The Pirate of Jasper Peak/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
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 how 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.”