Hjelmer hated the foundry from the first moment he saw it.
“It is just a job,” he promised himself. “For only a short time. You can endure anything for a little while.” He sniffed and coughed on the smoke-saturated air. “As soon as you have the rest of the money for a train ticket, you can leave for Dakota.”
The man that walked past him and into the foundry gave him a look that questioned his sanity for talking to himself.
Hjelmer felt like returning the rude look with one of his own. So he was talking to himself. Better than running for the river and throwing himself in as he’d seen someone do from the bridge the day before. This time he didn’t try to save the man. If the fellow wanted a quick entrance into the next world, so be it. Life or death, that was his own choice.
And if he hadn’t played the hero in saving the child, he wouldn’t be trapped in New York without enough money for his train ticket. He’d be on his way to the Bjorklund homesteads in Dakota Territory, where the grass grew green and the sky wore a gown of blue, not smudged gray. Here the only way to tell the sun was shining was to locate the silver disk hanging somewhere in the sky. It gave light but little warmth. He pulled his coat more tightly around him.
Nothing to do but go find the man. Mrs. Holtensland had a friend that owned the foundry and had begged a job for her immigrant hero. He was to ask for Einer Torlakson. She’d said at least the man spoke Norwegian. Hjelmer pushed open the door to the cavernous building, the incessant clanging of hammer on metal from rows of forges creating a cacophony of sound fit to split one’s head or drive one deaf in short order. Smoke hung in the air, bellows pumped the acrid smell of burning charcoal, and bright eyes of blazing fire waited for the metal it tried to devour but only heated white-hot. Monstrous steam engines provided power for the drill presses, shears, and sizes, all run by the drive shaft that ran the length of the building. Belts slapping, clutches squealing of metal on metal; the noise shrilled of progress in its most basic form.
Once his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room in spite of the two-story tall windows that formed the walls on either side, he saw a man walking from forge to forge and talking with the smiths. Hjelmer strode down the aisle between stacks of iron pigs and flat steel bars. The pigs would be melted for cast iron and the steel formed into implements and parts for machinery.
How would he be able to work in a place like this? At home the forge had been on one wall of a three-sided shed, open to a view of the pastures and trees, where a breeze off the hills blew the smoke away and wafted in scents of pine and growing grass.
He waited until the man finished giving instructions to the smith on the nearby forge and then cleared his throat to get the foreman’s attention. The man walked on. The man on the forge turned to draw out a white-hot steel bar.
“Sir, Mr. Torlakson.” Hjelmer started after him.
“Ja?” The man turned around, a frown creasing his forehead. “I am Torlakson. Who are you?” His voice rose in a shout to be heard.
“Mrs. Holtensland sent me. She said you would talk with me, and perhaps I could be hired on here.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “To be sure.” He turned back the way they had come. “Follow me.”
Hjelmer did as ordered, keeping his eyes open so he didn’t get hit in the head by a bar being swung into place by the overhead hoist.
He followed the foreman up a narrow set of stairs to an office on the second floor with windows that overlooked the work below. As soon as the door closed behind them, the roar subsided to a rumble. Hjelmer took in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
“Now then, young fellow, I told Mrs. Holtensland I was hiring if I could find a good man. You look to be but a boy, big though you are. What makes you think you could hold your own with the men you saw below. They have years of experience.”
“My father trained me well, said I seem to have a natural bent for working with metal.”
“Your father, you say. Have you not worked for anyone else, apprenticed perhaps?”
Hjelmer shook his head. “I did some work for my uncle once, fashioned him an anchor for his fishing boat. I’ve sharpened plows, pounded out new plowshares, brackets for the wagon bed, refitted rims on wooden wheels, all things needed on our farm and for some of the neighbors.” Hjelmer could feel his heart sinking as the man shook his head. “Please, I need this job.”
“So do all the men who come to me.” Torlakson studied the young man before him.
“Please, let me work today, and if I cannot do what you need, you owe me nothing.”
