Settlers of the Marsh (3 page)

The place was so utterly lonesome that it reminded Niels of the wood-cutters' houses in fairy tales. Wherever you looked, the bush reared about the buildings: great, towering aspens, now bare and leafless but glittering with the crystals of dry, powdery snow in the cracks of the bark.

Whenever Nelson and Niels were alone, the latter asked questions. Once he enquired after Amundsen's wife. Somehow she reminded him of his own mother; and like his mother she aroused in him a feeling of resentment against something that seemed to be wrong with the world.

“They say he's worked her to death,” Nelson said. “I don't know. People talk a lot. Around here the women and children all have to work. I saw her on the hay-stack last year. I've seen lots of others. Soon after, there was a child, born dead. She's never been up again.”

“But why not send for a doctor?”

“Nobody here sends for the doctor. He'd charge twenty-five or thirty dollars to come …”

T
HE WEEK WENT BY
. On Sunday Niels and Nelson were idle.

In the afternoon many people called at the farm in the bush, the women to look in on Mrs. Amundsen; the men, to gossip in the kitchen … Where did they all come from in this wilderness?

Some of the callers were Germans, some Swedes and Icelanders, two or three English or Canadian.

The men wore sheep-skins, big boots, and flannelette shirts; most of the women, dark, long skirts, shawls over their shoulders, and white or light-coloured head-kerchiefs. Many of them had babies along which they nursed without restraint.

Nelson knew them all; but it struck Niels that both he and his friend were outside of things. Many spoke German which Amundsen seemed to understand though he spoke it only in a broken way. Apart from the Canadians, one single couple—elderly Swedes—used English exclusively. To Niels it seemed that they were handling it with remarkable fluency. Their name was Lund.

Mr. Lund was between fifty-five and sixty years old: a man who once must have been of powerful build; but he seemed to be nearly blind; and as he walked about, he groped his way as if all his members were disjointed. When he sat down, he either reclined or bent forward, resting his elbows on table or knees. The hair on the huge dome of his head was scanty, grey, straggling; a short, grey beard covered his chin.

His wife was by ten years his junior: a big, fleshy woman of florid features who must have been attractive in the past. She was lively, in a coarse, good-humoured way, not without wit; and she treated her husband with a sort of contemptuous indulgence.

Both man and wife were shabby; though Mrs. Lund wore a glaring waist which would have drawn attention in a city and seemed entirely out of place where she was. Her black hair might have been a beauty if it had been kept tidy.

These were the people for whom Niels and Nelson were to dig the second well.

To Niels it was a foreign crowd. He had no contact with them. He felt lonesome, forlorn …

Then Mrs. Lund ran across him.

“So you have only just come into the country, Mr. Lindstedt?” she asked with the air of a lady of the world, speaking Swedish. “And what do you mean to do?”

“Oh, I don't know. Make some money and take up a homestead, I suppose …”

“Mr. Lindstedt,” she said, leaning over from her seat on a big, old-country trunk, “why don't you buy?”

“Buy?” His tone was vacant surprise.

“Sure. This isn't the old country, you know. Lots of people in this country buy without a cent of money. Crop-payments, you know.”

“Well,” Niels hesitated, “so long as I can get a homestead for nothing …”

“Listen,” she interrupted him. “Believe an old homesteader like me. By the time you're ready to
prove up
, in the bush, you've paid for the place in work three times over. And what with the stumps and stones, everybody is willing to sell out as soon as he gets his patent. Yes, if you could get a homestead out in the open prairie … But there the land's all settled. And when a man has proved up and owns his quarter of bush, what can he get for it?
Two thousand dollars
. And that's for six, seven years of back-breaking work; and sometimes for longer. Take a prairie farm, now, which sells for six thousand dollars, let me say. You work it for six years, and you've paid for it in half crops. And you own all your machinery besides. You are worth ten thousand dollars. And meanwhile you haven't been working so's to make a cripple out of yourself. Think it over, Mr. Lindstedt. That's all I say. Think it over. But you want to get married, of course.”

Niels coloured. He was ill at ease … There must be a flaw in these arguments.

