The Settlers (44 page)

“But it’s only dead weight. Do you understand? The weight of the yellow gold is dead . . . dead . . . dead . . . !”

From the gable room Harald was calling his mother. The boy had heard her come, so she rose from the stoop and walked away from Robert. But she turned twice and looked at him where he lay in the grass, holding his old, torn book above his face.

His explanation of the chapter in
The History of Nature
had filled her with inexplicable anxiety and sadness.

XXI

THE FOURTH NIGHT—ROBERT’S EAR SPEAKS

You push your head so deep into the pillow tonight. Do you think you can shut me up in that way? Do you think you can choke me, get rid of me forever, by pushing me down into the pillow?

No, you should know better after all the years we have been together. You know it doesn’t help to press me into the pillow. You might soften my sounds a little, perhaps. But only very little. Yes, you have tried to silence me in every way. What all haven’t you figured out during the many nights we have been together! You’ve turned and twisted and tried various positions doing what you thought would help. Sometimes you’ve behaved like a fool—like the time you poured a spoonful of whiskey into me! I choked a little, but not for long. You wanted to get me drunk! Ha, ha, ha!

I heard what you told Kristina today: your ache eases when I bleed a little. I know it. Sometimes I feel sorry for you and show it that way. Kristina has changed the spotted slip and now you have a new, clean one to rest on.

But these blood spots of mine do not tell anything to Karl Oskar and Kristina about the things that happened to you on the California Trail. You can trust my silence. But sometimes I think you’re going to tell on yourself—at least when you are alone with Kristina. Both yesterday and today you almost told her—shouldn’t you be more careful? Your ailing ear isn’t so bad that it can’t hear when you’re about to spill over.

I don’t have much to tell about your separation from Arvid at the water hole, because you didn’t understand at the time that your parting was final. But I’ve all the sounds stored away. You’re familiar with my good memory. But much of this you’re not interested in any more. You lost something that time—you know best what it was. That’s why so much from those days is of no importance to you any longer. Then why should I keep repeating it?

But that time when you were lying on your back in the withered prairie grass I heard a well-known voice calling the mules. It was the mule owner. And with him came succor—water, which gave you back your life.

—1—

“My poor boy! I take care of you! You get well . . . !”

Mario Vallejos had gone out to look for the lost ones from his caravan—two animals and two muleteers. Since none of his provisions were missing, he did not believe the two boys had fled with the mules, and after two days of searching he came across Robert, far gone from exposure and lack of water and food. The Mexican questioned him and what he had assumed was confirmed. He never found his two lost mules.

Robert was well taken care of by his master, who assured him he would soon be well again. Within a few days he had recuperated sufficiently so that they could continue their journey. He still felt weak and was bothered by dizziness but now he need no longer walk; he rode on one of the good Mexican mules instead. The mule lent him its spindly legs and small, hardened hooves, which moved quickly through the whirling sand. His own feet were covered with blood blisters and worn to the bare flesh.

The caravan was smaller now—only two men and six animals. One man and two mules had been left behind along the road.

The caravan now covered a shorter distance each day than before, since six animals had to carry the burdens previously distributed on eight. The pack mules had thinned down during the trip from St. Louis. Their hindquarters grew more sinewy each day. Their owner claimed that on the California Trail mules became so skinny that two animals were required to throw a shadow.

Robert wondered what happened to people before they reached California. How many gold seekers would be needed to throw a single shadow?

For more than a year now Robert had been on his journey toward the Land of Gold, and as yet he was only at the beginning of the road. But in the grave Arvid had dug for himself, and where he remained, Robert too had left something of himself; when he resumed his journey he felt empty inside. Life had returned to his thirst-plagued body but he felt like a pod without a kernel. He rode the mule and watched his accompanying shadow on the ground. He still had enough life in him to supply a shadow, something visible that moved along with him. But could he catch it with his hands? Was there any substance to this shape that slid along on the ground beside the mule? What he saw was something dark and thin and empty. And this nebulous, vague something was from now on to be his comrade and companion on the California journey.

Vallejos, his good master, talked to him about the land they would come to at the end of the journey, where the sand was mingled with gold. Gold! Vallejos spoke of gold, he sang of gold, dreamed of gold. He saw the “Pillar of Gold” which showed them the way through the desert. Mario Vallejos lived in the faith of gold.

The little Mexican feared none of the things they might encounter on the two-thousand-mile journey: not dangers of the desert, poisoned water holes, prairie fires, wild beasts, or Indians. Only one name did he still mention with fear in his voice—
The Yellow Jack.
Who was he? What was it? Vallejos sometimes spoke his native Spanish and often used English expressions Robert did not understand, and among them was this one. This much Robert understood: that this Yellow Jack had killed a lot of people. He was the most dangerous encounter the gold seekers could expect on the California Trail. But was he a bandit, an Indian chief, a human or an animal, a hurricane or a prairie fire?

Vallejos tried with gestures and signs to explain to his muleteer. He held his hands to his head as if suffering torture, he contorted his face, felt his back as if hit by a blow from a whip, he shook his hands, opened his mouth, and stuck out his tongue much as if he wanted to spit it out: this was Yellow Jack! But Robert was unable to interpret the signs. Perhaps Yellow Jack was the name of some terrible weather condition they would meet in the desert regions further west? When Vallejos described this monster by trembling in his whole body, Robert thought he was trying to describe an earthquake in its upheaval.

Robert was now alone with his master and soon he could resume his old chores. He was employed by the Mexican and he stayed with him and followed him. He no longer cared where the journey would take them. He rode his mule during the day and rested his head on the saddle at night. And he listened in silence when his master talked of the California country and described the banks of the Sacramento gold river.