“A day’s free labor? I’d be a fool to turn that down. Get yourself an apron from those on the pegs and gloves if you didn’t bring your own. I’ll meet you back on the floor.” He turned to answer a question asked by a man sitting on a high stool in front of a slab of wood that made a writing surface.
Hjelmer did as told. He had the knee-length cowhide apron tied in place and the gloves tucked into the strings and folded over like he’d seen the others wear before Torlakson made his way back down to the work area. When the man beckoned, Hjelmer followed. They stopped in front of a forge that was lit but not hot enough for reforming steel. A young boy, black with the dirt of the place, leaped to his feet and began cranking the bellow, adding its ascending scream to the torrent of sounds.
At the end of the day, Hjelmer laid his hammer down and felt like following it to the floor. Never had his arms ached so, or his head rung, or his mouth been so full of grit. He spit but nothing came. He needed water to spit with, and the only water he’d seen all day was what he’d stuck his forged pieces in to cool.
The other workers made their way to the tall doors open now to the street in front of the foundry. Hjelmer followed them until he came to the stairs leading to the offices. They looked steeper than the rock faces of the Nordland mountains where he’d climbed as a boy. It felt like several life times ago.
Was he to find the man or wait here? His stomach rumbled and his knees shook. Tomorrow, if there was to be a tomorrow, he would bring something to eat and drink.
“We start at six.” Torlakson appeared beside him. Had he been dozing on his feet that he didn’t hear the man approach?
“You mean—”
“Ya, you be here. Payday is on Saturday. You’ll get five dollars a week. If you don’t show up one day, don’t bother to come back the next. I need men who will do a day’s work, every day.”
“Mange takk, I will. You’ll see.” Hjelmer felt life flow into his limbs and hope into his heart. Five dollars in a week was more than he’d ever dreamed possible. Four weeks he would have to work, and then he could buy his train ticket west.
By the time he walked the mile and a half to Mrs. Holtensland’s house, he could barely place one foot in front of the other. Everything hurt, and what didn’t hurt, he couldn’t feel. His hands looked like they’d been fed through a meat grinder, and his shoulders—his shoulders burned like he’d been beaten with his own hammer.
“Uff da,” said Fulla, the maid, when she opened the door for him. Her nose twitched at the foundry stench that rose from his clothes. “Mrs. Holtensland is in the library. I suggest you don’t go in there like that.”
Hjelmer nodded. He hadn’t planned to. “Is there hot water that I can wash?”
“For certain.” Her look asked him what kind of house he thought she ran. She pointed to a room off the back porch. “In there.”
“Mange takk.”
“Supper will be served in one hour.”
The sting of soap on his bloodied hands held little importance to Hjelmer. He scrubbed with both soap and brush to remove the filth of the foundry. Twice he threw out the water and started again with clean. After donning his only other set of clothes, he reentered the kitchen.
“Do you have some strips of cloth I could use to bandage my hands?” he asked the cook who seemed more disposed to be cordial to a newcomer.
“Land sakes, boy.” She dropped her stirring spoon and took his hands in hers. “Didn’t you wear gloves?”
“Ja, but traveling softens the hands.” He wished he could put them in his pockets and forget the favor, but he knew his hands were to be his salvation. If he couldn’t hold a hammer, he wouldn’t last at the foundry.
Tearing an old sheet into strips, Cook wrapped his hands, tisking all the while.
After a supper where he’d endured the sniffs of the maid, he joined Mrs. Holtensland in the library at her request.
“How was it for you there? Can you understand the language well enough to make a go of it?”
“Mr. Torlakson, he speaks Norwegian to me and many of the others.” A pang caught him midsection. Roald and Carl had written, telling him to learn the English language before he came, but he’d been working hard to earn passage money, and no one near home knew the language either. The thought of his sister who’d been exchanging washing laundry for English lessons nipped at his mind.
