THE PROMISED LAND
There was not a great deal said, that night, about Hugh’s first
experiment as a woodsman, for Oscar seemed to be the sort of person who
knew when it was kinder not to ask questions. One look at his white,
anxious face when he came home long after dark, one glimpse of his smile
of delight and relief when he found that Hugh had returned safely after
all, these caused the boy enough remorse without the wasting of any
words. That he had lost Oscar’s rifle was to Hugh the bitterest and most
irretrievable mishap of the whole day. He might tell himself over and
over that he would replace it when he went back to Rudolm, but how soon
would that be and how desperately might not the weapon be needed before
that time?
When they set out again next day, Oscar gave his directions without any
added warning that this time Hugh had better not improve upon them with
additions of his own. He trusted the boy to carry out his share of the
search alone and made no comment when this time they met successfully at
the place that he had chosen.
All of that day they searched, and all of the next, but with no results.
“It is a good thing that Jake is really gone,” said Oscar, “for
otherwise I would not dare go so far and leave the cottage alone. This
way we can cover twice as much ground and so must surely find the boys
at last.”
They went further and further afield each day and finally, carrying
blankets and provisions, they penetrated far to the northward, slept in
the woods two nights and returned in a wide circle that covered the
forest for many miles. Footprints of Indians they found, and of moose
and deer, but of traces that two white men had passed that way, they saw
no single one. They came home worn and dispirited, each one trying to
talk cheerfully to raise the hopes of the other.
The next day they were too weary to set forth again. It was Sunday, a
week from the day that Hugh had come through the forest from Rudolm. The
day came somewhat as a surprise to him, for he had quite forgotten that
there were such things as calendars and days of the week. He noticed
that Oscar slept later that morning and reduced the household tasks of
both of them to as few as possible. He did not however suspect any other
reason beyond weariness until, at the end of the afternoon, he came out
to go to the spring for water and found his friend seated on the
doorstone, reading his Bible in the thorough, painstaking manner with
which he did everything.
“But how do you know when it is Sunday?” Hugh demanded when Oscar
explained that this was his weekly custom.
“Why, I keep count,” he replied, “and then I somehow think that I ought
to feel that it is Sunday in the air. Doesn’t it look like a Sunday
to-day?”
Now that Hugh thought of the matter it did. It was only chance, of
course, but the sun was mild and clear, the blue lake was like a mirror
and the flaming trees in the forest unstirred by any wind. Even though
he knew better, he felt that, if he listened intently enough, he might
hear church bells ring.
“Aren’t you ever mistaken when you think it feels like a Sunday?” Hugh
asked curiously.
“Oh, yes,” Oscar admitted, “I feel that I should know, but I don’t. Last
year when I went down to Rudolm I found that I was three days out and
had been having Sunday on a Wednesday for a month. How Linda laughed at
me!”
“Did you ever know how you happened to lose count?” Hugh inquired idly.
He had sat down upon the doorstep also, where he could see, on one side,
the open sunlit valley and, on the other, the narrow ravine with its
little stream that ran between them and Jasper Peak.
“Yes, I knew how I missed count,” Oscar answered, smiling a little
queerly as he looked down at one of his big rough hands. Whether he
would have gone on to explain is not certain, for just then another
thought drifted into Hugh’s mind and he asked another question.
“You say you are sure that Half-Breed Jake is away?”
“Yes,” returned Oscar. “Why?”
“Because sometimes I think I see something moving about in the clearing
near their house.”
“But I have looked for days for any sign of life there and have seen
nothing,” Oscar insisted. “Perhaps you saw their chickens or their cow.
They are usually gone at this time of year, but yet, I do not understand
it. If Jake had anything to do with the Edmonds boys’ disappearance—and
I am certain he had—he would be staying. And you say you saw him in the
woods. No, I do not understand it. Perhaps he is in Rudolm helping still
to spread the report that John Edmonds’ accounts are short and that he
ran away.”
“Do you think we will ever find them?” Hugh asked, the discouragement of
the whole week suddenly welling up in his voice.
“I do not know,” Oscar admitted, yet trying to speak cheerfully. “We can
only go on looking until we make sure it is hopeless.”
