Wild Wind Westward

by Vanessa Royall

  Kristin, who had seen less of the country than Eric, whose image of the world still lay more in Norway than in this savage, beautiful new land, stood at the rail of the steamer, stunned to wonder.

  “Does it ever end?” she asked, as they passed Louisville, heading westward still, westward ever. “How far does it go?”

  Eric walked up beside her, and put his arm around her waist. He remembered when he had seen her first in New York, seen her on the Valkyrie. Gustav had placed his arm about Kristin then. That was not going to happen again. That was a long time ago.

  “It goes on as far as you wish it to,” he said quietly, and pressed his lips to her cheek.

  “Darling,” she said, “let’s go someplace where we can be happy and safe. Away from the past, and all the people who made it bitter. Let us go where the air is pure and shining blue, and where the scent of pine perfumes the days and nights. Or does America have a place like that?”

  “I’m sure it does,” he smiled. “And if it does, we’ll find it.”

  “I want a pool, too,” she said. “An icy pool of clear water, like a mirror to see ourselves in, and like nectar to drink.”

  Together they remembered the holy afternoon at Sonnendahl Fjord, where they had promised themselves for eternity, drinking both image and essence of each other.

  “We’ll find that, too,” Eric said.

  They embraced there at the railing of the boat. Dinner was over, the children were in crib and bunk respectively, and in the west the sun was settling over green America. The air was cool, and the riverbanks dark and purple, shadowed by approaching night. It was time.

  The lost years, the tragedy of Pennsylvania, had subtly prevented them from lovemaking so far. Consigning hurts and wounds and burdens to the past cannot be done overnight. But time and the land were healing Kristin and Eric; time and the land and love were mysterious springs of inexhaustible wonder. It was time.

  “Let’s go below,” he said, with a breathy, ragged edge to his voice.

  Kristin did not demur, but there was something she had to ask.

  “That woman,” she said. “Joan Leeds. The one who shot the assassin with her derringer. She said she knew you. Had known you.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I am not proud of it. It was a profane thing. I might have acted more honorably, but I did not.”

  He remembered Joan’s last words to him, while the body of the dead assassin was being carted away from Harrisburg court house. “I’m sorry about your wife,” Joan had said. “I’m even sorrier that Benjamin and I will not be getting rich on oil. But we’ll do all right. I always manage to do all right. And anyway,” she added, winking at him with innocence and wickedness combined, “my shot might have saved your life. Or perhaps the life of your sweet Kristin. What do you think? Wasn’t such a shot worth three hundred dollars?”

  Eric recalled the money stolen from him beneath the floorboard in his room at the Leeds house.

  “All right Joan,” he had said. “Thank you. All debts paid, and all claims settled. Good-bye.”

  “No farewell kiss?” she’d asked, standing there before him, gorgeous as ever, lovely as sin. “Well, if you won’t…”

  And so she had stepped forward quickly, gone on tiptoe, and touched her lips to his.

  “You’ve come a long way, Starbane,” she said, “and though you might not know it, you’ve only just begun. I’ve learned a few things, too. There are roads I’m not made to travel. Maybe you knew that all along. When you set out upon those trails, think of me once in a while.”

  “That would be difficult not to do,” Eric had told her, truthfully.

  Now, with equal honesty, he said to Kristin, “In my heart, there was never anyone but you. And, for my heart and body, never will be, from this moment on.”

  Kristin clung to him in answer. Arm in arm they went to their cabin.

  “Why did you cut your hair?” he asked tenderly, unfastening the catch of her dress, easing the garment down over her shoulders.

  “Because everyone knew me.” She shivered “I only want you to know me.”

  He turned her in his arms, so they were face to face, and drew the dress down over her breasts, which she lifted for his kiss, shuddering with pleasure when the kisses came.

  “I know you,” he whispered, “have known, and know again.”

