The Troll Garden and Selected Stories

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"Say, Tip, when you go down there will you take me with you?"

"Maybe."

"Suppose one of us beats you down there, Tip?"

"Whoever gets to the Bluff first has got to promise to tell
the rest of us exactly what he finds," remarked one of the Hassler
boys, and to this we all readily assented.

Somewhat reassured, I dropped off to sleep. I must have
dreamed about a race for the Bluff, for I awoke in a kind of fear
that other people were getting ahead of me and that I was losing my
chance. I sat up in my damp clothes and looked at the other boys,
who lay tumbled in uneasy attitudes about the dead fire. It was
still dark, but the sky was blue with the last wonderful azure of
night. The stars glistened like crystal globes, and trembled as if
they shone through a depth of clear water. Even as I watched, they
began to pale and the sky brightened. Day came suddenly, almost
instantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue
night, and it was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and
all manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the
willows. A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy
smell of ripened corn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves.
We stripped and plunged into the river just as the sun came up over
the windy bluffs.

When I came home to Sandtown at Christmas time, we skated out
to our island and talked over the whole project of the Enchanted
Bluff, renewing our resolution to find it.

Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever
climbed the Enchanted Bluff. Percy Pound is a stockbroker in
Kansas City and will go nowhere that his red touring car cannot
carry him. Otto Hassler went on the railroad and lost his foot
braking; after which he and Fritz succeeded their father as the
town tailors.

Arthur sat about the sleepy little town all his life--he died
before he was twenty-five. The last time I saw him, when I was
home on one of my college vacations, he was sitting in a steamer
chair under a cottonwood tree in the little yard behind one of the
two Sandtown saloons. He was very untidy and his hand was not
steady, but when he rose, unabashed, to greet me, his eyes were as
clear and warm as ever. When I had talked with him for an hour and
heard him laugh again, I wondered how it was that when Nature had
taken such pains with a man, from his hands to the arch of his long
foot, she had ever lost him in Sandtown. He joked about Tip
Smith's Bluff, and declared he was going down there just as soon as
the weather got cooler; he thought the Grand Canyon might be worth
while, too.

I was perfectly sure when I left him that he would never get
beyond the high plank fence and the comfortable shade of the
cottonwood. And, indeed, it was under that very tree that he died
one summer morning.

Tip Smith still talks about going to New Mexico. He married
a slatternly, unthrifty country girl, has been much tied to a
perambulator, and has grown stooped and grey from irregular
meals and broken sleep. But the worst of his difficulties are now
over, and he has, as he says, come into easy water. When I was
last in Sandtown I walked home with him late one moonlight night,
after he had balanced his cash and shut up his store. We took the
long way around and sat down on the schoolhouse steps, and between
us we quite revived the romance of the lone red rock and the
extinct people. Tip insists that he still means to go down there,
but he thinks now he will wait until his boy Bert is old enough to
go with him. Bert has been let into the story, and thinks of
nothing but the Enchanted Bluff.

The Bohemian Girl

The transcontinental express swung along the windings of the
Sand River Valley, and in the rear seat of the observation car a
young man sat greatly at his ease, not in the least discomfited by
the fierce sunlight which beat in upon his brown face and neck and
strong back. There was a look of relaxation and of great passivity
about his broad shoulders, which seemed almost too heavy until he
stood up and squared them. He wore a pale flannel shirt and a blue
silk necktie with loose ends. His trousers were wide and belted at
the waist, and his short sack coat hung open. His heavy shoes had
seen good service. His reddish-brown hair, like his clothes, had
a foreign cut. He had deep-set, dark blue eyes under heavy reddish
eyebrows. His face was kept clean only by close shaving, and even
the sharpest razor left a glint of yellow in the smooth brown of
his skin. His teeth and the palms of his hands were very white.
His head, which looked hard and stubborn, lay indolently in the
green cushion of the wicker chair, and as he looked out at the ripe
summer country a teasing, not unkindly smile played over his lips.
Once, as he basked thus comfortably, a quick light flashed in his
eves, curiously dilating the pupils, and his mouth became a hard,
straight line, gradually relaxing into its former smile of rather
kindly mockery. He told himself, apparently, that there was no
point in getting excited; and he seemed a master hand at taking his
ease when he could. Neither the sharp whistle of the locomotive
nor the brakeman's call disturbed him. It was not until after the
train had stopped that he rose, put on a Panama hat, took from the
rack a small valise and a flute case, and stepped deliberately to
the station platform. The baggage was already unloaded, and the
stranger presented a check for a battered sole-leather steamer
trunk.

