fine women. Only honest, upright, chaste, capable women must volunteer, of course; no slut in the load.

And the women must have definite promises of marriage; each man who signed the petition would guarantee to marry a girl the moment she arrived in Minnesota Territory. No need to wait. The men must promise in writing to relieve the girls of their maidenheads on the day of arrival, or at least not later than the following night; they must promise this honestly and conscientiously as decent men and citizens. If any one of the women had her maidenhead intact the following morning at sunup, she would have a right to claim a thousand-dollar indemnity.

Anders Månsson laughed. Karl Oskar only smiled a little; ever since leaving their home village he had heard Jonas Petter’s continuous stories of women and bed play and it was beginning to bore him. Such talk might be excused in younger men who were familiar with the words but not the act; between grown men there were more important things to talk about. He had his own strong desires and he suffered greatly when pregnancies and childbeds prevented him from knowing his wife, but at other times they enjoyed each other and were well pleased. To him, this act belonged to secrecy and night and became unclean and profaned when men spoke of it in daylight openly and directly.

But Anders Månsson loved Jonas Petter’s tales. When the roofers took their next rest in the shade of the maples, Anders turned to him and said, “Tell us a good story!”

Jonas Petter dried his forehead slowly with a handkerchief stiff as bark from many days’ sweat. Today the weather was not suitable for storytelling; in this heat Jonas Petter’s head stood still. But he remembered a true happening that had taken place recently concerning a man and a woman here in North America. It was a serious story which anyone might learn from and find useful, for it was a story of loneliness.

This is what had happened:

A middle-aged man and a woman of the same age emigrated from the same land in the Old World and settled down in the same neighborhood in the New World. They met, and the woman was employed to run the man’s house.

In the old country the man still had a wife, whom he had left because they couldn’t get along; he was so tired of his life with her that, to be on the safe side, he had managed to put the Atlantic Ocean between himself and his marital bed. In the New World he sought peace. The woman who ran his house said that she had emigrated for the same reason. She had a good mind, a fine body, healthy and unused. Among her countrymen she was held in great esteem for her honesty, chastity, and religious devotion.

The man treated her well and they got along fine. She looked after his house, cooked his food, mended his clothes, prepared his breakfast in the morning and his bed in the evening. They never used evil or angry words between them. During the day they shared the work hours and the moments of rest and enjoyed each other’s company. Not until bedtime did they part; then they slept in different beds, in different rooms. Then the man became the master of the house, the woman, the housekeeper in his employ.

The man had already lived a whole year without a woman. But that which his body had been accustomed to for twenty-five years could not be denied without loss and suffering. He was not meant for a hermit’s bed. He was a sociable man and he valued highly the company of women, even outside the bed. In their presence he felt an increased well-being. And here he had a woman under his roof, within reach all day long. And so when evening came, bedtime, it seemed only natural to him to extend their companionship to include the night and the bed.

A person will suffer a loss more keenly if what he has lost is within view yet beyond reach. Thus it happened with this man; in the lonely night he lay awake, he pined and yearned. Only a wall separated the man and the woman. She was so close here in his house — so close and so unreachable. A few steps would take him to the woman’s bed, but those steps were longer than the distance between Sweden and North America. The man had emigrated to the New World to find peace. But when the woman came to his house, restlessness and distraction had moved in with her.

He was tempted to go in to her and confess his great suffering and plead with her to have compassion on him and satisfy his will. But each evening through the wall, he could hear her read her evening prayer and the confession in such a forceful and compelling voice that his courage failed him. How could a man go in to a woman who had just confessed her sins and try to tempt her to a new sin?

At length, however, the thought struck him that he could at least confess to the woman the sinful lust he felt for her. This confidence she could hardly take ill; it was only right for a Christian to lay bare his honest heart and his lustful thoughts and desires. At the same time he could use the opportunity to ask her forgiveness.

Thus one evening, shortly after she had retired, he went in and sat down on a chair beside her bed, timid and embarrassed; he had something important to tell her. And he confessed honestly that he looked upon her with desire.

She was not insulted, not even surprised. She replied that she had already guessed he was exposed to this great suffering. And she had read God’s Word as loud as she had just so he might hear it and gain strength from it against his temptation.

He said he would have liked to ask her to become his wife, but he already had a wife in the old country, and bigamy was a great sin with which he did not wish to burden his conscience. And anyway, here in the wilderness, he was unable to obtain the papers necessary to commit this sin.

The woman then told him something which stunned him: she too was married. She too had a mate alive in Sweden. They were equally bad off. She had married a miserable man who drank and caroused and lay about instead of earning a living for his wife and children. She had supported that good-for-nothing louse for many years, but when he rewarded her by whoring with other women, she had tired of stuffing his gullet; she had taken their two children and had emigrated. During the crossing both children had died of the ship sickness. She had arrived in the New World alone and without relatives, and she had decided to live alone ever after without menfolk.

He was a good employer, she told him, and she liked living in his house. But if she moved into his bed, or he to hers, then they would commit double bigamy, since both of them were married. And if an accident, or some other sudden death, should overtake her, and she had to depart unforgiven, she would be condemned to eternal fire in Hell for this grave sin against the sixth commandment. Therefore, everything must remain between them as it was.

To this the man replied that the sixth commandment was written many thousands of years ago on the Stone Tablets for a Jewish country with as many women as men, or perhaps more women than men. God could not have intended this law for settlers in Minnesota Territory, where women and men were so unequally proportioned as one to twenty. God could not have written laws for America many thousand years before that country had been discovered. He didn’t do things that far in advance. Therefore, the sixth commandment could not have been meant for Minnesota, at least not in all its severity. Here life began anew, as in Genesis, where God made a woman for the man. And the Creator’s intent was that even out here every man should be allowed to live with a woman for comfort and enjoyment. Why, then, must they be condemned by a many-thousand-years-old law on a stone tablet? Furthermore, Moses might have misunderstood the sixth commandment; he had grown rather old and his eyes and hearing were poor by that time.

And they got along well during the day, persisted the man. It could not be held against them as a great sin if they also had their bed in common.

The woman replied that in her marriage she had greatly enjoyed the bed play with her husband and that during her years of loneliness she had often missed it. But it was not indispensable to her and the pleasure was not of so great a duration that its price was worth eternal torture. Whoever was willing to pay such an outrageous price must be a big fool.

But she appreciated deeply his confession and she wanted to help him further to fight his desire — if it would aid him any she would read the confession still more loudly each evening.

The man had to leave the woman’s bedside, his purpose thwarted, and everything between them remained as before.

As time passed they grew more and more intimate. And at bedtime it seemed more and more difficult for him to part from her and repair to his own lonely bed. His conviction grew stronger for each day that the Stone Tablets from Mount Sinai were not meant for Minnesota.

A year passed, then one evening the woman came in to him after he had gone to bed. She in turn had a confession to make: they had lived so long under the same roof that she had become a victim of the same temptations as he.

A woman’s body too was made of flesh and blood, and it was not easy for her to live so close to a man for years, with only a wall between them. Many times a day she prayed to God for help against her temptation, unable to overcome it by herself, fragile human being that she was. But to her great consternation God had not answered her prayers. What could he mean by this? She had been at a loss for an answer. And the Lord’s ways were said to be inscrutable. Here she had been left to fight her temptation all alone. And she had long withstood it — it had begun to assail her many months ago — she had repelled it; again and again, she had been the victor. Scores of evenings she had been visited so grievously by her desire that she had been on the verge of leaving her bed to seek him out. But she had summoned all her strength to conquer her desire. At last her strength had given out, she was no longer able to conquer her desire. What should she do now, when her prayers hadn’t been heard? At last she could do nothing else but commit this weakness — sin — here she stood in all her weakness, beside his bed in nothing but her shift; she wished to comply with his desire. Why hadn’t God given her strength to fight off her temptation?

This the man could explain: a person’s prayers were heard only when asking for something good and useful. And it was good for neither her nor him that they slept in different beds. Why should they lie apart and suffer in two separate beds when they could enjoy themselves together in one bed? So now they could both see what God’s finger was pointing at: two miserable creatures in an empty wilderness; she missed a man, he a woman, and their Creator had taken pity on them and had brought them together for comfort and joy.

So the woman stayed with the man, and in his bed nothing was left undone during the night.

Next evening he in turn went to her, only to meet a horrible disappointment. She would no longer give herself to him. She was deeply repentant and had decided never to repeat what had taken place the night before. And now she wanted, she insisted, yes, she demanded, that he should help her carry out her decision. She wanted him to join her in prayer for strength for both of them — first and foremost for her — to withstand in future their unclean thoughts and desires.

The man was greatly disturbed at this demand. He realized what great danger they might be in — the danger of their prayer being heard. Perhaps not so much when it came to strength for himself; he didn’t anticipate any change there. But he knew what could happen to a woman’s strength. Women were always on and off, back and forth, in between.

He made excuses: people must not pray for things that weren’t good for them. And it wasn’t good for them with separate beds. And too persistent and stubborn prayers were against the Almighty’s will.

But the woman refused to budge. He was a fellow criminal in a sin she had committed last night, it was his duty to help her stand fast. If he refused she would no longer remain in his house.

Thus he was forced to comply. He prayed with her, although without great fervor. The words came from his lips rather than from his heart, which was secretly sad over them.

Time passed; they lived apart as before. Neither one of them referred to that single good night when they had shared one bed. As far as the woman was concerned she seemed to have stricken it from her memory, and the man sensed it would not be wise to remind her of it.

Then one evening after he had gone to bed his door opened — the woman had come to him again. All her prayers had been in vain, her great weakness was upon her again, she could not resist it.

The man offered her all the comfort he was capable of. And that night too they left nothing undone on his couch.

Again the woman regretted her act and her weakness and insisted it would not be repeated. And he said nothing, only waited in patience. Now he knew she would be back in his bed again, as indeed she was after the expected delay.

By and by a regular order was established in their lives, with two bed communions a week. This satisfied the man. And to the woman the in-between-time of repentance was indispensable. She admitted that repentance to her was a bliss she could not do without. For the peace of her soul she needed the assurance that her sin was forgiven each time.

Luckily, she had passed a woman’s fertile years so they need not fear a pregnancy. Their bed play need never be known. People would have censored them severely if they were discovered. But only their Creator knew how things were between them, and they relied on his silence.

Thus everything turned out well with the man and the woman. They had both found the peace they sought in the New World, and the woman could besides enjoy the sweet repentance she felt after each new fall.

Thus this man and this woman lived happily together, and if they weren’t dead yet, they were probably still alive, concluded Jonas Petter.

Karl Oskar looked askance at the storyteller after he had finished his tale. He remembered a Sunday morning last winter when he had happened to have an errand at Jonas Petter’s house. He had knocked on the door but no one had opened it. Perhaps they had already gone out. To make sure he had looked in through the window and had seen Jonas Petter and Swedish Anna sound asleep in the bed under the window.

Karl Oskar had turned away and walked over to Danjel’s to visit for an hour. When he returned Jonas Petter was outside the house, inspecting the window.

So Jonas Petter had told this story to make it clear that he relied on the silence of the man who had seen him with Swedish Anna. Only Karl Oskar and the Creator were in the know.

Anders Månsson, however, had listened with the expression of one hearing a wonderful fairy tale. Jonas Petter’s stories struck him as being completely unreal, but he always listened intently and asked for more.

“That’s a good story, Jonas Petter! How can you make up such yarns?”

It was time for the men to resume their work on the roof in the humid heat of the Minnesota summer. As they began to nail down the shakes again, Månsson said, “There’s a small part of truth in that story — that part about the men-folks’ loneliness out here. It’s like a hot iron right through the heart, this terrifying loneliness in Minnesota Territory.”

The storyteller kept his silence. And the third roofer thought that never to a living being, not even to his wife, would he betray what he knew of the man and the woman who had been brought to share their bed through loneliness in the St. Croix Valley.

VI. STARKODDER THE OX

— 1—

To plant and to seed, to harvest and to thresh, that was the order of the chores from spring to fall, the cycle of labor, year in, year out. Karl Oskar Nilsson had cut, harvested, and threshed his third crop from the clearing. His old Swedish almanac contained blank pages between the months, intended for a farmer’s notations; on these he had written down his harvests in America:

Anno 1851 I harvested 18 bussels

Rye, 11 bussels Barley and 32 bussels

potatoes, all ample measure;

Ditto 1852 harvested 24 bussels Rye,

16 and a half bussels Barley and 48

bussels potatoes, ditto measure.

Now he continued on the same page — between the harvest month of August and the autumn month of September:

Ditto 1853 I harvested 38 bussels

Rye, 26 bussels Barley and 69 bussels

potatoes, ditto measure;

He was getting along on his claim; his third crop was more than double his first.

What he missed more than anything was a team of his own. For three whole years he and Kristina had been their own beasts of burden. How much hadn’t they carried and dragged during that time! They had carried home all their necessities, trudged long roads with heavy loads. From Taylors Falls to Ki-Chi-Saga, they had carried their burdens in their hands, in their arms, on their shoulders, on their backs. They had trudged and shuffled along, and lugged and carried and pulled, until their backs were bent and their arms stretched beyond their normal length. Out here they had indeed undertaken labor which in Sweden was relegated to animals.

There were two kinds of immigrants in the Territory — two-legged and four-legged. The people were few, the animals fewer, but the latter were indispensable to the former. Animals were therefore imported; cattle were driven in herds, or freighted on the rivers, from Illinois. Many of the animals died during the long and difficult transportation, and those that survived were so expensive on arrival in Minnesota that a squatter could not afford them. “Oxen for Sale! Cheap for Cash!” Karl Oskar had seen these signs in Stillwater and St. Paul. But the cheap cash price for a team was still eighty, ninety, or a hundred dollars, and that much money he had not as yet held in his hand at one time since they settled here. What cash he received for surplus hay or other crops was needed for groceries, tools, and implements. He must himself raise his cattle. Meanwhile he must continue to lug his own burdens, while Lady’s and Miss’s bull calves grew into oxen.

But one day, on an errand to the lumber company in Taylors Falls, Karl Oskar learned that one of the company’s oxen had broken both of his front legs and that they had been forced to slaughter the animal; now its mate was for sale. Karl Oskar looked over the beast and made an offer: he had come to collect twenty dollars for hay which he had sold the company — he would write a receipt for that money and pay ten dollars more for the single ox if he might owe them this sum until next summer, when he would sell them more hay.

Thirty dollars was cheap for a thirteen-hand ox but the company manager accepted the offer even though the whole sum was not in cash.

“I trust you, Mr. Nilsson!” he said.

This was the first time in America that Karl Oskar had received credit. Before, when he asked for a few nails or a spool of thread, cash had been required. In his dealings with people, no one had trusted him until today. He felt as if he had been singled out for an honor, even though the sum was only ten dollars. As a squatter he had managed to remain on his claim for three years — perhaps the Americans at last realized that he intended to stay.

So Karl Oskar returned to Duvemåla the owner of a sturdy old ox. The beast had an enormous belly, his horns were thick and nicely curved, his coat black with a white spot in the middle of his forehead like a shining star. A stone-hard enlargement on the neck, with the fur entirely worn off, told of the many heavy loads this ox had pulled; this yoke mark, the bald lump, was the beast’s letter of recommendation.

“That’s a lordly ox!” exclaimed Kristina as Karl Oskar came up, leading the animal. It had a lumbering walk, moving slowly, one foot after the other, but it held its horn-crowned head proudly in the air. It was indeed a lord among oxen.

From a thick oak log Karl Oskar sawed off four trundles — the wheels of a settler’s wagon; he also made a single yoke for the ox’s neck. Now he had his own wagon and his own beast to pull it.

Up to now he had shared the lot of cotters and other poor people back in Sweden, who walked and carried their burdens on their backs, while the farmers loaded theirs on their wagons riding and snapping their whips confidently. After only three years on his claim he could now ride his own ox wagon and feel like a farmer who owned something in America.

Petrus Olausson came to inspect his neighbor’s new beast: “I too will buy an ox! Then we can team up and break land together.”

A few days later Olausson came home with a thirteen-hand ox, entirely white, that he had bought in Stillwater.

Karl Oskar measured the animal and said, “Our team is the strongest in the whole valley!”

The two men yoked the black and the white oxen together and helped each other break new fields during the fall, plowing the same number of days on each claim. They used Olausson’s plow, which had an iron bill and cut deeper than Karl Oskar’s wooden plow; but however deep they plowed, the team managed.

Before the frost came and stopped their work, Karl Oskar had added five more acres to his field. Already he had more acres to seed than he had had in Sweden.

The black ox became their most valued and beloved animal. He was strong, good-natured, untiring. Standing there, sated with rich grass, chewing his cud which dripped down the tuft of his chin, he was a picture of true contentment. His enormous belly was round as a barrel, he was heavy and immobile as a huge boulder, encompassed in a superior calm which nothing in the world could disturb. The black ox radiated his security to his owners.

