Rimfire Bride (4 page)

The fine stone-faced brick buildings gave way to crowded buildings, some of brick, many of wood. As they traveled farther along Ashland Avenue, most of the men on the car got off, to be replaced with more men, big, burly men with solemn faces. They barely spoke to one another, and when they did speak, Jana didn’t understand the language, except for the occasional German words.

The scenery was upsetting. The sky became darker and darker. It was almost as if storm clouds had come up, but the darkness was caused by billowing smoke, gushing out from tall smokestacks on industrial buildings.

“Jana,” Greta said, “this can’t be right. Mama wouldn’t send us to a place like this. We’ve made some mistake.”

Jana took out the letter once more. “It says she lives on Forty-Seventh Street, two blocks from Ashland.” Jana looked at Greta, who was fighting
back her tears. “We’re on Ashland, and I’ve been watching the numbers go by. We just passed Forty-First Street, so it can’t be too far now. I promise you, if it’s this bad, we won’t stay any longer than we have to.”

“I don’t want to go back to Papa,” Greta said.

“And we won’t. In a city the size of Chicago, we’ll find something we can do, but it will cost money, so if we can, we will stay with Cousin Marie for a while.”

Just then Greta began to wheeze. As she had done so many times before, Jana began to rub Greta’s back trying to comfort her.

“It’s the smell. It’s horrible. What is it?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s like a barnyard only a hundred times worse.”

“It’s the stockyards, woman. What do you expect a slaughterhouse to smell like? Roses?” The man who was sitting on the bench beside them laughed at his own joke. These were the first words spoken in English for the last fifteen or twenty blocks.

“Oh,” Jana said, her only word. She knew about the stockyards in East St. Louis because, if the conditions were just right, the smell would reach the farm in Highland, but it never stayed for more than a day or two. This constant smell, almost like a rancid odor, was burning her throat. How could Greta breathe at all?

The horsecar stopped, and Jana saw that it was Forty-Seventh Street, so she stood and helped Greta off the car. Several of the men also got off, and they began walking toward a commercial area with large, ugly buildings. A heavy, oily smoke
gushing from towering stacks colored the sky black as night. Here, too, were scores of railroad tracks crossing and recrossing, on which chugging locomotives were pulling long lines of rattling freight cars loaded with cows, all bellowing loudly.

“Jana, it’s awful,” Greta said, a shocked expression on her face as she looked around.

Jana grabbed her sister’s hand and held it tightly. “We’ll get through this, Greta. I promise you, we’ll get through this.”

They began walking away from the stockyard, seeing rows upon rows of ugly tenement houses all connected. Scattered among these buildings were a few open lots with tall weeds, strewn with trash. Clusters of poorly dressed, dirty children congregated in the lots, often darting into the hard-packed-dirt street, which was at least two feet lower than where the houses sat. Sewage, mixed with the cart-horse droppings, was flowing through the street, and the children ran through this filthy water as if it were a brook in a farm.

God in heaven, what were they getting into?

At last they reached a door with the number 1724 above it. Jana took a deep breath and then knocked. She smiled wanly at Greta, hoping to hide her own trepidation.

“What do you want?” a large woman with straggling hair asked as she jerked the door open.

“We are looking for Marie Gunter. Do you know her?” Jana asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“I am Jana Hartmann and this is my sister, Greta Kaiser, and Mrs. Gunter is our mother’s
cousin—her name is Marta Saathoff. Can you help us find her?”

A smile crossed the woman’s face. “
Ja,
I see the resemblance. You do look a bit like Marta did when she was a youngun. I grew up just two miles from her in Niederwerrn, I did. I long to go home, but . . . come in if you will.”

Jana and Greta stepped into the small room that was Marie’s home. Once inside, Jana saw that it was surprisingly clean, the stench of the outside air somewhat ameliorated by the smell of lye soap.

“I have always thought Marta and her husband lived among the Swiss. What brings her daughters to this place?”

“Mama sent you a letter.” Jana withdrew it from her pouch and gave it to her mother’s cousin.

