O Pioneers! Read online

  III

  One Sunday afternoon in July, six months after John Bergson's death,Carl was sitting in the doorway of the Linstrum kitchen, dreamingover an illustrated paper, when he heard the rattle of a wagon alongthe hill road. Looking up he recognized the Bergsons' team, withtwo seats in the wagon, which meant they were off for a pleasureexcursion. Oscar and Lou, on the front seat, wore their cloth hatsand coats, never worn except on Sundays, and Emil, on the secondseat with Alexandra, sat proudly in his new trousers, made from apair of his father's, and a pink-striped shirt, with a wide ruffledcollar. Oscar stopped the horses and waved to Carl, who caught uphis hat and ran through the melon patch to join them.

  "Want to go with us?" Lou called. "We're going to Crazy Ivar's tobuy a hammock."

  "Sure." Carl ran up panting, and clambering over the wheel satdown beside Emil. "I've always wanted to see Ivar's pond. Theysay it's the biggest in all the country. Aren't you afraid to goto Ivar's in that new shirt, Emil? He might want it and take itright off your back."

  Emil grinned. "I'd be awful scared to go," he admitted, "if youbig boys weren't along to take care of me. Did you ever hear himhowl, Carl? People say sometimes he runs about the country howlingat night because he is afraid the Lord will destroy him. Motherthinks he must have done something awful wicked."

  Lou looked back and winked at Carl. "What would you do, Emil, ifyou was out on the prairie by yourself and seen him coming?"

  Emil stared. "Maybe I could hide in a badger-hole," he suggesteddoubtfully.

  "But suppose there wasn't any badger-hole," Lou persisted. "Wouldyou run?"

  "No, I'd be too scared to run," Emil admitted mournfully, twistinghis fingers. "I guess I'd sit right down on the ground and say myprayers."

  The big boys laughed, and Oscar brandished his whip over the broadbacks of the horses.

  "He wouldn't hurt you, Emil," said Carl persuasively. "He cameto doctor our mare when she ate green corn and swelled up most asbig as the water-tank. He petted her just like you do your cats.I couldn't understand much he said, for he don't talk any English,but he kept patting her and groaning as if he had the pain himself,and saying, 'There now, sister, that's easier, that's better!'"

  Lou and Oscar laughed, and Emil giggled delightedly and looked upat his sister.

  "I don't think he knows anything at all about doctoring," saidOscar scornfully. "They say when horses have distemper he takesthe medicine himself, and then prays over the horses."

  Alexandra spoke up. "That's what the Crows said, but he curedtheir horses, all the same. Some days his mind is cloudy, like.But if you can get him on a clear day, you can learn a great dealfrom him. He understands animals. Didn't I see him take the hornoff the Berquist's cow when she had torn it loose and went crazy?She was tearing all over the place, knocking herself against things.And at last she ran out on the roof of the old dugout and her legswent through and there she stuck, bellowing. Ivar came runningwith his white bag, and the moment he got to her she was quiet andlet him saw her horn off and daub the place with tar."

  Emil had been watching his sister, his face reflecting the sufferingsof the cow. "And then didn't it hurt her any more?" he asked.

  Alexandra patted him. "No, not any more. And in two days theycould use her milk again."

  The road to Ivar's homestead was a very poor one. He had settledin the rough country across the county line, where no one lived butsome Russians,--half a dozen families who dwelt together in one longhouse, divided off like barracks. Ivar had explained his choiceby saying that the fewer neighbors he had, the fewer temptations.Nevertheless, when one considered that his chief business washorse-doctoring, it seemed rather short-sighted of him to live in themost inaccessible place he could find. The Bergson wagon lurchedalong over the rough hummocks and grass banks, followed the bottomof winding draws, or skirted the margin of wide lagoons, where thegolden coreopsis grew up out of the clear water and the wild ducksrose with a whirr of wings.

  Lou looked after them helplessly. "I wish I'd brought my gun,anyway, Alexandra," he said fretfully. "I could have hidden itunder the straw in the bottom of the wagon."

  "Then we'd have had to lie to Ivar. Besides, they say he can smelldead birds. And if he knew, we wouldn't get anything out of him,not even a hammock. I want to talk to him, and he won't talk senseif he's angry. It makes him foolish."

  Lou sniffed. "Whoever heard of him talking sense, anyhow! I'drather have ducks for supper than Crazy Ivar's tongue."

  Emil was alarmed. "Oh, but, Lou, you don't want to make him mad!He might howl!"

  They all laughed again, and Oscar urged the horses up the crumblingside of a clay bank. They had left the lagoons and the red grassbehind them. In Crazy Ivar's country the grass was short and gray,the draws deeper than they were in the Bergsons' neighborhood,and the land was all broken up into hillocks and clay ridges. Thewild flowers disappeared, and only in the bottom of the draws andgullies grew a few of the very toughest and hardiest: shoestring,and ironweed, and snow-on-the-mountain.

