It had originally been his intention to buy both oxen and cows as soon as they arrived. But he hadn’t known the price of cattle; a good cow cost thirty dollars, almost as much as they had left. And he still had to buy a few essentials for the house-building if they expected to have shelter for the winter. And next spring he would have to buy seed grain. He must lay aside money for the seed. If they had nothing to plant next spring, all their troubles in emigrating would have been in vain.
That was how things were with them. They had already spent so much that a cow was out of the question; and yet, he had been as careful as he could with his outlays.
“Have I bought anything unimportant, Kristina?”
“No — I can’t say that you have. But a cow that gives milk is as important as anything else.”
“Not as important as the house!”
“But a whole, long, milkless winter, Karl Oskar! How can the children live through the winter without a drop of milk?”
And she added: The children had lately gained in weight and strength, but without milk, there might be nothing left of their little bodies by spring. She had heard him say many times that above all they must keep healthy through the winter. To do this, they needed a cow. They had been poor at home, but they had always had a drop of milk for the children, all year round.
Karl Oskar repeated: First of all they must build a house; they could get along without a cow, but not without a house. If the children were given other food they would survive the winter without milk, but if they were forced to live in the shanty, they would freeze to death. And she mustn’t forget that they awaited yet another tender life — that one, too, would need a warm shelter, that new life must be saved through the winter. They couldn’t live in a shed with a newborn baby through the winter; they couldn’t live in this hovel where daylight shone through the cracks, where it would be as cold inside as outside.
He was right; but she insisted that she too was right. They must save their lives, and the question was how best to do this. Timbered walls gave protection against cold, milk against hunger and illness. They needed the cow as well as the house, she was not going to give in on this point — they must have the indispensable cow. Couldn’t he at least look about for one? Now that they had land, mightn’t they be allowed some delay in payment, wouldn’t people trust them?
He answered, as yet they had no paper on their claim; an impoverished squatter was not trusted for anything out here. The Scot in Taylors Falls wouldn’t give him credit for a penny’s worth. Moreover, how could they expect to be trusted, strangers as they were? No one knew what sort of people they were. Here in America a newcomer must show that he could help himself, before he could expect help from others.
Kristina thought this sounded uncharitable; a person unable to help himself needed help above all others.
“Isn’t there any way we could get a cow?”
“It looks bad. I can’t buy without money.”
But she had made up her mind to have her own way, that he understood. She said, as a rule he made the decisions alone, but there were times when he must listen to her. He had persuaded her to emigrate. — She had never before reminded him of that, but he often reminded himself of it and felt the responsibility he had assumed. If she had wanted to, she could have said: You never told me we would be without milk out here! You never mentioned in advance that we must be without a cow. Had you mentioned that fact the time you persuaded me, then perhaps I mightn’t be here now.
Karl Oskar thought long over her words about the children and the milkless winter. It could be a question of life or death. He handled their money, he was the one who had to choose — and the choice stood between two indispensables; there was no choice. How could he decide — when life or death might depend on his decision?
— 3—
Robert was not very deft with his hands, he had never learned anything about carpentry, he had no feeling for working with wood. Karl Oskar could rely on him for only the simplest chores. Together they had felled the timbers and prepared the logs, and after this was finished Karl Oskar told his brother to grub hoe the meadow. His feeling was that the two of them, as brothers, ought to stick together, that Robert should remain and help him until he was of age and could take a claim for himself; he would pay his brother for this as soon as he could. Robert was now eighteen, in a few years he could choose his own farm from the thousands of acres that lay here waiting on the shores of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga.
“I’ll never take land!” exclaimed Robert with conviction.
“What do you mean? Wouldn’t you like to be on your own?”
“Yes! That is exactly what I want! Here in America everyone decides for himself. That’s why I wanted to come here.”
Karl Oskar stared at his brother in surprise: Didn’t Robert want to be the owner of one hundred and sixty acres of this good earth? Was he so shiftless that he wouldn’t claim all the land he could on such favorable conditions?
“If you don’t take land before it’s claimed, you’ll regret it,” Karl Oskar insisted.
“Maybe. But I don’t think so.”
And Robert thought to himself as he said this: Karl Oskar was not his guardian, he had never promised to serve as farm hand for his brother here in America; he had paid for his emigration with his own inheritance, which Karl Oskar had kept; he didn’t owe his brother anything, he was not bound to him in any way.
Yet here his brother put a hoe in his hand and asked him to break land! He felt almost as though he were back home again, in his old farm-hand service; he had cleared land many long days, back in Sweden — now it was the same here. The tools he had thrown away in Sweden he had had to pick up again. And the American grub hoe Karl Oskar had bought was much heavier than the one at home. What advantage had there been in his emigration if everything was to be the same as before? To stoop all day long until his back ached in the evenings — this he had done enough of in Sweden. He had not emigrated to America in order to hoe.
Robert could not understand his brother’s joy in squatting on a piece of land that required so much labor — a patch to plow, seed, and harvest, year after year, as long as he was able, all his life. A patch of soil he could never get rid of. Robert only wanted to do the kind of work that would liberate him from work. Only the rich man had no master, only the rich were free to do as they pleased; and no one would grow rich from hoeing the earth, even if he hoed to the end of eternity.
Never, never would Robert become a squatter. While he hoed for his brother he kept listening to his left ear: through that ear the Atlantic Ocean had called to him, and he had listened to the call and crossed the ocean. He had come here to get away from cruel masters, from the servant law, from drudgery with hoe and spade — and now he turned the clods and lived the same life he had fled from. Again he heard the humming call in his ear: Come! Don’t stay here!
In New York Harbor he had seen a ship with a red banner, its soft-sounding girl-name beckoning him: Angelica. In his ear he could now hear that name again, the name of the speedy, copper-plated ship with her singing and dancing passengers. Why hadn’t he stepped on board and joined them? Why hadn’t he gone with the Angelica?
In the New World there were other fields than farmers’ fields. And Robert listened so intently to his own ear that he didn’t hear when Karl Oskar spoke to him; his brother had to repeat his words.
“Have you lost your hearing?”