"Can you keep it here for a day or two?" he asked the agent. "I
may send for it, and I may not."

"Depends on whether you like the country, I suppose?" demanded
the agent in a challenging tone.

"Just so."

The agent shrugged his shoulders, looked scornfully at the
small trunk, which was marked "N.E.," and handed out a claim check
without further comment. The stranger watched him as he caught one
end of the trunk and dragged it into the express room. The agent's
manner seemed to remind him of something amusing. "Doesn't seem to
be a very big place," he remarked, looking about.

"It's big enough for us," snapped the agent, as he banged the
trunk into a corner.

That remark, apparently, was what Nils Ericson had wanted. He
chuckled quietly as he took a leather strap from his pocket and
swung his valise around his shoulder. Then he settled his Panama
securely on his head, turned up his trousers, tucked the flute case
under his arm, and started off across the fields. He gave the
town, as he would have said, a wide berth, and cut through a great
fenced pasture, emerging, when he rolled under the barbed wire at
the farther corner, upon a white dusty road which ran straight up
from the river valley to the high prairies, where the ripe wheat
stood yellow and the tin roofs and weathercocks were twinkling in
the fierce sunlight. By the time Nils had done three miles, the
sun was sinking and the farm wagons on their way home from town
came rattling by, covering him with dust and making him sneeze.
When one of the farmers pulled up and offered to give him a lift,
he clambered in willingly. The driver was a thin, grizzled old man
with a long lean neck and a foolish sort of beard, like a goat's.
"How fur ye goin'?" he asked, as he clucked to his horses and
started off.

"Do you go by the Ericson place?"

"Which Ericson?" The old man drew in his reins as if he expected
to stop again.

"Preacher Ericson's."

"Oh, the Old Lady Ericson's!" He turned and looked at Nils.
"La, me! If you're goin' out there you might a' rid out in the
automobile. That's a pity, now. The Old Lady Ericson was in town
with her auto. You might 'a' heard it snortin' anywhere about the
post-office er the butcher shop."

"Has she a motor?" asked the stranger absently.

"'Deed an' she has! She runs into town every night about this
time for her mail and meat for supper. Some folks say she's afraid
her auto won't get exercise enough, but I say that's jealousy."

"Aren't there any other motors about here?"

"Oh, yes! we have fourteen in all. But nobody else gets
around like the Old Lady Ericson. She's out, rain er shine, over
the whole county, chargin' into town and out amongst her farms, an'
up to her sons' places. Sure you ain't goin' to the wrong place?"
He craned his neck and looked at Nils' flute case with eager
curiosity. "The old woman ain't got any piany that I knows on.
Olaf, he has a grand. His wife's musical: took lessons in
Chicago."

"I'm going up there tomorrow," said Nils imperturbably. He
saw that the driver took him for a piano tuner.

"Oh, I see!" The old man screwed up his eyes mysteriously. He
was a little dashed by the stranger's noncommunicativeness, but he
soon broke out again.

"I'm one o' Miss Ericson's tenants. Look after one of her
places. I did own the place myself once, but I lost it a while
back, in the bad years just after the World's Fair. Just as well,
too, I say. Lets you out o' payin' taxes. The Ericsons do own
most of the county now. I remember the old preacher's favorite
text used to be, 'To them that hath shall be given.' They've spread
something wonderful--run over this here country like bindweed. But
I ain't one that begretches it to 'em. Folks is entitled to what
they kin git; and they're hustlers. Olaf, he's in the Legislature
now, and a likely man fur Congress. Listen, if that ain't the old
woman comin' now. Want I should stop her?"

Nils shook his head. He heard the deep chug-chug of a motor
vibrating steadily in the clear twilight behind them. The pale
lights of the car swam over the hill, and the old man slapped his
reins and turned clear out of the road, ducking his head at
the first of three angry snorts from behind. The motor was running
at a hot, even speed, and passed without turning an inch from its
course. The driver was a stalwart woman who sat at ease in the
front seat and drove her car bareheaded. She left a cloud of dust
and a trail of gasoline behind her. Her tenant threw back his head
and sneezed.

