The Settlers Read online

  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.