Hugh leaned forward, thrilling to the fervor of Oscar’s tone. He looked at the wide valley brimming with sunshine and abundant fertility, and thought of what a gift it might offer to famine-stricken France as she cried to America for aid. He drew a long breath.
“It is a wonderful idea, Oscar,” he said. “But can you do it?”
“I will do it,” said Oscar with all his slow Swedish determination sounding in his voice. “I saw it all as I stood and watched a big, black freighter steaming away into the dawn toward—where I wanted to go. I saw that if you serve, you serve, and some other than yourself settles where you are to be the most useful. So I went over to the Land Office and explained what I wanted to do and asked to double the size of my claim.”
“They should have given you the whole valley,” Hugh said.
“They didn’t,” his friend replied drily. “They didn’t take any stock in me at all. I think they thought I was trying to dodge military service for they sent over to the recruiting office to see if the facts I gave agreed at both places. An officer came over himself to say, ‘If there is anything for that shouting madman to spend his energies on, in the name of Heaven, give it to him.’ So they let me register for as much as I wanted and told me to go back and hold it if I could. They were pretty sure I couldn’t.”
“But you will, oh, Oscar, I know you will,” Hugh said. “And now I see why you have called it the Promised Land.”
Oscar laughed a little shamefacedly.
“It is a foolish name perhaps and we will find another when the settlers come. But now I call it that just to—to keep my courage up. If you have not something big to think of while you are waiting, the loneliness might eat into your very soul.”
“And after the settlers come the road will follow?” said Hugh.
“I have thought many times of how it will be,” answered Oscar, leaning forward to point. “The road will come winding down that hillside, white and smooth and dusty with much travel. There by that group of pines will be Linda’s house, with a space for children to play in the meadow below. Nels Larson’s place will be there just north of it by that knoll, and Ole Peterson’s across the stream. And by the bend of the river there will be a little town with a school and white houses with gardens and a church with a square spire, just as it used to be in Sweden. I have pictured it a hundred times as I sit here by the door. I know every house and field and meadow, just how it will all be. Sometimes I think I can almost hear the church bells ring already or the children calling to each other as they go across the fields to school.”