by Ann Treacy
The Search for the Homestead Treasure
The Search for the Homestead Treasure
Ann Treacy
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
Copyright 2016 by Ann Treacy
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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For Annie Koehnen
1884–1893
The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.
—Swedish proverb
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
—Galileo Galilei
Prologue
Goodhue County, Minnesota
6 July 1865
Cora awoke hearing blackbirds bark, cicadas buzz, and Mother shifting about in the cabin. She was tempted to open her eyes, but Cora knew if she appeared to be sleeping, Mother might allow her to stay in bed longer. The trick was to relax her face because if she squeezed her eyes, Mother would know she was playing possum.
The glow through her eyelids told her that the sun was already well up. She smelled sour soot as the sun warmed the roof and stovepipe. Waves of pungent ammonia reminded her that the washtub was filled with baby linens that could not wait another day for washing. That alone was a good reason to stay in bed, because now that she was thirteen years old, Cora had to help with the washings.
But there were reasons to get up. The pitcher of milk would have clotted overnight on the sideboard, making it perfect for griddlecakes or bread.
Mother’s shadow came close and blocked the bright sun illuminating Cora’s eyelids.
“Min bästa flicka . . . My best girl, you look like a princess but sleep like a field mouse.” Mother lingered longer than usual at her bedside. She gently cupped Cora’s forehead with her rough hand. The hand felt hot and moist like steamy linen being pressed.
Then Cora heard long skirts sweep the floorboards as Mother moved toward Jacob’s crib. She peeked enough to see Mother feel the baby’s face, then her own, then walk out the cabin door. Cora settled into her feather tick. She felt successful at her game if she was still pretending to be asleep when Mother pumped water for morning coffee. But Mother didn’t take the teakettle with her this morning. Cora looked straight out the open door and saw Mother weakly working the pump handle. When a trickle began, Mother reached for a handful of water and poured it down the open neck of her long nightdress.
Cora heard the cabin door close, and then the bed ropes creaked. Mother was going back to bed! Was she playing possum, too? Usually Mother got up hours before the children to hoe the rapidly growing vegetables. Cora crept out of bed and spider-walked her fingers up Mother’s arm to surprise her.
“Good morning.”
“God morgon, dotter.”
Cora understood Swedish but always answered in English. “Aren’t you getting up?”
“I’ll just lie here a minute. It must be the heat.” Mother’s smile did not reach her blue eyes. Her face looked lined and old.
It was odd to be up and see Mother in bed. She was never sick. “I’ll haul the water today,” Cora offered. “And feed the chickens. I can be so quiet Jacob won’t wake up.”
When Cora came in from her chores, Mother’s face glistened like summer butter. Cora had never heard such raspy breathing. She stood still and listened. Mother began shaking in the bed and mumbling. “Dotter,” Mother whispered, “min vacker lilla dotter.” My beautiful little daughter.
What was happening? Mother seemed as sick as some of the animals Cora had seen die. Except Mother was young and healthy. She was Anna Gunnarsson; she had survived the voyage from Sweden. Mother was beautiful. Father had been young when he died, but the war had killed him. Cora went to the bed and shook Mother’s wrist.
Mother’s hand fluttered to her heart. “I am so sick. I need you to listen about the baby. You must take Jacob to Mrs. Perry. Now.”
“It’s too far.” Cora was frightened by the way Mother gasped for air. She had never seen anyone like this before. Mother struggled to breathe as if she had swallowed thick molasses.
“You have to.” Mother clutched at Cora’s arm. “But first, you must get something from the wood box.”
“Mor, let me bring you water instead.”
“Go to the wood box. Do it now, dotter.”
Cora backed toward the box by the hearth.
Mother coughed deep in her chest. “Dig out the oil cloth . . . at the bottom . . . under the logs.”
Cora struggled to lift a heavy, wrapped bundle that felt like a lead baby. “Bring it here,” Mother choked. She placed her hands around the girl’s arms, sealing the parcel in them. “This is yours now. Put it somewhere safe. With your pa dead, it’s all you have for your life.”
Mother’s hands swam across the coverlet, and she began to mumble as if Cora weren’t there. “Carl, I should have told you I brought a dowry. I’ve been so upset since you died . . . should never . . . kept secret . . . from my husband. If you had known, we could have had a better place, a place closer to town. Closer to a doctor . . .”
Cora hid the awkward bundle in the safest place she knew. When she returned Mother was still talking to Father, but he was dead. Tears brimmed in Cora’s eyes as she patted cold water on her mother’s burning face. Baby Jacob stirred in his bed. “Wake up, Mor.” Then louder: “Wake up.”
Mother gasped. Without opening her eyes she whispered, “The dowry will take you and baby Jacob far. Start now, go to the Perrys, min söta flicka.” Mother did not speak another word.
What was happening, and so quickly? Cora did not go directly to the Perry farm. For the first time in her life she disobeyed. Even with Jacob and Mother near her in their beds, she couldn’t remember a time when she felt so alone. She curled up in the rocker with her familiar blue diary and took comfort in writing an entry.