Karl Oskar named the beast Starkodder. It was a name he had taken from the saga of a brave Viking; Starkodder had been a hero strong as three men and endowed by the god Odin with a life span of three ordinary humans. It was the hero’s strength Karl Oskar had in mind when he named his ox. The saga warrior had also been headstrong, unruly, evil-tempered; when at last he fell in combat, his decapitated head had bitten into the turf and chewed the earth angrily.

Thus the temperament of the Viking did not fit the ox Starkodder, who was calm and tractable in all his activities. He became the Nilssons’ devoted helper, breaking their land, pulling home their supplies, and relieving them of much drudgery. They lifted their burdens off their shoulders and backs and laid them all onto his neck; everything was loaded on his bald, thick neck-swelling. And the old beast received it all patiently.

Starkodder was a sacrificial animal: he sacrificed himself for them.

— 2—

Pastor Erland Törner had stayed with the Swedes in the St. Croix Valley and had conducted services throughout the summer and fall. Now he was recalled to the Swedish settlement in Moline, Illinois, where newly arrived immigrants had brought cholera with them. It had raged among the settlers, who urged his return, for there were no ministers to conduct funeral rites. The timber and boards purchased for the new church in Moline were now being used for coffins for the cholera victims. Decent death couches and resting ground must be found for the dead ones before a house of prayer could be built for the living. The Illinois settlers found no time for their autumn plowing, for they spent their days digging graves in death’s field. Instead of sowing their winter wheat they now put friends and neighbors into the earth. A minister would have much to do in Moline and Galesburg and neighboring villages, and Pastor Törner intended to remain through the winter. His mission to the St. Croix Valley had been to give spiritual comfort to the settlers and lay the foundation for a Lutheran congregation. Now as he was about to leave the Swedes, they wished to pay him for his sermons. They collected twenty dollars for the young pastor, a dollar or two from each homestead.

When Kristina learned that Pastor Törner was to move away she made a decision: she would ask him to church her before he left. She regretted she had not asked him to perform this ritual the first day he came to their house; she ought not to have received Holy Communion without first being cleansed from her childbed. But now at last it would take place.

She made her decision a little too late; the following day she discovered she was pregnant.

No minister would church a woman who was again carrying a life. And here she was, pregnant without being cleansed and blessed from her earlier birth, so indifferent and negligent had she become in religious matters. How would God view her neglect? Would he make a special dispensation for a settler wife who had both participated in the Lord’s Supper and become pregnant again without churching?

Almost three years had passed since the birth of her youngest child and she had hoped it was her last. Her fervent wish was to remain barren for the rest of her life. She had already borne six children, four of whom were living, and she would be twenty-eight next St. Michael’s Mass. The strain of so many pregnancies and the heavy work over the years had begun to leave their marks on her. The bloom of youth was gone, her rounded girl-cheeks thinner, her face lined with wrinkles. Recently she had lost her front tooth, and as she showed it, lying in her palm, to Karl Oskar she said, “This is the first sign of old age.”

He replied that they had gone through so much, as emigrants, that they were in reality older in body and soul than those of the same age who had remained at home.

This would be her seventh child. Her concern for her children would now have to be shared by one more, and she felt depressed not only for her own sake, but for the children’s sake. The more of them there were, the less each could expect.

If she and her husband stayed apart, she would not become pregnant again, but the holy bonds of matrimony intended that they should know each other bodily and beget children. God wanted them to enjoy each other in that way. And the physical attraction was so powerful between Karl Oskar and herself that they couldn’t stay away from each other for long. What took place between them was according to the Almighty’s will; through them He created new people. And now He had again created a life in her. What could she do about it? It would be sinful to attempt to avoid pregnancies by such devices as long breast-feeding. No one could expect to fool God with such tricks.

A pregnancy reminded a woman that God trusted her — it was a sign of his confidence in her, a blessing. Barrenness was a curse, a punishment, which, when it struck biblical women, caused them to lament.

Thus Kristina, again blessed, dared not offer the prayer in her mind. How could she ask to escape a blessing and pray for a curse? But couldn’t she ask the young minister if it would be sinful to pray that this pregnancy might be her last?

But when Pastor Törner came to say goodby she was embarrassed to ask him the question; her tongue refused to speak the words. He was too young. If he only had been an old minister, one she could have looked upon as a father, then it would have been different. With a man so near her own age, she felt too much a woman. And the pastor, himself unmarried, could hardly be expected to know much about these matters. She might embarrass him with her question.

Pastor Törner promised to return in the spring and help them establish a Lutheran parish in the St. Croix Valley. He had become deeply attached to his countrymen here. Now he counseled them not to become confused by the arguments between the many religious groups in America. After all, a fight for souls was better than spiritual indifference.

Kristina watched the young pastor from the door as he departed. She had not told him that on his return next spring there would be one more in the log cabin. Her seventh child so she calculated, would come into the world next May.

— 3—

The shores of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga were most beautiful in fall when the color of the deciduous trees mingled with the pines. There stood a green aspen next to a brown oak, here a golden elm beside a red maple. The maples had the largest leaves and the thickest foliage — the scarlet flame of the autumn forest. When the sun shone it seemed the stands along the shore were on fire, burning with clear flames, so intensely did the leaves glitter. In Ki-Chi-Saga’s sky-blue water this leaf fire was stirred into billows. In the depths of the lake the shores’s maple forest burned with a strange, unquenchable fire.

In mid-October the leaves came loose from the trees and fell into the lake, swimming about on the surface, forming into large, multi-colored floats. The oak still held its leaves, but leaf-floats from maples, aspens, ash, elm, and hazel separated from the shore and started on long voyages. Inlets and sounds were covered with the summer’s withered verdure. The shore forest undressed with approaching winter and its garments floated away, while the trees stretched their naked branches over the water. Reeds and shore-grass rustled and crackled in the wind, and Ki-Chi-Saga’s water darkened earlier each day. The hood of dusk fell over land and water and thickened quickly into the dark autumn night.

In the evenings enormous flocks of wild geese, flying southward, stretched over the lake. Kristina heard their calls and honks as they followed their lofty course — the birds up there knew what to expect and moved in good time; winter was near.

Their fourth winter lurked around the corner, ready to pounce on them any day now. For the next five months Kristina would have to live imprisoned by the snow, chained by darkness and cold. She would have to bend before the sharp sickle of the winter wind, trudge through the snow in her icy, slippery wooden shoes, blow into her stiff, blue-frozen hands to try to warm them with her breath. And the frost-roses would bloom around the door inside her home, bloom the cycle of their season.

In the sky whizzing wings carried away the migrants; down here on the ground she stood and listened. She was chained here, she had her home here — here she would remain forever.

Then at times she caught herself thinking she was still on her emigration-journey; this was only a resting-place; one day she would continue her journey.

— 4—

November came and no more calls were heard from the sky. The oaks lost their leaves. The weather was still mild, the ground bare.

Karl Oskar was readying himself to drive to Bolle’s mill at Taylors Falls before the first snowfall. He loaded the wagon the evening before: two sacks of rye, two of barley; with two bushels to each sack it made a good load for his trundle cart, as heavy a load as the ox could manage on the bumpy forest road.

He arose before daylight and yoked Starkodder to the cart; he wanted to start at the break of dawn to be back before dark. Johan, always awake early, wanted to ride with his father, who once had promised to take him along to Taylors Falls. But today his load was heavy and Kristina felt the boy should stay at home; he would only get cold riding on the load such a long distance. It wasn’t freezing yet, replied Karl Oskar, and as the boy kept on pleading he relented. It would be good for the boy to get out a little; he would soon be eight and children ought to get around a little at that age.

Children should be hardened was an old saying, but Kristina wound her big woolen shawl around Johan to keep him warm on the journey. She lingered in the door and looked after them as they rolled away into the forest; Karl Oskar walked beside the cart, the reins in one hand, while he steadied the wagon with the other. Johan sat on top of the sacks and waved proudly to his mother; the gray shawl, covering everything but his face, made him look like a wizened old woman.

The ox cart rocked and bumped in the deep ruts — how easily it could turn over on the bumpy road.

“Drive carefully, Karl Oskar! The boy might fall off!” Kristina called after them.

Her husband and son disappeared from Kristina’s view, enveloped by the gray mist of dawn. She sat down in front of the fire with her wool cards; she ought to card wool days on end, all of them needed new stockings before the winter cold set in, and besides the work made the hours fly. But she could not get the cart out of her mind; so many things could happen to Karl Oskar and Johan. Suppose they had to wait at the mill for their grind — then they wouldn’t be home until after dark and could easily lose their way in the forest. The cart might turn over and pin Karl Oskar under the load, badly hurt and unable to move. The cart might break down on the wretched road, preventing them moving from the spot, or Johan might fall off and break an arm or a leg. Busy with her carding, she still could not help thinking there was no end to all the things that might happen to an ox cart.

In the late afternoon she began to listen for the sound of the wagon; wasn’t it time for her to hear the heavy tramp of the ox and the rolling trundles? But she heard nothing. At last she put the wool cards aside and walked out to the edge of the clearing. Once outside she understood that there was still something else that might have happened to Karl Oskar, something she had not imagined — the very thing that must have happened.

Indeed, they had been forewarned. She should have remembered the previous evening — the sun had set fiery red as a peony.

— 5—

The forest had much to offer a child’s eyes and the road to Taylors Falls was all too short for Johan. From his high seat on the load he had a good view of all the creatures of the forest. The flying squirrels, so much shyer than ordinary squirrels, fluttered among the distant branches like enormous bats. The woodpecker hammered his arrow-sharp beak into a dry tree trunk until the noise echoed through the forest. At the approach of the noisy wagon, large flocks of blackbirds lifted from the thickets, and the long ears of curious rabbits poked up from the grass in meadows and glades, their white tails bobbing up and down as they took off, their hind legs stretching out behind them. But the skunk, that evil-smelling animal, was not so easily scared — he sat down among the bushes and examined the wagon; better avoid that critter or it would piss on you.

Of all the animals, Johan was most familiar with the gophers, which were always visible near the house. Now he saw them wherever the ground was free of trees and bushes. The gophers had gray-brown coats with two black streaks along the back, and were bigger than rats but smaller than squirrels. They sat upright on their tails, blinking curiously at you, but if you tried to catch them they dove quickly into their holes. Gophers were not dangerous, Johan had been told, they neither clawed nor bit you. But the gray wildcat with its short legs and bobbed tail, which sometimes sneaked all the way into their house — he could both claw and bite, and if he was very hungry he might tear little children to pieces and eat them. Johan had been warned about that cat.

With a lumbering gait the black ox pulled the cart, the oak trundles turning slowly over stumps, into and out of ruts. The axles were well greased with bacon rind to prevent them from squeaking; Karl Oskar’s cart was no screech-wagon announcing a coming settler miles away. It was the first time in America he had driven a load with his own vehicle and his own beast, and the first time he was accompanied by his oldest son.

Johan had a mind ahead of his years, always quick to notice things around him. He had begun to help his father, looking after the cows and the pigs when they were let out, carrying in water and wood. He was a willing helper as far as his strength went. In time the boy would be a great aid to Karl Oskar.

“If you’re cold, come down and run beside the cart!”

No, Johan wasn’t cold; he wanted to ride on the load. The weather was mild and he was warmed by the excitement of his new experience, by all he saw and heard. He was only afraid the road might come to an end, and only too soon he spied the river; they had arrived.

Stephen Bolle, the Irishman, had built his little mill near the rushing stream above Taylors Falls. The mill house had been raised without a single nail; the walls were held together by pegs. The millstones were only eighteen inches in diameter; the small stones could grind only a rough flour. It was really a dwarf mill, a little makeshift contraption, but it was the closest one. Marine and Stillwater could boast of steam mills to grind the settlers’ crops.

The miller looked out through the door of his dwarf house, frightening Johan. Bolle was a thick-set, fat man with heavy white hair hanging down to his shoulders like a horse’s mane. His face was black-gray with white spots, like hardened, cracked clay, and in the cracks, dirt and flour had gathered; Bolle never washed his face. In the center of this black-gray, flour-white field, his mouth opened like a hole with one long, black tooth. To the boy the miller looked like an old troll.

One of his daughters, a widow, took care of the miller’s household, and a little granddaughter with fiery red hair ran around his legs, peeking curiously at the newcomers.

Stephen Bolle was a laconic man who grunted like an Indian; Karl Oskar could not understand half of what he said. But the Irishman understood the purpose of a man with grain sacks, and Karl Oskar knew the cost of grinding per bushel; further conversation was unnecessary.

There was one load before them; Karl Oskar would have to wait an hour until the other settler’s grind was finished, then his own sacks would be poured between the grindstones. Meanwhile, Karl Oskar and Johan opened their lunch basket: bread, potato pancakes, fried pork, milk from a bottle Kristina had tied in a woolen sock to keep warm. As they ate Bolle’s granddaughter, the little girl with the flaming hair, eagerly watched them. She tried to talk to Johan but he couldn’t begin to understand what she was saying. Her forehead above her snub nose was covered with freckles; she was the troll child and her grandfather the old troll; Johan disliked them both.

He asked his father about the miller and the girl and Karl Oskar told him that the Irish were a special race of people, unlike the Swedes except for the color of their skin. They were ill-tempered, always fighting among themselves or with other people. They quarreled willingly and worked unwillingly. But English happened to be their mother tongue and so they got along well in America, in spite of their bad behavior. That was the strange thing about this country — you might meet all kinds of people. So Johan mustn’t be surprised at the way people looked or acted.

The Irishman’s ramshackle mill ground slowly and it was one o’clock before Karl Oskar’s grain had been turned into flour. While they were waiting, the weather had unexpectedly changed. The sun was no longer visible, the whole sky had clouded over, and suddenly the air felt much colder.

The old miller dumped the last sack onto the cart, squinted heavenward, and granted, “Goin’ to get snow — pahaps — uh. .”

The Swedish settler nodded goodbye to the Irishman and hurried to turn homeward. His ox cart would need four hours on the road and the day was far gone; he had no time to lose if he wanted to be home before dark. Of course he was familiar with the road and could follow his own tracks so he was sure to reach Duvemåla even if he had to travel the last stretch in darkness. Nevertheless. . he urged Starkodder: “Git goin’! Hurry up!” But the black ox had once and for all set his own pace, and moved his heavy body with the familiar slow speed, shuffling his hooves in the same rhythm; this steady beast was not to be ruffled by whip or urging.

Johan had again settled himself on top of the sacks but after a couple of miles he complained of being cold. Karl Oskar helped the boy down and had him walk beside the cart to keep warm. Karl Oskar buttoned up his own heavy coat. It had indeed turned cold, and there was a peculiar thickness in the air, indicating a change in the weather, the kind that took place so suddenly in the Territory. Men said the temperature could fall from twenty above to twenty below within a few hours. And the Irish miller had croaked something about snow. Well, it was time, of course. .

But there was another word in connection with snow, and that word Karl Oskar did not even wish to voice. But it was surely too early for that kind of weather, now, at the beginning of November. Yet, anything could happen weather-wise in this country — if they were unlucky. He began to feel apprehensive as he peered at the clouds; they were thickening and darkening above the tree tops. And the trees, which had been still when they drove past them a few hours ago, had begun to sway — slowly, to be sure — yet it was not a good sign; it boded ill.

But a storm couldn’t come on so suddenly; he had time to get home. Well, to be on the safe side, perhaps they had better take the road by Danjel’s and Jonas Petter’s claims, on Lake Gennesaret. This was a little farther, a mile or two, but in New Kärragärde they would find shelter should the threatening storm break. They would have to turn off at the creek, a few hundred yards farther on. He hesitated, scanning the fir tops every couple of minutes — it couldn’t come that quick. .

Johan was unable to keep warm even though he ran behind the cart and kept in constant motion.

“I’m cold, Father! It burns. .”

He wound the woolen shawl tighter around Johan’s head and shoulders and showed him how to flail his arms against his body to keep warm. He had no mittens but Karl Oskar dug his own out of his pocket and put them on the boy’s ice-cold hands. As the cold became more intense, the boy became a problem, for he was sensitive to it in a way a grown person was not. If Karl Oskar had suspected the weather would change he would have driven alone to Taylors Falls. But in the morning it had looked promising. . For his son’s sake he now decided to take the longer road through Danjel’s claim and, if need be, seek shelter. At the creek Karl Oskar left his old tracks and turned off toward New Kärragärde. This stretch should take only half an hour, certainly not much more, if he just could get his ox to move a little faster.

He cut a juniper branch and struck Starkodder a few blows across the hindquarters. “Git goin’!” The black ox stepped up his pace a little, and sniffed the air as if he could smell an approaching calamity.

A raw fog was enveloping the wagon from all quarters. A sharp wind, which penetrated their clothing and cut the skin like a knife edge, had come up behind them from the northeast. In the air, high above the trees, a heavy roar could be heard; it sounded like breaking waves on a distant shore. The trees bent back and forth, swaying like masts of a ship. This was a sure sign: a northeaster was breaking. But it might not last long. .