He closed his book since Hugh’s continued questions had evidently made
reading impossible. They sat together looking down the valley, so green
and quiet in the sun. A lovely place, but a very lonely one, Hugh was
thinking.
“I should think you would have a dog, Oscar,” he observed aloud. “It
would be such company for you.”
The grimness of Oscar’s tone as he answered startled Hugh into turning
square about.
“I had one,” he said, “and Jake killed him.”
“What,” exclaimed the boy, “are they so bad as that?”
“They are as bad as anything you can think of,” his friend answered.
He looked down again at his hand and Hugh noticed that over the back of
it ran a long puckered scar that extended upward under his sleeve.
“That was the time when I lost count of Sunday,” Oscar went on. “It was
before I had been here very long and Jake and his friends were bound to
run me out. You see I am proving up on a claim to this land; I have to
live here just so long, build a house and keep up a certain amount of
cultivation. They thought that if they could drive me away and burn down
the cottage they could jump the claim. They know better now.”
“Was it—was it hard to teach them better?” Hugh inquired eagerly.
“It took me three days, no, four or five, I never quite knew. They lay
in the woods at the edge of the clearing and shot whenever I came near
the door or window. See there,” he laid his finger upon a rough groove
that showed in the window ledge, “that is some of their work and there
are more marks around the door and even inside. Little Hendrik—that was
the dog—and I stood the siege for two days; he was a great help, for he
waked me twice in the night when I had dropped asleep and the Indians
were stealing across the clearing. We stood them off easily enough for a
while, but it got to be bad when our water gave out.”
Oscar told the story as calmly as though it concerned some one quite
other than himself. He would indeed have dropped the narrative there had
Hugh not urged him on with impatient questions.
“Yes, by the third day we were badly off. So when it was twilight I let
little Hendrik out to go down to the spring and drink. Would you think
it mattered to them whether a little black dog lived or not? They knew
that I—I liked him a good deal, I suppose, for they killed him halfway
across the clearing. I heard a shot and a yelp and ran out to him, but
when I got there he was dead.”
“You ran out? Didn’t they shoot at you?” Hugh exclaimed.
“Yes, and hit me too, but I didn’t even notice it at the time. I carried
little Hendrik back, and if I was determined to hold out before, I was a
hundred times more determined then. It rained that night and I caught a
little water in a bucket by the window, so I had that to go on, but I
never really knew quite how long the fight lasted. The bullet had plowed
across the back of my hand and along my arm and had broken the bone just
above the elbow. It got very sore and made me lightheaded, so for a
while it seemed to be always glaring daytime and for a while always
night. And then I seemed to wake up from a long sleep and found the sun
just coming up and a fresh wind blowing off the lake and the pirates
gone. The clock had run down and I had lost the place on the calendar
and that was how I got Sunday three days wrong.”
“And Jake and the Indians, did they all get away?”
“There were seven that came, and it seemed to me that I could still
count seven afterward where I saw them walking around their cabin over
there. But I heard when I went to Rudolm that there was not a sound man
amongst them, and that two of them had got enough of pirating forever
and did not come back to these parts. And while it is pretty hard to see
for certain, I believe Jake limps still.”
“I think he does,” said Hugh, remembering that tall figure striding away
in the moonlight down Rudolm’s single street.
“Over yonder under that maple,” continued Oscar, “is where I buried
little Hendrik, so now I have no company but Hulda. She is not much good
to talk to, Hulda isn’t, but she is a nice cow in her way. It has been
good to have you here, Hugh, for it has been a little lonely since
little Hendrik was gone.”
He laid his scarred hand on Hugh’s knee and looked very steadily out
across the hills. Hugh sat very straight, staring at the Pirate’s house
with new and fascinated interest, thinking very deeply. Presently he
broke out again.
“Oscar,” he said, “why do you live here all alone? You are in danger,
you are not happy, what good is it going to do you in the end?”
His friend answered with a little hesitation, his words coming almost
shyly at first, but gradually gathering headway as he put into speech
the thought that possessed his whole heart.
