Читать книгу Spring Came on Forever - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 7

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To the Lutheran homesteaders the journey out of Illinois and into the plains of Iowa had been a tedious and apparently endless trip. For weeks now they had lurched over trails which took them through prairie grass and sunflowers, down creek-beds and across gulleys, into tangled clumps of wild growth and past an occasional settlement. It had rained much of the time and the crude wagons drawn by stolid oxen and heavy-footed plow-horses jerked through thick black mud or jounced over the uneven dry ground until some of the women were ill from the torture of the constant shaking.

Day after day the prairie-schooners had crept on to the west,--a winding procession like so many tiny, gray-colored bugs following a twisting line on the wide expanse of a school-room map. The cracking of the blacksnakes, the stentorian calls of the drivers, the creaking of the wagons, were all the sounds heard as the caravan made slow and tortuous progress toward the ever-receding rim of the world.

Night after night they had formed in a wide circle around the fires, their cattle and horses corralled by this human perimeter, more safe from any potential marauder than if left outside of it. There was no danger from the redskins in Iowa, they felt,--but of Nebraska they were not certain. It had been only a few years since the alarm had been spread in the town of Omaha concerning the report of Indian outrages, and the militia had gone out to subdue the Pawnees at Battle Creek. No more Indian troubles had been known in the eastern third of the territory for a half-dozen years, but the men said no one could ever tell when it might break out again. On beyond there were tribes of them always ready to steal cattle and to commit various offenses, but it was scarcely to be supposed that they would attack so large a group.

Today, Amalia, riding beside her brother in one of their two wagons, was shaken almost to the point of illness, for never had the trail seemed so rough. Although the household things had been packed together as solidly as possible, sometimes when the horses forded a creek-bed or lumbered down a rough incline the chairs and walnut bureau knocked together, and the new soap-kettle with its perfect rounded bottom took to rocking back and forth perilously.

The menfolks had said they thought they must be getting near the Nishnabotna River region which lay only a few days' journey this side of the Missouri. All indications seemed to point that way. They were rather excited about a possible sight of the Big Muddy in a few days now.

But Amalia took no great interest in this news. She made no inquiry, commented on nothing,--merely clung to the seat of the lurching wagon and lived over again the days of her leaving,--days whose happenings would be forever burned in her memory.

She had been working on her Baum des Lebens--Tree of Life--quilt-block in her bedroom, had hidden it quickly as her father came to the door. She could still see him standing there, big and bustling, filling the doorway, dominating the scene, his sandy beard and thick mustaches almost bristling with importance.

"Well, Amalia, I have news."

"News?" she had said, her body going suddenly cold.

"Yah, the men do not wait to return. Instead they have sent word to us. They have found suitable lands many miles to the west of the town of Nebraska City. We are to go as soon as possible and meet them there in that territorial town."

Sitting here beside her brother now, on this endless, lurching journey, she could feel again the faintness stealing over her at his "We go now."

He had shouted it, excited because of the coming important event. "Fritz brings me the letter just now. You I tell first." He laughed at his joke: "You are the favored,--the one of all honored by me to know first."

"We go?" She had repeated it in a whisper.

"Yah! Fritz at once rides to the homes of our people. It is like the Paulus Rewere Fritz told us from school. To-day I give the command. Each knows his part. There shall be no delay. It is, as I have said, like an army under orders,--the army of the Lord. You know your part well. At once the extra baking and roasting of the meat. Then, even as these cool, the last of the packing. The sacks of oats and the seed corn at once Fritz loads in the second wagon. Myself I oversee all. Come Wednesday morning we start . . . Thursday at the latest. That day come the Dunbars to take over the house."

Riding silently by Fritz she was living it all over again, trembling a little now even as she had trembled then. She had tried to tell him.

"Father, I must tell you at once. I do not go."

"Do not go?" The syllables had been lightning bolts.

"No . . . for I cannot now marry Herman Holmsdorfer."

"Have you lost your reason?"

"Nein." At the dear thought of Matthias she had gained a bit of courage. "It is only that the young man at the foundry . . . you recall where we bought the kettle . . . ? Do not be angry, Father . . . he has been here several times since."