Karl Oskar looked skyward and discovered that he no longer could see the tree tops through the fog. Snow was all right, but that other word. . No, he liked no part of it; it was a terrifying word in the Territory—blizzard. One’s life was always in danger in a blizzard if one happened to be more than five minutes from a house.

They were still only halfway home but they might reach Danjel’s cottage. Another half hour — if it didn’t get too bad in the next half hour. It couldn’t come that quickly. They would make it. He urged the ox on, he yelled and hit and slapped the reins. The cart was moving forward; each time the wheels turned he took a few steps, three long steps. They had to reach shelter.

The noise from above was closer, the tree tops were bending lower, the motion of the trunks had increased. The blizzard was hitting the forest at a terrifying speed, rolling across the valley in darkening clouds, bursting furiously over hundreds of miles while the cart trudged only a quarter of a mile. It had come upon them so unbelievably fast that they could feel its impact already; the first snow-hail was whipping Karl Oskar’s cheeks.

Like a hawk after its prey, the blizzard dove down upon the cart and its people.

Within a few moments it was upon them. It began with whirling hail, biting like gravel into the skin; then after this first smarting blow, it hurled snow masses with mighty force. All at once the world around them was enveloped in snow, hurling, whirling, whipping, piercing, smarting snow. Only snow could be seen. The northeaster drove the blinding mass through the forest, swept the valley with its blizzard-broom. Without warning, they had fallen into the ambush of a great blizzard.

If the onslaught had come from the opposite direction they would have been unable to drive on. Against such a force the ox would have been unable to move; the cart would have stopped in its tracks. Now they were driven forward by the storm.

Shivering and trembling, Johan clung to his father: “Dad! Please! Help me please, Dad!”

The boy cried pitifully. Karl Oskar took the blanket which covered the sacks and wrapped it around him and put him back on top of the load. He reined in the ox for a moment — the boy had lost his wooden shoes in the snow and Karl Oskar must find them. It took some moments, for the dense snow stung his eyelids, blinding him.

The thick, snow-filled air darkened the forest; a premature dusk fell about them. Karl Oskar felt as if he were naked, so penetrating was the fierce wind. The northeaster’s icy scraper tore at his face. Johan, despite being well bundled, whimpered and cried with the painful cold. Only Starkodder, in his thick hide, had adequate protection against the blizzard.

The ox plodded along between the shafts, pulling the cart and following the clearing among the trees. The wheels turned, the cart moved, but had they not been somewhat sheltered by the forest it would surely have turned over.

On, on! They must reach Danjel’s, they must find shelter. It could not be far now — if the boy was able to stand it. . Karl Oskar walked beside the wagon and held onto it as if he were afraid of losing it. Now and again he felt for Johan to make sure he was still there; at the same time he watched his beast ahead of him. Starkodder tramped steadily through the blizzard, pushing his big-bellied body through the whirling snow masses like a slowly rolling boulder. The ox no longer seemed black — his coat was covered with snow and between the shafts he looked like a moving snowdrift with a pair of horns sticking out.

The snow lumped itself under Karl Oskar’s clogs, hung like a freezing cover over his back, stuck to the trundle wheels in big clumps. The cart rolled more slowly as the snow grew deeper, but they did move forward. God be praised for this ox; he was tough, he could get through.

And the blizzard-broom swept furiously and hurled the snow-masses over the St. Croix Valley. Karl Oskar had not seen the like of this storm in November. But a blizzard that came on so quickly usually did not last very long. It might be over in an hour, perhaps sooner. An hour, though, was too much for them; even a half hour or a quarter might be too much. So much could happen in a quarter of an hour in weather like this; indeed, a few minutes could mean life or death. They must find shelter quickly; their lives were now in danger.

The roar of the blizzard rose and fell. Sharp, crackling sounds were heard above the din: broken tree trunks that crashed in the forest. Here trees were felled without an ax, and the storm thundered and rumbled and swallowed all other sounds with its own tumult. The cart trundles, however, were still turning, the black ox still pulled his wagon, even though the snow had changed his color to shining white.

The driver’s cheeks were stiff, frostbitten; he rubbed them with snow. How long would his time of grace last? How long could the boy endure? No protection helped a body against this cold, however well bundled up. He called cheeringly to his son, who lay on the sacks like a bundle of clothes. A weak complaint was his only reply. Johan’s life was in danger, his resistance was not great. .

The storm-broom swept with its mighty strokes; the forest crackled, to right and left they could hear trees falling. Karl Oskar yelled with all his might at his beast, urging him, hitting him, but his voice was drowned in the blizzard’s hissing cauldron.

Suddenly he stopped; his clog had struck against wood. He took another step, yes, he was standing on wood. He recognized the place. They ware crossing the wooden bridge which Danjel and Jonas Petter had built over the brook Kidron. They were now in the little valley which the biblically inclined Danjel had called Kidron’s Valley.

If he remembered rightly he now had only about half a mile left to Danjel’s cabin. If the ox didn’t slow down they could make it in a quarter of an hour, surely in twenty minutes. On a clear day they could have seen the lake from here, and the house, they were that close. Within fifteen minutes they would be out of danger, sitting in the warmth of Danjel’s cottage. He called to the boy that they were almost at his uncle’s.

But the trundles turned more heavily in the drifted snow, the cart moved ever more grudgingly. Karl Oskar tied the reins around his waist and pushed the cart from behind with all his strength. This would also warm him. And the trundles kept turning, still rolling, and each turn brought them a few steps closer to the house down there at the lakeside, a few steps closer to safety.

If he hadn’t been forced to wait at the mill they would have escaped the blizzard, he thought, and would now be sitting in front of the fire at home. They were in bad luck today.

Just then, the greatest of bad luck overtook them. A heavy crashing sound cut through the roar of the blizzard somewhere close ahead of them and the cart stopped with a jerk. Karl Oskar hit the ox with the reins, urging him on. But Starkodder stood still. Karl Oskar walked up alongside the ox, feeling his flanks. Why had the beast come to a stop? He walked forward to Starkodder’s head, which the ox was shaking in annoyance; a branch hit Karl Oskar smartly across his face; he brushed the snow from his eyes and now he could see that a giant fir had fallen across the road, its roots poking heavenward. The tree had fallen close to the ox, who now stood in a thicket of branches; the beast was shaking his head, twisting and pulling it to free his horns, which had become ensnared in the fir’s branches.

Further progress was cut off. With only a short distance left the blizzard had felled a tree and caught them. Now they could move neither back nor forward.

Karl Oskar pulled out his ax from under the sacks, cut a few branches from the fallen tree, and liberated the ox; he unyoked the beast and secured him with the reins to the cart. Johan made a faint sound. Karl Oskar climbed up and felt the bundled-up child body.

“Awfully cold, little one?”

He took the boy in his arms, stuck his hand into the bundle, and felt the tiny limbs. Terror struck him.

“You’re cold as an icicle!”

A faint whimper from Johan: “Are we home, Dad?”

The father began to rub the stiff limbs so violently that the boy cried out: “Stop it, Dad! It hurts! Please!”

Feeling still remained in the little body, no part of it was as yet frozen through. But Johan was terribly sleepy and wanted to be left alone. He knew the cart had stopped moving and thought they were home— “. . home with Mother.”

Karl Oskar shook and rubbed the tiny limbs. The boy cried out in pain. The cold bit and burned, cutting his skin like a knife. Johan could not understand: they were home, he had called Mother but she didn’t answer him. Why? With no reply from Mother he clung to Father, closer, shivering.

“I’m cold, Dad, worse, awfully bad. .”

Karl Oskar Nilsson held his oldest son in his arms and tried to find protection from the blizzard behind the cart. He sat down in the snow, squatting against the sharp sweep of the storm. The cold snow whirled around him. He crept under the cart with the child; it did not help noticeably. Where could he find protection for Johan against the merciless cold? He himself shook with cold and his limbs stiffened as soon as he stopped moving them; he had no warmth left for his son. What must he do to keep life in the little body?

Should he try to cut the tree and clear the road? It was only a short distance to Danjel’s. But he wouldn’t have time; before he could cut half through the giant fir, his son would be frozen to death.

No, there was nothing he could do, nothing that would help him. All he could do was pray to God for his poor soul. And sit under the cart and wait for the child in his arms to stiffen to a corpse.

At home Kristina was waiting with three more children and one unborn life, while he sat under an ox cart, preparing himself for eternity. A tree had fallen, and parted them forever; he had driven off to the mill, never to return. The blizzard had parted them forever. Was this the way his life would end?

Hadn’t the storm gone down a little? Or was the blizzard just catching its breath? No, it couldn’t be over so soon. There was no hope of that. And so all would be over. Over? No! He mustn’t give up! He had never given up! A person must use his sense and his strength as long as a drop of blood was left in his body. He mustn’t be tempted to think that nothing would help. He must try and try and try again. He still had some fight left in him. And it wasn’t the first time that a life close to him had been in danger. He had never given up before — why should he now? Hadn’t he any guts left?

A third life was with them — the ox, Starkodder, who bellowed now and then between the gusts. The black ox had seldom before made any sound, but now he bellowed in fright. Even a dumb animal could sense danger to life. Yet the beast would probably endure the longest of them, the ox would survive its owner and the owner’s son, the animal would survive the humans. Yes, how long could an old, tough ox withstand the blizzard? He did have a thick fur coat.

Now that the branches of the fallen tree had swept the snow from Starkod-der’s back he was black again; only the white star on his forehead shone through the mist, the animal’s big belly had been washed clean by the snow and shone wet.

They were so close to human habitation. He could try to get through alone the piece that was left. But Johan, what should he meanwhile do with the child?

Karl Oskar rose with the boy in his arms and walked toward his trusted beast of burden, who bellowed helplessly against the roaring blizzard; the man was approaching his beast for help, for a thought had come to him. There was still a chance — he must make a last effort.

Johan clung to his neck, his arms stiffening with the cold. The boy was small, the ox large. The little one could find shelter with the big one, a human being with an animal. Starkodder was his good, reliable beast, but he was only an animal, and a new animal could be found in his place. But no one could replace his son if he froze to death.

Karl Oskar had the necessary tools with him, the ax and the knife. He could do it quickly, it was still light enough for him to see. But he must hurry, it must be done within minutes. And it wouldn’t take long.

Karl Oskar had never moved as quickly as he did in the following few minutes. He bundled up Johan in the shawl and the blanket and laid him in the snow under the cart. Then he led the ox a few paces away, to the side of the road. Starkodder followed him trustingly, stopping when the man stopped. They walked with the wind, yet were almost blown over by its force. In the lee of a great tree trunk Karl Oskar halted, gathered the reins, and tied the right foreleg of the ox to his left hind leg, down low, near the hoof. The ox stood still, patient, accommodating. Karl Oskar picked up his ax and stationed himself near the head of the beast.

Starkodder stumbled toward his owner, sniffing his master’s coat as if seeking fodder hidden under it. Karl Oskar raised his arm with the ax but let it drop again; the ox’s mouth touched his sleeve, his tongue licked it, as if expressing his devotion. The animal’s behavior caused the master to stay his arm momentarily, but he hesitated only a few seconds. He remembered the life he was trying to save; there was no time to lose.

Grasping the handle firmly with both hands, he raised the ax above his head, aimed at the little white star between the ox’s horns, and let the ax hammer fall with a murderous blow on the beast’s forehead.

With a piercing bellow, the ox staggered to his knees, his head against the ground. The butcher hit again in the same spot. Now the ox was down; from his throat came a bellow of agony which for a few moments drowned the blizzard’s roar. With the third blow the bellowing died to a faint sound. The ox’s head was in the snow but his body still rested on his hind legs; Karl Oskar jerked the reins with which he had fastened the animal’s legs and the beast toppled over. The heavy body rolled on its right side, but the legs still kicked in the air.

Karl Oskar alone had never butchered an animal so big, but with a firm hand, he pushed the knife into the neck all the way to the handle. As he pulled it out, he saw that he had hit the right spot; blood pumped out in a heavy stream as if he had pulled the plug from the bung hole of a barrel. The snow around the ox’s head was stained dark red, fumes rose from the spurting liquid, and Karl Oskar warmed his frozen hands in the steaming blood from the ox. He stood bent over the animal as long as the red stream flowed; soon it trickled in drops. The black ox still kicked, but these motions soon weakened into feeble jerks.

Its blood drained, its life gone, the butchered animal lay still. Karl Oskar picked up the reins again and managed, with some difficulty, to turn the heavy carcass over on its back, to facilitate removing the entrails. With the ax he quickly severed the ribs, put the ax handle into the hole and widened it enough to get his hands through. Then, with his knife, he opened the carcass from the chest to the tail and cut loose the entrails — heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen, liver, bladder. A fetid odor rose in his face. His fingers moved cautiously around the ox’s big stomach, lest he puncture it with the knife. Below it he groped for the intestines, entwined like a coil of snakes, the pale light from the snow shining into their nest.

The butcher wiped the icicles from his eyes; the blood from his hands smeared his face. All entrails must be removed from the carcass to make sufficient room. He cut out organ after organ and threw them in the snow. Most difficult to handle was the large stomach sac, which flowed in all directions like an immense lump of dough, steam issuing from it as if it were a boiling cauldron. At last the carcass was clean, and round about it lay the entrails strewn in the snow.

Karl Oskar had prepared a warm, safe room for his son.

He pulled the bundled-up Johan from under the cart, carried him to the ox, and placed him inside the carcass. There was plenty of room in there for the child, and the animal’s warmth would start the blood circulating in the boy’s frozen limbs.

Then the father folded the edge of the hide over the child, who already was reviving; he felt the thick fur with his hand: “At home, Dad?”

“Yes, go to sleep again, boy. .”

With the ox hide over him Johan thought he was at home in bed under their thick comforter; he fell asleep again, contentedly. The father wrapped the shawl around him as best he could. Then with the reins he tied the carcass together, leaving a small air hole above the child’s mouth. He stood for a moment, listening to his son’s breathing. But Johan was already sound asleep, as comfortable inside the carcass as if he had been sleeping in his own bed.

Karl Oskar’s arms and legs were still shaking, no longer from the cold, but from suspense and the effort of butchering. His hands and clothing were covered with blood and entrail slime, but it was done and he had succeeded; his last effort to fight on. He had found shelter for Johan in the ox’s cavity. He would last a good while there. And now with the boy safe, Karl Oskar could seek shelter and aid.

He didn’t feel the cold now; the butchering had warmed him. And perhaps the storm was going down a little. The black clouds seemed a little lighter and higher above the tree tops. Heavy gusts of wind still shook the trees, but not so persistently. Perhaps the blizzard would die down as suddenly as it had come on. Trees were still falling, however, and it was hard to walk upright.

It was barely half a mile to Danjel’s — could he make it? Of course he could, even if he had to crawl on his hands and knees. Even though it was almost dark, he remembered the trees they had blazed for the road, and the wind would be at his back.

Karl Oskar picked up his ax and began to cut his way through the huge fir which had blocked their progress. He hacked at it furiously, grateful that he still had strength for one more effort against the elements. He would find his way through the blizzard, his bloody hands would knock on Danjel’s door. .

— 6—

Yesterday, when she had seen the sun’s blood-red globe, she knew it boded a storm. Why hadn’t she remembered that when Karl Oskar left? Why hadn’t she warned him?

Kristina asked herself these questions when the blizzard broke in the late afternoon, imprisoning her and the children in the cabin.

The day was followed by the longest, most wakeful night of her life. She clung to a single if: if her husband had been warned about the impending blizzard, then he and Johan might have remained at Taylors Falls. Otherwise they now lay frozen to death somewhere in the forest.

Life could be snuffed out quickly in a blizzard. Last winter a settler’s wife in Marine had gone out to feed her chickens in a blizzard; she had never come back. After the storm was over she had been found, twenty paces from her door. An ox cart, overtaken by such a storm, could stall in a drift. The snow would cover ox, cart, and driver, who would remain hidden until the first thaw of spring. The cold would have preserved their bodies: there would sit the driver, still upright on his load, the reins in his hands, his mouth open as if he were urging on the ox to greater speed. And the ox in the shafts, the yoke on his neck, his horns in the air, would have his knees bent for the next step. So the cart and its occupants would remain immobile under the snow mantle all winter long, as if they had been driving through the entire winter. In March the death cart would be unveiled by the sun.

All night long, Kristina could see Karl Oskar, with Johan on the load behind him, driving in the same spot, driving the road to eternity.

In the evening, the blizzard had died down. After a night of agony, which denied her merciful sleep for a single moment, dawn finally came. And in the morning she beheld through the window a strange procession approaching their house: Uncle Danjel came, driving his ox team, and their own black ox, which yesterday had been yoked to the cart when Karl Oskar had left for the mill, now lay on Danjel’s wagon. The animals limbs dangled lifeless, his large head with the beautiful horns hung over the side of the wagon. Danjel walked beside it, Karl Oskar came behind, carrying a shapeless bundle. Kristina stepped back, fumbling for something to hold onto. She recognized the shawl she had tucked around Johan yesterday morning. Her lips were tightly pressed together to hold back her instinctive cry. With trembling knees she walked to the door and opened it.