“You are fortunate now to be in an area where many people speak Norwegian. That is why many of the immigrants settle here. It is easier than crossing the country without the English language. We have classes at the Settlement House in the evenings. You could attend there.”
Hjelmer nodded while at the same time wanting to pull his collar away from his neck. Was it so hot in the room? Was she scolding him? He studied the edges of his fingernails where black crescents outlined the skin.
“I will think on it.” Right now all he could think about was falling on the bed and never getting up. He stared into the fire where flames curled around chunks of coal in oranges and yellows, not the white hot of the coke fires at the foundry. There was something he’d been meaning to ask Mrs. Holtensland. What was it? He hardly remembered stumbling up the stairs and collapsing.
The next evening when he dragged back to the house in the same filthy condition, the maid sent him around to the back door. “People such as you don’t use the front door,” she hissed. “People like you shouldn’t even be here. Mrs. Holtensland is too kind for her own good, bringing home filthy immigrants like stray kittens. And with just as many diseases.”
Hjelmer blinked in astonishment. What had he done to make this woman resent him so? But the rebuke stung, getting under his skin like a bee stinger never removed. He recalled what had been bothering him the night before. He’d planned to ask Mrs. Holtensland for a recommendation on a place for him to rent. He hadn’t been planning to stay here indefinitely. He might be an immigrant, but he wasn’t dirty and ignorant. His mor would be wounded to her soul to hear one of her sons referred to as a filthy immigrant.
That night he scrubbed doubly long, but still he could see traces of grime under his fingernails. When he returned fully clothed to the kitchen, Cook bustled over and picked up his hands. “Uff da.” She shook her head. “There.” She pointed at a chair and Hjelmer sat. Cook didn’t say much, but when she did, everyone around her jumped to. She smoothed salve over the seeping flesh and applied another bandage, wrapping the strips of cloth around and around to cushion the palm and tying tight knots on the back of the hand. “Two, three more days and the calluses will form. Then you be good again.”
“Mange takk.” Hjelmer turned his hands both front and back. “You sure know how to bandage good. Never would have gotten through the day without them.” He thought to the filthy, bloody strips he had pulled off when he washed. “You want I should wash the used ones?”
“Nei.” She shook her head. “I do that. Leave them by the basin.”
Hjelmer turned in time to see the glare the maid daggered between his shoulder blades. He turned back to catch the look of disgust on the cook’s face.
“Pay no mind to her.” Cook levered herself to her feet with beefy arms pushing against her knees. The look she shot the maid could have fried eggs.
He left the room wondering at the attitudes of both the cook and the maid. Why was one so good to him, and the other would dump him in the mud without the slightest hesitation? He shook his head. Women!
“Mrs. Holtensland, please, I have something to ask you.” The two of them were again seated in the library after a supper that filled his belly and astounded his mind at the variety of it all. He had to speak before the warmth of the fire put him to sleep.
“What is it?” Mrs. Holtensland looked up from the needlepoint she worked each evening.
“I . . . I—please don’t misunderstand me. I appreciate all that you have done for me, far beyond any thing I can say. But I must—I mean, I can’t stay here.”
“Why not?” She looked at him over the rim of her glasses.
“It . . . it is not seemly. I mean, you took me in, and I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”
“Please, I have nothing to pay you with. Surely there is some place I can go that won’t put you at a disadvantage.”
“Are you not comfortable here?”
He looked at her like she’d struck him. “Of course I am comfortable. I have never lived anywhere so fine.”
“I see.” She continued to peer at him over her spectacles.
“I . . . I cannot pay”
She nodded. “I see,” she said again.
Hjelmer was glad she did, for he certainly didn’t. He should have just picked up his things and gone—but to where?