Sometimes it might happen that he stuck his hand into his pocket and felt the nickel watch. It was as though he sought in his pocket for the hand which for a thousand evenings had wound the watch. Now it had stopped; it remained stopped. But Arvid no longer needed to know when it was time to rise in the morning, when it was mealtime, or time to go to bed in the evening. As he had twisted his body and tumbled about in the grave his hands had dug, he had pulled out the watch and put it in the sand beside him. He had no more use for it; what use could he have for a contraption that showed time when there was no more time for him?

One winter evening after cutting wood all day long they had returned to their miserably cold shed and Arvid had started to cry. “I don’t care about gold any more! I give up riches! I don’t care if I’m rich or poor! I want to go back!”

That evening, as he cried so miserably in their shed, there had still been three months of time left for him. He was still to rise from his bed a hundred mornings, still take out the key and wind his watch on a hundred evenings.

Robert would never wind that watch again. He didn’t care any longer about the time needed on the road to California. He was not in need of anything to measure and point it out, it was lost to him permanently.

In a grave he never again would see, he had lost his dream of gold.

—2—

Twenty days out from St. Louis a train of two men and six mules arrived in St. Joseph, one of the starting places for the train of the hundred thousand.

It was now the last week of April 1852. It was the beginning of the long-journey season; the plains were green, and the army of gold seekers congregating at St. Joseph was ready to take off for the West. During a few days the last preparations were made for a two-thousand-mile move, for a life of travel during the next four months. For the last time the vehicles were tested and tried out, the provision sacks inspected, guns and revolvers tested, and guides and lookouts who rode as a vanguard to the train were chosen with discrimination. In St. Joseph, Mario Vallejos had arranged to meet two friends from his own country who were to accompany him to California. He looked for them for several days among the hordes of people that filled the place but was unable to find them. He sat silent and sad in their tent until late at night. At last he said that his friends were reliable; there was no explanation for their failure to show up except that they no longer were alive. And he felt sure that no one except Yellow Jack had killed them.

They had raised their tent in a hickory grove in a small valley; round about them spread the immense camp of the California farers. It was a camp of noises, the abode of a thousand sounds, where commotion reigned, cries and complaints rising at all hours of the day. Here an enormous horde of humanity was in motion, here great herds of cattle had been rounded up, and the noises that all these living creatures emitted could burst one’s eardrums. The camp seemed to Robert like a fair in his home country, a thousand times enlarged, a fair that went on day and night—a giant fair that would last four months without interruption. Drunken men hollered, angry women yelled, children cried, horses neighed, oxen bawled, cows lowed, sheep bleated, mules brayed—not for half an hour did silence rule during the whole twenty-four hours of the day.

New arrivals came every day. One night Robert was awakened by a piercing scream outside the tent:

“Water! For God’s sake gimme some water! Water . . . !”

He rose and went outside in the half dark, where he could see a shape crawling on hands and knees, begging for water. Two men came and picked him up, one by the shoulders and one by the legs, and carried him to a tent. The man had just arrived from the plains.

Robert had seen a repetition of his own rescue. But now his blistered feet were well on the way to healing and he could again walk. Life had been given back to him—if not the desire to live.

He was back at his job—he curried, fed, and watered Vallejos’ mules; he ate and drank and slept. Most of the time he kept to the tent, knowing little of what took place in the camp around him. He listened to the sounds around him day and night and guessed what was going on. He heard new songs from the gold seekers:

No matter whether rich or poor,

I’m happy as a clam;

I wish my friends could look

And see me as I am.

With woolen shirt and rubber boots

In sand up to my knees;

And lice as big as chili beans

A-fightin’ with the fleas.

It was the last refrain that caught Robert’s attention, the lice, big as chili beans. He himself had got lice in this camp; his shirt was creeping with the critters. They were round, fat, shiny lice that bit into his body like gadflies on cow udders. However many he picked from his shirt and skin it seemed just as many were left even though he deloused himself for hours each day. The Mexican was constantly rubbing and scratching his body but Robert never saw him pick away any lice.

Robert himself was now a victim of the song’s vermin; the shiny lice were not unlike gold grains. His mother used to say: if you got lice that bit into the skin you would soon get rich. The sign was considered sure. In that case he would reach the gold land and become a rich man.

One day as he was walking some short distance outside the camp he saw a group of men digging in the ground beneath some tall trees. He stopped to watch. Were they already digging for gold? Couldn’t they wait till they got there? Why were they digging? The men were in a great hurry and shoveled quantities of dirt and sand from holes in the ground. But they didn’t dig to pick up something; instead, something was to be put into those holes. Behind them lay a row of bundles, wrapped in blankets, six feet long. He easily recognized that measure: the height of a person. And from one blanket he saw a human foot protrude, with long, dirty black toenails.

He walked on. Now he knew what went on at the encampment in St. Joseph; here the men were not diggings
for
something; here a different labor in the earth took place.

On another occasion he stopped and listened to two men who were felling a hickory tree; the wood was used for repairs of the ox wagons. In their conversation they had used an English word that he had recently seen on a wooden board near a water hole: death. One of the men was leaning against his ax handle for a moment; death had taken twenty-seven people yesterday, and several hundred lay sick in their wagons and tents.

In the Train of the Hundred Thousand the men practiced to dig graves before they had opportunity to dig for gold.

Then one day Roberts master entered the tent, fear in his eyes, stuttering, “Yellow Jack has come! Yellow Jack is in St. Joseph!”

And Vallejos explained to his muleteer who the Feared One was, but he used so many incomprehensible words, in rapid Spanish; when he grew excited his mother tongue would spurt from his mouth. And now Robert understood that Yellow Jack was not a person, nor an animal, nor one of the Lord’s tempests or earthquakes: the feared one was an invisible murderer who had sneaked into the gold-seekers’ camp; it was because of him they already had been forced to dig while on the road.