Karl Oskar stepped over the threshold, and walked slowly into the room. Silently he laid his burden on the bed nearest the door.

Kristina glimpsed the little head in the shawl. Her voice failed her, and she could barely whisper, “Is he dead?”

Relieved of his burden, Karl Oskar straightened up.

“The boy is all right.”

“But how. .? The blizzard. .?”

“It let up. But we decided to stay over with Danjel.”

“Yesterday afternoon. . when it began. . last night. . I thought. . I. .”

Again her voice failed her; she could not go on.

Karl Oskar had carefully washed away every sign of blood from his face, hands, and clothing, so that his wife wouldn’t be frightened, but now, as he unbundled the shawl, he discovered a large, liver-red spot on Johan’s neck, clinging like a fat leech.

Kristina cried out.

Quickly he said, “Don’t be afraid! It’s only ox blood!”

“. . the ox. .?”

“Had to kill him to save the boy. .”

It was not easy to explain why he had butchered his fine ox. Now that the storm was over and all was still again, he couldn’t quite understand it himself.

“I put the boy in the ox’s stomach while I went to Danjel’s. When the storm died down, we went back and found him still asleep. It saved his life.”

And so Karl Oskar was again without a beast of burden.

He kept the hide of the black ox to use for shoe leather, but sold the meat to German Fischer’s Inn at Taylors Falls for ten dollars, the sum he still owed for the animal. Kristina thought they should have kept some of the meat, but Karl Oskar said he would be unable to swallow a single bite of it. After having had to kill Starkodder, he felt the animal had assumed a sacrificial significance: not only had the ox given them his strength in life, he had given his life to save their oldest son.

VII. ULRIKA IN HER GLORY

— 1—

One Saturday afternoon, having fired the bake-oven and raked out the embers, Kristina was just ready to put in the bread when she heard someone stamp off the snow outside the door; Ulrika, warmly dressed, stepped across the threshold.

Sledding was good now along the timber roads, and Ulrika had ridden in a sleigh most of the way from Stillwater in the company of her husband, who had been called to preach in St. Paul on Sunday.

“I took the opportunity to visit you!”

Kristina had been standing in front of the hot oven, the rake and the ash broom in her hands; she forgot to dust the soot from the hand she offered to the caller, so glad was she to see Ulrika. She enjoyed no visitor more. Although Kristina had neighbors and had met the settlers’ wives, it was difficult for her to feel intimate with them. Perhaps it was the long isolation that had made her feel shy and awkward in company, but she never quite knew how to act with new people; she was afraid she might appear backward and foolish to them. In order to become friends with the neighbors, great efforts were demanded of her, and she rarely felt up to such efforts.

But when Ulrika came to visit her, however inconveniently, all guards were down and all concerns forgotten, even today — besides the baking, Lill-Marta was in bed with a cold and a throat irritation. Kristina quickly put a coffeepot over the fire. But the rising bread must be put in while the oven was hot, so as soon as Ulrika had removed her coat and shawl she took the bread ladle from Kristina’s hands to help her. She stood directly in front of the oven opening even though Kristina warned her she might get soot on her fine clothing.

Ulrika was in the last month of her pregnancy, and had grown ample around the waist and become clumsy in her motions. But she handled the ladle firmly and within a short time she had all the bread in the oven.

It had been an unlucky day for the children, Kristina said. Dan had crept too near the fire and burned himself on the forehead and she had had to melt sheep fat and put it on the burn. Barely had she attended to the little one when Harald, playing with a piece of firewood, had got a splinter under his fingernail and cried like a stuck pig before she could get it out. And the girl in bed was forever complaining of her sore throat and needed attention. All these things had more or less upset her household this morning.

But despite her problems, Kristina soon had the coffee on the table and could sit down with her visitor for a rest.

“You’re overloaded with work,” said Ulrika sympathetically. “American women have it much easier. The men scrub the floors and wash the dishes for their wives.”

Kristina said, “When Karl Oskar comes in from work in the evening he’s so tired out that I wouldn’t dream of asking him to wash up after supper.”

“If he were an American man he would offer to do it,” insisted Ulrika. “He is still too Swedish!”

Swedish men were ashamed to do women’s chores, she continued. Think of how it was back home. After eating, the menfolk just lolled about, resting and breaking wind, while the wives cleaned up and waited on those lazybodies. Weekdays and Sundays alike. And many women in Sweden had to do the men’s chores as well — carry in water and wood, thresh, plow, load dung. They were hardly better off than the animals. If they only knew how much easier their lives would be as wives to American men, the whole Kingdom of Sweden would be empty of women in a few weeks.

Kristina noticed how big Ulrika had grown since their last meeting. “You too will soon have more to do, I can see!”

“Sure enough!” Ulrika felt her enormous belly. “My priest was made in March. I’ll bear him before Christmas, I guess.”

She had had such horrible vomitings during this pregnancy, she was sure it would be a boy. A woman puked more when she carried a male child than she would carrying one of her own sex. This was only natural.

Kristina confided to her guest that she, too, was pregnant again.

Ulrika looked at her compassionately. “I thought you looked kind of pale-faced. But you have such a big household and so much to care for; you should really go barren and empty for a few years.”

It was a nuisance to protect and look after babies out here during the winter, said Kristina. She would never forget all the trouble she had with Dan the first winter. But this time she would bear in May, just the right time for a birth; the little one would come into the world in summer and warmth.

Ulrika looked about the cabin. “It won’t be easy for you with five brats in this little log hut. With five kids to care for you need space to turn around.”

“This is our last winter in the cabin. Karl Oskar has promised to have the new house ready by next fall.”

Kristina only worried, she told her friend, because his plans called for so large a house she was afraid he wouldn’t be able to raise it. It was to be two stories, with rooms both upstairs and downstairs. Everything he undertook was on such a large scale. She could never persuade him to be moderate.

“But he is an extra fine man!” said Ulrika with conviction. “He can use his hands and do everything for himself.”

She added that she had heard how he had managed in the blizzard and saved both Johan’s and his own life by killing the ox while the storm was at its height. The Swedes in the valley were talking about nothing else, and Karl Oskar was said to be both able and ingenious. Ulrika herself knew from earlier experience that he was neither a weakling nor at a loss as to what to do.

“I’m only afraid it’s going to his head,” said Kristina.

Karl Oskar was fearless and undismayed, and never gave up; he insisted it always paid to fight back however hopeless things looked. But he was getting so that he thought he could depend entirely on himself. And to tell the truth, however well he had managed during the blizzard, the saving of the boy was God’s miracle. He himself had frostbitten ears and cheeks, but Johan had not a frozen spot on him, and this was a miracle. What would Karl Oskar have done if the blizzard had continued to rage? Then he couldn’t have got to the boy in time and Johan would have frozen to death inside the ox belly. And that was just what Kristina had told Karl Oskar.

He had insisted that a person in danger had no time to spend on prayers but must try all the tricks he could think of to help himself. Waiting for someone else to do it would bring no result. And Kristina feared that his saving of Johan in the blizzard had had a bad influence on him; he called it his own doing, and this was arrogance. He was getting so big-headed that he relied more on himself than on God.

“Well, it seems at times the Lord wants people to help him a little when he performs his miracles,” said Ulrika.

Karl Oskar was after all one hell of a good man, no one could deny that, she insisted. And he made children one after another; for this he needed no one’s help, either. But this was one activity he ought to curtail. If he rested occasionally from his male duties it would be good for Kristina. But she guessed a man couldn’t hold back what he didn’t hold in his hand.

Someone else was stamping off snow outside, this time the heavy stampings of a man. Petrus Olausson entered the cabin. In his hand he held an enormous auger. He shook hands with Kristina, and looked questioningly at Ulrika. Kristina introduced them. “This is Ulrika from Stillwater, who has come for a visit.”

She was about to explain to Petrus a little further who this woman was, but Ulrika stood up and took the words out of her mouth: “I’m Mrs. Henry Jackson, a good friend of Mrs. Nilsson. I gather you’re one of the new neighbors?”

“That’s right, Mrs. Jackson.”

Petrus Olausson glanced at Ulrika sharply; tall, ample around the waist, she stood there displaying her big belly. The farmer’s eyes roamed over her body; the sight of the pregnant woman seemed to affect him uncomfortably.

He turned to Kristina. Tomorrow, on the Lord’s Day, he had invited a few friends among the Swedes for spiritual conversations in his house; he hoped Kristina and her husband would come for the edification of their souls: “We will have a speak-meeting.”

Kristina wanted to go to Olausson’s, but she hesitated. Ulrika intended to stay over Sunday and she felt she could not leave her.

She put a third cup on the table. “Sit down, Petrus! Have a cup of coffee with us.”

Olausson sat down, and as Kristina filled the plate again, he began to talk to Ulrika. The Swedes out here needed to gather for spiritual communion, he told her. Last fall he had built a big barn, which had plenty of room now that his crops had been threshed. He thought they could use this barn for services until they built themselves a church.

“Barns are fine for sermons,” agreed Ulrika. “But you can’t use them in winter.”

Petrus Olausson said that as the Swedes in the valley still had no church, they could hardly be looked upon as devoted users of God’s Holy Word. A formal service every Sunday and at least two sermons during the week were the least a good Lutheran Christian needed; daily prayers, morning, noon, and evening he took for granted, health permitting.

But Ulrika shook her head. “It’s unreasonable to have services that often! God doesn’t expect it!”

Petrus Olausson looked at her, startled.

Ulrika continued. Yes, she was sure God expected moderation in their devotion. A person should never become excessive in spiritual matters. Her husband preached about ten sermons a week, at different places, and it was all he had the strength to do. His journeys over the bad roads wore him out. And neither God nor his flock had any joy from a tired-out priest who came home so bedraggled that he was unable to say his evening prayers or perform his manly duty to his wife.

Olausson’s mouth had dropped open while Ulrika spoke; now he said, “Are you married to a man of the Church, Mrs. Jackson?”

“Yes, that I am.”

“Well, this is a surprise. .”

“It’s the truth — my husband is a priest.”

“Where does he preach?”

“My husband is serving as priest in the American Baptist Church in Stillwater.”

Petrus Olausson’s eyelids twitched violently as if suddenly he had got something in his eye. His lips moved eagerly; he seemed to have words at the tip of his tongue, but only a grunt came out.

He rose like a jack-in-the-box.

Kristina turned from the fire, the coffeepot in her hand. “Sit down, Petrus. I’ve just warmed the coffee. .”

“Thanks! I care not for coffee today!”

“Please, Petrus!”

“I’ll find Nilsson outside — I just wanted to return his auger. .”

He nodded stiffly to Kristina, picked up his hat, and without another look at Ulrika he stomped out of the cabin.

Greatly disturbed, Kristina looked through the window after her neighbor. “What got into him?”

“The man jumped up as if someone stuck an awl in his ass!” laughed Ulrika.

“But he usually acts so friendly. Did he think my coffee was poisoned?”

“Perhaps it was the looks of me he didn’t like.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m thick. But I told him I was married. I have both Christian and legal right to be thick.”

“Nonsense! He didn’t run away because of that.”

“I’ve known pious Lutheran men who detest a woman who dares show herself while pregnant. They hold her unclean — specially when she’s as big as I am.”

Such an explanation Kristina could not accept; their neighbor was indeed pious and hard in his judgments, but he couldn’t detest a woman because she was pregnant. So she worried to herself about Olausson’s strange behavior.

Ulrika, however, brushed it aside.

“Now I want to tell you my errand,” she said. “I’ve come to ask you and Karl Oskar to a party during the Christmas holidays.”

Kristina clapped her hands in joyful surprise. “I don’t believe it! Are you going to give a party?”

Ever since Ulrika’s marriage she had wanted to give a big party for all the Swedes who had emigrated with her from her old parish. It would be a great pleasure to invite her old countrymen to a feast. In Sweden she had never entertained; she was considered too low at home — who would have come? And one couldn’t have a party without guests. But here in America those she invited would come, here she would have guests. And this Christmas feast would be the first party she had ever given.

“But you aren’t going to have a party before the child comes, are you?” asked Kristina.

“Lord no! It will be a christening at the same time; I want to show off my little priest!” And Ulrika caressed her protruding belly: for her childbed she had bespoken Cora Skalrud whom she greatly trusted. All Norwegians she knew in Stillwater and Marine she valued highly. The Norwegians did not play up to upper-class people the way the Swedes did. They had never had any nobility in their country, Miss Skalrud used to say, but were, all of them, born with nobility: no Norwegian would ever give up his inborn right to haughtiness. So the Norwegians walked with straight backs, even in their homeland. But in Sweden, the ceilings were so low that people had to travel all the way to Minnesota to straighten out their backs.

Kristina understood Ulrika perfectly. For years she must have been thinking of this party, of showing her American home to her countrymen, showing them how well things were with her. It would be the crowning event of her rehabilitation. Kristina promised her dear friend that she and Karl Oskar would be most happy to come to Ulrika’s first party.

— 2—

During a dark night in December, eight days before Christmas, the birth took place. Pastor Jackson had to leave his bed in the middle of the night to fetch Miss Cora Skalrud to help his wife. It was over before dawn. The Norwegian woman had been a midwife for twenty-five years and approached her duties with experienced hands. Ulrika was successfully delivered, without other assistance.

The mother lay quietly in her bed regaining her strength, while Miss Skalrud, a strong, resolute woman, fussed with the newborn child, washed and cared for it. Pastor Jackson waited in the living room, into which he had been pushed unceremoniously by Miss Skalrud, not yet aware that all was over.

The midwife was surprised that the mother had not immediately asked the sex of the child. Now she volunteered to Mrs. Jackson that she had borne a girl.

Ulrika raised herself quickly on her elbow. “What are you saying, woman? Did I hear you right?”

“I said, you’ve borne a little girl. .”

“Do you mean to insist that I. .?”

The mother fell back on her pillow. She lay in silent thought for a minute. It had not crossed her mind — she had known in advance the child would be a male. Then she spoke. “Look again!”

The midwife stared at her; was this woman out of her head? Or why didn’t she believe her words concerning the child’s sex? She replied gruffly; perhaps she hadn’t spoken clearly enough? It was a girl she held in her arms.

But Ulrika knew that Miss Skalrud’s eyesight was poor. She had of course held the child too far away from her eyes. Besides, it was still quite dark outside, and their only light was the pale flame of a tallow candle; the midwife was obviously wrong.

“Take the candle and peek closer!”

This was an insult to Cora Skalrud’s professional pride. She replied that in her life she had helped more than a thousand children through the portals of this world — who would know the difference between male and female better than she?

Ulrika sat up in bed. “But you are shortsighted, Skalrud! And you are a stubborn woman because you are Norwegian. Give me the brat and the stump of tallow and let me look for myself!”

Without reply the midwife held the newborn child close to the mothers face and let the candle shine on the wriggling little body. Ulrika looked herself.

“Well, what do you say now?”

Ulrika said nothing. She had sunk down into her bed again.

This child could not become a minister. No woman could be consecrated for pastoral duties.

The midwife remained at the bedside, the child in her arms, reproaching Ulrika. She should be proud to have given life to such an unusually well-shaped girl. Why did she act as if she were disappointed and annoyed? Miss Skalrud had assisted at the births of creatures born blind as kittens, ill-shaped, hare-lipped, one-handed, one-legged, noseless, or crippled changelings. In such cases she could understand if the mother were unhappy and complained. If she had put any such monster in Ulrika’s arms there would have been cause for wailing!

The words rang true to the mother and she asked for the girl. Miss Skalrud was right — she was a beautiful child, a wonderful little bundle. The baby was amazingly well made, perfect in every way.

“Yet a thief for a father!”

“What’s that?”

“And a whore for a mother!”

“Have you lost your mind, woman?”

The midwife was greatly disturbed. She went in to Pastor Jackson to tell him that his wife was successfully delivered, but she added: “Your wife is out of her head. I’m afraid she has childbed fever.”

Pastor Jackson became greatly upset. He immediately sent for Dr. Christoffer Caldwell, a contractor, carpenter, and blacksmith in the town, but first and foremost a capable doctor. He examined Ulrika and pronounced her a woman with the strength of a horse; never had he seen a woman so fully recuperated one hour after a birth.

Ulrika had no childbed fever. After a few days she was up, attending to her usual chores. And when one evening the Baptist congregation offered a prayer of thanks for Mr. and Mrs. Jackson’s newborn child, the pastor expressed his gratitude to the Lord.

But now, at the big Christmas party which Ulrika intended to give, there would be something amiss. She had planned to step forward with a boy-child on her arm and say to her guests: Look at this little one! He will be a man of the Church! He will stand in his surplice before the altar! He will climb the pulpit in full regalia! He shall be as important a man as Dean Brusander back in Ljuder, Sweden. And she who has carried this Lord’s servant in her womb for nine months is Ulrika of Västergöhl, the old parish whore from Ljuder, who at home was denied the holy sacrament and forbidden the Lord’s house. She is the one who stands before you now in her glory — the mother of a priest!