“It is on account of those people back in Rudolm. They, and my father
with them, came over from Sweden, thinking, like children in a fairy
tale, that they were coming to a new world where they were to be rich
and happy always. My father was the biggest man amongst them, I think it
must have been he who persuaded them to come. He was so bitterly unhappy
afterward to see how poor and disappointed they were. He gave me the
best education he could and encouraged me to work for an even better one
after he died; he said more than once that he hoped I could help his
comrades since he never could.”
“How did they find such a place as Rudolm to come to?” Hugh asked.
“A good many Swedes had settled in this part of the country, for it is
like their own, the same sort of hills and woods full of birch trees and
lakes and little rivers. And there was at that time a great cry that
these mountains were fabulously rich in iron, some even said in gold and
silver, but the iron was thrilling enough. All who could came flocking
into Rudolm valley to stake out a claim or to buy one, expecting to grow
rich in a single night. My father spent all the money he had from
selling his farm in Sweden to buy a few stony acres—where now Linda and
her children work all day long to cut the hay.”
“And there were no mines?”
“A few, one or two that were worth working if one had the money to put
into them. Some millionaire or other owns what there are, and those
Swedes who spent everything they had to buy themselves a hole in the
ground, they work for him and live as best they can.”
“Why didn’t they all go back to Sweden again?” Hugh inquired.
“They were too proud,” said Oscar. “Would it be easy, do you think,
after your whole village had turned out to do you honor, after your
gateway had been dressed with wreaths and branches and all your
neighbors had come in to wish you good-by and good luck and to envy you
a little, in a friendly way, for your boldness and spirit in going to
America to make your fortune, would it be easy to go back and say you
were ruined? No, one and all of them went stubbornly to work and never a
complaint went back to the Old Country.”
“But I don’t quite see—” began Hugh.
He could not understand what all this had to do with Oscar’s living on a
lonely hilltop in the forest.
“Linda and I often talked the whole matter over,” Oscar went on, “and
wondered what could be done, but we never saw a way. Then one day, when
I had been hunting, I came as far as this valley which Jake had just
begun trying to hold; it was then I saw suddenly whence help could come.
There are only rocky bits of ground to be tilled near Rudolm, but here
is land, and prosperity for all even though it will not come in a single
day. I thought it out as I lay by my campfire that night, and in the
morning I could hardly get home quickly enough to tell them of my plan.”
“And wouldn’t they listen?”
Hugh had moved close up to him to make sure of missing no single word.
He was beginning to see the reasons for some of the things he had
noticed in Rudolm, the tiny houses, the narrow fields, the heavy sad
faces. He thought of the road, “Oscar’s road,” that went to the top of
the first hill, and stopped.
“It was hard to make them heed, for they had been deceived once, but in
the end they began to listen. The first step needed was to build a road
through the forest so that the new valley should not be buried beyond
the reach of the world. We got together a little money, the men came
with their horses, their axes and picks and, at the summer Festival,
with laughing and singing and a few tears too, so great a plan did it
seem to some, we began to push our way into the wilderness. But the
labor was harder than they thought and the men began to be discouraged
and to quarrel and to mutter among themselves, ‘That mad Oscar Dansk, he
and his father, they were both dreamers of dreams.’ So the work went
slower and slower until we came at last to the top of the hill.
“You see it was Jake who had commenced to make trouble. He began to
think that this valley where he hunted and fished would be lost to him
if settlers came. He threatened openly that any man who worked longer on
the road would be shot in the dark some night, and he got the women
whispering that the whole affair was a mad scheme that could come to
nothing. So they doubted and hesitated and finally lost heart. And that
was the end of our road-building.”
“But not the end forever, surely,” Hugh said.
“No, for I made up my mind that if I could not persuade them at that end
I could show them at this. I staked out a claim for a farm of my own,
and I mean to live here until it is mine and those people in Rudolm see
that it can be done and that Jake’s threats must come to nothing in the
end. It takes fourteen months to prove up on a claim, but my time is
almost done.”
“And you have lived in this lonely place so long as that,” Hugh
exclaimed. “How did you ever hold to that one idea for all this time?”