Mrs. Lund rose. “Carl,” she called. “Come on. Time we get home.”

“Yes, Anna,” her husband replied; and when he had slowly raised himself, he adjusted with trembling hands smoked glasses before his eyes. His wife helped him into a series of three or four coats, each being singly too light for the season. She herself donned a man's coat and, over it, a sheep-skin.

Nelson approached. “Came in the bob-sleighs?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Lund replied.

“Going straight home?”

“Immedately.”

“We might come along,” Nelson suggested, “and tramp it back.”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Nelson,” Lund said with insincere cordiality. “Certainly, Mr. Nelson. Look the place over.”

“Lots of room in the box,” Mrs. Lund joined in.

“Come on,” Nelson said to Niels.

And both got their sheep-skins and caps.

On the yard there was a great deal of bustle. Four or five different parties prepared to leave. Horses pawed, nickered, plunged. Nelson found Lund's team and backed them out of the row. One of the horses was a tall, ancient white; the other a bony sorrel with elephantine feet.

Assisted by his wife, Lund lifted himself into the box and sat down on its floor, drawing the straw close about him. Mrs. Lund sat on the spring-seat in front; Nelson climbed in beside her, taking the lines; and Niels stood behind them.

“Well,” Mrs. Lund sang, “good-by everybody.”

I
T WAS THE FIRST TIME
since their arrival at Amundsen's farm that either of the two friends left the yard. Niels was glad to escape from the crowded house. He felt as if freedom had been bestowed upon him in the wild. Somehow he felt less a stranger in the bush. Though everything was different, yet it was nature as in Sweden. None of the heath country of his native
Blekinge
here; none of the pretty juniper trees; none of the sea with its rocky islands. These poplar trees seemed wilder, less spared by an ancient civilisation that has learned to appreciate them. They invited the axe, the explorer …

The trees stood still, strangely still in the slanting afternoon sun which threw a ruddy glow over the white snow in sloughs and glades …

A mile or two from Amundsen's place they passed a lonely school house in the bush. It stood on a little clearing, the trees encroaching on it from every side. Except for Nelson's occasional shout to the horses they drove in silence.

After four miles or so they emerged from the bush on to a vast, low slough which, from the character of the tops of weeds and sedges rising above the snow, must be a swamp in summer. It was a mile or so wide; in the north it seemed to stretch to the very horizon. To the east, in the rising margin of the enveloping bush, Niels espied a single, solitary giant spruce tree, outtopping the poplar forest and heralding the straggling cluster of low buildings which go to make up a pioneer farmstead.

That was Lund's place.

Slowly they approached it across the frozen slough. Taller and taller the spruce tree loomed, dwarfing the poplars about the place …

They drove up on a dam; and the view to the yard opened up.

There were a number of low buildings, stable, smokehouse, smithy—none of them more than eight feet high in the front, and all sloping down in the rear. The dwelling at the southern end of the yard was a huge, shack-like affair, built of lumber, twelve feet high in front and also sloping down behind.

The yard was encumbered with all kinds of machinery. Several horses and cows were mixed into the general disorder; and over it all a sprinkling as it were of children was spread out. These struck Niels so forcibly that, for the first time, he took the lead in asking a question.

“All those children yours?” he asked.

Mrs. Lund laughed a broad, hearty laugh.

“We have only two, Mr. Lindstedt. A girl and a boy; and the boy is adopted. Our own boy was drowned in the Muddy River, five years ago. So we adopted Bobby from the
children's home
.”

When they turned in over a rickety culvert of poles bridging the ditch, a number of grown-ups came out from the door of the dwelling.

“You've callers,” Nelson said.

“Well,” Mrs. Lund laughed, “you know us, Mr. Nelson. We've always callers.” Turning to Niels and changing back into Swedish, she added, “This is the general meeting-place for fifteen miles around, post office, boarding house, and news store combined.”

Behind the giant spruce tree and the surrounding bluff of poplars a number of teams were tied to the fence-posts.

“Hello,” a girl said, coming to meet them in front of the long-extended stable with its low doors which gaped like the entrances into caves, for straw was thrown over roof and back of the building.

