Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

It was almost midnight before Kristina heard the sound she had been waiting for. She went back into the kitchen and blew fire into the dying embers; the food would be ready as soon as Karl Oskar had unyoked the oxen and stabled them. She heard no voices; their neighbor must have left below the meadow and taken a short cut to his home.

After a few moments she heard the familiar footsteps outside the door. Only a few minutes more and the eggs would be boiled and the pork fried. Karl Oskar came in.

She greeted him with the words that many times before had met him when he returned:

“You’re late. .”

He flung his hat unto its accustomed nail on the wall, drew in his breath, and said that on the way home they had hit a stump in the road, turned over the cart, and broken the axle. Algot Svensson had gone to the new homestead at Hay Lake and borrowed tools so they could cut a tree and put in a new axle. This had delayed them several hours. His cart wasn’t good enough for long trips.

She was just lifting the boiling pot off the fire and she turned around quickly; his voice sounded strange. He spoke with an effort, in short, stuttering words as she had never before heard him talk. What was the matter with him? The broken axle couldn’t have affected him that seriously.

He walked past her into the big room before she could see his face, and now she remembered his most important errand today. But she had not intended to ask him anything before he had eaten; hungry men needed food first of all.

Karl Oskar usually went directly to the table and sat down to eat when he came home hungry. Wonderingly, she went into the big room after him. He had lit a candle; his face was stern, his features frozen.

“What is it, Karl Oskar. .?”

His face was spotted, marked by his dirty fingers wiping off perspiration. He had driven his team a long way on a hot day and he had turned over, but he was not hurt. Why, then, wasn’t everything all right?

Kristina noticed that he held something in his hands. With a sudden, angry thrust he threw it away — flung it all the way into the fireplace corner toward the old spittoon she had just cleaned. It was a bundle of paper which fluttered in the air as it flew past her; around and inside the spittoon a heap of green bills lay strewn.

“We can throw those on the dunghill!”

“The money. .?”

“Wildcat money!”

“Paper money. .?”

“Useless! Money for wildcats!”

“Aren’t they real. .?”

“This money isn’t worth a shit! ‘Good for nothing’ they said at the bank!”

Karl Oskar sat down on a chair, heavily.

“ ‘These bills ain’t worth a plugged nickel!’ the man at the bank said!”

He tried to repeat what the man had said, the English words of the banker that still rang in his ears.

Today, he told her, when he had gone to the bank at Stillwater, one clerk after another had come to inspect the money. At last they had called out the head man of the bank and he had inspected the bills at length. It was he who had said: Wildcat money! Good for nothing!

The Indiana State Bank of Bloomfield, which had issued the money, had long ago gone broke. That was probably why its name hadn’t been on the list in the Swedish newspaper. Bills on that bank were no longer in circulation in this part of the country, the banker had said, only far out in the wild West. And he had added, that even there it must be Swedish immigrants and other newcomers who were cheated by that kind of money.

He had said he was sorry for Karl Oskar, and the clerks had said the same, but they couldn’t accept his money. They had advised him never to take bills unless he knew about the bank that issued them. And he had stood there like a fool when they handed the money back to him. He suspected the American bankers had had a good laugh behind his back, laughing at a trusting, ignorant Swedish settler.

He was seldom with business people and he had never heard of wildcat money; it was money issued by banks that lacked securities and were unable to redeem it.

Kristina was glued to the spot staring at the fireplace corner, which was covered with the bills. Only last night she had ironed out these bills and removed the spots from them.

She tried to understand; how could the bills be false? Anyone in Sweden making false money was arrested by the sheriff and put into prison. She asked: Were such swindlers allowed to be on the loose in America? Had the banks themselves the right to cheat people with useless bills?

Karl Oskar replied that as long as there was no order in currency anyone could start a bank and print bills. There was full freedom in this country. And wildcat money was a suitable name; the bankers who had printed these bills were of the same ilk as their namesake; they were robbers, as treacherous as the wild beasts lurking in the bushes, endangering their children.

Kristina sank down on a chair, her head filled with a throbbing confusion. Dazed and bewildered she tried to understand. Last Monday evening a fortune had come into their home. This was Friday — and here it was back in the house again. But now the money lay strewn like refuse in the spittoon in the corner.

It was a false fortune, wildcat riches.

She had forgotten the frying pan — an odor of burned pork came through the door from the kitchen. It had entirely gone out of her mind that she had been preparing supper for Karl Oskar.

But he smelled it.

“You’re burning the pork!”

He rushed to the kitchen and pulled the pan off the fire, then returned to her in the big room. He didn’t care enough about food to eat; he wasn’t hungry tonight. He started walking back and forth across the floor, he pounded his fists against his chest; it was as if he wanted to punish himself for his foolishness.

“I had made up my mind I wouldn’t let him fool me any more! I had my doubts all the time! But he won — he made a fool of me!”

“Do you think Robert meant to cheat you?”

“See for yourself! He tried! Look in the corner! His hellish lying! He’s unable to say a single word that’s true! Where do you think he has his gold? It’s inside his head — where no one can get to it!”

“I can’t believe Robert had some evil intent in mind when he gave us the money,” said Kristina firmly.

“You still think well of him?” exclaimed Karl Oskar in a hardening voice. “A liar can just as easily cheat! Don’t you know Robert by now?”

Kristina had just begun to know Robert. She had never thought of him as being evil or deceitful, and after her talk with him today under the sugar maples she knew better than before that he was not a bad person who wished to cheat them with false money. Even though he did lie he was not a cheater. He was not one who would want to skin anyone. On the contrary, he himself was trusting and easily cheated. She wondered if it wasn’t possible that Robert himself had been cheated by those bankers who had printed the bills.

“He must know they’re useless!” said Karl Oskar. “He must have tried to use the same kind of money himself! He must have found out the bills were useless and then decided they were good enough for us!”

“No! I don’t believe that of Robert!”

“He felt ashamed of returning empty-handed, of course!”

Karl Oskar looked toward the gable room.

“I’m going to call him — then you can hear what he has to say for himself!”

“It’s the middle of the night!” She took him by the arm. “He’s weak and ailing — leave him alone till tomorrow morning.”

“Well, as you say. .”

“You need to calm down too. .”

“But you can be sure I’ll have a talk with him in the morning!”

“Don’t do anything rash,” Kristina pleaded. “Robert might have an explanation for his wildcat money.”