"Has he . . . ? He has . . . molested you?"

Amalia flinched again with pain at the memory of the evil thing her father had suggested. How could he have so translated a beautiful thing? How could there ever be evil when two people loved the way she and Matthias did?

"Father! He loves me . . . and I . . ."

"Go on . . . lest in my anger I strike you."

". . . I love him, too, Father . . . so much."

"Du Narr!" he had flung at her, calling his Amalia a fool for loving.

Lurching through the sodden wild grass of the Iowa prairie, she closed her eyes now as though she might forever shut out the period that followed, a time as of a great storm which lashed and beat with words, which closed over her in its fury of commands and threats, so that rather than drown in the beating stress of it she had promised obedience.

If only she had acquiesced for once and all at that time, but she must do something which merely made matters much worse. On the evening before they were to leave she had rolled a few things into a little bundle, slipped out and started down the timber road toward Matthias so many miles away. At the sound of a horse's hoofs thudding behind her she had slipped into the underbrush at the side. But she had not been quick enough, for the lantern's light had focused itself upon her like an evil eye, and her father's cold voice had ordered her to come forth. Well, her spirit was crushed then. There was nothing more to do.

In two things only had she been deceitful,--in writing a second letter to Matthias after the dictated one, and in bringing the shell box with her. She had written her heart out to her lover in a note dictated by no one, and, when ordered to leave the dear gift behind for Mrs. Dunbar, she had pretended to do so. But even now it was in the wagon wrapped in many layers of unbleached muslin sheeting.

"What have you there?" her father had asked as she brought out the yellow-white bundle.

It was then that she had openly lied. "The freshest of the bread," she had answered. And if God would not forgive her, she did not even care.

For the first time after all the tragic days, riding now with Fritz, they spoke of the unhappy situation. The fifteen-year-old brother had something on his mind which had worried him for weeks. He could scarcely speak for the closing of his throat against the words. "I . . . myself I hate, Mollia. This you do not know before. It was I who told Father I saw you go down the timber road. I did not then know the reason. I would not . . . would not . . . have harmed you."

"Do not worry. Nothing was your fault."

"Are you then so unhappy?"

"I can never know happiness again, Fritz."

The youth shook his head. "It is bad. You should not be unhappy. You are so pretty. We could have managed . . . Father and I. I am a man now."

It broke something in Amalia, some tight-bound band around her heart and throat which had not been loosed for days. She, who had been like a dead woman for all this time, wept wildly. Her young brother needing her,--her lover wanting her. The church pulling her one way,--Matthias another. Obedience asking one thing,--love another. Why did God bring such agony into the world? They taught you God was good. Was it true?

The wagon lurched on through the miles of sodden grass and sunflowers, thickets of sumac, wild plum and Indian currant.

After a while she calmed. "Fritz, I confide in you. You will never tell on Amalia?"

"Nein, sister."

"I am praying that I shall see him again," and did not notice that she was turning to the God about whom she had so recently questioned. "Is it too much to ask?"

"How can that be? So far away?"

"Always in the back of my mind, Fritz, I have it that he might come too, that getting my letter on Sunday after the Wednesday we left he would try to overtake us even though so far away and seek me out."

"It is a big thing to hope for."

"He was like that." She spoke proudly. "And his love was like that."

"I wish for you it could be." He glanced shyly side-wise at his sister.

"Perhaps I wish it so much that I make myself think it could be. Do you think it could come true, brother?"

"It could come true," he answered simply. And if he kept to himself the thought that it was not likely, that no one could ever overtake another in this vast ocean of prairie country, it was out of boyish sympathy for Mollia.

Ahead of them lumbered slowly as always through the sodden grass the other wagon belonging to their father and the two of the Schaffers.

Amalia turned now and glanced back across the wide spaces of the prairie. Behind them on the trail came the three wagons of the Kratzes, the two of the Rhodenbachs, the two of the Gebhardts,--four of them oxen-drawn, three with teams of horses. She knew the outfits, every horse and ox as well as their own. As always there were only these same plodding creatures,--no other.