“I have a proposition for you, young man.” She waited for him to nod. “Out in the carriage house is a phaeton that was my husband’s pride and joy. After he died, I sold the horses because I can go anywhere I want on the El or the streetcars. As you’ll see, the carriage has fallen into disrepair. Above the carriage house are the quarters where the groom lived. Now, if you will refurbish that carriage, you can live in those rooms. If you run out of work on the carriage, now that spring is coming, there is plenty of work in the yard. Cook likes her kitchen garden turned over, and the gardener I employ cannot find time for it all. Oh, and you will continue to take your meals with me. I enjoy your company. Is that too much to ask?”
Hjelmer closed his mouth with a snap. His sister would have been teasing him for letting the flies in. “No, not at all. I . . . I—mange takk. What more can I say?”
“Nothing more is needed. Good night, young man.”
By the time Saturday night rolled around, Hjelmer had made an acquaintance with another young man, Tor Heglund, who also had no family of his own. After they picked up their pay envelopes, they followed the stream of weary workers out the doors.
“You want to join us down the street?” Tor asked.
“Where?”
“Down at the tavern. We have a drink or two, play cards, have a good time. Come on, you will like it. You’ll find only Norwegian spoken there.”
Hjelmer thought of the four dollars in his pay envelope. He’d won many pots on the ship when he played cards with both immigrant and sailor alike. It seemed like months since he’d had a beer. But he needed to start work early in the morning on the carriage.
Surely one drink wouldn’t take too much of his money. And after all, he would make more next week. “Ja, I will come. For one drink only.”
His pay check was one dollar lighter when he left.
That night he called himself all kinds of fool after ignoring the sniffs of the maid, blushing at the raising of Cook’s right eyebrow, and having to apologize to Mrs. Holtensland for being late for supper. Worst of all, he’d wasted a dollar. He’d have to get that back. The card tables and players at the back of the room marched through his dreams.
Guilt gave him speed in the morning, in spite of feeling like a tree being attacked by a flock of woodpeckers. Or was he banging his head on the log without knowing it? He went over the carriage, checking to see what parts needed to be replaced and what could do with only a cleaning or minor repair. The leather was split in places, the wood spokes and wheel pulling away from the steel rim. Everything needed painting. He looked around the carriage house and found a small forge, along with cupboards and shelves containing tools still in the same place the former owner had left them. He reached out and lifted down a plane, now rusty and dirty with disuse.
He traced the wooden frame. All it needed was some sandpaper, a bit of oil, and sharpening of the blade. Files of all shapes and sizes, hammers, screw drivers, all lined up waiting for him to come along and bring them back to life. What his far wouldn’t give for such a wealth of tools. He was deep into cleaning and refurbishing the work area when Fulla appeared in the doorway.
“Mrs. Holtensland wants to know if you are attending church with us this morning?”
“Ah.” Hjelmer thought fast. He had nothing to wear but the clothes on his back, since his others were soaking prior to a hard scrubbing. “Tell her no thank you. Perhaps another time.”
The woman sniffed and spun on her heel. Hjelmer thought he heard, “Well, I’m not surprised. Filthy heathen,” but he wasn’t sure. He stared after the steel-spined retreating body. Whatever was the matter with her?
By dinnertime, which was served later on Sunday, the workroom looked more like it must have in its former glory days. But Hjelmer looked as though he’d been rolling in the dirt he’d swept up. A cobweb stretched across his hat.
“I can’t be fetching you,” Fulla said when she came to announce dinner. “You aren’t in the kitchen when it is time to eat, you can go without.” She shook her head at his dishevelment. “And if you think we are going to wash your clothes, you can think again.”
The bee stinger returned. Hjelmer itched to tell her what he thought of her bitter tirades and he could feel his cheeks flaming at the effort to keep his mouth closed. It wasn’t his place to tell her what to do, after all.
Besides that, his clothes were already hanging on the line to dry.
“Mange takk.” He’d be polite if it killed him. The old bag. Some trolls were more friendly than she.
The week passed swiftly with the twelve-hour workdays at the foundry and his trying to manage some time on restoring the carriage. Hjelmer fell into bed each night with no energy left to think of either home or his destination. Friday night he told Cook he wouldn’t be there for supper on Saturday. He not only needed to win back what he’d lost the week before, he planned to add to his small store of cash.