The girl was perhaps sixteen years old, fat, overgrown, physically mature; but her face showed a certain baby-like prettiness; and she was gaudily dressed in cheap and flimsy finery. With amazement Niels noticed that her skirt was of black silk …

Niels was the first to jump to the ground; and while the others alighted, he looked about. Every one of the five or six horses that stood on the yard had something the matter with it. One was lame; the other humpbacked; and a third was hardly able to move with old age.

Nelson, still holding the lines, shook hands with the girl. Her face bore an almost engaging smile.

“Hello, Mr. Nelson,” she said. “And how are you? Didn't it snow up early this year? And how cold it is!”

Mrs. Lund stepped down with the air of a great lady, her numerous wraps gathered loosely over her arm. “This is Mr. Lindstedt, Olga, a friend of Mr. Nelson's. Now listen, Olga. You and Bobby put the horses in. And give them a good feed of oats.”

The emphasis on the word “good” attracted Niels' attention.

Nelson tried to interpose. “I'll put them in,” he said and bent to unhook the traces.

“Not at all, Mr. Nelson,” Mrs. Lund objected. “You know Olga. She'll look after that. Don't you bother.”

Olga shot a glance at him, half shy, half coquettish.

“Hello,” a pleasant-faced boy of eleven or twelve sang out, joining the group just when they started for the house.

“You look after the horses, Bobby,” Mrs. Lund repeated. “Give them a good feed of oats.”

Mr. Lund, as if forgotten by everybody, had groped his way out of the box and was standing helpless, feeling about with his hands for something to support himself by. Niels saw it and stepped up to guide him. But again Mrs. Lund protested.

“Never mind daddy, Mr. Lindstedt,” she called. “He is on his yard. He can find his way.”

The next moment she had mingled in the group at the door of the dwelling. With an elaborate courtesy which would have been becoming in a duchess she started the formalities of introduction. A dozen times Niels had to shake hands. The names went past his ear in bewilderment.

A single one struck him: that of a woman who formed a rather striking contrast to all other women present. It was “Mrs. Vogel.”

She was dressed in a remarkably pretty and becoming way, with ruffles around her plump, smooth-skinned, though rather pallid face. In spite of the season she wore a light, washable dress which fitted her slender and yet plump body without a fold. Her waist showed a v-shaped opening at the throat which gave her—by contrast to the other women—something peculiarly feminine; beside her, the others looked neuter.

But more than anything else her round, laughing, coal-black eyes attracted attention. They were in everlasting motion and seemed to be dancing with merriment. Mrs. Lund was like a great lady, accustomed, no matter what she wore and how she looked, to lord it over every one in her surroundings; but even she seemed to live under a strain, as if she kept her spirits up in an eternal fight against adverse circumstances. Her predominance was a physical one, gained by sheer weight and dimensions and held by sonorous
contralto
and booming ring of the voice. All the other women were subdued, self-effacing, almost apologetic; as if daunted by work and struggling not to be swamped by it. Mrs. Vogel was different. Difficulties and poverty did not seem to reach her. She shrank from them; she smiled till they vanished. She did not step out and fight; she stepped back, into the protection of her sex; and they passed her by.

“All this did not become clear to Niels in articulate thought. It gathered into a general impression of attraction. Her sight roused his protective instincts, the impulses of the man in him.

“Mrs. Vogel,” Mrs. Lund had said in introducing her, “the gay widow of the settlement.”

Mrs. Vogel's face had lighted up. She had shuddered in mock seriousness. “Widow sounds so funereal,” she had said and stepped back. But the look from her dancing eyes had sent a thrill through Niels.

The next moment he found himself involved in a conversation with a short, slight man of thirty-five or so who spoke a fluent English. It went, so far, quite beyond Niels' understanding.

Nelson joined the group.

“Where have you been?” Mrs. Lund veered about.

“Put the horses in,” he replied.

“Well,” she exclaimed, “what do you know about that?”

And at once Nelson was surrounded by a laughing, hand-shaking crowd of men.