  Kristin unbuttoned his shirt as they kissed, and it slipped away as her dress had. They pressed close to each other, skin to skin, kissing, touching. An aura of pure desire encompassed them, shimmering all about. He took off her dress, and she his breeches, and they lay down in a splendor of ecstasy upon the wide bunk in the cabin. This was the time for which Kristin had been waiting for so long, and now that it had finally come to pass, she could scarcely believe it. Oh, but her body believed it, as she closed her eyes against the world, against the light, to know love not by sight but sensation alone. Wave upon wave of resounding pleasure swelled and broke and flooded upon the shores of her soul, and veiled twilight, suffused in shades of amber, red, rust, flickered and danced behind her eyelids. When he kissed her breasts, she gasped, and when he traced the long, long length of her with kisses, she sighed. She keened in want when he played her softly with his tongue, and when he took her, finally, she cried out as if it were a song from long ago that she had just remembered. She felt him within her, to the depths of her soul itself. Joyously she wrapped herself about him, matching her rhythm to his riding need. No one on the whole wild earth could stop them now. Not man nor mountain nor ocean could keep them apart, nor hold back the tide of pleasure that grew within them, swept toward them, plucked them from vast white beaches of heaven, tossed them spellbound upon an isle of delight. Kristin felt Eric lost within her, not caring, and she was lost herself upon the rolling waves of this enchanted sea. As if she were drowning, fragments of her life passed before her: blue cliffs rising from the fjords, green pastures sweeping to the mountain tops, the faces ot her family, safe now upon the ancient lands of home. These things she saw, in a flashing moment. But above them all, beyond them all, was Eric. She felt his body taut and trembling upon her, within her, knew his need as she knew her own, and joined him in the flood of passion, so long held back but now released with such force it seemed all life was washed away before its surging flow.

  “We will never be parted again,” he whispered to her afterwards, kissing her, cradling her in his arms. “We have had enough suffering and heartbreak for any two lifetimes. All that is ended.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” she said.

  “I’ll kill anyone who stands in the way of our happiness now.”

  Kristin said nothing, snuggling close to him, holding him as he passed into sleep. She was happy, tremendously happy. But she was also—way down deep—disturbed. She could not have expected Eric to remain exactly as he had been. He was older, experienced. Years had passed, a war, business battles. But twice recently he had mentioned killing, with a steely hardness he had never possessed before. She, who had lived with Gustav Rolfson, knew the slittyeyed, clench-jawed look of lawless implacability. Rolfson had known no better, such had been his dismal birthright. And surely Eric had cause for anger and resentment. But there had been something horrible and unyielding in his tone.

  No, she told herself. No. We are free as the wind, westward bound. There are none to touch us now.

  Then she felt a pang that surprised her at first, until she remembered how she had felt after making love with Eric in the old days.

  “Darling,” she asked, “do you think the galley might still be open? Suddenly I feel famished.”

  “No, it’s closed for the night” He laughed. “But let me see if I can find a way to take your mind off that kind of hunger.”

  He began to caress her anew, long and lingeringly.

  “Oh, I think you are succeeding,” she sighed.

  And again they knew the passion for which they had been fated and born.

  Kristin awoke very late in the night, and kissed Eric onc
e, as he slept. Then she slipped her hand into his, and followed him out upon golden prairies of dreams, beyond which pine trees bowed and dipped in the wind, where deep lakes glinted eerily beneath the cornflower blue of northern sky.

  II

  Putting behind him a past of poverty, struggle, and want, Eric built one of the first great mansions in St. Paul, on the high, tree-laden east bank of the Mississippi River. Minnesota, which had joined the Union as recently as 1858, was still a wild state. The Sioux had staged what everyone hoped would be their last great uprising in 1862, and many of that nation had moved west into the Dakotas. But the Indian presence was still strong in the land, especially in the far north, where a vast empire of lakes and pine forests had yet to be charted by white men. Central Minnesota was partially forested, a countryside of rolling groves, rich farmland juxtaposed with massive deposits of granite left eons earlier when the glaciers of the Ice Age receded. The southern tier of the North Star State flattened into prairieland that rolled on for a thousand miles across Nebraska and Kansas and Colorado, like a golden sea that finally broke against the vaulting blue Rockies.

