Settlers of the Marsh Read Free Page B

Hahn’s.”
    â€œI know him,” Amundsen said with a peculiar smile. “He’s German. He used to be a good, steady fellow till last year. Then he went crazy and joined the Baptists. As if the word of the Lord were not perfectly clear …” And he reached for a Bible on the windowshelf.
    But Nelson forestalled him. “Do you intend to break next summer?”
    â€œIf I live and am well.” Amundsen’s smile was deprecating. “I’ve brushed and cleared three acres in summer. So, if it please God …”
    â€œYou’ve surely done well in this country.”
    â€œYes,” Amundsen admitted. “It might have been better, of course. But I can’t complain. God has blessed my labour.”
    â€œYou came only seven or eight years ago, didn’t you?”
    â€œNine. But when I came I was in debt. I owe no man now.”
    â€œToo bad about your wife,” Nelson said after a while. “Have you had the doctor in?”
    â€œShe is in the hand of God,” Amundsen replied sententiously. “What is to be will be. I am a sinner and a stricken man.” It sounded as if he boasted of the fact.
    â€œToo bad,” Nelson repeated.
    Once more Niels looked at the man. There was something repulsive about his self-sufficiency. His wife was lying at the point of death; but he had not even called in what help human skill and knowledge might give. He relied on God to do for him what could be done … And his daughter worked like a man …
    N EXT DAY the sky was bright and clear. Not a wisp of cloud was visible anywhere. But it had been very cold overnight …
    Work felt grateful: this country seemed to have been created to rouse man’s energies to fullest exertion …
    Again the girl was about the yard. She fetched water for the stock and fed cows, horses, and pigs; and when the chores were done, she went with her father to get hay from a stack in the meadow …
    Without his being conscious of it she intrigued Niels. She was so utterly impersonal. The only softer feature she betrayed consisted in an absent-minded patting of the old dog that limped through the snow across the yard, wagging his tail whenever she came, to return to his lair in the straw-stack as soon as she left.
    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.
    â€œThey 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.”
    â€œBut why not send for a doctor?”
    â€œNobody 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