Torlakson stopped by Hjelmer’s forge late in the afternoon and asked him how he liked working there.
“Ja, this is a good place to work.” Hjelmer delivered a ringing blow to the piece forming beneath his hammer and stuck it back in the forge to heat again. He nodded to the boy on the bellows. The extra whoosh of air made the forge glow hotter instantly.
“Keep on like you are, and you will prove your father right.”
Hjelmer stared at the man, barely able to keep his jaw from smacking his chest. “Mange takk, sir. He would be pleased to hear that.”
“See you stay out of trouble, then.”
“Ja, I am.” The thought of the coming card games rolled through his mind. Hjelmer watched the man as he continued down the row of forges, stopping to speak for a moment with each man. He’d overheard men saying what a fair man was Mr. Torlakson, and now he’d heard it for his own ears. Of course, he’d also heard two men cussing and grumbling what a slave driver the man was. But then one of them reeked of booze and the other came late. Said he’d been caught in a traffic jam.
Torlakson said, “Next time don’t come back.”
Hjelmer left the card game only one dollar down at ten o’clock. He’d planned to leave by eight, but at that time he only had two bits left in his pocket. He’d looked around the table to see delight glinting from the players’ eyes at the immigrant sucker.
It was time to turn the tables.
He won the next three hands. Tor clapped him on the shoulder. “Your luck turned, man. Congratulations.”
Hjelmer only nodded. Luck had nothing to do with it. He’d finally learned to read the other players, and like back on the ship, he’d set them up to believe the dumb kid didn’t know much about playing cards.
Sunday he again declined the invitation to church. Who had time for that? He had one wheel that needed new spokes and the metal rim shrunk to fit the felloe again. When the others left, he laid the wheel flat on the ground and stacked dry wood mixed with coal around and over the rim. He set the finished spokes into the hub and pegged the wooden rim into place again. When the gardener returned from church, he joined Hjelmer in setting fire to the circle of stacked wood. When lit, the fire burned hot, setting the entire metal rim aglow. When it was hot enough, the two men lifted the rim out with tongs, set it over the wooden wheel, and sprinkled water on it to cool. Then, again with the tongs, they lifted the newly rimmed wheel and put it upright in a tub of water, turning it to cool the entire rim. The now shrunken metal fit like a new skin.
“You sure do know what you are doing,” the gardener said, admiration coloring both his words and face.
Hjelmer nodded, running the circular traveler around the rim to make sure it was now the proper size. “My far set many a wheel. He always said his sons would never want for bread if they could set a wheel, shoe a horse, or carve a kitchen tool.”
“Your far is a wise man.”
Hjelmer nodded. More and more he was beginning to appreciate that.
The thought of his far brought a stinger of guilt. What would he say about his son’s gambling? Plenty, no doubt, and none of it would be good.
Hjelmer set the wheel back on the axle and stood back to admire his handiwork. The frame was ready for paint. Someday, he promised himself, someday I will have a carriage like this and a pair of fine bay trotters to drive. No more dumb and filthy immigrant me. I’ll have my free Dakota land and maybe a wife to boot. He’d always thought Kaaren a comely woman, and now she needed a husband. She wasn’t that much older than he. This way they could keep the homestead within the family.
Saturday night he doubled his money.
“You lucky dog,” Tor said, clapping him on the shoulder again.
“A fair man would let us try for our money back,” one player grumbled.
“Next week.” A man, huge by even Norwegian standards, tented sausage fingers and stared at Hjelmer out of ice blue eyes. “He can’t win ’em all.”
Hjelmer stared back. “It’s just a game, Swen. See you next Saturday?”
“Ja, next Saturday. Unless you vant to come before then.”
“Not me. I’ll wait till payday.” The two young men finished their beer and headed out to the rain-slicked street.
“I wouldn’t want that giant looking at me like that.” Tor shuddered. “He’s a mean one, he is.”
