KAREN'S BROTHER
"How would you like to spend a whole summer here in the forest, watching
the reindeer?" Lieutenant Ekman asked Gerda, after the milking was over
and the Lapp mother had gone back to the tent with her children.
"Not very well, if I had to live in that tent," Gerda answered. Then
suddenly something attracted her attention, and she held up her hand,
saying, "Listen!"
A faint call sounded in the distance,--a call for help.
"This way," cried Erik, and dashed off down a path which led toward the
river.
All the others followed him. "It must be one of the lumbermen," said
Erik's father. "They often get hurt in the log jams."
He was right. When they reached the riverbank they found several men
trying to drive some logs out into the current, so as to release a man
who had slipped and was pinned against a rock.
The bed of the river was rilled with rocks, over which the water was
rushing with great force, in just such a torrent as may be found on
nearly all the rivers of northern Sweden. Starting from the melting snow
on the mountains, these rivers flow rapidly down to the sea, and every
summer millions of logs go sailing down the streams to the sawmills along
the eastern coast.
Thousands of these logs are thrown into the water to drift down to the
sea by themselves; but on some of the slower rivers the logs are made
up into rafts which are guided down the stream by men who live on the
raft during its journey.
It was one of the log-drivers who had been caught while he was trying to
push the logs out into the channel; and now his leg was broken.
"We can take him to Gellivare in one of our kärra," said Lieutenant
Ekman, when, with the help of Erik and his father, the man had finally
been rescued and carried ashore.
Accordingly, he was lifted into the cart with Erik, while Gerda snuggled
into the seat between Birger and her father; and the journey over the
rough woodland road was made as carefully as possible.
Several interesting things were discovered while the doctor from the
mines was setting the broken leg. The most important of all was that this
stalwart lumberman had a father who was a lighthouse keeper.
"Ask him if it is the Sea-gull Light," begged Gerda, when she heard of
it; "and find out if Karen is his sister."
And it was indeed so. The young man had been in the woods all winter, and
was on his way to the lighthouse, which he had hoped to reach in a few
days, for the river current was swift and the logs were making good
progress down to Luleå.
"You shall reach home sooner than you expected," said Lieutenant Ekman
the next morning, "for you shall go with us this very day."
"Fine! Fine! Fine!" cried Gerda joyously when she heard of it. "Pack your
bundle, Erik, for you are going with us, too."
While their clothes, and all the little keepsakes of the trip, were being
hurried into the satchels, Gerda's tongue flew fast with excitement, and
her feet flew to keep it company.
"What do you suppose Karen will say, when she sees us bringing her
brother over the rocks?" she ran to ask Birger in one room, and then ran
to ask her father in another.
At nine o'clock the injured man was moved into the train, the children
took their last look at the mining town, and then began their return over
the most northerly railroad in the world, back through the swamps and
forests, across the Polcirkel, and out of Lapland.
Luleå was reached at last and Josef Klasson was transported from the
train to the steamer, "Just as if he were a load of iron ore from the
mines," Birger declared.
"Not quite so bad as that," said his father, and took the twins to see
the great hydraulic lift that takes up a car loaded with ore, as easily
as a mother lifts her baby, and dumps the whole load into the hold of a
vessel.
The children were so full of interest in all the new life around them
that Josef Klasson almost forgot his pain in telling them about his
winter in the lumber camp, and the long dark night, when for over a month
there was not even a glimpse of the sun, and no light except that of the
moon and the frosty stars.
It seemed but a very short time before Gerda was crying, "I can see the
Sea-gull Light, and Karen is out on the rocks."
Then came all the excitement of landing. The twins told Karen about
finding her brother, and the reindeer, and the midnight sun, and the logs
in the river, all in one breath; while Lieutenant Ekman explained Josef's
accident to the lighthouse keeper and his wife, who had both hurried down
to the wharf to find out the meaning of the return of the government
boat.
Then, after Josef had been welcomed with loving sorrow because of his
injury, and they had carried him up to the house and made him
comfortable, Gerda told about her desire to take Karen home with her.
At first the father and mother would not hear of such a thing; but when
Herr Ekman told of the medical gymnastic exercises that might cure her
lameness, Josef spoke from his cot.
"Let her go," he said. "It is a terrible thing to be lame. These few days
that I have been helpless are the worst I have ever known. If there is a
chance to make Karen well, let her go."
And so Karen and Erik both went to Stockholm on the boat with Herr Ekman
and the twins.
"You know I told you that I never see my brothers very long at one time,"
Karen said to Gerda, after the children had been greeted and gladly
welcomed by Fru Ekman, and they had all tried to make the strangers feel
at home among them.
"Yes," said Gerda; "but when you next see Josef you may be so well and
strong that you can go off to the lumber camp with him and help him saw
down the trees."
Karen shook her head sadly. She could not believe that she would ever
walk without a crutch, and it was the first time that she had been away
from her mother in all her life. She turned to the window so that Gerda
might not see the tears that came into her eyes, and looked down at the
strange city sights.
Just then Lieutenant Ekman came into the room. "Oh, Father, may we take
Erik to the Djurgård to-morrow?" Birger asked. "I want to show him the
Lapp tent and the reindeer out there. He seems to be rather homesick for
the forest, and says that we live up in the air like the birds in their
nests."
When the four children were asleep for the night, and the father and
mother were left alone, they laughed softly together over the situation.
"Who ever heard of bringing a Lapp boy to Stockholm!" exclaimed Herr
Ekman; and his wife added, "Who but Gerda would think of bringing a
strange child here, to be cured of her lameness?"