“I did not,” admitted Oscar, “for I went off on a wild goose chase, but
I came back again. When I went down to Rudolm last April and knew that
war was declared, there was nothing I thought of but that I must be a
soldier or a sailor as quickly as chance would let me. I rushed down to
Duluth to enlist; my scheme for helping Rudolm was forgotten as though
it had never been.”
Oscar’s tale stopped suddenly short. Hugh, looking down, saw his big
hand clench suddenly upon his knee until the knuckles were white and the
cords stood out along his wrist. For a moment the boy did not dare to
speak.
“Wouldn’t they take you, Oscar?” he said gently at last.
“They wouldn’t take me,” was the heavy answer, as though even now the
disappointment was too keen to dwell upon. “It was on account of what
that fight with the pirates had done to my arm, the bone had been
injured so that the elbow will only move halfway. I never believed it
amounted to anything, but every man at the recruiting station thought
otherwise.”
“What did you say to them?”
“Say—I have no notion what I said. I shouted and cursed at them, for
such anger possessed me as I had never known before. Finally I flung out
of the building and down the street, not knowing or caring where I went.
I wandered all night, I think, for when at last I came out on the docks
where the Great Lakes’ freighters were loading, it was beginning to be
morning. I saw iron and steel and flour and wheat all being dropped into
those great holds, to be carried overseas, so some one told me, to help
toward the winning of the war. I sat there long in a sort of daze, and
watched the steamers loading, but at last, through my anger, through the
sight that was before my eyes I began to see this valley again and to
dream of what might come out of it to help us win the war.”
“Iron—mines?” ventured Hugh inquiringly after Oscar had sat quiet a
minute, seeing his vision again, perhaps.
“No, there is iron in plenty near Rudolm and in the ranges to the
eastward, enough for all the munition factories we have. No, no, what
are mines alongside of a great valley lying fallow, ready to help feed a
starving world? Can’t you see those wild grass meadows cut up into great
square fields of green, can’t you see those slopes all yellow with grain
and rippling like water under the autumn winds? It’s not iron—it’s not
gold—it’s wheat, man, wheat!”
Hugh leaned forward, thrilling to the fervor of Oscar’s tone. He looked
at the wide valley brimming with sunshine and abundant fertility, and
thought of what a gift it might offer to famine-stricken France as she
cried to America for aid. He drew a long breath.
“It is a wonderful idea, Oscar,” he said. “But can you do it?”
“I will do it,” said Oscar with all his slow Swedish determination
sounding in his voice. “I saw it all as I stood and watched a big, black
freighter steaming away into the dawn toward—where I wanted to go. I saw
that if you serve, you serve, and some other than yourself settles where
you are to be the most useful. So I went over to the Land Office and
explained what I wanted to do and asked to double the size of my claim.”
“They should have given you the whole valley,” Hugh said.
“They didn’t,” his friend replied drily. “They didn’t take any stock in
me at all. I think they thought I was trying to dodge military service
for they sent over to the recruiting office to see if the facts I gave
agreed at both places. An officer came over himself to say, ‘If there is
anything for that shouting madman to spend his energies on, in the name
of Heaven, give it to him.’ So they let me register for as much as I
wanted and told me to go back and hold it if I could. They were pretty
sure I couldn’t.”
“But you will, oh, Oscar, I know you will,” Hugh said. “And now I see
why you have called it the Promised Land.”
Oscar laughed a little shamefacedly.
“It is a foolish name perhaps and we will find another when the settlers
come. But now I call it that just to—to keep my courage up. If you have
not something big to think of while you are waiting, the loneliness
might eat into your very soul.”
“And after the settlers come the road will follow?” said Hugh.
“I have thought many times of how it will be,” answered Oscar, leaning
forward to point. “The road will come winding down that hillside, white
and smooth and dusty with much travel. There by that group of pines will
be Linda’s house, with a space for children to play in the meadow below.
Nels Larson’s place will be there just north of it by that knoll, and
Ole Peterson’s across the stream. And by the bend of the river there
will be a little town with a school and white houses with gardens and a
church with a square spire, just as it used to be in Sweden. I have
pictured it a hundred times as I sit here by the door. I know every
house and field and meadow, just how it will all be. Sometimes I think I
can almost hear the church bells ring already or the children calling to
each other as they go across the fields to school.”