"Whew! I sometimes say I'd as lief be before Mrs. Ericson
as behind her. She does beat all! Nearly seventy, and never lets
another soul touch that car. Puts it into commission herself
every morning, and keeps it tuned up by the hitch-bar all day. I
never stop work for a drink o' water that I don't hear her a-
churnin' up the road. I reckon her darter-in-laws never sets
down easy nowadays. Never know when she'll pop in. Mis' Otto,
she says to me: 'We're so afraid that thing'll blow up and do Ma
some injury yet, she's so turrible venturesome.' Says I: 'I
wouldn't stew, Mis' Otto; the old lady'll drive that car to the
funeral of every darter-in-law she's got.' That was after the old
woman had jumped a turrible bad culvert."

The stranger heard vaguely what the old man was saying.
Just now he was experiencing something very much like
homesickness, and he was wondering what had brought it about.
The mention of a name or two, perhaps; the rattle of a wagon
along a dusty road; the rank, resinous smell of sunflowers and
ironweed, which the night damp brought up from the draws and low
places; perhaps, more than all, the dancing lights of the motor
that had plunged by. He squared his shoulders with a comfortable
sense of strength.

The wagon, as it jolted westward, climbed a pretty steady
up-grade. The country, receding from the rough river valley,
swelled more and more gently, as if it had been smoothed out by
the wind. On one of the last of the rugged ridges, at the end of
a branch road, stood a grim square house with a tin roof and
double porches. Behind the house stretched a row of broken,
wind-racked poplars, and down the hill slope to the left
straggled the sheds and stables. The old man stopped his horses
where the Ericsons' road branched across a dry sand creek that
wound about the foot of the hill.

"That's the old lady's place. Want I should drive in?" "No,
thank you. I'll roll out here. Much obliged to you. Good
night."

His passenger stepped down over the front wheel, and the old
man drove on reluctantly, looking back as if he would like to see
how the stranger would be received.

As Nils was crossing the dry creek he heard the restive
tramp of a horse coming toward him down the hill. Instantly he
flashed out of the road and stood behind a thicket of wild plum
bushes that grew in the sandy bed. Peering through the dusk, be
saw a light horse, under tight rein, descending the hill at a
sharp walk. The rider was a slender woman--barely visible
against the dark hillside--wearing an old-fashioned derby hat and
a long riding skirt. She sat lightly in the saddle, with her
chin high, and seemed to be looking into the distance. As she
passed the plum thicket her horse snuffed the air and shied. She
struck him, pulling him in sharply, with an angry exclamation,
"Blazne!" in Bohemian. Once in the main road, she let him
out into a lope, and they soon emerged upon the crest of high land,
where they moved along the skyline, silhouetted against the band
of faint colour that lingered in the west. This horse and rider,
with their free, rhythmical gallop, were the only moving things
to be seen on the face of the flat country. They seemed, in the
last sad light of evening, not to be there accidentally, but as
an inevitable detail of the landscape.

Nils watched them until they had shrunk to a mere moving
speck against the sky, then he crossed the sand creek and climbed
the hill. When he reached the gate the front of the house was
dark, but a light was shining from the side windows. The pigs
were squealing in the hog corral, and Nils could see a tall boy,
who carried two big wooden buckets, moving about among them.
Halfway between the barn and the house, the windmill wheezed
lazily. Following the path that ran around to the back porch,
Nils stopped to look through the screen door into the lamplit
kitchen. The kitchen was the largest room in the house; Nils
remembered that his older brothers used to give dances there when
he was a boy. Beside the stove stood a little girl with two
light yellow braids and a broad, flushed face, peering
anxiously into a frying pan. In the dining-room beyond, a large,
broad-shouldered woman was moving about the table. She walked
with an active, springy step. Her face was heavy and florid,
almost without wrinkles, and her hair was black at seventy. Nils
felt proud of her as he watched her deliberate activity; never a
momentary hesitation, or a movement that did not tell. He waited
until she came out into the kitchen and, brushing the child aside,
took her place at the stove. Then he tapped on the screen door
and entered.

"It's nobody but Nils, Mother. I expect you weren't looking
for me."

Mrs. Ericson turned away from the stove and stood staring at
him. "Bring the lamp, Hilda, and let me look."

Nils laughed and unslung his valise. "What's the matter,
Mother? Don't you know me?"

Mrs. Ericson put down the lamp. "You must be Nils. You
don't look very different, anyway."

"Nor you, Mother. You hold your own. Don't you wear
glasses yet?"

"Only to read by. Where's your trunk, Nils?"

"Oh, I left that in town. I thought it might not be
convenient for you to have company so near threshing-time."