6 July 1865
Mother is sick. Not even Father was this sick. She told me to take Jacob to the Perrys. Her last words were about a dowry, which I hid safely in my doll’s house. Jacob is starting to cry. I am afraid to disobey her, but I am also afraid to leave her alone.
Baby Jacob screamed. Cora put down her pencil and dipped the corner of a clean pillow linen in boiled sugar water for him to suck. Rocking the baby, she bent over her mother, but the ashen woman no longer responded, not even when Cora bounced the oak bed frame with her knee.
Cora’s legs wobbled. Her own throat began to burn and she felt her forehead with the back of her hand. The image of Mother doing the same flashed in her mind. It was nothing, only the heat of the day. She put down the few belongings she had gathered for Jacob and walked out of the farmhouse with nothing but her brother.
Chapter 1
Goodhue County, Minnesota
February 1903
“Way over there,” Pa pointed across an empty expanse of frozen field, “is where they found Cora and me.”
Fourteen-year-old Martin
Gunnarsson listened as his father told the story of being found in a field, like Moses in the bulrushes. Despite his anger at having to leave Stillwater and his friends, Martin listened carefully. He only knew bits about his father’s childhood, as Pa didn’t speak of it much. In the front wagon seat Ma was silent as always, but so was Aunt Ida, which was rare.
Pa went on. “Cora wasn’t dead, not yet, of the diphtheria. She must have lain there most of a day, face up to the sun; they say she was scorched pretty bad. Not me though. She covered me with her apron.”
Pa lightly flipped the reins over the plodding horses’ backs. “It was summer; I imagine crops were tall then. ’Course I was just a baby and don’t remember. They say it was my wailing on toward sundown that brought the dogs.”
Their wagon was so heavily laden with household goods that it rode more smoothly than usual. In the back of the wagon bed, seven-year-old Lilly had to sit almost in Martin’s lap. She played with a sack of clothespin dolls. As Pa talked she hummed and whispered. She dropped clothespins onto the wagon floor as she acted out the story of how first his mother, then his sister had died of diphtheria.
Lilly looked up from her dolls. “Was Cora beautiful, Pa?”
“Dang it,” Martin swore softly. Every time Lilly turned to speak, she bumped his whittling arm. She stuck her tongue out at him. A wagon was no place to do fine work, so for an hour he had just cut notches into a pin, like a gunslinger cut notches in his revolver handle.
“I don’t know, little Lilly,” Pa called back. “I was too young to remember her, and she was years older. I’ve never seen a likeness of her, but the Perrys always did say she had beautiful yellow hair. Maybe like yours.”
“And the gold? Tell about the gold and riches,” Lilly said.
Martin pushed Lilly’s skirt off his pants leg. He’d heard the lost riches story before, mostly because Pa didn’t have anything real to tell about his family. Pa’s father died in the states’ war, and his mother died when he was a baby. The Perrys were nice neighbors to raise him, but they knew little about the Gunnarsson family’s background. Martin sometimes wondered if Pa still had relatives in Sweden they knew nothing about.
Pa shook his head. “That was just a rumor started by Mrs. Perry. I guess she was about my mother’s only lady friend. The Perrys raised me on the very next homestead. Sometimes they would rent out my parents’ place to croppers, but as far as I know, in over thirty years nobody has found anything there but hard work.”
Aunt Ida snorted. She was Ma’s aunt, old, thin, and white-haired. But she was also wiry and spry and rarely failed to speak her mind. “These farms are hard living, all right. Hard on horses and hell on women.”
That hard work would fall to him. Martin missed home. Not the bad times since his brother Dan had died, but the good things like his friends Stan and Chet and the firehouse. He loved polishing lights on the rig and visiting the huge horses that pulled the water wagon. He would go back. He would give Pa a year. Get the first crop in and paying. By then he’d be fifteen. Lots of fifteen-year-olds lived away and worked.
Martin stretched his collar. Ma had laid out Sunday clothes today for their arrival. Sunday clothes under winter coats were uncomfortable enough, but the collar and socks weren’t even his. Poverty, Martin thought, was wearing your dead brother’s clothes.
Lilly attempted to stand in order to rearrange her woolen petticoats. “Are we almost there, Pa?”
“As the crow flies, it’s not far. But by road we have to go the long way around. Not a terrible lot has changed out here, except that most of these old places are being bought up.”
Dunes of gray snow sagged in the brown fields. Martin couldn’t imagine this bleak, frozen countryside was desirable to anyone. Yet Pa looked the happiest he had in months, leaning forward on the wagon bench to see past Aunt Ida. “It’s the chance of a lifetime, Martha. Of course, we have to make the taxes, or the bank will get our place. I’m lucky Robert Perry offered the homestead back to me.”
Our place. Martin knew that during the war Pa’s parents had started a homestead on 160 acres. But they couldn’t have gotten much built up before they both died. Martin wished Pa had let the bank have it.