  When the Victura had docked at Cairo, Illinois, Eric was entertaining two choices.

  “Kristin,” he said, “I cannot see the two of us settling down to ranch on the grasslands. Either we go on to California, or follow the Mississippi to Minnesota. I’m told many Swedes and Norwegians are settling there, even now.”

  “But what will you do? Is there oil? What? I want you to find peace and reward in whatever enterprise you choose.”

  “I have been thinking about that. There are many possibilities. Banking, perhaps, or the railroad…”

  “Somehow I don’t think you’d be happy sitting in a bank office.”

  “And there have been rumors these past few years of astonishingly rich deposits of iron ore, far to the north. I will look into that, for certain.”

  She heard in his voice a tone of excitement, a desire for adventure, lust for a challenge in which he might pit himself against destiny, a face-to-face confrontation, hand-to-hand combat in the wilderness.

  “Well, I guess we can rule out California then, can’t we?” she asked, with a smile.

  “I’ve already booked passage on a river steamer north to St. Paul,” he told her, looking pleased at his maneuver.

  And so they steamed into St. Paul, Minnesota, in the late summer of 1865, prepared for hard work but with every expectation of happiness. St. Paul was a bustling center, although its population was less than ten thousand in that year.

  The first person to greet the Gunnarsons in their new base of operations was a canny, cagey-looking man who seemed to be in charge of the river wharves. He stood upon the dock as if it were the deck of a ship, and he the captain, with short, thick legs, broad, powerful torso, and a black patch covering his left eye. His good eye was black, astonishingly large and sharp—from this came the aspect of clever intelligence—and his black hair was glossy and thick.

  “J. J. Granger at your service,” he said to each of the disembarking passengers, “top of the day to you, I’m sure. And what might your needs be, here in God’s country? Perhaps I might be of use to you?”

  Kristin was certain this man must be very important in Minnesota, so easily, so commandingly, did he present himself.

  “J. J. Granger at your service, sir,” said the man to Eric, offering his hand. Eric shook it, found the grip strong and prehensile. J. J. Granger clung to things, as if a handshake were the first step on the way to clutching a man’s soul.

  “Perhaps I might be of use to you?” Granger asked, politely enough, but in a manner that suggested what he really meant was Perhaps you can be of use to me?

  “Perhaps,” Eric answered cordially. “What is your business?”

  “Just about anything that will turn a dollar,” Granger responded good-naturedly, winking.

  “Are you in charge here?” Eric asked.

  Before Granger could reply, a man in an expensive suit and top hat emerged from the adjacent warehouse office. “Goddammit to hell, J.J.,” he yelled, “stop trying to trick the passengers out of their money, and get back to your desk. I hired you to keep track of invoices, not jaw the day away.”

  A look of steely resentment appeared on Granger’s handsome, mobile face.

  “You work for me, J.J., and keep that in mind, you hear?” added the man in the top hat, approaching Eric and Kristin.

  “For the time being,” Granger muttered under his breath, before turning away and going into the warehouse, “for the time being.”

  “I’m Sylvester Till,” said the man, introducing himself to the Gunnarsons. “Head of the Hiawatha River Line. Hope J.J. didn’t chew your ears off. He’s quite a character.” He appraised Eric and Kristin, looked at little Haakon, who was holding Eric’s hand, smiled at Elizabeth in Kristin’s arms. “Coming to visit or coming to settle?” he asked.

  ‘‘We plan on settling,” Eric said, “especially if I can find the right business opportunity.”

  Till judged Eric’s clothes, manner, appearance. Clearly this big blond Scandihoovian was not looking for a job; he was interested in founding a business of his own. “Well, this is Minnesota,” Till said. “We’ve got just about everything. Lumber, fur trade, shipping, cattle, now the new railroad coming through. Building, if you want to go into that. Thousands of people are going to need homes. Now that the war is over, the rush is on. Homesteaders are buying up land left and right. They’re going to need farm machinery. Oh, yes, if you want to go into business, you can pick and choose. You came to the right place, no doubt about it.”

