Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

Kristina smiled. She was walking about in such old rags it would be a long time before she looked like a queen. But it would be a shame if a woman with a needle and thread couldn’t baste together a few holes in a garment.

After breakfast Pastor Törner made ready to continue on his way. He opened his black leather bag, which contained a flask of communion wine, a small sack of communion bread, a couple of white, newly starched minister’s collars, and a dozen small jars of a remedy for fever and chills. This was quinine and the price for each jar was seventy-five cents. In his bag the pastor carried remedies for both soul and body.

Another minister from Sweden, Pastor Hasselquist in Galesburg, Illinois, had come across the medicine and sent it along by Pastor Törner for those Swedish settlements where fevers and chills constantly plagued the people. Pastor Hasselquist had also hoped his colleague might earn a little by selling the medicine. But the settlers had little cash, and most of the time he had to leave the jars without payment. Many of them needed quinine for their bodies as much as they needed communion wine for their souls. He presented Kristina with a jar of the remedy as a small reward for bed and board.

He promised to return within a short time and set the date for the communion in their house. But first he wanted to call on the other Swedish settlers in the St. Croix Valley.

Karl Oskar walked a bit on the road with Pastor Törner to show him the way to their nearest neighbor, Petrus Olausson from Helsingland.

Gradually it stopped raining, and in the late morning the sun came out. Kristina picked up the mattress she and Karl Oskar had slept on; the cover seemed moist to her, perhaps it had got wet when Karl Oskar went to fetch the hay, and she wanted to dry it. She carried the mattress to the barn and emptied it near the door. She had barely finished when she let out a piercing scream. Something that looked like a dry tree branch had come out of the mattress with the hay, but she had paid scant attention to it; now she saw that it was a wriggling, living thing she had shaken out.

Karl Oskar, who was just returning, was near the stoop when he heard his wife’s cries from the barn. He ran to her as fast as he could.

“A snake! Karl Oskar, a snake!”

Kristina shrieked as if someone had stuck a knife into her. She stood with the empty mattress cover in her hands, staring at the hay wads inside the door.

“What happened? Have you hurt yourself?”

She pointed in front of her: “That thing. . it was in the mattress. . in the hay. .!”

Karl Oskar, standing beside her, saw in the hay a snake, extended to its full length. It was light gray with brown stripes and thick rings on its tail. A rattler!

The sight of the reptile had frightened Kristina so, she was unable to move from the spot. Karl Oskar grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. “Get out of his reach! He might strike!”

He pushed her still farther away, while he looked for something to kill it with. “Be careful! The snake might throw himself at you!”

As yet he had never killed a rattler. He had seen such snakes, curled up in low places, but none had attacked him and he had not disturbed them. They were not so easy to dispatch as the snakes in Sweden which only crawled on the ground. Rattlers were more dangerous — they could raise themselves on their tails and throw themselves at a person as fast as an arrow from a bow. But this evil thing must not escape; if it crawled under the barn they would live in eternal fear of it.

Under the oak at the side of the barn was a pile of fence posts. He grabbed one, and took down the scythe which hung in the tree. He held the scythe in front of him in his left hand and the post in his right. Thus armed he stole slowly, with bent back, toward the reptile at the barn door.

The rattler was still lying quite still in the hay; it seemed drowsy in the sun.

“Karl Oskar! Don’t go so close! Be careful!”

It was Kristina’s turn to urge caution. She had found a rake which she held in front of her; couldn’t she help him kill the nasty creature?

Karl Oskar was a few steps from the snake when the animal raised its head. Its tongue, red and shining like a flower pistil, shot out of its jaws — the reptile was showing its stingers where death lurked. And now the rattling sound was heard from the tail rings — the warning signal; the rattler had begun to coil to throw itself against its enemy.

Karl Oskar jumped at the same time as the reptile; he threw himself forward at the very last second. With the scythe he met the snake halfway, pressed the back of the scythe against the snake, and pushed it to the ground. But the wriggling monster fought wildly and furiously, twisting and turning itself under the pressure, throwing its head back and forth until the scythe steel tinkled. The tongue’s red pistil shot forth, it hissed and sizzled like a boiling kettle. Against the soft hay the flexible snake body with its sinuous motions struggled to get away from the scythe-hold.

Now the monstrous creature raised its head against the barn sill, and this gave Karl Oskar an opportunity to use his second implement; with a few heavy blows of the post he crushed the rattlers’ head against the sill.

“The Lord is protecting you, Karl Oskar! You risked your life!”

Kristina stood behind him, the rake in her hand, her lips blue-white, every limb trembling.

“Don’t be afraid! I’ve killed him now!”

Karl Oskar lifted the rattler with the point of the scythe; the crushed head hung limp. Then he stretched out the snake on the ground to its full length. The first rattler he had killed was also the biggest one he had seen. It was over five feet long and had seven rattles. He had heard that this kind of snake got its first rattle at the age of three and from then on one each year; this one must be an old devil.

“That sting-eel was a little dazed and sluggish; if he had been quicker he could have killed me!”

Karl Oskar’s hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. Kristina felt her legs give way; she sank down on her knees in the hay, timidly eyeing the dead snake. The critter’s upturned stomach was greenish and glittered prettily in the sun. The wild animals in North America were dangerous and beautiful.

“He purred like a spinning wheel,” she said.

“That was the rattles. They’re two inches thick!”

Karl Oskar pushed the scythe end into the jaws of the snake: “He has teeth like a dog! Sharp as awls! Wonder if he was blind — they say rattlers are so full of poison they go quite blind during the summer.”

And Kristina knew that if a rattler bit a person in a blood vessel that ran directly to the heart, that person would die on the spot.

Her voice almost failed her as she tried to say:

“The snake was in the mattress I was emptying. .”

Karl Oskar looked at the cover she had thrown on the ground, he looked at the rattler he had carried into their house with the hay last night. When he had filled the mattress, in the dark barn — if his hands had happened to. .

They were both silent for several minutes.

What was there to say about what had happened during the night? They had shared their bed with the most poisonous snake in North America. They had slept their sweet sleep with death underneath them in the bed.

“. . to think. . that we’re all right. .” he said in a low voice.

“Perhaps we’re saved because we gave shelter to a man of the Church,” said she.

With the scythe Karl Oskar cut off the tail with the seven rattles, which he wanted to keep as a souvenir. But Kristina could not understand how he could want to keep anything of the evil creature. Even though it lay dead in front of her, it still inspired fear in her.