"Don't be foolish, Nils." Mrs. Ericson turned back to the
stove. "I don't thresh now. I hitched the wheat land onto the
next farm and have a tenant. Hilda, take some hot water up to
the company room, and go call little Eric."

The tow-haired child, who had been standing in mute
amazement, took up the tea-kettle and withdrew, giving Nils a
long, admiring look from the door of the kitchen stairs.

"Who's the youngster?" Nils asked, dropping down on the
bench behind the kitchen stove.

"One of your Cousin Henrik's."

"How long has Cousin Henrik been dead?"

"Six years. There are two boys. One stays with Peter and
one with Anders. Olaf is their guardeen."

There was a clatter of pails on the porch, and a tall, lanky
boy peered wonderingly in through the screen door. He had a
fair, gentle face and big grey eyes, and wisps of soft yellow
hair hung down under his cap. Nils sprang up and pulled
him into the kitchen, hugging him and slapping him on the
shoulders. "Well, if it isn't my kid! Look at the size of him!
Don't you know me, Eric?"

The boy reddened tinder his sunburn and freckles, and hung his
head. "I guess it's Nils," he said shyly.

"You're a good guesser," laughed Nils giving the lad's hand a
swing. To himself he was thinking: "That's why the little girl
looked so friendly. He's taught her to like me. He was only six
when I went away, and he's remembered for twelve years."

Eric stood fumbling with his cap and smiling. "You look just
like I thought you would," he ventured.

"Go wash your hands, Eric," called Mrs. Ericson. "I've got
cob corn for supper, Nils. You used to like it. I guess you don't
get much of that in the old country. Here's Hilda; she'll take you
up to your room. You'll want to get the dust off you before you
eat."

Mrs. Ericson went into the dining-room to lay another plate,
and the little girl came up and nodded to Nils as if to let him
know that his room was ready. He put out his hand and she took it,
with a startled glance up at his face. Little Eric dropped his
towel, threw an arm about Nils and one about Hilda, gave them a
clumsy squeeze, and then stumbled out to the porch.

During supper Nils heard exactly how much land each of his
eight grown brothers farmed, how their crops were coming on, and
how much livestock they were feeding. His mother watched him
narrowly as she talked. "You've got better looking, Nils," she
remarked abruptly, whereupon he grinned and the children giggled.
Eric, although he was eighteen and as tall as Nils, was always
accounted a child, being the last of so many sons. His face seemed
childlike, too, Nils thought, and he had the open, wandering eves
of a little boy. All the others had been men at his age.

After supper Nils went out to the front porch and sat down on
the step to smoke a pipe. Mrs. Ericson drew a rocking-chair up
near him and began to knit busily. It was one of the few Old World
customs she had kept up, for she could not bear to sit with idle
hands.

"Where's little Eric, Mother?"

"He's helping Hilda with the dishes. He does it of his own
will; I don't like a boy to be too handy about the house."

"He seems like a nice kid."

"He's very obedient."

Nils smiled a little in the dark. It was just as well to
shift the line of conversation. "What are you knitting there,
Mother?"

"Baby stockings. The boys keep me busy." Mrs. Ericson
chuckled and clicked her needles.

"How many grandchildren have you?"

"Only thirty-one now. Olaf lost his three. They were
sickly, like their mother."

"I supposed he had a second crop by this time!"

"His second wife has no children. She's too proud. She
tears about on horseback all the time. But she'll get caught up
with, yet. She sets herself very high, though nobody knows what
for. They were low enough Bohemians she came of. I never
thought much of Bohemians; always drinking."

Nils puffed away at his pipe in silence, and Mrs. Ericson
knitted on. In a few moments she added grimly: "She was down
here tonight, just before you came. She'd like to quarrel with
me and come between me and Olaf, but I don't give her the chance.
I suppose you'll be bringing a wife home some day."

"I don't know. I've never thought much about it."

"Well, perhaps it's best as it is," suggested Mrs. Ericson
hopefully. "You'd never be contented tied down to the land.
There was roving blood in your father's family, and it's come out
in you. I expect your own way of life suits you best." Mrs.
Ericson had dropped into a blandly agreeable tone which Nils well
remembered. It seemed to amuse him a good deal and his white
teeth flashed behind his pipe. His mother's strategies had
always diverted him, even when he was a boy--they were so flimsy
and patent, so illy proportioned to her vigor and force.
"They've been waiting to see which way I'd jump," he reflected.
He felt that Mrs. Ericson was pondering his case deeply as she
sat clicking her needles.