  “What you say is very encouraging,” Eric replied. “But right now I think we ought to find a hotel. Is it possible to hire a buggy?”

  “Certainly, certainly,” Till assured them. “Just outside the gate. You see it, just to your right. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be off. I’m sure we’ll meet again, soon, after you get settled. St. Paul is a small town, and”—he tipped his hat to Kristin—“and the addition of a lovely lady should certainly be excuse for a gathering.”

  “He was quite nice,” said Kristin, as they took the children over to the gate, while a porter trailed along with their baggage.

  “I think we’re all going to like it here,” Eric agreed.

  Several cabs pulled up to the gate, taking on passengers who had been waiting there already. “That damn Granger,” muttered Eric. “He delayed us. I hope we find a hotel. I’m going to build us a house as soon as possible. Certainly before winter.”

  Then, when they were the last passengers waiting, a rattletrap buggy pulled by a sinewy, swaybacked nag emerged from behind the dock warehouse and clopped over to the gate.

  “You folks be needin’ a ride?” asked the driver solicitously.

  It was J. J. Granger.

  Eric looked around. No other cabs in sight. “All right,” he agreed reluctantly. “Take us to the best hotel in town. What’ll you charge for the fare?”

  “One dollar even,” Granger said.

  On the way to the hotel he said what a fine boy Haakon was, what lovely girls Kristin and Elizabeth were, and how it was clear that Eric would go places in Minnesota. He also informed them that the new railroad was missing a trick by not running enough spurs out to the farmland, confided to them that he would soon be in the lumber business, and indicated he had heard a rumor to the effect that the Hudson Bay Fur Trading Company needed an infusion of investment capital. “Might be just the opportunity you’re looking for,” he told Eric, winking. Then he caught little Haakon staring at his eyepatch, and laughed.

  “Never seen one of these, eh, youngster?” He pulled away the patch, showing the discolored crater where his eye had been. Haakon wasn’t frightened. He was fascinated. But Kristin turned away.

  “Chippewa arry did that,” J. J. Granger explained, replacing the patch. “I was up hunting for iron ore in the country north of Lake Superior—”

  Eric looked startled, but said not
hing.

  “—and a bunch of Chippewa didn’t seem to care for me poking around. Guess they thought I was a goner when that arry stuck in my eye. Had to pull her out myself, too. Well, here’s the hotel. That’ll be a dollar and a quarter.”

  “A dollar,” Eric reminded him.

  “Oh? Oh, yes. I forget. Sorry about that.”

  Eric gave him a dollar. J.J. took it, squinted at it, kissed it, and slipped it into his coat pocket.

  “Be seeing you,” he called happily, driving off.

  “If that J.J. isn’t the biggest windbag I’ve ever seen in all my born days,” observed Kristin later that evening, after the children were asleep, “then I don’t know what.”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” said Eric. He was standing at the hotel window, dressed in his robe, looking out across the Mississippi, where the land rolled away into the west.

  “You mean you actually think he made sense, with all that babbling?”

  “It was babble, in a way. But things are different here. I sense it. Our experience in America has been mostly in the east, which is older, more settled. More refined, is what I’m trying to say. Who knows but that out here on the frontier it will take men like J. J. Granger to open things up.”

  “And men like you,” said Kristin, coming over to him.

  He put his arms around her. “And men like me,” he agreed.

  “Really think Granger knows what he’s talking about?”

  “Yes. I don’t think he has much capital, but he knows where the opportunities lie. And either he’s damn intuitive or he’s damn smart. I read an article in a St. Louis paper, when we were waiting for boat connections downriver. The article reported that a Chicago geologist had claimed to believe, on the basis of certain magnetic experiments he conducted, that a great range of iron was located in northern Minnesota.”