  "Look, look, Emil, there's Ivar's big pond!" Alexandra pointed toa shining sheet of water that lay at the bottom of a shallow draw.At one end of the pond was an earthen dam, planted with green willowbushes, and above it a door and a single window were set into thehillside. You would not have seen them at all but for the reflectionof the sunlight upon the four panes of window-glass. And that wasall you saw. Not a shed, not a corral, not a well, not even a pathbroken in the curly grass. But for the piece of rusty stovepipesticking up through the sod, you could have walked over the roofof Ivar's dwelling without dreaming that you were near a humanhabitation. Ivar had lived for three years in the clay bank,without defiling the face of nature any more than the coyote thathad lived there before him had done.

  When the Bergsons drove over the hill, Ivar was sitting in thedoorway of his house, reading the Norwegian Bible. He was a queerlyshaped old man, with a thick, powerful body set on short bow-legs.His shaggy white hair, falling in a thick mane about his ruddycheeks, made him look older than he was. He was barefoot, buthe wore a clean shirt of unbleached cotton, open at the neck. Healways put on a clean shirt when Sunday morning came round, thoughhe never went to church. He had a peculiar religion of his ownand could not get on with any of the denominations. Often he didnot see anybody from one week's end to another. He kept a calendar,and every morning he checked off a day, so that he was never inany doubt as to which day of the week it was. Ivar hired himselfout in threshing and corn-husking time, and he doctored sick animalswhen he was sent for. When he was at home, he made hammocks outof twine and committed chapters of the Bible to memory.

  Ivar found contentment in the solitude he had sought out for himself.He disliked the litter of human dwellings: the broken food, thebits of broken china, the old wash-boilers and tea-kettles throwninto the sunflower patch. He preferred the cleanness and tidiness ofthe wild sod. He always said that the badgers had cleaner housesthan people, and that when he took a housekeeper her name wouldbe Mrs. Badger. He best expressed his preference for his wildhomestead by saying that his Bible seemed truer to him there. Ifone stood in the doorway of his cave, and looked off at the roughland, the smiling sky, the curly grass white in the hot sunlight;if one listened to the rapturous song of the lark, the drumming ofthe quail, the burr of the locust against that vast silence, oneunderstood what Ivar meant.

  On this Sunday afternoon his face shone with happiness. He closedthe book on his knee, keeping the place with his horny finger, andrepeated softly:--

  He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills;

  They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild asses quench their thirst.

  The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted;

  Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house.

  The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies.

  Before he opened his Bible again, Ivar he
ard the Bergsons' wagonapproaching, and he sprang up and ran toward it.

  "No guns, no guns!" he shouted, waving his arms distractedly.

  "No, Ivar, no guns," Alexandra called reassuringly.

  He dropped his arms and went up to the wagon, smiling amiably andlooking at them out of his pale blue eyes.

  "We want to buy a hammock, if you have one," Alexandra explained,"and my little brother, here, wants to see your big pond, where somany birds come."

  Ivar smiled foolishly, and began rubbing the horses' noses andfeeling about their mouths behind the bits. "Not many birds justnow. A few ducks this morning; and some snipe come to drink. Butthere was a crane last week. She spent one night and came back thenext evening. I don't know why. It is not her season, of course.Many of them go over in the fall. Then the pond is full of strangevoices every night."

  Alexandra translated for Carl, who looked thoughtful. "Ask him,Alexandra, if it is true that a sea gull came here once. I haveheard so."

  She had some difficulty in making the old man understand.

  He looked puzzled at first, then smote his hands together as heremembered. "Oh, yes, yes! A big white bird with long wings andpink feet. My! what a voice she had! She came in the afternoonand kept flying about the pond and screaming until dark. She wasin trouble of some sort, but I could not understand her. She wasgoing over to the other ocean, maybe, and did not know how far itwas. She was afraid of never getting there. She was more mournfulthan our birds here; she cried in the night. She saw the lightfrom my window and darted up to it. Maybe she thought my housewas a boat, she was such a wild thing. Next morning, when the sunrose, I went out to take her food, but she flew up into the skyand went on her way." Ivar ran his fingers through his thick hair."I have many strange birds stop with me here. They come from veryfar away and are great company. I hope you boys never shoot wildbirds?"

  Lou and Oscar grinned, and Ivar shook his bushy head. "Yes, I knowboys are thoughtless. But these wild things are God's birds. Hewatches over them and counts them, as we do our cattle; Christ saysso in the New Testament."

  "Now, Ivar," Lou asked, "may we water our horses at your pond andgive them some feed? It's a bad road to your place."

  "Yes, yes, it is." The old man scrambled about and began to loosethe tugs. "A bad road, eh, girls? And the bay with a colt athome!"

