Free Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick Page A

Einar had inherited the saying not from his Swedish father, but from his mother. It was a proverb that meant, as far as the young Anna could work out, nothing is ever truly finished; the past is always with us.
    She worked it out for herself, as she worked out many things for herself that summer while Einar toiled in the Assay Office and Maria tried to turn a hut into a home.
    There was a saying of Maria’s, too, which Anna learned quickly, because her mother said it often: “Let’s not speak of the snow that fell last year.” Anna noticed her mother said it when people were arguing over something that had happened a while ago.
    Mr. Salisbury heard her say it one day and decided to teach her the English version.
    â€œLet bygones be bygones,” he said carefully, playing the
schoolmaster, but Maria had laughed when she tried the words herself.
    â€œI’ll stick with what my mother said. ‘Tala inte om den snö som föll i fjol.’ It sounds better.”
    It was around then Anna noticed something else about her mother. She noticed Maria quoted the Bible constantly, at every waking moment there would be something to learn from the Bible that Maria kept, stored preciously in a box, the same way Einar kept his Colt 44-40. The only difference was that one was out all the time, the other hidden. But waiting for its moment.
    When Sig argued with Anna, which was rarely, Maria would admonish them both with “turn the other cheek.” And if Sig was naughty or cross, she would tell him gently “turn from evil and do good.”
    The inhabitants of Nome had no church as yet, and the joke started to spread that Maria was the church. You only had to spend half an hour in her company to get a year’s worth of preaching—that was what they said. And though Einar was a God-fearing man, Anna more than once heard her father question Maria’s faith, though it was little Sig who really said something bad.
    â€œIf God loves us so much,” he said, “why are we hungry so much?”
    It was true that they were doing better than through
the dark winter when Maria was ill, but there were many days when they would go short of food. It was the way of Nome.
    Maria sat down with Sig and explained it all to him. He sat on her lap and looked at the red flowers embroidered on her blue dress while she told him a story, from the Bible about a man called Job. It was a long and confusing story, and Anna, hanging around to listen, didn’t follow it all that well.
    Job was a good man who loved God, and who, no matter what bad things happened to him, refused to curse God’s name and kept worshiping him. He lost his house and his servants and his family and all his sons and daughters, and still he kept believing in God’s love.
    Sig listened thoughtfully till his mother had finished speaking, and then said, “But why are we hungry all the time?”
    Just then, Einar had walked in the door, home from the office. His hair was slicked back as usual, but before even going to wash out the oil, he swooped Sig up in his arms and made him a promise.
    â€œWe won’t be hungry ever again, I promise. Not once we leave this town.”
    â€œAre we leaving, Einar?” Maria said, hope rising in her voice.
    â€œWe’ll leave in the autumn. On the last boat. I’m going
to work the summer. But I promise we’ll never spend another winter here.”
    And in their different ways, none of them would.

24
    The Water That Burns
    T hough Einar had expected trouble from Wolff the day after he’d refused to reopen the office, the trouble never came.
    Wolff had spent the night at the saloon and seemed perfectly civilized the next morning.
    Nonetheless, he was first in the queue to have his gold tested and was waiting at the door of the office. Einar worked with two other men, also appointed by Mr. Salisbury, and who’d arrived on the first boat that summer. They were a frail