When Hjelmer declined the church invitation again, Mrs. Holtensland looked at him over her spectacles. “I am certain your mor made sure you were sitting in the pew every Sunday. You have been confirmed, have you not?”
“Ja, I have, and ja, Mor would be very unhappy with me. But you asked me to refurbish the carriage, and this is the only day I have any length of time.” His smile could have melted a heart of cast iron. “As soon as I’m finished, I’ll go to church with you.”
The maid sniffed and glowered at him from behind Mrs. Holtensland’s back. He tipped his hat to her as they walked out the hall.
Cook chuckled behind him. “That Fulla, she sure got it in for you.”
“Why? I never did her no harm.”
“I ain’t be one to carry tales, but let’s just say that apple-cheeked young men with angel eyes and a devil’s smile remind her of something she’d rather be forgetting.” Cook lumbered back to her kitchen and the dough she had rising for dinner rolls.
Hjelmer shook his head. A few more weeks of doubling his money, and he would be heading west anyway. In fact, one big pot could set him on easy street. He spent the morning painting the carriage. The main body gleamed in new black paint, and the red wheels gave a look of class with just a bit of daring. He’d already patched the upholstery and worked enough saddle soap into the leather to make it smooth and supple again. If only there were a team to hitch, he’d drive the ladies to church next Sunday.
“I hear you are close to finished with the carriage,” Mrs. Holtensland said one evening at the supper table.
“Ja, you will be pleased, I am sure.” Hjelmer laid his fork down. “Shame you don’t have horses for it.”
“If I bought horses, would you stay?”
Hjelmer blinked and felt his face go slack. “Bought horses? I thought you planned to sell the carriage.”
“I did . . . I do . . . Don’t fret, it was just a thought. Sometimes I remember my husband’s pride in the carriage and pair, and . . .” She fluttered her hand at him. “No, just forget what I said. I must be rambling tonight, getting to be an old woman.”
“You’re not old.”
“Let’s just say, my better years are behind me.” She straightened her back. “Now, let’s talk about something else. It is so rare you don’t run right out to work on the carriage. I have missed our evening visits. Tell me, how is it going with your English classes?”
“I haven’t begun them yet. Maybe after I finish the carriage.” Hjelmer wanted to add, And besides, I am getting along just fine without taking language classes, but he didn’t.
Mrs. Holtensland looked at him over the rim of her spectacles. “All the rest of the country isn’t as benevolent to Norwegian immigrants as here in Brooklyn. You must keep that in mind.”
“Ja, I will, and I thank you for your concern.” He waited for her to lay her napkin down and begin to push her chair back. That was the signal that he could rise. When she did so, he pulled her chair back, and they walked from the room. “I have a few things left to do on the carriage. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
That night, just before he fell asleep, he thought again to what his benefactress had said. If he wanted, he could probably stay in Brooklyn. He had a good job that paid more money than he had ever dreamed possible, a fine place to live, and a way to make extra money to spend as he wished. With a little encouragement, Mrs. Holtensland would buy a team, and he could drive around the city. Perhaps even out into the country for a Sunday outing. Could life get much better than this?
He deliberately lost the first hand on Saturday night. And the second.
“Things not going so good tonight, eh, kid?” one of the men asked.
Swen only quirked one black eyebrow. He wore the dark look of the Norwegians of the far north known as the Sami.
Hjelmer only shrugged. “Deal.”
He won the hand, raking in the pot with a nonchalant motion. “Mange takk. That helps make up for the earlier.”
He won the next. The stash of coins grew in front of him.
Swen dealt the next hand calling for Five Card Stud. He dealt one card face down to each of the players. Hjelmer checked his card, a three. The next round dealt face up only gave him an eight. He glanced across the table at Swen’s hand. Ace up.
“I’m out,” he said, pushing his cards toward the center of the table.
Swen nodded, dealt three more times around and raked in the pot. He stared at Hjelmer, his dark eyes never blinking, then passed the deck across.