Marie took the letter and looked at it, then handed it back to Jana. “Could you read it to me? My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

Jana took the letter and began to read in careful German:

Cousin Marie, I ask that you please look after my daughters for a while until they can get settled in Chicago.

My girls are good girls, but my Greta is sickly. It is important that she have some time away from my husband because I fear he does not look favorably upon a weak child. I have enclosed some funds for you, should you have a need for it. I will forever be indebted to you should you do this for me.

Your cousin, Marta Saathoff Kaiser

“How much money?” Marie asked.

Jana handed her the paper bills that Marta had inserted in the envelope. Marie began to count them out, then she looked at Greta.

“Does he beat you?”

“He does not,” Greta answered.

“Then why has she sent you to me?”

“It is the work. He has no sons, and he hasn’t enough money to hire help,” Greta continued.

“And you think the work will be easier in Chicago?”

T
he
first night was miserable because if a window was opened, the stench was unbearable, but without an open window the heat from the September evening was stifling. Once Jana got up and stepped out onto the steps that led to Marie’s front door. She was surprised to see that people were sleeping on pallets on the sidewalk. Why did people choose to live like this? There had to be a better way.

The sleeping arrangements inside were considerably less than comfortable, and it wasn’t just because of the heat and the smell. Marie strung a hammock between two hooks on adjoining walls with the idea that one night Greta would sleep in the hammock while Jana slept on the floor, then the next night they would switch. But because of her frailty, Jana knew Greta would not be able to sleep except in the hammock, so Jana would be spending every night on the floor.

Jana soon discovered that she had to endure
more than just the discomfort of a hard floor. The apartment crawled with mice, and Marie’s cat, which was not a loving pet, but a mouser, did his most productive hunting in the night, often awakening Jana when she was able to fall asleep.

The next morning, even before sunrise, Marie Gunter put on one of the two dresses that she owned and covered it with an apron that was near threadbare from washing. She had told Jana and Greta to stay in her home for the day while she found out if there were places for them in her shop. If so, they could start working the next day.

A job was necessary because part of their arrangement with Marie was that they would pay rent, as well as their share for the food. Marie did get the two a job in the butcher shop.

Greta swept and mopped the floors and cleaned the meat cases, but Jana had to actually cut up the meat, a job she found so loathsome that she actually considered returning to Highland. She knew, though, that she wouldn’t be able to get her job back at the school, and if she had no money to give to Mr. Kaiser, he would make things even more difficult for her. She would like a teaching position in Chicago, but without a convenient place to live, and with no time off from the butcher shop to look for the job, she had no opportunity to apply.

But to Jana’s surprise she found that she was making $4 more a month working in the butcher shop than she had as a teacher in Highland. Greta was earning an income as well, and since they didn’t have to pay Marie as much for rent and food as Jana had been paying her stepfather, they were
able to save what money they had brought with them and even add to it.

The girls had
been in Chicago for almost two months, and as the hot summer waned with the approach of fall the smell became more bearable.

“Do you want to stay in Chicago?” Greta asked as they were walking home from the butcher shop.

“I don’t know what choice we have right now. I’m thinking, if we just stay where we are, by spring we’ll have saved enough to find a room and then look for something else,” Jana said.

“Would you leave right now?”

“What do you mean, would I leave right now? If we did leave, where would we go?”

“To Dakota Territory.”

“Where?” Jana asked with a little laugh.

“To Dakota Territory. Someone left this pamphlet in the shop today, and I put it in my pocket. Read it.”

The girls stopped in a circle of light that was coming from one of the dingy gaslights. Jana began to read the pamphlet, put out by the Northern Pacific Railway.

IMMIGRANTS ARE INVITED TO DAKOTA TERRITORY

R
AILROAD TO
G
IVE
G
REATLY
R
EDUCED
R
ATES FOR
P
ASSAGE

Those who wish to better themselves would do well to examine the opportunities offered
by moving to the Dakota Territory. It is not a false statement to say that the young and vigorous settlers of Dakota are drawn from the best of America, and the energy, capacity, and enterprise of these settlers are bringing about a rapid accumulation of riches in the shape of active capital, pushing the development of Dakota. It can truly be said that Dakota is drawing from the older states the best blood that flows in the veins of American men and women.