Pa whistled and looked across the wagon seat at Ma. Ma, who used to excite so easily, rarely spoke since Dan died. She didn’t smile and hadn’t commented on leaving her home. She just reached into her coat pocket and doctored herself with a spoonful of cough tonic, then slowly said, “If you say so, Jacob.”
They heard the jangle of approaching teams beyond a rise in the road ahead. All five fell silent in anticipation. Cresting the hill were several dozen brightly painted wagons, like an approaching carnival caravan.
“What’s ahead, Pa?” Martin called.
Lilly turned and knelt to see over the side of the wagon. She studied the approaching procession of dark-skinned people in various odd wagons. “Who are they?”
Aunt Ida clasped her hands to her bony chest and gasped as Pa answered, “Gypsies.”
As fast as a cow kicks, old Aunt Ida was on her feet. “Heathen Egyptians,” she spat. “They rob people blind and disappear in the night.” She pushed up her black parasol and tilted it toward the oncoming wagons. “I won’t be able to sleep tonight if they cast their eye on me.”
Lilly ducked her head, trying to hide behind the wagon’s side. But curiosity soon brought her head slowly up again like a sunflower following the sun.
In Stillwater, Martin had been accustomed to seeing Indians, and in his lifetime he had seen three men with black skin. But these people were different, and he couldn’t help but stare as their odd wagons passed Pa’s plodding team. For once Lilly didn’t fidget but watched the procession of people in loose-fitting clothes who appeared to come from another world.
Aunt Ida complained about the bad omen of crossing paths with Gypsies on the trip to their new home. But Pa, who usually tried to console Aunt Ida, was busy appraising each passing horse with the practiced eye of a lumber camp farrier. Pa knew horses. It was his job to shoe them and do general doctoring of sprains and colic. For all their large size, workhorses had touchy constitutions.
Martin hadn’t seen such a parade of horseflesh since the county fair. He studied the people, too, although most of the Gypsies kept their eyes averted. A girl and boy skipped along the roadside playing with two dogs. A woman held a baby on her lap, face forward, to be entertained by the sights.
Just people. With children just like us. Their children even look happy, the way we used to be, Martin thought.
Suddenly Lilly pulled a quilt over her head to protect her open satchel of doll clothes from the road dust. She peered up at Martin. “Will they scalp us?”
“Silly Lilly,” Martin said. “Nobody gets scalped anymore. It’s 1903.”
“Probably do worse,” Aunt Ida snorted from the squeaky spring seat. Her thin frame rocked as she hid behind the parasol. “Sneak up in the night, rob you, slit your throat, and disappear faster than cream in an orphanage.”
Ma rode in silence, but not because she cared about the passing horses as Pa did. Ever since Dan was whisked away like a sheet from a bed, Ma didn’t laugh or even manage to prop up her side of a conversation. Dan had been the oldest, Lilly’s preferred brother, and the only one of the children able to cajole Aunt Ida into making his favorite foods or Ma into changing her rules.
The wagon lurched on toward a new, lonely life. Martin took out his grief and examined it as if it were a thing to be held. No, it was no longer the worst numbing grief, but it was still a constant sense of loss. He thought about climbing the St. Croix River cliffs just two days ago with his friends. Right now he missed them almost more than Dan. He felt like cargo being hauled to a farm, and farming had never interested him.
Just before dark Pa turned the horses and wagon onto a road that shrank to a narrow, overgrown trail. When the wagon finally stopped in a small clearing, Pa grinned more broadly than Martin had ever seen.
“My boyhood home,
” Pa said happily. “Well, I was born here anyway.”
Martin stood to look. There was an old barn and a small house. Beyond, in the evening darkness, he made out several former structures melting into the earth from disrepair. Even though for a year Martin had filled the conversations left empty by Ma’s silence, he couldn’t think of one thing to say now to Pa. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
Even Aunt Ida was silent. She just patted Ma’s hand.
Lilly had busied herself with packing up her dolls. “Are we there?” She pulled herself up against the wagon sides. “Where are we?”
The gloom of the cold February day was changing to blackness. At home, street lamps would be lit by now. Awkwardly, as if he had never done it before, Martin climbed out of the wagon in his Sunday clothes and stood in the bleak yard. No fabled fortune had helped Pa’s family forty years ago, and it wouldn’t help his family now.
A terrible longing settled over him. He had known deep yearnings since the accident—the “if onlys” and bargaining-with-God feelings of wishing his brother back to life. The difference was that they could undo this move. This regret was reversible, at least for him. He would make sure of it.
Chapter 2
“Ain’t those perty town shoes,” Dale Barker whispered as Martin stepped into the aisle.
Miss Abrams had asked, “Martin, the new boy, how many stars are on the American flag?” Although he answered correctly, she reminded him to “always stand to recite.”
Martin unclenched his teeth and stood and repeated, “Forty-five.” After attending the one-room school for several weeks, he had abandoned hope that Miss Abrams would ever address him without adding “new boy” to his name. His Stillwater teacher, Mrs. Walters, was smart and fun. Here the boys joked that Miss Abrams had been a passenger on the Santa Maria.
