The winter was far gone, and the food supply was running low for the settlers at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga. They were near the bottom of the flour barrel, and Kristina reduced their bread rations to one thin slice apiece at every meal. They were now on their last bushel of potatoes, and these too had to be rationed. They still had some frozen venison, and this was not yet rationed. Fresh meat was seldom on the table — the game seemed to have disappeared in the dead of winter. Indians used dogs to hunt, but without a dog a hunter usually returned without game. And Lady, their borrowed cow, had almost gone dry; she gave only half a quart a day.
Fishing, too, had become difficult after the snow had piled high on the lake ice. Earlier in the winter they had caught a great many pike without any fishing gear, using only an ax. They would walk over the clear ice until they espied fish, and then hit the ice above them with the ax hammer; the pike were stunned, turning up their white bellies, and it was easy to break the ice and pull them out. After the snow covered the lake several feet deep, Karl Oskar and Robert had to cut holes through the ice for fishing. It was mostly catfish they caught this way, standing at the holes with their fingers stiff from cold. Catfish had an unpleasant, oily taste, and no one liked them as well as the other lake fish. Robert detested them, with their round, catlike heads, actually purring like cats; after an evening meal of catfish he complained about being unable to sleep — the cat kept purring in his stomach the whole night through!
“Better to have a fish purr in you than to have your stomach purr from emptiness,” answered Karl Oskar.
Kristina boiled the catfish, she fried it, salted it, dried it, made soup from it, she tried in all ways to make it taste good. They ate catfish at almost every meal, it was their only fresh winter food, and when the venison was gone, it would be their only animal food. The fish was ugly to look at, its taste was not appetizing, but Kristina said it would be ungrateful to speak ill of this creature, which had the same Creator as they themselves; hungry people ought to eat without complaint whatever they could find. And the catfish was faithful to them; when everything else on land and in the water failed them, they always had the bearded, purring fish. It came as a gift from God and helped them sustain life through the winter.
Robert’s almanac indicated they were now in February. And each day the settlers asked themselves the same question: How long would it be before the ground grew green? When would the ice break up? How long before spring came?
They had put this question to Anders Månsson, he had spent several years here, he ought to know. He had answered: Spring varied from year to year, it might vary by many weeks. He remembered one spring when the frost had gone out of the ground the last week in March, another year he had not started his plowing until the second week of April. The ice on the St. Croix River usually broke up toward the end of March, and spring in the St. Croix Valley was counted from the day when the river flowed free.
So they must fight the winter, perhaps another two months.
The settlers in the log cabin at Ki-Chi-Saga kept their house warm with their constant fire, they were well protected against the winter weather, no longer were they afraid of the cold; but they began to fear hunger.
— 2—
Kristina knew from experience: it was always harder to satisfy a hungry family in winter than in summer. All were hungrier and ate more in winter. During the cold part of the year a human body needed rich, nourishing food to keep the blood active and warm in the body. And as the food grew scarce, her family grew hungrier than any winter before. She too — her stomach ached all day long, she wakened during the nights with the pain. And she was in charge of their food — before she herself ate she must see to it that the others had something on their plates.
At meals she left the table a little before the others or she might be tempted to eat so much that the children would have too little. She was so careful of the flour she hardly dared use a few pinches for gravy; it must be saved for bread. But however she skimped and saved, she could not make the barrel deeper than it was. The time came when she swept the barrel bottom clean to have sufficient flour for a baking. And the moment arrived when the loaves from this baking were eaten. Now she had nothing more to bake with. Now they were breadless.
That day when they sat down at table there was no bread. No one said a word about it, no one asked about the missing bread. How could questions help them? The men had long dreaded the day when bread would be missing — it was no surprise to them. Nevertheless, Karl Oskar and Robert glanced from time to time at the empty place on the board where the bread used to lie. Did they think it would suddenly appear?
At the next meal little Johan began to complain: “Mother! I want bread! Where’s the bread?”
“There is no bread, child,” said the mother.
“Mother, you must bake,” Johan told her. “I want bread.”
None of the others at the table said a word, but the boy kept repeating: “Mother! Why don’t you bake?”
No other food satisfies a human stomach like bread, no food will keep hunger away like bread. Nothing can take the place of bread for grownups or children, but a growing child-body suffers most from the lack of it.
And a mother suffers when she must deny her own child who hangs on to her skirts and cries persistently: “Mother, I want bread!”
It was the same at every meal. No one said anything except the child, but it was almost more than Kristina could endure. She knew only too well how things were with them; they had used all their money. At length she had to speak to Karl Oskar: Their children must have bread to stay healthy until spring; growing children needed bread. Couldn’t he manage to get hold of a small sack of flour — only a very small sack?
This problem had been ever in his mind since the bread had been missing from the table; one sack of flour. . But their last money had been spent for seed grain which Karl Oskar had ordered for spring. The seed grain was more important to them than anything else — it was next year’s crop. If they had spent the seed money for this winter’s food, they would starve to death next winter.
Kristina argued: It did not matter which winter they starved to death — this one or next. What help would their spring seed be to them if they couldn’t survive until spring? How could they put the seeds in the ground if they themselves were already under the ground?
Karl Oskar said he would go to Danjel and ask for a loan. This was the only way out. He would not be trusted by anyone else. Here everyone asked for cash. If he wanted to buy a penny’s worth in a store, the owner would first ask if he had cash. Cash was an American word he now understood quite well, he had learned what it meant. Cash! Cash! Cheap for cash! How many times he had heard it! It began to sound like the rustle of paper bills. He could hear the same rustle in the voice of Mr. Abbott, the Scots storekeeper in Taylors Falls: “Do you have cash, Mr. Nilsson?” A settler’s life — or death — depended on cash.
He was embarrassed to borrow from Danjel again; he still owed his wife’s uncle one hundred daler for the mortgage interest on Korpamoen; his lost years at home still weighed him down. And now Danjel wasn’t much better off than he was himself; Danjel too had a large family to feed, he had bought a half share in the ox team, he had lent thirty dollars to Anders Månsson, he was very generous to Ulrika and her daughter, he helped people without being asked. He had been extravagant with the cash he had on arrival, he too would soon be impoverished.
But Karl Oskar went to Danjel, and came back with five shining coins in his hand: five silver dollars: “Now we can buy a sack of flour!”