"I don't suppose you've ever got used to steady work," she went on
presently. "Men ain't apt to if they roam around too long. It's
a pity you didn't come back the year after the World's Fair. Your
father picked up a good bit of land cheap then, in the hard times,
and I expect maybe he'd have give you a farm. it's too bad you put
off comin' back so long, for I always thought he meant to do
something by you."

Nils laughed and shook the ashes out of his pipe. "I'd have
missed a lot if I had come back then. But I'm sorry I didn't get
back to see father."

"Well, I suppose we have to miss things at one end or the
other. Perhaps you are as well satisfied with your own doings,
now, as you'd have been with a farm," said Mrs. Ericson
reassuringly.

"Land's a good thing to have," Nils commented, as he lit
another match and sheltered it with his hand.

His mother looked sharply at his face until the match burned
out. "Only when you stay on it!" she hastened to say.

Eric came round the house by the path just then, and Nils
rose, with a yawn. "Mother, if you don't mind, Eric and I will
take a little tramp before bedtime. It will make me sleep."

"Very well; only don't stay long. I'll sit up and wait for
you. I like to lock up myself."

Nils put his hand on Eric's shoulder, and the two tramped down
the hill and across the sand creek into the dusty highroad beyond.
Neither spoke. They swung along at an even gait, Nils puffing at
his pipe. There was no moon, and the white road and the wide
fields lay faint in the starlight. Over everything was darkness
and thick silence, and the smell of dust and sunflowers. The
brothers followed the road for a mile or more without finding a
place to sit down. Finally, Nils perched on a stile over the wire
fence, and Eric sat on the lower step.

"I began to think you never would come back, Nils," said the
boy softly.

"Didn't I promise you I would?"

"Yes; but people don't bother about promises they make to
babies. Did you really know you were going away for good
when you went to Chicago with the cattle that time?"

"I thought it very likely, if I could make my way."

"I don't see how you did it, Nils. Not many fellows could."
Eric rubbed his shoulder against his brother's knee.

"The hard thing was leaving home you and father. It was easy
enough, once I got beyond Chicago. Of course I got awful homesick;
used to cry myself to sleep. But I'd burned my bridges."

"You had always wanted to go, hadn't you?"

"Always. Do you still sleep in our little room? Is that
cottonwood still by the window?"

Eric nodded eagerly and smiled up at his brother in the grey
darkness.

"You remember how we always said the leaves were whispering
when they rustled at night? Well, they always whispered to me
about the sea. Sometimes they said names out of the geography
books. In a high wind they had a desperate sound, like someone
trying to tear loose."

"How funny, Nils," said Eric dreamily, resting his chin on his
hand. "That tree still talks like that, and 'most always it talks
to me about you."

They sat a while longer, watching the stars. At last Eric
whispered anxiously: "Hadn't we better go back now? Mother will
get tired waiting for us." They rose and took a short cut home,
through the pasture.

II

The next morning Nils woke with the first flood of light that
came with dawn. The white-plastered walls of his room reflected
the glare that shone through the thin window shades, and he found
it impossible to sleep. He dressed hurriedly and slipped down the
hall and up the back stairs to the half-story room which be used to
share with his little brother. Eric, in a skimpy nightshirt, was
sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes, his pale yellow
hair standing up in tufts all over his head. When he saw Nils, he
murmured something confusedly and hustled his long legs into
his trousers. "I didn't expect you'd be up so early, Nils," he
said, as his head emerged from his blue shirt.

"Oh, you thought I was a dude, did you?" Nils gave him a
playful tap which bent the tall boy up like a clasp knife. "See
here: I must teach you to box." Nils thrust his hands into his
pockets and walked about. "You haven't changed things much up
here. Got most of my old traps, haven't you?"

He took down a bent, withered piece of sapling that hung over
the dresser. "If this isn't the stick Lou Sandberg killed himself
with!"

The boy looked up from his shoe-lacing.

"Yes; you never used to let me play with that. Just how did
he do it, Nils? You were with father when he found Lou, weren't
you?"

"Yes. Father was going off to preach somewhere, and, as we
drove along, Lou's place looked sort of forlorn, and we thought
we'd stop and cheer him up. When we found him father said he'd
been dead a couple days. He'd tied a piece of binding twine round
his neck, made a noose in each end, fixed the nooses over the ends
of a bent stick, and let the stick spring straight; strangled
himself."

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