Читать книгу Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie - O. E. Rölvaag - Страница 28

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The food supply was steadily vanishing. Bags and sacks yawned empty and had nothing to yield. The settlers shared freely with one another as long as they had anything left; but even at Hans Olsa's, where plenty usually reigned, the food at last began to give out. Among the menfolk a crumb of tobacco was as rare as gold. . . . High time that they took the situation in hand and did something about it! Besides, the season was getting so far advanced that they would soon have to start in haying. No two ways about it--they must make a trip to town.

All the men, accordingly--Per Hansa, and Tönseten, and Hans Olsa, and the two Solum boys--met together one Sunday to discuss the matter. A trip to town in those days was a serious affair, which had to be planned carefully from beginning to end. The seventy or eighty miles through desolate country was in itself no trifle; one couldn't expect to be back in less than four days, even with horses. And under pressure of time, it was hard to accomplish everything that one wanted to do. Provisions of all sorts must be replenished for the next season; first of all came food, and after that clothing; then tools and farming implements, as far as their money would go. If it wouldn't go far enough they would have to find some other way out of the fix, but they must hold down to essentials in order to keep alive. . . . As yet, no one in the Spring Creek settlement was in a position to carry any produce along, to be sold for cash or given in exchange for wares. But they all looked forward to the time when this would be possible; it would be harder work to haul a load both ways, of course; but what a help it would be--and what a satisfaction--to have their own products to barter!

They at once agreed that some of the menfolk would have to stay at home, in case anything untoward happened. . . . It was a singular thing, not a soul in this little colony ever felt wholly at ease, though no one referred to the fact or cared to frame the thought in words. All of a sudden, apparently without any cause, a vague, nameless dread would seize hold of them; it would shake them for a while like an attack of nerves; or again, it might fill them with restless apprehension, making them quiet and cautious in everything they did. They seemed to sense an unseen force around them. . . . The men grew taciturn under the strain; they would cast about for some task or other on which they could work off the spell. With the women it found an outlet in talk; they often became extravagantly loud and boisterous over nothing at all. Few realized what this strange feeling was; none of them would have admitted that he was afraid.

. . . Yes, God defend them! Man's strength availed but little out here. They had already experienced it more than once. Terrible storms would come up--so suddenly, with such appalling violence! . . . Mother Sörine had reason to be frightened of these storms. Less than a week ago their tent had been carried away in one of them; Sörine, trapped inside and half choked, had been swept along with the canvas. Hans Olsa had laid the tent rope across his shoulder, planted his feet solidly in the ground, and summoned all his giant strength; but he had been whirled away like a tuft of wool. It had turned out all right, however; no one was seriously hurt . . . this time.

And then, the Indians! . . . "Injuns," as the red children of the great plain were called in common speech. Kjersti, Tönseten's wife, didn't mind the storms so much; they never committed inhuman outrages . . . weren't out for your scalp, at any rate! But fear of the Indians was ever vividly present in her mind. Not a day passed that she didn't search the sky line many times. . . . Why, one of the savages actually lay buried over on Per Hansa's land! And where the dead had their abode, the living were sure to come. . . . Since she had learned of the grave she was always on the lookout. . . .

Truth to tell, her fear of the Indians was very natural. She and Syvert had heard the tale of the terrors of '62 so often that they could have repeated it word for word, as if from an open book. When they were living in Fillmore County, Minnesota, two refugees from the Norway Lake massacre had drifted into the place; the story of the horrors they had undergone had taken on new and gruesome details as it passed from mouth to mouth; out here now on the open prairie, where no hiding place could be found, the form in which Kjersti remembered it had assumed the fantastic proportions of a myth.

Tönseten, however, wasn't a bit afraid of the Indians--not he! Who ever heard of such nonsense? Why should he or anyone else fear them, now that they had become peaceful and civilized? He tried his best to instill this idea into the others. . . . Per Hansa would sit listening to Tönseten with a quizzical smile on his face. "That's right, Syvert--go on," he would agree. "All the Indians have turned into honest-to-God gentlemen these last ten years, with red skull-caps, and wooden shoes, and long pipes, and everything else they need. It's no trick at all, you know, for a savage to learn fine manners, as crowded with folks to teach him as it is out here!" . . . From the Trönders on the Sioux River, Per Hansa had learned a great deal of valuable information about the Indians; he had heard of a place, not very far away, called Flandreau or some such outlandish name, where they had a permanent colony; west from this place an Indian trail ran all the way through to Nebraska, and along this route the red man was said to make his yearly journeys. More than likely, Per Hansa thought, his own quarter-section lay directly in their path; he inferred this from the grave on the hill and from what he had heard. . . . If it were true, the fact would be certain to come to light before the summer was over. In the meanwhile--well, no use to cross a bridge until you came to it.

The men never spoke of the Indians while the womenfolk were around. But at other times, whenever the subject came up for discussion, Ole and Store-Hans stood listening with open mouths. . . . The grave where they found the stones had now begun to strike a chill into their hearts; but it also exerted a strange and irresistible fascination.

. . . So here they all were, afraid of something or other. But the women were the worst off; Kjersti feared the Indians, Sörine the storms; and Beret, poor thing, feared both--and feared the very air.

The outcome of their deliberations that Sunday was only what might have been expected; it seemed the logical thing for Hans Olsa and Tönseten and Henry Solum, each of whom owned horses and wagon, to make up the party for the journey. That would give three men and three separate teams; such a caravan ought to be able to haul home on one trip whatever the settlement could afford to buy.

Per Hansa was badly out of sorts that day; every word that he let fall had a bitter sting to it; he said little and sat morose and silent most of the time. In his eyes, the whole affair had the appearance of having been settled beforehand. He and the other Solum boy were to stay at home and look after the settlement; that was the plan, though it hadn't been stated in outright terms. It looked to Per Hansa like a pretty mean piece of business. . . . For his part, he took it as a matter of course that he was a better man for the trip to town than Syvert Tönseten or Henry Solum--neither of whom, God knows, had any more wits than he could get along with! . . . In all their talk, no one had even hinted at that side of the question. And certainly Per Hansa wasn't the sort of man to force himself down anybody's throat. . . . But, by God! it was disgusting to have to lie around the house with the womenfolk while the others were off on such a fine expedition! . . . The thirst for adventure was burning in his blood.

When the party left on Monday morning Per Hansa was in a towering ill humour; he rose with the others at dawn, woke Ole, and hitched the oxen to the plow. On that day he broke up an acre and a half of prairie, with only the crude implements at hand--a record that stood for many years in that part of the country.

But at quitting time that night, when he paced around the field and discovered what an enormous day's work he had done, he felt so elated that he began to whistle the tune of an old ballad. . . . Just look at that! If they didn't hurry back, he'd have the whole farm broken up before they arrived. . . . By God! he'd show them! He'd give them a chance to see for themselves who was the better man!