“It looks homelike, somehow, even without any houses in it,” observed
Hugh after a long survey of the quiet landscape. “Oh, Oscar, how like
home it looked the day that I was lost and came over that hill at last!”
He hesitated a moment, for very little had been said of his adventure in
the wood. He had not even let himself think of it often and, half
defiant, half ashamed, had avoided the subject, but now let his spoken
remorse come with a rush.
“I am so sorry that I did not do just as you told me. You looked for me
for hours, I know, and I have never owned that it was all my fault. And
I lost your rifle, too; I feel so dreadfully about that. I thought that
I could save time and that you were too careful.”
He sat thinking for a second, then added in a sudden burst of
illumination:
“Perhaps that was why my father wouldn’t let me go to France, because he
knew I hadn’t sense enough to obey orders. I understand now what he
meant by my not having enough judgment. Oh, Oscar, I am so ashamed!”
“It iss all right.” The Swedish accent in Oscar’s voice sounded very
distinctly as it was apt to do when he was moved. “It was my fault as
much as yours; I should have warned you that you would be tempted to do
just such a thing. When I waited for you and you did not come—well, I am
not so often frightened, but I was afraid then. It is no little thing to
be lost in these woods. I wish—I wish—”
He did not finish his sentence, but Hugh knew that he was thinking of
the Edmonds boys and of how the search for them was growing more
hopeless every day. He, too, felt that despair was not far off, but he
had a feeling that, if either of them spoke of it, the idea of failure
would suddenly become a real thing instead of a dreaded possibility. He
tried to turn the talk to another subject and spoke the first words that
entered his mind. It was the most careless of questions, but it led to
such unexpected consequences that he used to wonder, later, why the
clock had not ceased ticking or the rising breeze stopped blowing to
listen as he spoke.
“Have you seen any wolves about here lately, or that white deer that the
Indians say is in the forest?”
“Wolves never come so far south as this in summer,” answered Oscar, then
added sharply, “Why?”
“Because when I was lost I stopped by a marsh and—I haven’t really
thought of it very clearly since—but there were footprints in the ground
that were much too big to have been made by a fox, I am sure, so I
thought they were a wolf’s.”
Oscar leaned toward him, his blue eyes suddenly burning with excitement.
“What sort of footprints?” he questioned tersely. “How big? That makes
all the difference in the world.”
“Why, I don’t know,” stammered Hugh; “just footprints of some big
animal. They weren’t very plain.”
In wild haste Oscar fumbled in his pockets, pulled out a pencil and, so
great was his eagerness, drew his rough outlines on the blank page of
his Bible.
“If a fox had made them they would be this big,” he said; “and if a
wolf, like this. Were they as big, bigger than that? As big as this?”
Hugh looked over his shoulder and pointed unhesitatingly to the third
drawing.
“They were as large as that, or even larger,” he stated. “Oh, what does
it mean?”
Oscar drew a long breath.
“There is but one creature that could have made them,” said he; “that is
the dog Nicholas. He is very large, and white, as large as a deer. Now
we have something to go upon at last.”
He glanced quickly toward the west and frowned as he noted that the sun
was low.
“It is too late to go now,” he said, “and would hardly be worth while,
for I suppose the marks were days old when you saw them. We will have
supper, and go to bed early for a start at sunrise to-morrow.”
Rising, he went into the cabin and, as Hugh could plainly hear, began to
whistle gayly as he stirred the fire and brought out the frying pan. He
seemed much more cheerful already now that there was, at last, a little
hope. Hugh took up his pail and went to finish his long interrupted task
of fetching water from the spring.
He came running up the path a few minutes later, spilling the water in
wild splashes, and burst in at the cottage door.
“Oscar,” he cried, “did you say that you were sure Jake was still away?”
“Yes,” answered Oscar, looking up from the fire; “he can’t be back yet.”
“But he is,” insisted Hugh excitedly. “I thought so, and now I know.
Just this minute I saw three men walk across the clearing and there is
smoke coming from the chimney of the cabin on Jasper Peak. Just come to
the door and see.”