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By Root 780 0

carried him to a fresh corner of the planet, a familiar livelihood and religion, and a doom. At first, curiosity was all there was to it, a way to ease hours—watching the cardplayers. Then he edged into the gaming, merely an evening now and again, which in a feet-first fellow such as Wennberg truly shows how guardful he was being. Some money vanished from him in the first years but not all so much, no amount to keep a man awake nights. Besides, Pastor Cygnaeus was one to inveigh against waywardness, the devil's trinity of drink and cards and the flesh; and as it is with those who have some of the bully in them, Wennberg by close-herding could be bullied in the general direction of moderation. But came the spring of 1845, Pastor Cygnaeus departed New Archangel, sailed back for Europe with Etholen at his end of term as governor. Wennberg yet had two years of indenture and during them his gaming, and all else, changed.

"Back there at the tide trough."

Karlsson waited, impassive.

"If I'd been to the right of you and Braaf to the left, I'd've gone into that millrace instead of him."

... If that'd been, my ears would get rest this night.... Aloud: "If the moon were window we could sec up angels' nighties, too. Lay it away, Wennberg." Less than anything did Karlsson want to discuss the perishing of Braaf. "Tomorrow paddles will still fit our hands, and the canoe will still fit into the ocean. Live by that,"

Wennberg moved his head from side to side. "You can wash your mind of such matters, Karlsson. I can't. Death this side of me and then that, I need think on it. Sec through to why I was let live."

"Maybe God's aim is bad."

"No, got to be more to it than that." Wennberg would not be swerved. "Maybe like sheep and goats. 'And He shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left—' No, Braaf was to the right—"

"Wennberg. Stow that."

Wennberg peered earnestly through the firelight to Karlsson. "You know what the pastors'd say, about all this."

... No, and I damn well don't give a...

"They'd say I'm being put to test. All this, bedamned coast, you other three, Koloshes—" Just now a thought could he seen to surprise Wennberg: "Maybe even you, too, Karlsson ! Being put to test 1"

Proclamation of his eligibility did not noticeably allure Karlsson. "Wennberg, I know at least this. We're not playing whist with God along this coast. Either we paddle to the place Astoria or die in the try. One or other. Just that."

Wennberg shook his head. Not, as it turned out, against Karlsson; the pastors. "But they don't know a thumb's worth about it either. Found that out, I did, when it happened with—with her."

Karlsson looked the question to Wennberg.

"Katya," the blacksmith said.

"Katya?" Karlsson echoed.

"My wife." Wennberg wiped the back of bis hand across his mouth, as if clearing away for the next words. "Think you're the only one ever looked at a woman, do you? You've fiddled your time, north there. You know what the Creole women can be, the young ones. Black diamonds, the Russians call them. Katya was one, right enough—But why'd she die?" Wennberg's look was beseeching, as if Karlsson might be withholding the answer. "If she hadn't, I'd not be in all this. God's will, the pastor said. God's swill, right enough, I told him back. What kind of thing is that to do, kill a man's wife with whooping cough? Didn't even seem ill at first, Katya. Just a cough. And then—'() satisfy us early with Thy mercy,' that clodhopper of a Finn preaching when we buried her on the hill. Mercy? Late for mercy on Katya. And me. How's I to go through life with her grave up there on the hill from me all the while? If I could've bought my way out of that Russian shit pile, back to Sweden. If the gambling'd worked—"

Evenings, that summer of 1845, a particular plump Russian clerk sat into the barracks card games. Three times out of five now, when this clerk departed the table he look with him just a bit more of Wennberg's money than Wennberg ought to have let himself lose. Nor was Pastor Cygnaeus' successor any help as a vigilant; he too suffered