Gerda In Sweden Part 8

Erik and his brother Pers went carefully into the herd and threw a la.s.so gently over the horns of the deer, to hold them still while the mother did the milking. The twins looked on with interest; but to their great astonishment not one of the reindeer gave more than a mug of milk. They had been used to seeing br.i.m.m.i.n.g pails of cow's milk at the Ekman farm in Dalarne.

"How do they ever get enough cream to make b.u.t.ter?" questioned Gerda.

"We never make b.u.t.ter, but we make good cheese," Erik's mother explained, as she brought a cup of milk for them to taste.

"What do these people eat?" Gerda asked her father, when the woman went back to her milking.

"The reindeer furnish them with milk, cream, cheese and meat; and when they sell an animal they buy coffee, sugar, meal, tobacco, and whatever else they need. Then they catch a few fish and kill a bear once in a great while."

"I have killed two bears in my life," Erik's father said with pride.

"Look," and he showed his belt, from which hung a fringe of bears' teeth.

"Do all the Lapps know how to speak Swedish?" Birger questioned.

"And do they all know how to read and write?" added Gerda.

Lieutenant Ekman nodded. "Most of them do," he replied. "Our government provides teachers and ministers for the largest settlements, so that the Laplanders may become good Swedish subjects."

"My brother and I went to school in Jockmock last winter," said Erik, who had overheard the conversation. "It is a Lapp village near Gellivare, and my father goes there sometimes to sell toys that we carve from the antlers of the reindeer."

A little five-year-old girl, who had hardly taken her eyes from Gerda's face, suddenly put up her hand and took off a leather pouch which hung around her neck. Opening the pouch, she took from it a tiny bag made of deerskin.

Gerda had noticed that each one of the family wore just such a pouch, and she had seen the mother open hers, when she was making the coffee, and take from it a silver spoon.

From the deerskin bag the child next took a small box made of bone, and by this time Birger and all the others were watching her with interest.

Off came the cover of the box. Out of the box came a tiny package wrapped carefully in a bit of woolen cloth, and out of the wrappings came a precious treasure.

"Look," exclaimed Gerda when she saw what it was; "it is a perfect little reindeer!"

And so, indeed, it was,--a tiny animal made from a bit of bone, with hoofs, head and antlers all perfectly carved.

The child held it out toward Gerda, nodding her head shyly to show that she wished to have her take it. But Gerda hesitated to do so until Erik said, "My father will make her another. You gave her the string of sh.e.l.ls, and she will not like it if you refuse her gift."

So Gerda took the little reindeer, and many a time in Stockholm, the next winter, she looked at it and thought of the child who gave it to her, and of the curious day she spent with the Lapps in far away Lapland.

CHAPTER IX

KAREN'S BROTHER

"How would you like to spend a whole summer here in the forest, watching the reindeer?" Lieutenant Ekman asked Gerda, after the milking was over and the Lapp mother had gone back to the tent with her children.

"Not very well, if I had to live in that tent," Gerda answered. Then suddenly something attracted her attention, and she held up her hand, saying, "Listen!"

A faint call sounded in the distance,--a call for help.

"This way," cried Erik, and dashed off down a path which led toward the river.

All the others followed him. "It must be one of the lumbermen," said Erik's father. "They often get hurt in the log jams."

He was right. When they reached the riverbank they found several men trying to drive some logs out into the current, so as to release a man who had slipped and was pinned against a rock.

The bed of the river was rilled with rocks, over which the water was rus.h.i.+ng with great force, in just such a torrent as may be found on nearly all the rivers of northern Sweden. Starting from the melting snow on the mountains, these rivers flow rapidly down to the sea, and every summer millions of logs go sailing down the streams to the sawmills along the eastern coast.

Thousands of these logs are thrown into the water to drift down to the sea by themselves; but on some of the slower rivers the logs are made up into rafts which are guided down the stream by men who live on the raft during its journey.

It was one of the log-drivers who had been caught while he was trying to push the logs out into the channel; and now his leg was broken.

"We can take him to Gellivare in one of our karra," said Lieutenant Ekman, when, with the help of Erik and his father, the man had finally been rescued and carried ash.o.r.e.

Accordingly, he was lifted into the cart with Erik, while Gerda snuggled into the seat between Birger and her father; and the journey over the rough woodland road was made as carefully as possible.

Several interesting things were discovered while the doctor from the mines was setting the broken leg. The most important of all was that this stalwart lumberman had a father who was a lighthouse keeper.

"Ask him if it is the Sea-gull Light," begged Gerda, when she heard of it; "and find out if Karen is his sister."

And it was indeed so. The young man had been in the woods all winter, and was on his way to the lighthouse, which he had hoped to reach in a few days, for the river current was swift and the logs were making good progress down to Lule.

"You shall reach home sooner than you expected," said Lieutenant Ekman the next morning, "for you shall go with us this very day."

"Fine! Fine! Fine!" cried Gerda joyously when she heard of it. "Pack your bundle, Erik, for you are going with us, too."

While their clothes, and all the little keepsakes of the trip, were being hurried into the satchels, Gerda's tongue flew fast with excitement, and her feet flew to keep it company.

"What do you suppose Karen will say, when she sees us bringing her brother over the rocks?" she ran to ask Birger in one room, and then ran to ask her father in another.

At nine o'clock the injured man was moved into the train, the children took their last look at the mining town, and then began their return over the most northerly railroad in the world, back through the swamps and forests, across the Polcirkel, and out of Lapland.

Lule was reached at last and Josef Kla.s.son was transported from the train to the steamer, "Just as if he were a load of iron ore from the mines," Birger declared.

"Not quite so bad as that," said his father, and took the twins to see the great hydraulic lift that takes up a car loaded with ore, as easily as a mother lifts her baby, and dumps the whole load into the hold of a vessel.

The children were so full of interest in all the new life around them that Josef Kla.s.son almost forgot his pain in telling them about his winter in the lumber camp, and the long dark night, when for over a month there was not even a glimpse of the sun, and no light except that of the moon and the frosty stars.

It seemed but a very short time before Gerda was crying, "I can see the Sea-gull Light, and Karen is out on the rocks."

Then came all the excitement of landing. The twins told Karen about finding her brother, and the reindeer, and the midnight sun, and the logs in the river, all in one breath; while Lieutenant Ekman explained Josef's accident to the lighthouse keeper and his wife, who had both hurried down to the wharf to find out the meaning of the return of the government boat.

Then, after Josef had been welcomed with loving sorrow because of his injury, and they had carried him up to the house and made him comfortable, Gerda told about her desire to take Karen home with her.

At first the father and mother would not hear of such a thing; but when Herr Ekman told of the medical gymnastic exercises that might cure her lameness, Josef spoke from his cot.

"Let her go," he said. "It is a terrible thing to be lame. These few days that I have been helpless are the worst I have ever known. If there is a chance to make Karen well, let her go."

And so Karen and Erik both went to Stockholm on the boat with Herr Ekman and the twins.