So she had intended to speak. But now she could not. And Ulrika searched her soul, realizing she had not yet managed to shed her old sinful body, and that God looked upon her as unworthy of mothering a minister.

But that day would come if she continued to improve. At the age of forty she had not many years to lose — she must make sure she became pregnant again as soon as possible.

— 3—

On the “fourth day of Christmas” Mrs. Henry O. Jackson gave the first party of her life, in the Baptist minister’s home at Stillwater. Her Swedish guests, grown-ups and children, came from Taylors Falls, from New Kärragärde, and from Duvemåla. Two Norwegian immigrants from Stillwater, Miss Skalrud and shoemaker Thomassen, were also invited. Karl Oskar and Kristina came with their four children; they would stay the night with the Jacksons. Only Swedish Anna did not come. Jonas Petter told them his housekeeper had awakened during the night with chills and running bowels and dared not travel the long road in this winter cold. The chills, that horrible disease, was prevalent among the settlers this winter, he explained. But they all knew that Swedish Anna refused to have anything to do with Ulrika after she became a Baptist.

Jonas Petter offered the excuse innocently, at face value, and Ulrika replied that she realized chills and loose bowels were the most annoying of ailments since they reduced a human body to a shadow within a short time, making it useless for both one thing and another. But a human soul could, in spite of this, remain honest and truthful. Then she whispered to Kristina, “I bet Swedish Anna prayed the Lord for this diarrhea!”

The only American among the guests was Pastor Jackson himself, and in his own home today he was not the host; it was his wife’s party and he also was an invited guest. The language barrier separated him from most of the others but some of them spoke English passably, so he wasn’t entirely deaf and dumb. He tried to make himself understood with motions of his hands, nods, pointings, and winks, and when he himself failed to understand what was said to him, he smiled his radiant smile, filled with friendship and warmth, making everyone feel happy.

Ulrika offered her guests old-fashioned Swedish Christmas dishes: boiled pig’s head, preserved and rolled pork, stewed pork, meatballs, chopped calf liver. She had made sausage of lamb and veal, prepared sweet cheese and cheesecake. This was not ordinary food, it was holiday abundance, not meager, everyday fare but sumptuous Christmas dishes — the Christmas delicacies of Sweden served to the Swedes in the St. Croix Valley.

The guests helped themselves from the smörgäsbord and found places to sit down with their overflowing plates. They ate in silence. The fat rolled pork melted in their mouths, their tongues savored the aftertaste, the jellied pork from the pig’s head trembled on their plates, the smell from the sweet cheese penetrated their nostrils. It was a revelation: they had forgotten this taste. They had forgotten how wonderful all these dishes were. But after a few bites memory returned and they ate in silence and reverence; it was the taste of Christmas in Sweden!

Only a few times had they eaten these dishes since they left their homeland. After having been away for so long this feast became to them a return home, as it were. They saw, they tasted, they smelled Christmas in the homeland. It penetrated their eyes, mouths, and noses. The Christmas fare they devoured affected them more than physically — it penetrated the souls of the immigrants.

Memories from that land where they had eaten these dishes every Christmas filled the minds of the guests. A vision of that land suddenly fled before them with Christmas tables and festivities, with close relatives, intimate neighbors, forgotten friends. In their vision, they sat down with people they would never again see; they were sitting in a company who no longer belonged to the living. They remembered that year, and that Christmas, and that party — what festivity and hilarity! But she? She was at that party, and she is dead now. And he? I’ll never see him again.

To the Swedish settlers in Minnesota Territory Ulrika’s party became a party of memories; their old-country past caught up with them in the new, dwelt with them in this room. Ulrika’s table brought back their homeland in concrete reality. They had left that country, but the country was still with them.

Here they sat at memory’s table, in the company of the living and the dead. And they talked of the country they never again would see.

— 4—

Kristina felt liberated, at home, in this company where the language did not separate her from the others. She could listen and understand, talk and reply. It was as if she had been given back an essential faculty that she had lost in North America and missed sorely. She felt lighthearted and happy as she said to Karl Oskar, “This is exactly like a Christmas party back home.”

Home—it still lay across the sea. And she was still out here.

Kristina began to watch Anders Månsson. He ate very slowly from his well-filled plate, staring in front of him, staring with a fixed expression at the wall where there was nothing to see. But perhaps Anders Månsson did see something, perhaps it was Öländ, his home province, which he envisioned. He had once said that he had only one wish left: to eat Öländ dumplings once more before he died. And Kristina had promised to prepare them for him but had not yet had the opportunity.

Anders suffered from the same ailment as she did: he longed for the homeland. When that disease attacked him at its worst, he drank brännvin until he became insensible and lay flat on his back. She would have liked to talk with him about that ache and anguish, of their common loss. But he was a close man, and morose, and shied away from confidences. Perhaps he would not have taken to drinking in his misery if he had found a woman to share his life on his claim.

Kristina sat on the sofa beside Thomassen, the Stillwater Norwegian who had made her spinning wheel. Samuel Nöjd, the trapper, came over with his plate and sat down on the other side of her, grinning: “I keep to the ladies!”

Kristina had a feeling that a stink of slaughter and rancid hides always rose from Nöjd, and his evil language offended her. When he had been invited to Communion last spring he had sent a blasphemous refusal. This old man, so near to meeting his Creator, was an unbeliever. He was a disgusting man, who lived with an Indian woman, a persistent sinner. He had lived so long among the heathens out here that he had lost all his Christian conceptions. In spite of this Ulrika had invited him today; she would not overlook any of her countrymen, and she felt that the heathen Nöjd, more than others, needed to meet people who lived like Christians.

Nöjd pushed a large chunk of preserved pork into his mouth; the juice ran from the corners onto his chin, and he swallowed ravenously.

“Can she cook, that Ulrika! Oj, oj, oj! What a cook! I’m sorry she wouldn’t marry me!”

“But you have a woman, I’ve heard,” said Kristina.

“That Indian wench cooks regular pigs’ slops for me. All she does is stir up some wild rice and corn now and then.”

“Why do you keep her, then?”

“Oh, she’s useful for other things. She’s good to sleep on.”

And Samuel Nöjd chuckled and winked at Kristina with his small green eyes. “She’s somewhat narrow in the right place, Indian girls always are. .”

Shoemaker Thomassen pricked up his ears when the hunter described his Indian woman. He leaned so far forward that his yellow hair fell over his forehead.

“It’s not nice of you to use the poor woman in that way!” exclaimed Kristina.

“I’m only helping her,” chuckled Nöjd. “She came to my cabin one night last winter. She was almost starved to death, and frozen stiff. She nearly died. I let her stay. I’ve taken care of the girl.”

Ulrika was walking about among her guests, urging them to refill their plates. She stopped near Nöjd and listened as he continued:

“She has nobody who is interested in her. Her tribe doesn’t live hereabouts. I’ve been kind and human to her.”

“But you get paid for your kindness,” interrupted Ulrika. “Every night you exact payment from the poor girl!”

“My Indian girl sleeps with me of her free will!”

“She has no choice!”

“No! That’s a lie!” insisted the fur trader, insulted. “The French trappers forced the squaws on their backs, but I’ve never used force with any woman, not even with one of the savages.”

Ulrika wanted to be kind to Nöjd and said, “Well, you’re not one of the worst of the white men in the Territory. There are men who go after the poor animals. You, at least, keep to the human race.”

“Must men be so horrible and need it so much!” exclaimed Kristina, her voice half choked with repulsion.

The yellow-haired Norwegian at her other side nodded to her as if agreeing with her.

“What do you expect of men?” said Ulrika and looked from the Swede to the Norwegian. “They’re created that way!”

“You mean we can’t help ourselves,” grinned Nöjd.

But Ulrika explained how matters were: first God created man, and he did it on the afternoon of the same day in which he had made the animals, each according to its nature. He was a beginner with people, he had as yet no experience. When he attempted man he only knew how to make animals. And the man turned out the way he did because of this. Much later God created the woman. Then he had had experience, then he knew what a human should be like.

“But I’m no wild animal!” said Samuel Nöjd, annoyed. “The Indian girl isn’t faring ill with me, she would be much worse off among her own people.”

He cleaned his plate and walked up to the table for more. The Norwegian moved closer to Kristina. His lustful eyes had been on her all the time. She remembered that look from the day when they arrived in Stillwater and he had shown them the way to Taylors Falls.

“The women here in the Territory are unjustly divided,” said the Norwegian settler, thickly. “So many of us men have to go without them.”

“But new women are coming in right along,” said Ulrika.

Thomassen, however, complained that no woman had been left over for him.

Ulrika turned to him with deep understanding. Both men and women suffered with great desires and had to fight against them, she told him. It was only natural that the men in the Territory had hot pants, spending their days and nights alone. But partly they had themselves to blame; they needn’t, for example, drink so much of that egg beer they all bought at Pierre’s Tavern down at the river. She knew lumberjacks and other men who practically lived on that stuff; it contained four eggs to each quart of beer. It was of course a healthy and strength-giving drink. But a more sexy drink was not to be had in the world. And the men complained they couldn’t hold themselves back, after first having stirred up their lusts. She had heard that Thomassen used to go to Pierre’s Tavern; her Christian kindness compelled her to advise him: if his flesh cried out for women, by all means stay away from the egg beer!

Ulrika walked away to talk to other guests. The blond Norwegian had not taken his eyes off Kristina. When Ulrika left them he put his hand on her shoulder.

Kristina could feel the strong yearning emanating from the man. His eyes were so strangely penetrating; she felt they were seeking her sex. His lust lay so open today she became uncomfortable. She pulled back her shoulder, shivering and began to praise the spinning wheel he had made for her: it was so easy to handle, the pedals moved lightly. She didn’t tire from spinning all day at a stretch. Spinning and weaving were her winter occupations.

The Norwegian touched the hand in which she held her plate:

“Come and visit me sometime!”

He was talking in a very low voice — what did he mean? He had said that the women were unjustly divided among the men hereabouts — did he mean that several men should share one woman? Would he himself wish to share her, perhaps?

“Please, come in and see me! I live all alone.”

Yes, that was what he meant: he wanted to have his share of her. He wanted to lure her to his lonely house.

She looked for Karl Oskar — he was sitting at the other end of the room, talking in his halting English with Pastor Jackson. What would Karl Oskar have said if he had heard Thomassen’s invitation? Something unpleasant would have happened to the shoemaker, of that she was sure. She also was sure that there was one threshold in Stillwater she would never cross.

Little by little she moved away from the man, until he was forced to take his hand from her shoulder.

He smiled, awkwardly: “You aren’t afraid of me?”

“No, I had not thought of you as being dangerous.”

“I am a very peaceful man.”

There was something of a child’s helplessness in the little shoemaker’s voice. And something childlike came over his face when he smiled. Her fear and repulsion were overcome by compassion: perhaps he hadn’t meant anything by his invitation. Perhaps he had asked her out of pure kindness and only wanted her to come and visit him — he must suffer from lack of company. If he wanted a woman, could she reproach him for that? She could understand a lone man’s predicament in this frontier country. She could imagine what it would be for her were she forced to live alone, without husband and children. She could not have endured it, absolutely not. Yet most of the men out here must endure such a life, year in, year out. Perhaps they were not to be judged too severely if they were tempted to adultery with other men’s wives, and God must overlook it even if they mixed with heathen women and had unnatural relations with animals.

Samuel Nöjd had gone to sit alone in a corner with another heaped-up plate in front of him, oblivious to everything except the food. Her judgment on him and his treatment of the Indian girl may have been too thoughtless. Perhaps he had told her the truth, that he was so kind and good to the girl that she gave in to him willingly. Samuel Nöjd had been born in a Christian land and had once known what sin was, but had forgotten. The heathen girl should not be judged, she did not know God’s Ten Commandments.

Again she heard the low voice of the Norwegian: “I am a kind man and would not harm a woman.”

Kristina turned to him. To live alone was too much for a human being. She had gone through so much, she knew. She herself would not wish to live without a man, and she thanked her Creator that she had one. She wanted to tell Thomassen how sorry she was that he must live alone. God had made men and women for each other and he wanted them to enjoy each other. She told him that she hoped so many women would move into the Territory that every man who wanted a wife could have one; that he too would find the companionship he longed for, so he would no longer have to suffer the cruel lot of the lonely ones.

The little yellow-haired man listened intently. Then he touched her hand and said in a controlled voice: “You are a good woman.”

Kristina felt perhaps she had been able to comfort another human being.

— 5—

At the height of the party Ulrika had an announcement: when she had planned the party she had hoped to have one more dear guest present, a little man-child. But as far as she could see it would be another year or so before he could be welcomed. In his place had been sent another guest, a little girl, whom they now would see for the first time.

Cora Skalrud came in carrying the tender child, the little newborn girl, bundled up in her swaddling clothes, and showed her to the guests. Miss Skalrud was as proud of the little one as if she herself had borne her. She predicted that the daughter would one day be as beautiful as her mother. Ulrika replied that in America a girl could make good use of a fair face. But such a girl born in Sweden to poor people would only have to suffer because of it, as she would be considered permissible prey for the men.

“Well, now I have introduced the wench,” she said happily, and Miss Skalrud carried the baby back to bed.

In the meantime, Jonas Petter had been telling a ribald story to a few of the male guests who sat in a circle around him. It was about a rich farmer at home in Ljuder who was unable to become a father and wanted to hire the village soldier to make him an heir, after his wife had agreed to do her part of the work. The farmer offered the soldier ten sacks of rye for his trouble if a male heir were the result, and five sacks if a female was born, all ample measure. That was how great a difference in value of the two sexes there was in Sweden. The soldier at first pretended hesitation, hoping the farmer would raise the offer. But it had been a year of bad crops and grain was high priced and at last he accepted the pay — it would give bread to his own large flock of children. Next time when the farmer had an errand to town and had to stay away for a couple of nights, the soldier was called in for duty in the couple’s marital bed.

He broke it off, however, when Ulrika displayed her newborn child, and when the little girl had been carried to her room he refused to go on. He realized suddenly that it was not a suitable story for a party in a minister’s home — he would tell the rest of it some other time in a less pious place.

Jonas Petter understood more English than any of the other men who had come to America with him; during the winter evenings he had studied language books and this last year he had been reading The Pioneer, the American paper for settlers, printed in St. Paul. And tonight Pastor Jackson had discovered Jonas’s ability in English; they had talked in the pastor’s tongue and understood each other easily.

The pastor now approached Jonas Petter, took him by the arm, and led him to a corner. He was speaking in a whisper — it seemed he had a secret to confide. And Jonas Petter’s ears were wide open:

Pastor Jackson had thought of a surprise for his wife at her party tonight: he intended to give a speech in her own language: “I want to pay tribute to my wife in Swedish, you see!”

From his Swedish friends he had picked up a few suitable sentences and had practiced their pronunciation in secret. But Swedish was a very difficult language and therefore his speech would be short, only seven or eight brief sentences. He practiced this speech for a long time. He wanted to honor and thank his beloved wife in her own language, but in his address of respect he wished also to include all the other women who had come from her country. He valued and thought highly of them all.

The little speech he had prepared with so much effort was written down on a piece of paper. Now he wanted to show it to Jonas Petter and get his opinion as to whether it was good enough. He was anxious to know if he had made any mistakes in the language — would Jonas Petter be kind enough to look through it?

Pastor Jackson handed him the paper. Jonas Petter walked over to the nearest wall candle and read by the light from the tallow:

“Dear my beloved Ollrika! I wish you a bit of speech on your party-feast today. I wish to say unto you thank you my dear. I am joyful and filled with happiness that you became a wife of mine. You are the best of wives in this world. I want you this to know. I would like to make speech and honor all Swedish womenkind today. I enjoy them and find happiness in them all. Svensuka flicker knulla bra.”

Twice Jonas Petter read through what Pastor Jackson had written. He read slowly and carefully and his face assumed a thoughtful mien.

The pastor stood behind his back and explained. It was the chastity and virtue of the Swedish women he wanted to praise in these words. Of all the people who had moved into Minnesota, the Swedish women appeared to him the model of pious morality.

The pastor was still talking in whispers. Jonas Petter whispered back: there was one sentence he wanted to ask about — where had the pastor picked up the very last sentence of the speech?

Jackson replied he had it from a Swedish timberman he had met in Franconi; he had asked this man to write down in his own language a few words of praise for Swedish women, indeed, the best praise he could give with a clear conscience. And the Swede had written it on paper he had copied, so Pastor Jackson did not think there could be any mistake in the language; he remembered that sentence very well — it was the last one, and he had copied it correctly.

Jonas Petter also spoke in a whisper when he answered that this was an elegant and worthy speech. It was well suited for the occasion here tonight. All that was written down on this paper was clear, unadulterated truth; from the first word to the last it was the whole truth. And he was sure the women present would like it; they would be well pleased with the praise they received. Nor were there any mistakes in Swedish grammar; all was well put together.