  Oscar brushed the old man aside. "We'll take care of the horses,Ivar. You'll be finding some disease on them. Alexandra wants tosee your hammocks."

  Ivar led Alexandra and Emil to his little cave house. He had butone room, neatly plastered and whitewashed, and there was a woodenfloor. There was a kitchen stove, a table covered with oilcloth,two chairs, a clock, a calendar, a few books on the window-shelf;nothing more. But the place was as clean as a cupboard.

  "But where do you sleep, Ivar?" Emil asked, looking about.

  Ivar unslung a hammock from a hook on the wall; in it was rolleda buffalo robe. "There, my son. A hammock is a good bed, and inwinter I wrap up in this skin. Where I go to work, the beds arenot half so easy as this."

  By this time Emil had lost all his timidity. He thought a cave avery superior kind of house. There was something pleasantly unusualabout it and about Ivar. "Do the birds know you will be kind tothem, Ivar? Is that why so many come?" he asked.

  Ivar sat down on the floor and tucked his feet under him. "See,little brother, they have come from a long way, and they are verytired. From up there where they are flying, our country looks darkand flat. They must have water to drink and to bathe in beforethey can go on with their journey. They look this way and that,and far below them they see something shining, like a piece of glassset in the dark earth. That is my pond. They come to it and arenot disturbed. Maybe I sprinkle a little corn. They tell the otherbirds, and next year more come this way. They have their roads upthere, as we have down here."

  Emil rubbed his knees thoughtfully. "And is that true, Ivar, aboutthe head ducks falling back when they are tired, and the hind onestaking their place?"

  "Yes. The point of the wedge gets the worst of it; they cut thewind. They can only stand it there a little while--half an hour,maybe. Then they fall back and the wedge splits a little, whilethe rear ones come up the middle to the front. Then it closes upand they fly on, with a new edge. They are always changing likethat, up in the air. Never any confusion; just like soldiers whohave been drilled."

  Alexandra had selected her hammock by the time the boys came upfrom the pond. They would not come in, but sat in the shade ofthe bank outside while Alexandra and Ivar talked about the birdsand about his housekeeping, and why he never ate meat, fresh orsalt.

  Alexandra was sitting on one of the wooden chairs, her arms restingon the table. Ivar was sitting on the floor at her feet. "Ivar,"she said suddenly, beginning to trace the pattern on the oilclothwith her forefinger, "I came to-day more because I wanted to talkto you than because I wanted to buy a hammock."

  "Yes?" The old man scraped his bare feet on the plank floor.

  "We have a big bunch of hogs, Ivar. I wouldn't sell in the spring,when everybody advised me to, and now so many people are losingtheir hogs that I am frightened. What can be done?"

  Ivar's little eyes began to shine. They lost their vagueness.

  "You feed them swill and such stuff? Of course! And sour milk?Oh, yes! And keep them in a stinking pen? I tell you, sister,the hogs of this country are put upon! They become unclean, likethe hogs in the Bible. If you kept your chickens like that, whatwould happen? You have a little sorghum patch, maybe? Put a fencearound it, and turn the hogs in. Build a shed to give them shade,a thatch on poles. Let the boys haul water to them in barrels,clean water, and plenty. Get them off the old stinking ground, anddo not let them go back there until winter. Give them only grainand clean feed, such as you would give horses or cattle. Hogs donot like to be filthy."

  The boys outside the door had been listening. Lou nudged hisbrother. "Come, the horses are done eating. Let's hitch up andget out of here. He'll fill her full of notions. She'll be forhaving the pigs sleep with us, next."

  Oscar grunted and got up. Carl, who could not understand what Ivarsaid, saw that the two boys were displeased. They did not mindhard work, but they hated experiments and could never see the useof taking pains. Even Lou, who was more elastic than his olderbrother, disliked to do anything different from their neighbors.He felt that it made them conspicuous and gave people a chance totalk about them.

  Once they were on the homeward road, the boys forgot their ill-humorand joked about Ivar and his birds. Alexandra did not propose anyreforms in the care of the pigs, and they hoped she had forgottenIvar's talk. They agreed that he was crazier than ever, and wouldnever be able to prove up on his land because he worked it so little.Alexandra privately resolved that she would have a talk with Ivarabout this and stir him up. The boys persuaded Carl to stay forsupper and go swimming in the pasture pond after dark.

  That evening, after she had washed the supper dishes, Alexandrasat down on the kitchen doorstep, while her mother was mixing thebread. It was a still, deep-breathing summer night, full of thesmell of the hay fields. Sounds of laughter and splashing cameup from the pasture, and when the moon rose rapidly above the barerim of the prairie, the pond glittered like polished metal, andshe could see the flash of white bodies as the boys ran about theedge, or jumped into the water. Alexandra watched the shimmeringpool dreamily, but eventually her eyes went back to the sorghumpatch south of the barn, where she was planning to make her newpig corral.