The soil is from three to six inches deep and is the most fertile to be found anywhere. The cutting plow, going down three inches deep, turns over a ribbon of black dirt as rich as butter. Breaking commences in the latter part of April and continues until June. Farmers can raise vegetables, flax, and fodder grain.

The Northern Pacific is currently plotting out a new town to be known as New Salem, located approximately thirty miles west of the Missouri River. It is to be settled by the German Evangelical Synod of North America. A colonization bureau has been organized in Chicago under the leadership of Pastor G. L. Kling, and plans are under way to take no fewer than two hundred immigrants to New Salem, where anyone, man or woman, who is 21 years of age, or the head of a household, qualifies for free land.

Northern Pacific is giving special reduced rates for those travelers who would settle in the Dakota Territory.

“What do you think, Jana?”

“Oh, Greta, I don’t know. What if we got out there and, uh, something happened? I mean, what if you got really sick?”

“What you’re actually asking, is if I’m up to doing this.”

“Well, are you? Coming to Chicago was a big change for us, but going to Dakota—that would be an even bigger move. Here, at least we have Cousin Marie if something happens, but out there we’d have no one,” Jana said.

“That’s not true. We’d have each other. And the answer is, yes, I am up to doing this.”

“Dakota is a long way from Highland.”

“And Geldersheim is a long way from Highland. At least the Dakota Territory is on the same continent. It says man or woman twenty-one years of age. That’s you. We know how to farm. We can do this,” Greta continued.

“It’s cold there.”

“And it’s not going to be cold here? Look around you. Do you think Cousin Marie wants to live here? No. She’s stuck here. Let’s get out before something happens and we can’t go either,” Greta pleaded.

“You really do want to do this, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Greta answered enthusiastically.

“All right, I’ll find Pastor Kling’s church,” Jana said.

Greta threw her arms around her sister. “Oh, thank you, Jana, I know it’s the right thing to do.”

Sunday morning, as
Jana sat through Reverend Kling’s service, she studied the man—tall, hawk-nosed, with an eminent brow, sad eyes, and a mouth that, unless he kept it tightly shut, was apt to be quivering. He had a look as if he had just been startled.

Dear Lord,
she prayed silently,
I am about to put both my life and my sister’s in the hands of this man. Please don’t let me make a big mistake.

“Do you speak
German?” Reverend Kling asked Jana when she spoke to him after the service. “It’s not necessary, but if you do, it will be helpful.”

“I lived in Germany until I was eight. That’s when my family moved to America, so, yes, I am quite comfortable speaking German.”

“Good. The next question: Do you know anything about farming?”

“The village where I was born was a farming community, and I’ve lived and worked on a farm since coming to America. I’ve also taught school.”

Pastor Kling smiled broadly. “Then I know you’ll be welcome at New Salem. A young woman who can both work the fields and teach the minds of the young. Yes, you’ll be welcomed by our group.”

“Thank you. I am honored. Oh, and my sister will come with me.”

“Wonderful, and is she also a schoolteacher?”

“No.”

“That is okay. There’s always room for one more, especially a young woman who wants to join our flock.”

“When do we leave?” Jana asked, her enthusiasm over the project growing even as they were talking.

“We plan to leave next spring.”

Jana felt her spirits tumble as she thought of the prospect of having to spend the winter at Cousin Marie’s. “Next spring?”

“Yes. We want to be there in time to break the sod and have something in the ground for the growing season.”

“Reverend Kling, next spring is too late. I, that is, my sister and I, need to go now.”

“Oh, dear. Young lady, you aren’t in any sort of difficulty, are you? Something that you haven’t told me?”

“No, sir, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that we are living with our cousin—on Forty-Seventh Street—and we would like to, that is, we need to, find some other living arrangement. My sister found a pamphlet describing the Dakota Territory, and we got very excited about the prospect of owning our own land.”