But he would advise the pastor to shorten the speech with one sentence, only one little sentence. If, for example, the last sentence were cut out, the very last one. It was more or less superfluous anyway. What it conveyed had already been repeated so often that everyone knew it. It was indeed correct and right and true, that line also, perhaps the truest of them all. Jonas Petter himself could from practical experience verify its truth, for that matter. It contained great honor and much praise for the Swedish women, and they would indeed feel honored when they heard it. But a speaker ought not to repeat what everyone knew. So the last sentence was entirely superfluous. The fine speech would have its best effect if it were removed.

Pastor Jackson nodded eagerly and thanked Jonas Petter warmly for the advice; of course he would follow it. Jonas Petter pulled out his red carpenter’s pencil, which he always carried in his hip pocket, and drew a line through the last four words on the paper, a thick, forceful line which almost obliterated them.

The speech Pastor Jackson gave in honor of his wife came as her crown of honor. The surprise was almost too much for her — now old Ulrika of Västergöhl was indeed rehabilitated; she had invited these guests to her new home, they had willingly accepted her invitation, yes, they had felt honored by it. And they were happy and sated with food and good cheer — with one voice they had praised her ability as housekeeper and cook. There was no end to their praise of her “Swedish table” with its delicious dishes. And she had been proud to show them a well-shaped daughter, born in wedlock, in a Christian marriage. Even as a mother she had received honor and praise. And then at last, entirely unexpected, utterly surprising, came this further honor, respect and praise to her — this speech in her own language which her dear, beloved Henry gave for her.

Her fellow immigrants, the people from her own home parish, could hear in their own language, clearly and loudly, how grateful her husband was to her, how highly he esteemed and respected and honored her. It was a mark of honor surpassing all others — it raised her so high she felt dizziness overtake her. Ulrika of Västergöhl had come into her glory. What more could she wish in life?

Ulrika rushed over to her husband, who opened his arms to her for everyone to see, resting on his breast she could no longer contain her emotions. She burst into tears of happiness.

And Jonas Petter returned to his seat and helped himself to more of the hostess’s delicious cheesecake. He had undoubtedly done a good deed today; he had prevented a great scandal at this party. He had done so because it was Ulrikas first party. But now he sat there wondering about himself and the way he had acted. He wondered if he hadn’t in some way begun to change — if Pastor Jackson had asked his advice in this matter a few years ago, then he would surely have urged him to give his speech without shortening it. Why had he this evening refused such a malicious pleasure?

Like Ulrika of Västergöhl, he must have become a better person in America.

VIII. “THAT BAPTIST ILK”

— 1—

Karl Oskar and Kristina were celebrating their fourth Christmas in the new country. They had made things as Yule-like as possible, both inside and outside. At threshing time Karl Oskar had put aside a dozen sheaves which he now set up for the birds in front of the window; there the yellow barley straw broke warmly against the tall white drifts. Just finished for Christmas was a little sled he had made for the children on which they could slide down the drifts as soon as the snow packed. The weather was mild this Christmas, their last in the log cabin.

Karl Oskar was in the habit of writing to his parents twice a year, at Christmas and at Midsummer. Now he sat with pen and paper for several evenings during the holidays and wrote his letter to Sweden. Last summer his letter had been very brief; he wanted to make his winter letter a little longer. But when, at the very beginning, he had noted down that all of them enjoyed the precious gift of health, he seemed to have said almost all there was to say, and he had to work laboriously to compose further sentences.

On the last day of the old year Karl Oskar received a letter from his sister Lydia, who had written in their fathers place. Father’s hands shook so, she wrote, that Nils Jakobsson was afraid his letters from now on would be so poorly written that his son in America would be unable to read them. But both he and Mother were well and active, even though they no longer made any use of themselves in this life. His sister wrote that she, during the past year, had joined in wedlock a farmer at Åkerby, so that her name from now on would be Lydia Karlsson. Since her marriage she had borne a son who at the moment of her writing was six weeks old. She mentioned the names of a few parishioners, recently dead, whom Karl Oskar had known, and she wrote that many farmers from Ljuder and the neighboring villages of Linneryd and Elmeboda had emigrated to North America during the year, but she did not know where they had settled. Finally, she wondered what had happened to their brother Robert, whom they had not heard from for almost two years.

Karl Oskar could not allay her apprehensions concerning Robert, only share them. Almost a year had passed since he had received the last letter from his brother. And next spring three years would have passed since Robert and Arvid started out on their journey to the California goldfields.

Neither of the young men was made for long, dangerous journeys, nor were they in shape to endure hardships. One could only hope Providence had protected them on the road to the goldfields. And what could Karl Oskar have done to stop their venture? He could not have denied his brother the right to make his own decisions. He could not put his brother in a cage. Moreover, Robert would have escaped had he done so. Even as a small child he would run away, and his parents had had to put a cowbell around his neck to find the straying boy. The day he was to begin his first service as a hired hand he had tried to run away and leave the home village, and later he had escaped from his master. Robert was the eternal escapist. If he only reached Heaven he would try to escape from it too, thought Karl Oskar. But why didn’t he write more often? He could write well.

“Robert won’t come back until he has found gold,” Kristina said.

“And just because of this I’m afraid he’ll never come back.”

Karl Oskar was beginning to think that his younger brother was no longer alive.

— 2—

Another new year began—1854—and again they were without a new almanac. Notations about crops, purchases, sales, dates when the cows took the bull, and other important days were still recorded in the old almanac.

With the new year came severe cold. Night and day they kept the fire burning. The fireplace — it was the cabin’s heart and center, the capitol of the home kingdom. The hearth was the home’s altar, and on that altar were sacrificed all the cords of firewood that had been cut during the summer and stacked against the cabin wall to dry. The fireplace — it was the most essential part of the home, the source of blessed warmth. The fire must not go out. In the light of the fire they performed their chores, round the altar of flames they gathered to warm their cold limbs. The fireplace gave the people in the cabin light and warmth, it was the defender of life.

Each morning the wreath of white frost roses bloomed anew on the nail heads. On the walls of round logs the cold found ever new holes and cracks. But next winter it might penetrate here as much as it pleased; no living soul would then be in this place, and no fire would burn on the hearth. Next winter they would be protected in a real house. The child Kristina was expecting would have its delicate body sheltered by well-chinked timber walls. The child — that is, if it now turned out to be only one. . The thought had begun to hover in Kristina’s mind, that perhaps a twin birth was in the offing. The new life felt so heavy in her body — hadn’t it felt the same way once before? She had had twins earlier, but only Lill-Marta had survived. If again she gave life to two, would they both live? It was futile to worry about it but she couldn’t help it; she was made that way.

Early one Sunday morning, shortly after New Year’s, the Olaussons came to call unexpectedly. Karl Oskar had been out in the woods looking for a pig which had broken out of its sty, and he had just returned. Neither he nor Kristina had had time to think of their Sunday rest, and they had not yet cleaned up. They were surprised at this early call from their neighbors; when Bible discussions and spiritual gatherings were held, the families did not get together until the afternoon of the Sabbath.

Kristina pulled forth chairs for the callers, who were dressed in their Sunday best. Petrus Olausson had put on a tie and trimmed his beard, and his thin tufts of hair were combed and orderly. Judit wore her best white-frilled black dress which buttoned all the way to her chin. Her black hair was pulled back severely and parted in the middle, displaying a line of skin like a straight white ribbon from her forehead to the top of her skull. On the back of her head she wore a black cap with white embroidery. Her powerful nose stuck out sharply, a spy for her prying eyes. Her mouth as always was tightly closed, the right corner slightly higher than the left.

The couple’s expressions were set in their customary Sabbath severity which Karl Oskar and Kristina recognized from earlier Sundays, but their faces also displayed something serious and ominous. What could they want so early on a Sunday morning?

The Olaussons sat stiffly and ceremoniously and twisted awkwardly on their chairs; they had not come just to amuse themselves, that much was clear.

Karl Oskar began telling them about the pig he had been hunting for over an hour. What luck the weather was so mild this morning — it was an important pig, a sow he intended to send to the boar for mating when her time came again.

Petrus Olausson listened absentmindedly. Then he said, “We have come to call on a matter of great spiritual importance.”

He raised his chin with its newly trimmed beard and spoke as if he were reading aloud from the Bible. “We have come to open your eyes and to warn you, our beloved neighbors and fellow Christians.”

“To open your eyes, indeed!” interrupted the wife, adjusting her cap, which had slid down over her left ear.

“It is the duty of a person who sees to warn the one who is blind,” continued the husband. “It is our duty as Christians to safeguard our neighbors’ souls.”

“Exactly so,” echoed the wife. “We are here to fulfill our duty.”

“It concerns your souls, our dear neighbors. .”

Karl Oskar and Kristina listened with increasing confusion. Their neighbors spoke as if the Almighty himself had sent them here with the message that the Day of Doom would come on the morrow.

Petrus Olausson went on. “We have for a long time thought about this. We have hesitated, delayed. As Christians we can now no longer be responsible.”

“What’s this all about?” exclaimed Kristina. “What in the world is going on?”

“I will tell you.” He rose and moved closer to her. “Some time ago I met in this house an unknown woman. A Swedish woman. You must recall our meeting. .? The woman had. .”

“You said she made a fright of herself in a hat!” interrupted Judit.

“That is correct — she wore a hat on her head. A very large piece of headgear, full of vanity and most outlandish.”

Judit Olausson had her opinion. “A Swedish woman gone plumb crazy of vanity! Putting on a hat when she gets to America!” Her voice was brittle with disgust.

“I have now learned who this woman is,” said Petrus Olausson slowly, as if announcing a great discovery.

“You must mean Ulrika, I gather,” said Kristina.

“That’s her name, that scarecrow,” confirmed Judit, pulling up the right corner of her mouth still further.

“But Ulrika didn’t put on a hat from vanity — she is as good as any upper-class woman,” said Kristina. “We’re intimate friends.”

“Friends?” interrupted the neighbor. “My poor woman — this ‘friend’ of yours is married to the Baptist minister in Stillwater!”

“She has gone over to her husband’s religion and she has been rebaptized!” echoed Judit.

“I know all that; it concerns no one but herself.”

Olausson straightened up to give greater weight to his words: “You also know this: we must have no connection with lost souls! We must keep clear of sectarians. And that is why you must have nothing to do with this woman who is the wife of the Stillwater priest.”

Karl Oskar and Kristina stared at each other. At last they began to grasp their neighbors’ purpose.

“Look out for this Mrs. Jackson. Don’t let that woman into your house. Don’t ever open your door to her again.”

Karl Oskar snorted loudly. Petrus Olausson’s advice seemed to him so outrageous that he wanted to laugh. But he held his tongue.

“With this Mrs. Jackson you admit the Evil One into your home,” continued Olausson. “I heard that woman’s raw and unbecoming speech. She carries the devil’s own tongue in her sweet mouth. Without you being aware of it, she pours irreligion’s poison into your ears. Only because of Christian love do we wish to warn you. It concerns your soul!”

“We do our duty as Christians!” added Judit.

“We only wish your best, dear neighbor. Listen to your friends’ advice; have nothing more to do with that woman!”

Olausson turned toward Kristina, whose face had stiffened as she listened. Words stuck in her throat as she tried to answer.

“Uncle Petrus. . do. . do you know. . you’re talking about my best friend in America. .”

“Yes, I know. And because of this friendship the danger is so much greater for you.”

“You’re blind!” insisted the neighbor wife. “Friendship blinds people.”

“Mrs. Jackson offers you her hand and you do not perceive the claw hidden in the paw.”

“Because you are blind!”

Kristina’s face had turned flaming red. What was this her neighbor asked of her? She needed time to collect herself in order to understand. They asked that she sacrifice her friendship for Ulrika and close her door to her! This friendship. . She remembered so well what Ulrika had once said to her: I sold my body at times for a loaf of bread, but my friendship costs more than any man or woman can pay. I don’t throw it away on just anyone. But you have it, Kristina. You have it for all time. Of that you can be sure. You got it that time when you shared your bread with me on the journey. You have received the most valuable possession I have to give to any human being. That was what Ulrika had said, that was how valuable was her friendship. And she, Kristina, had it; Ulrika had by her actions proven it to her. And here came these people, demanding that she repay good with evil and deny her friendship for Ulrika, that she behave treacherously, that she betray her best friend. .!

Kristina had her own ideas about right and wrong toward other people, and never had anyone been able to sway her. Nor would Petrus Olausson and his wife be able to do so, not to the smallest degree. They asked her to betray a friendship, they asked her to wrong a person, they demanded that she commit this gravest of sins.

And there stood Uncle Petrus and continued to talk to her in the patient voice of an admonishing father. He knew from experience the dangers of heresy, he himself had for a time followed a false prophet. But one day his eyes had been opened to the true light, and now he wanted — along with true Swedish Lutherans — to found an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which would be free from interference by worldly authorities and unblemished by heresy. And among those true Christians who must build this Church were Kristina and her husband. He must therefore protect them against false prophets who called themselves Baptists. They were sent by the devil to spread dissension among the Swedes. They were sunderers, this Baptist ilk, they wanted to create dissension and dissolve the true faith.

He took Kristina by the arm, pleadingly, admonishingly, mildly rebuking her as if she were his beloved, disobedient, self-willed child.

“Dearly beloved Kristina! These sunderers and false prophets deck themselves out like friends. You do not recognize them for what they are. You do not know the Fiend in the soul of this Mrs. Jackson! But as long as she continues to come here, your home is besmirched. Therefore, beloved Kristina, do not ever let her cross your threshold again. Will you give me this promise?”

“No!” she screamed out. “No! No! No! Never!”

And Kristina violently pulled herself away from him, as if he were unclean and had besmirched her. Her explosion was so sudden that Olausson took a few steps backward. His wife jumped up from her chair.

“This is enough!” cried Kristina. “Listen to me, you, once and for all. You come to me and talk ill of Ulrika — what do you mean? Do you think I’m a fool? I’ll tell you something, both of you! Pretending to be my friends, ah?”

“Poor child! How you talk!” said Judit Olausson and turned her head so quickly that her cap slid down over her right ear.

“Dear Kristina, calm down!” pleaded Olausson.

“Wretched woman! The devil speaks through her mouth,” added Judit.

With Kristina’s sudden explosion, Olausson lost his composure. He turned to Karl Oskar. “You must correct your foolish wife, Nilsson! She acts as if she had already been led astray. Help us bring her back to her senses.”

Karl Oskar rose from his seat and straightened up to his full height, “This is crazier than hell!”

“Yes, yes, here we come as friends and fellow Christians and your wife treats us as if we were. .”

“You have given order in my house, Olausson. But you have done it for the last time.”

“What’s that, Nilsson? Are you too against us? Are you as blind as your wife?”

Karl Oskar looked steadily at his neighbor and raised his voice until Olausson drew back. “You leave Kristina alone! She can open her door to whoever she wants! And this I had intended to tell you before: I don’t need a guardian! Nor does my wife! Now you know!”

“But Nilsson — my dear neighbor — you must understand us! All we want is to warn you against the sectarians. . you know — those Baptists! We must be careful — every moment of our lives we must watch out against. .”

“That’s enough! You force me to tell you right out: take care of yourself and shit on others!”

Kristina had stepped between the two men, her eyes aflame. “Let me have a word in this matter! I want to be open with you, Petrus — you come here and try to separate old friends. You insist I kick out the best friend I have. And you speak of sundering and dissension! Who is the sunderer? Who is trying to spread ill will and dissension? No one but you!”

In her excitement she no longer called her neighbor Uncle Petrus. He tried to get a word in in reply, but she wouldn’t let him. “You shut up — it’s my turn to talk now! You try to part Ulrika and me! You yourself are the sunderer, you spread discord, you slander Ulrika and accuse her of evil deeds! You belie your fellow men! You’ve forgotten the eighth commandment, Christian that you call yourself! You bear false witness against your neighbor! You run about and spread evil rumors — you, a grown man! You ought to be ashamed! Or haven’t you any shame in your old body? Haven’t you any decency, you evil old man!”

Petrus Olausson remained frozen, listening. His eyes were riveted on Kristina; his look was one of sorrow rather than anger. It was as if he looked upon his neighbor’s wife as a father might look at a difficult and straying child.

“You ought to feel ashamed of yourself, Petrus Olausson!”

“Dear neighbors — I’m amazed and saddened. It is with sorrow and pain that I hear. .”

“Come, Petrus!” said Judit Olausson, adjusting again her black cap. She took her husband by the arm. “That woman is possessed! Insulting us like that! Lets go!”

“But our duty as fellow Christians. .”

“You can see we’re too late,” said his wife.

“Dear Judit, it’s never too late to lead a straying soul back to the true. .”

“But can’t you hear — the sectarians already have snared her in their nets. Let’s go home. Come, Petrus!”

Judit walked toward the door. Petrus Olausson cleared his throat and turned once more to Kristina, lecturing her kindly. “Our Christian love for our neighbors brought us here today. We so want to warn you, and you reward us with insults. But I forgive you, Kristina. I overlook your words. For it is an evil spirit that speaks through your mouth.”

“Shut up about your evil spirits! No one has led me astray! I intend to remain a Christian Lutheran as long as I live! But I won’t betray my friends! Now you know! And so shut up!”

“You are a foolish woman. We must pray God to protect you against snares. We will pray for your mind to change so that you never again will admit that Baptist ilk into your home. As Christian people we must avoid this unclean house until it has been cleansed.”

“Out with you!” shouted Kristina, trembling. “Out of my house, both of you! Not clean in here! That I’ll never forget as long as I live!”

At this her voice failed her.

— 3—

The Olaussons left. Karl Oskar and Kristina sat down to rest, exhausted as if by some heavy chore.

“Well, I guess our neighbor-peace has come to an end,” said he.

Kristina thought of the spring day last year — it had seemed to her then like a Sunday — when Karl Oskar for the first time had heard their new neighbor’s ax ringing in the forest.

“I lost my temper — but I don’t regret it,” she said.

Her voice still trembled: what did they take her for, this Olausson and his woman? Who did they think she was? A nodding doll, without a mind of her own? A stupid woman they could lead wherever they wished, one whom they must lead by the hand? A silly sheep, in utter simplicity letting herself be devoured by those ugly Baptist wolves, Ulrika and her husband?

But the neighbor’s remark about her unclean house had hurt her the most.

“Well, now they know how we feel,” said Karl Oskar. “Let them get mad if they wish. How stupid that we must quarrel with our neighbors because Ulrika jumped into the river and got herself baptized. It doesn’t make sense.”

Ulrika was not as close to him as she was to Kristina. The former parish whore still had many characteristics he found difficult to accept. But over the years he had learned to value her more and more. And regardless of who the person was, no outsider could come to him and dictate whom he could admit to his house and whom he must exclude. They would open their door for whomever they wished.

“No neighbor shall make decisions for us!”

After Kristina had calmed down a little, she began to think she must not be unjust toward her neighbors; surely only the best of intentions had caused them to call today. Uncle Petrus was perfectly honest in his concern for them: his talk to her had been sincere and fatherly.

But Karl Oskar replied, why must people eternally worry about other people’s souls? Why not be satisfied with the care of their own? Olausson was a thrifty and capable settler, and his advice and examples were often worth following. A man like him was needed among the immigrants: he was interested in communal matters and got things started. The only trouble was that he tried to manage people without being asked, and against their will.

“Like Uncle Danjel, he has been punished at home for his Bible explanations,” reminded Kristina.

“Exactly — in Sweden Olausson himself was a sectarian, yet here in America he can’t stand them!”

“It’s very strange; how can he be so intolerant out here?”

Karl Oskar volunteered that Petrus Olausson had become so warmly attached to religious freedom that he no longer allowed it to anyone but himself.

Well, the pleasant neighborliness with the Helsinge family seemed to be over. The Olaussons had been shown the door and were not likely to return. But new neighbors had arrived, and more would come, by and by. The first settlers at Ki-Chi-Saga need no longer live as hermits. However, said Karl Oskar, he would rather live without neighbors than have to fight with them.

For a long time Kristina continued to think about Uncle Petrus, this strange man. In Sweden he had suffered punishment and persecution for his belief, in America he himself persecuted people who believed differently. Could anyone understand this kind of person?

How could people who had sprung from the same Creator and belonged to the same race be so intolerant of each other? It was a shame. Here in these great wild forests a small group of people had settled; they came from the same country and spoke the same language; all of them had to begin life anew, in a new land; they were poor, dependent on themselves, and needed each other’s company; they lived so far apart that the distance between their houses in itself kept them apart. Must they now also close their doors against each other because different churches and different faiths existed in this country? Must they separate even more — and because of religion? Because of Christ’s gospel, which preached that all people were brethren?

Was it impossible to live in unity and enjoy each other because of one’s faith?

If any people in this world needed to live harmoniously it was the small group of Swedish settlers in the St. Croix Valley. It must be God’s intention that they be friends.

IX. HEMLANDET COMES TO THE IMMIGRANTS

— 1—

Early one morning in the first week of May the anticipated increase in the Duvemåla family took place. Kristina escaped the dreaded twin birth; she was delivered of a girl. The evening before, she had sent a message to Ulrika, who had dispatched Miss Skalrud to aid her. The Norwegian midwife arrived at the cabin a couple of hours too late, but remained for a few days while Kristina stayed in bed. Never before had she felt so weak and worn out after a birth.

Shortly before her delivery Pastor Erland Törner had returned from Illinois, and he had now resumed his pastoral duties in the St. Croix Valley, where he traveled from place to place among his countrymen, as he had done the year before. He came one Sunday to Duvemåla and christened Karl Oskar’s and Kristina’s newborn baby; with a minister available they had no excuse for delaying the baptism.

This time the mother alone had chosen the name for the child. The little girl was named Anna Evelina Ulrika, the first two names after Kristina’s own mother — Anna Evelina Andersdotter. But the girl was to be called Ulrika.

By giving her daughter Ulrikas name Kristina had in her own way cleansed her home, which the Olaussons considered unclean and degraded by Mrs. Henry O. Jackson of Stillwater.

The neighbors had said: do not open your door to this woman! She had replied, and let them know where she stood: she welcomed an Ulrika who would be a permanent part of the household.

— 2—

Great things were happening at Ki-Chi-Saga this year. During the spring and summer of 1854 the first great wave of Swedish immigrants washed over the St. Croix Valley. They came in large groups, by the hundreds, and the population of the valley was doubled many times over.

The settlers began to arrive as soon as the ice had melted and the steamboats could ply the river. Already in March and April the first arrivals found their way to the big lake. They had emigrated from Småland, Helsingland, and Östergötland. Larger groups came later in the summer, mostly Smålanders. One group of fourteen families claimed lands along the shores. But a great many of these immigrants settled in the eastern part of the valley, where there were passable roads and more easily accessible claims.

All the claims suitable for farming around Ki-Chi-Saga — the fertile meadows along the lake slopes — were now taken. The newcomers put up their log cabins along bays and sounds, on jutting points and tongues of land. On the surveyor’s map, obtained from the land office, the Chippewa word Ki-Chi-Saga had been changed to Chisago Lake. The metamorphosis of the lake had even reached its name. And the thirty-six squares, or sections, around the lake which had been surveyed for settling were now referred to as Chisago Township on maps and deeds. This in turn was part of a larger square, comprising thirty-six square miles. Each section was divided into four claims; thus the whole district contained 144 homesteads. There was still room for more settlers in Chisago Township.

The newcomers told of an immense emigration from Sweden to come next year. Thousands of people were planning to leave, and it was expected that this horde would head for Minnesota to settle among their countrymen.

So the Indian lake Ki-Chi-Saga was renamed. The heathen water was christened by the white tillers and divided into squares and the name written down on deeds and entered on records. The nomad people were pushed farther and farther away from the forests where they had hunted and the waters where they had fished. Their fires had gone out, their camping sites lay unoccupied.

But on the western shore, high above Ki-Chi-Saga’s surface, the Indian still stood watch, the red-brown sandstone cliff with its image of a savage, still rose like a heaven-high, unconquerable bastion. The Indians immense head was turned to the east; with empty, black, cliff-cave eyes he watched day and night over his old hunting grounds and fishing waters. Each spring his crown of thickets turned green, but with each spring he saw more trespassers arrive. And his eyes remained fixed, as if mirroring an inconsolable sorrow in the dark depth of the cliff. From the east they came, this race of intruders, and the high watchman spied forever in that direction from where the land’s new inhabitants approached in ever increasing numbers.

One race wandered into the land, and the other wandered away. But the Indian at Ki-Chi-Saga remained at his watch, looking in the direction of the rising sun.

— 3—

The only unclaimed quarter of Karl Oskar Nilsson’s section — the northeast corner — was taken in the spring by an immigrant from Småland. Their neighbor to the north was Johan Kron from Algutsboda, Kristina’s home parish. Kron was the village soldier but had retired from the service and emigrated with his large family, his wife and eight children. The family had brought along two cradles, one for each of the smallest children, who were twins. So the last homestead suddenly had ten inhabitants.

Section 35 of Chisago Township, the new name for Ki-Chi-Saga, where Karl Oskar had been the first settler, was now entirely claimed and occupied.

Axes ringing in the forest — no longer were these unfamiliar sounds. This spring when Karl Oskar walked over his land he could hear echoes from all directions. Here Swedish axes went after the trees, here trunks fell all around, here logs were piled on logs for new homes. Who could have imagined that so many would have followed him from Sweden? Farmers from his own parish were felling trees for log houses, farmers from Algutsboda, Linneryd, Elmeboda, and Hovmantorp, all neighbor parishes of Ljuder. As yet he had not run into anyone he knew from home but he expected to do so any day.

The ring of the axes was a joyous sound to Kristina’s ears; it brought her the message of new neighbors building their houses; it told her of new people who would live close to her. It rang out the end of the great loneliness. Living here would no longer be so drab. Already enough people had arrived to make up a good-sized village, even though the houses weren’t as close together as in the old country. If the emigration continued, perhaps eventually there would be enough people to make up a large parish. And with each family’s arrival she felt the same wonder: why had they come so far to settle in a corner of the world so remote?

Karl Oskar said that it looked as though all the people in the old country were following their example and moving to the Territory. And there was plenty of space out here — there was room for the whole Kingdom of Sweden. But the upper classes would probably remain where they were; those useless creatures lived well and in comfort in Sweden.

Yes, it seemed as if the homeland was coming to America. And in a way it did come to the immigrants that spring — in the form of a newspaper.

It came about through Pastor Törner; Pastor Hasselquist in Galesburg, Illinois, had begun to print a paper in Swedish, Hemlandet, det Gamla och det Nya (The Homeland, the Old and the New), and he asked his colleague to spread the word in the Swedish settlements. As Pastor Törner traveled about he wrote down the names of those who wanted to subscribe. The paper would describe the most important happenings in both Sweden and America and would appear fortnightly. The price was only a dollar a year, but the publisher appealed to the better-off among his countrymen for an extra fifty cents in order to purchase Swedish type. His press did not have all of the Swedish letters, and since they were difficult to obtain in America, he must order them from Sweden.

Karl Oskar felt it would be worth a dollar (plus fifty cents for the Swedish type) to obtain news from Sweden twice a month; he subscribed to Hemlandet, det Gamla och det Nya, and from then on, picked up his paper every second week in Mr. Abbott’s store in Taylors Falls. Algot Svensson, his neighbor to the west, was also a subscriber, and they decided to pick up the paper in turn so they need not go to the post office more than once a month.

And Hemlandet was received in the settler’s home as a dear and welcome guest. They held the paper with cautious hands as if afraid it might fall to pieces in the handling.

The news sheet had four pages, and five columns to each page, all printed in Swedish. Karl Oskar and Kristina read and discussed almost every word in Hemlandet. After supper he would read to her while she finished her chores. On Sunday afternoons, when she was free for a few hours, they would sit down at the table, with the paper spread before them, and go through paragraph after paragraph systematically.

Through Hemlandet they learned that a great war had broken out in Europe a few months earlier: on March 28 war had been declared between Russia on one side and England and France on the other. Besides, the Russians and the Turks had been fighting since last fall, because the Russians were not allowed to protect the Turkish subjects of Christian belief. It was assumed that Sweden would join in the war against Russia to retrieve Finland. But Kristina felt Sweden shouldn’t bother with this; she had two brothers of military age and she did not like to think of them participating in human slaughter. Only people who wanted to should take part in wars. Karl Oskar had no close relatives who need go — only his sister, Lydia, was left in Sweden of his generation — but he too hoped the old country would remain at peace. War was an amusement for lords and kings but no plaything for farmers, who had more important things to do. All this warring would probably in the end destroy the Old World.

Another amazing piece of news was that the Swedes were thinking of building railroads here and there in the country, beginning with the provinces of Vårmland and Skåne. It was not easy to imagine that perhaps one day a steam wagon might come rolling through Ljuder parish. As yet, Karl Oskar thought, they and the other emigrants were the only Swedes who had traveled in that way.

Telegraphy was the newest contraption. Messages were sent along steel wire with the speed of lightning. This invention too had reached Sweden: a wire had recently been strung all the distance between Stockholm and Gothenburg. “A Simple Explanation of Telegraphy” was the title of the article in Hemlandet:

A Telegraph is the name of an instrument through which people can make signs to each other over great distances. It carries tidings from one end of the Union to the other, speedier than a wink of the eye. It has been agreed that certain signs represent certain letters in the alphabet and in this way a conversation can be carried on. It is unimportant if the two communicants are a mile or a thousand miles apart; the conversation goes on with equal speed and what is said with signs arrives on the moment.

In almost every issue of the paper there was a description of some new, amazing invention which the clever Americans had made. There was Pitt’s threshing machine, which threshed a bushel of wheat in a minute; the reaper, which was constructed in such a way that it cut the crop with steel arms; the sewing machine, which could baste and sew when tramped by a human foot. From now on one could sew garments with one’s feet instead of one’s hands. Kristina had just finished her first weaving of last year’s flax, and she could have used this tramping apparatus now that she was ready to make clothes for all of them.

They read about the broad city streets with railroads in the middle, about illumination from a vapor called gas, about the iron pipes which led water under the ground and at any moment squirted a stream if one needed water. But the strangest discovery was a new, secret power called electricity. It gave heat and light, it could be used to pull vehicles, it could heal sickness, like lameness, fever, epilepsy. Electricity returned hearing to deaf people, taught the mute to use their tongues. Hemlandet had a clarifying article about electricity:

The cause of lightning is a peculiar power called Electricity. Lightning emanates from clouds up in the sky which have become electric. How the clouds have become such is not known. But if a lightning-cloud comes close to an object on earth, an electric spark passes with lightning and thunder from the cloud to the object, and then we say that lightning strikes. It is entirely unfounded, as some people say, that a wedge hits the earth when lightning strikes.

Lightning had once struck and burned a hay-filled barn belonging to Karl Oskar and he therefore felt great respect for electricity. When it was loosed it was much more dangerous than fire: in a single second it could shake a person to death. The paper related that a farmer in Indiana had brought suit against his wife for attempted murder with the new discovery: she had put electricity in her husband’s underwear so that it had shot into his body and almost killed him.

In the paper’s editorial on electricity, the question was raised as to whether or not Benjamin Franklin had broken God’s ordinances by inventing the lightning rod whereby man neutralized the bolts. It seemed self-evident that God must cause hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters — catastrophes to kill those people he originally had intended to kill by lightning. Mr. Franklin had thus with his rod interfered in the business of the Almighty and caused him unnecessary trouble.

Pastor Hasselquist’s paper fought for the true Evangelical Lutheran religion, the world’s only right religion, and condemned sectarianism. He lauded highly the new law passed by the Swedish Riksdag, which condemned the Baptist and prescribed high fines for any layman distributing the sacrament. Of the sects in America, the Mormons were described as the most horrible; they preached the rawest gospel of the flesh since Mohammed descended to Hell. Utah, their place of habitation in the Union, had grown like a festering boil on the American nation. The Mormons had recently made a great conquest in Sweden: one hundred and fifty foolish young women had gone to Utah and had been divided ten to each man; in the new land, they now satisfied men’s carnal lusts.

The paper printed a list of Brigham Young’s wives, thirty-nine in number at that moment. The wives were numbered from one to twenty-seven and a few also had a name, but after twenty-seven they had neither name nor number. Number one was called Lucy Decker, and she would be raised to queen at the resurrection. Those wives who had been given only a number Brigham Young had married for this life only, but those named he had joined for eternity as well. When he held his Sabbath he retired to some lonely place for peace and quiet, taking with him six or seven deeply beloved wives with low numbers.

The Hemlandet’s editor warned his countrymen not only against spiritual dangers but also against worldly snares and perils, especially those connected with the confusing money matters of North America. Every issue had a column headed Bank Swindles, enumerating the banks especially started to cheat people. It was useful for Swedes in the wilderness to know which bills were phony, or worth only half of their face value. And it was emphasized to the readers that neither in the Old World nor in the New did a single bank exist which gave its depositors full security. But there was one Bank, with no human directors, and no earthly safe — the Bank of Grace — which, because of its inexhaustible capital resources — Christ’s Blood and the Forgiveness of Sins — always and everywhere was in a position to redeem its bills at their full value: the promise of eternal joy in the Heavenly Chambers. Readers were advised to make their deposits in that bank.

— 4—

And so Hemlandet came to Karl Oskar and Kristina with news of the world outside the Territory. They had little knowledge of the broad, changing country which had become their home; now they read many amazing things about it. And with the aid of this paper in their native tongue they were also able to educate their children; they used the paper in place of the missing ABC book. In the Hemlandet Johan and Lill-Marta learned to recognize Swedish letters, both small and capital letters, and by and by the children began to form syllables and words from them.

Inquiries was the headline of one column in Hemlandet; where readers made inquiries about relatives living at unknown places in America. Parents were looking for their children, brother for sister, and sister for brother, engaged couples who had lost touch sought to find one another, friends asked the addresses of friends. Here inquiries were made for relatives who had lost their way on the journey and had not arrived at their destination. Many Swedes apparently were wandering about in North America, vainly looking for family connections.

Inquiries was the narrative of peoples hopeless quest for each other. Kristina felt great compassion for these unhappy beings who couldn’t find their dear ones. Somewhere, hands were stretched out to them, but they didn’t know where; they fumbled in a great darkness in the broad land. Kristina had seen this land, she knew how broad it was. The world was entirely too vast for a poor lost person.

Now she wanted Karl Oskar to write an inquiry to Hemlandet and ask about Robert. They hadn’t heard from him in a year and a half, and Karl Oskar was almost sure his brother was dead. Moreover, he felt an inquiry in the little Swedish paper would be useless, since he doubted it reached as far away as California. But to please Kristina he sat down one evening and wrote an inquiry and sent it in. With some changes in the spelling, the piece was printed in Hemlandet:

Brother Sought.

Axel Robert Nilsson from Ljuder parish, Sweden, who left for California in the spring of 1851, in the company of Arvid Pettersson from same parish, has not been heard from since January, 1853. He is 21 years of age and tall. If anyone knows where Nilsson is, or has seen him, please notify his brother, Karl Oskar Nilsson at the address of Taylors Falls Post Office, Minnesota Territory.

They waited a long time, but no answer came. Theirs was a message lost in the wilderness.

— 5—

“Timberrim, timberram, timberrammaram. .”

On Ki-Chi-Saga’s shores the timberman’s song was heard again. Karl Oskar Nilsson was building his third American house this summer.

His first house had been a simple shed, or shanty, of boards nailed together; his second house had been built of logs; but this third house would be one of hewn timbers — a true, sturdy main house on a farmer’s land. A main house. Until now Karl Oskar had lived as a squatter, but when he moved into a main house he would feel he had become a farmer on his own land. Then he could stand erect; the well-timbered building would be the sign of his independence.

The board hut, the log cabin, the timbered main house to these are the three chapters in the story of a settler’s progress.

But Karl Oskar had been forced to shorten his foundation by one third in order to get the new house roofed this year. He would eventually build a larger house than this one, but as yet he didn’t have the necessary cash. He had to give in to those who had warned him and said that he was attempting too big a house. It irked him sorely that he had to cut down on its size. A man makes an estimate and figures out what he would like to do — he puts in the foundation of a new house — and then his strength is not sufficient to raise it. This had happened to him before with other projects, now it happened again. He felt as if he would never have the time to accomplish what he intended. He managed a part, a good part, but when would he be able to accomplish the whole?

And in the evenings his fatigue was greater than before, lasting even till morning and the new day of labor. At times Karl Oskar felt his strength was beginning to wane. Yet, he was only in his thirty-first year, maturity was still between him and old age. He could build once more, he could raise a fourth house, this time the one he had in mind, the great big house he had promised his wife their first year out here. And he said to Kristina: “Next time! Wait till I build next time!”

They had lived in the wretched shanty for two months, for four years they had had their home in the log cabin; how long would the timbered main house be their home?

The roof must be up before the new crop was ripe. They were three timber-men, as Danjel and Jonas Petter were helping him. The walls grew a little bit each day, while Jonas Petter sang the timberman’s song. They were building higher than they had before — this main house would have two stories.

And the three ax hammers fell heavily against the solid timbers, in rhythm to the song:

What’s your daughter doing tonight?

What’s your daughter doing tonight?

What’s your timberman’s daughter doing tonight?

Four years had passed since the building song last was heard on this homestead. In the log cabin they had timbered them, two new human lives had been lit. Karl Oskar’s hands had changed the contours of the ground; many things had happened to them. For those who began life anew in Minnesota Territory, a span of four years equaled more than eight had they stayed in the old, quiet, unchanging home village.

It was the log cabin’s last summer as a home. One period was coming to an end in the lives of the immigrant family; their log-cabin days were ending.

X. SURVEYING THE FOREST

— 1—

On the twenty-fourth day of May that year, the immigrants from Sweden met in Petrus Olausson’s barn and formed the first Lutheran parish in the St. Croix Valley.

Fifty-eight grown persons were registered as members of the congregation, and forty children. Pastor Erland Törner was chosen as minister, and Petrus Olausson as warden. It was agreed eventually to construct a church, but until it could be built, a smaller building was to be erected and used for a school, parish meeting hall, and church.

In the sermon which Pastor Törner preached in the barn on the day of the founding of the parish, he said that the immigrants of the Territory were in the same situation as the first Christians were after the Master’s ascension: the disciples had also been without a temple in which to worship their God and had therefore met under the open skies, or in caves, or in shepherds’ huts. Here the immigrant Swedes were holding their meeting in a barn, which had been built for the storage of crops from the fields. But when Christ’s Church was founded today, ninety-eight sheaves of that nobler crop of human souls had been gathered.

The founder of Christianity was born in a stable. It was utterly fitting that the first Christian congregation in the wilderness be founded in a barn.

— 2—

May 24, 1854, was a great day for the Swedes in the St. Croix Valley; in joining together in this first congregation, they laid the foundation for a new community.

During the first years their most urgent needs had been for food and shelter for themselves and their animals. Not until these needs had been met could they make preparations to fill their spiritual needs. This order had been in effect for Man since the beginning of time.

These people came from the same land and they were already united in a common language, and by similar customs and usages. But the life of the Swedish village had provided an anchorage which they missed here; the church and the church green had been the community center, intimately involved with life’s great happenings. In their new land they were parishioners without parish or church. And so they now strove for a new center to replace the one they had lost when they emigrated.

In the home village the church and the church green had been the gathering place where both spiritual and worldly needs had been satisfied. From the pulpit they had heard both the Holy Word and important announcements concerning animals for studs, auctions, farms for sale. From the pulpit prayers were read for parishioners seriously sick, or lately deceased; the banns of matrimony were proclaimed. Everything of importance that had happened in the parish from Sunday to Sunday was announced from the pulpit. On the church green they met every Sunday relatives and friends and were made aware that they belonged to a group greater than the family.

The immigrants would now build a church and a church green and found a new parish for themselves.

They would have to begin — as with everything here — from the very beginning. They must find a teacher and a house for their children’s schooling; they must elect a governing board for their parish and school; they must establish a mediation board where disagreements could be settled in their own language; they must organize a district and elect representatives who could speak for them in the territorial government.

In the homeland they had been subjects of the Crown and its authority; here they were their own temporal and church authority. There were no laws laid down by authorities they had not helped to elect. Their new parish was a free parish; no bishops or deans had power over them; they themselves were the church power.

In their new situation, however, demands were made on them unknown in the homeland. There was no oppressive authority but by the same token they were without aid from any authority. They alone were responsible for their parish and could expect no help from others. Whether a church would be built where they could enjoy God’s Word, whether a schoolhouse were to be erected, if a parish hall were to be constructed for social gatherings depended on them entirely. They alone must decide and order, but they alone must also carry out their decisions and be responsible for them.

When immigrants established a new community, a price for their liberty was exacted of them. From the irresponsible, responsibility was demanded; from the selfish, a will to unified effort; from the arbitrary, willingness to listen to the opinions of others. From each of the settlers was required his ability to use his newfound liberty: in North America they were all faced with the tests of free citizens.

Because of the new country’s demands on the immigrants, capabilities would be developed for which they had had no use in the homeland. They changed America — and America changed them.

— 3—

Four of the Swedish-born settlers met early one June morning and walked together through the wilderness. They had set out to choose a place where their community could bury its dead; these four men had accepted the responsibility of selecting the cemetery site for the new congregation.

Once before they had walked in company through the forest. Then they had been seekers of land. They had gone out to choose the ground where they would settle down and live out the rest of their lives. Today they were selecting the ground where they were to be buried.

It was a calm and bright morning; the St. Croix Valley spread out under a clear sky. A heavy dew had nourished the earth during the night — grass, herbs, and leaves were still moist and exuded a fragrance as after rain. To the west the Indian cliff had doffed its night shawl of fog and vapor and turned its brown-gleaming brow toward the eastern morn. The fertile ground was beginning to warm itself in the suns fire. The oppressive summer heat had not yet begun but the earth was already in the cycle of fertility: growth had begun, fresh — green and potent, and the thickets were full and lush. The fields displayed their promise of crops in shoots and stalks, in buds and boughs, in blades and blooms, in grass and growth — in all the clear, shining verdure of the earth.

The four men walked southeast, through a deep valley with thick stands of leaf trees. They passed through groves of red oak and black oak, black and white walnut, elm, and linden trees. They penetrated thickets of raspberries and wild roses, blackberries and sloe-berries — huge, thorny bushes. Here wild plum trees stood in full bloom, here grew black cherries, the biggest of all the cherry trees, their smooth, thick trunks much taller than a man. Round and about the men was all the summer’s wild splendor, soon to bring forth berries and fruit. Today the valley displayed to them its greenery and glitter of blossoming light as if it would bud and bloom and gleam forever.

The men had gone out to select a resting place for the dead, but this June day the earth seemed a paradigm of life eternal.

As they walked silently, facing todays errand, along paths that had been cleared, they were more than ever reminded of the irrevocability of their emigration. In this country they would not only live out their lives, here they would also rest forever. At the time of their emigration they had not thought through to its conclusion: that their graves would be dug far from those of their forefathers. Now as they walked, surveying the ground, they meditated on this final discovery — that their emigration had been not only for this life, but for all eternity.

The forest thickened, the tree crowns rose taller and taller. The men had reached the dense forest. They followed the Indian path which meandered round sand cliffs and over ravines. They crossed streams with water cascading from the rocks. Then they reached an open spot with a few mounds, overgrown with tall grass. The mounds were shaped like overturned bowls, rising in the glade like green-furred, shaggy, evil animals.

These were Indian mounds; under the tangle of weeds the former rulers of this land decayed. The settlers had come upon one of the old burying places of the nomads.

The tillers stopped to inspect the hillocks. At times they had happened to plow too close to a similar mound, and skulls, human bones, and food bowls had been brought to the surface. Then they had hurried to rebury the human remnants and refill the hole. The Indians supplied their dead with food and drink — the ungodly beliefs of the savages penetrated even the earth. White people, born in Christian lands, avoided the graves of the heathens. No Christian settler would wish to lie after his death in earth besmirched by heathendom and idolatry. The cemetery of the new parish must not be placed in the vicinity of these mounds which memorialized a heathen race; bones of Christians and heathens could not rest side by side.

The searchers continued their walk until they reached Ki-Chi-Saga. They followed the shores of the lake in a wide arc round a bay which cut deep into a grove of maple, oak, elm, and walnut trees of lush beauty. Now and then they stopped, exchanged a few words, deliberated. Wasn’t this a suitable piece of ground? The cemetery site must be in beautiful surroundings where survivors would be able to see objects that would minimize their sorrow and invoke comforting thoughts. It would be fine if roses and lilies grew on such ground. It was a consolation when flowers grew on a grave, even before it was dug. The resting place of the dead should also lie on high ground, on a knoll or gentle slope; it must have elevation so that it could be seen. And the rising ground would, as it were, point out the road to Heaven — the road the dead ones had taken before the survivors.

The four men wandered about for hours; they hesitated in a number of places; they discussed the location, examined the soil, speculated on roads to the place, compared one spot with another, deliberated, weighed arguments. But they continued their walk, continued to seek. As yet they had not gone far from the shores of the great lake.

They reached a promontory which cut into Lake Ki-Chi-Saga, and stopped again. The point comprised about five acres. On the lakeside it ended in steep sandstone cliffs to the water. It was heavily wooded with deciduous trees, silver maples predominating. The sugar maple provided the settlers with sugar and syrup and it was a harder wood than the other maples, but the silver maple was more beautiful, friendlier. It was in some way a sociable tree: the settlers preferred the silver maple above all other leaf trees. On this promontory hazel, hawthorn, and walnut also grew in profusion. A level place in the center was overgrown with sumac, cheerful with its red blossoms. The opening with its sumac was like a furnished room in the forests house. And the steep cliffs formed nature’s own protection, fencing in the point with a wall of stone.

The four stayed a long time examining the point. Their conviction grew stronger and stronger. They need seek no farther. They had arrived. This was truly a resting place for human beings.

They sat down in the shade of a wide-spreading silver maple, leaning their backs against the trunk of the tree. It was comfortingly calm in this elevated grove, isolated by the lake on three sides. They looked at the blossoming ground, they squinted toward the sky, out over the water. No heathen graves lay within sight. This was the home of quietude. The June day’s perfection and the absence of wind increased the great stillness of the place. The leaves of the silver maples glistened in the sun, the gentle surf was a faint, peaceful purl against the boulders below the stone wall. This point had already been fenced to the north, south, and west by the lake, fenced by the Creator himself when on the third day he separated land and water.

The four men listened to the soft wind and to the purling water; here sitting under the silver maples people could enjoy a momentary rest, and later that longer repose which at last would succeed this earthly life. This was a resting place for both the living and the dead.

The men held a short deliberation, after which they agreed that they would advise the new parish to have the ground on this beautiful point near Ki-Chi-Saga consecrated as a burying place for their dead.

Once the men had chosen their last resting place they sat for a long while, preoccupied. Within themselves each posed a question. It was a question that could not be answered by what they could hear or see, it could not be answered by any human being — it arose and made itself felt of its own volition who would be the first to lie in his grave here on this point? Who would be first to rest under the silver maples?

Would it be a man or a woman, a child or an adult, young or old? The shareholders in this, the burial plot they had selected, were mostly people in their youth or blooming prime, but none among them had any promise of the morrow. Life in this country offered so little security and so many dangers that only a few could hope to die in bed, full of years.

Perhaps one of them, one of the four who today rested in the future parish cemetery, might be the first to lie under the silver maples.

Four human beings sat at the site of their last destination in life’s journey. Wherever their steps led them in this world, here their wandering would finally cease. However much they strove, whatever they undertook — they would eventually be carried to this plot of ground on the lakeshore. During their wandering today they had been reminded anew of the old truth, the truth they had learned from those who had gone before them, the truth they felt shudderingly, deep in their soul: they were of the earth and inexorably chained to the earth. The four men resting in the shade of the silver maples belonged to the turf under their feet. And today they had searched out their own turf of death.

And now having finished their search in the forest and having taken their rest, the seekers rose and returned to the life which still remained to them.

XI. THE LETTER TO SWEDEN

New Duvemåla at Taylors Falls Post

Office in Minnesota, North America,

Christmas Day, 1854.

Dearly Beloved Parents,

Hope you are Well is my Daily Wish.

I want to write to let you know that various things are well with us. We have health and since I last wrote nothing of weight has happened to us.

Last October we moved into our new Main House which has two storys. It is built of timbers which I have rough hewn by hand on both sides. In this building we have plenty of room, it is warm also and lacks nothing.

Concerning my situation in North America it is improving right along. I have this fall paid for my whole land at the landoffis, 200 hundred dollar for 160 acres. I have broken new land three times as large as Korpamoen and fensed in about 300 yards, one yard equals 3 Swedish feet. I have four cows in the stable and 3 young livestock in pens. I have cut a pair of Bull Calfs which I raise for oxes. In America no one reaches Comfort in one day but we are satisfied with our improvement.

We have now built up a school house in our Parish. Johan and Marta go to school and learn various subjects from Books, English also. We pay for a pastor in our Parish with 65 dollar a year and free fire wood. Sometimes he travels to other Settlements and Preaches. Here is much disagreement in Religion. But the Pastor can not exclude anyone from the Parish or from the Sacrament, but two thirds of the parishioners can fire the pastor from his job.

We shall this winter select a Swedish justice of the Peace among us. But there is not much Authority here and I like that well. Here in America the Officials are appointed as servants to attend to their duties. When they do not attend to their job other Officials are put in their place. It is not like in Sweden. They have a perverted Government at home. Sweden has too many lazy dogs to feed who do not wish to work.

I think it is sad for you to sit alone. Is it cold in your room in winter? Have you enough wood for fires — I wish I could send you some of the wood we have here in abundance.

I got apple seeds from Duvemåla which I planted and a sapling has grown up but it will take time I reckon before the tree has fruit. Around the new house Kristina made a flower bed and I have planted 5 Cherrys and 12 Goosberrys and wine berries and some places for strawberries which will bear next summer.

It is Christmas Day today and I have taken the whole day off to write to Sweden. I remember the Christmas games at home, but the joyful and happy mind of a youth is no longer mine; it is hard to claim wild land and I feel it in the Body although not yet Old. I do not hop about on my feet as lightly as in my youth.

It would be a Joy to come home to you once more in Life and sit down at the old table and cut slices of the Christmas Pig, like in my childhood days.

Many days have now passed since I offered you my hand in farewell and left a dear Childhood home. I apologize if I have been slow in writing and write so seldom. I am thinking every day I must write but always delay.

Immeasurable Seas separate us but Daily I have my dear Parents in my thoughts, and my letters to Sweden shall not cease.

You are greeted heartily from your relations in a far-off land. Greetings also to my dear sister Lydia and ask her to write to her brother in North America, if Fathers Hands do tremble.

Your devoted Son

Karl Oskar Nilsson.