“Five Card Stud again.” Hjelmer split the deck and spliced the cards at the corners, the whir of the shuffle sounding loud in the silence. He dealt one card face down to each player. By the second round he had two Jacks, one up and one down. Swen showed a King and bet four bits. One player folded, leaving four.
Hjelmer dealt a face up round again, giving himself only a queen and the others no better.
Swen raised the bet to six bits.
“Too rich for my blood,” said one of the others.
“Mine too,” Tor agreed.
On the next flop, Swen paired his King and Hjelmer his Jack. Knowing he needn’t, Hjelmer checked his hole card. He knew that third Jack, the Jack of Clubs hadn’t gone anywhere. But he could feel the tension tighten.
“Dollar.”
“I call it.” Slowly, deliberately, Hjelmer peeled the remaining cards off the deck. A five of Spades slipped in front of Swen and the last Jack showed in front of Hjelmer. Four Jacks!
One side of Swen’s narrow lipped mouth lifted in what might have passed for a smile. “I see three Jacks with a Queen kicker, an impressive hand. Your bet!”
Hjelmer kept his gaze frozen on Swen’s. He slid out two dollars.
Swen’s smile twitched. “I got those three Jacks beat, which means I got to have that third King in the hole, don’t it? Well, I’m a gonna see your two lousy bucks and raise ya another two.”
Hjelmer sat without moving a muscle for a good thirty seconds. He didn’t even breathe. This was it. His four Jacks gave him the lock on the hand.
Swen’s mouth twitched again and nearly broadened into a real smile.
Throwing four silver dollars in the pot, Hjelmer softly but firmly whispered. “I’ll see your two dollar raise and bump you back two.”
Swen’s eyes narrowed, his brows meeting in a straight gash across his forehead. His voice deepened, like a bear about to roar. “You better not have another Queen in the hole for a full house. If you do, I know you been cheating, dealing seconds like I been suspecting.” He propped his elbows on the table. “I call your two dollar raise. Whatcha holding?” He flipped over his hole card. “There’s my third King.”
“I don’t have a Queen in the hole.” Hjelmer could hear an intake of breath by the spectators.
Swen let a touch of unholy glee light his black eyes for only an instant.
As he rolled over his hole card, Hjelmer murmured. “What I got is four Jacks.”
The sparkle turned to lightning. “You been cheatin’!” Swen exploded. He slammed both hands on the table, and a roar of obscenities blistered the ears of those at the table and anyone within a city block. “I’m going to cut your heart out and feed it to the fish. I’ll kill you, you . . .” Swen reached across the table with both hands, fingers wide to clamp around Hjelmer’s neck. The young man ducked sideways, scooped the remainder of his winnings and leaped to his feet.
The monster came at him, tables, chairs, and bodies flying in all directions. One pile-driver fist caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder, and Hjelmer staggered back, saved from crashing to the floor only by the arms of his friend.
“Run!” Tor yelled in his ear.
The two pelted out the room.
“I’ll find you, you thieving whelp. . . .” The thunder behind them leant power to their legs. “You can’t run far enough,” the giant bellowed behind them. “I’ll find you.” The string of Norwegian curses promised all manner of damage to his person, his family, and anyone in any way connected to him.
After a mile of turns and pounding feet, Tor leaned against a wall, struggling to catch his breath. “He means it.”
“Naa, it will blow over by Monday. I won that hand fair and square.”
“I know that, and you know that. But I saw Swen hit a man one time, and the man never got up again.”
“The police—”
“You think those Irish loudmouths care what happens here to us Norwegians?” He stood upright again. “You better get your stuff and head west to that homestead you told me about.”
The two walked on, feeling safe now that they could no longer hear the raging Swen.
“But my job—”
“Hjelmer, listen to me. That man will kill you. He said he would and he meant it. You took every dime he had. And worse, you made him look the fool.”
Hjelmer spun around. Was that footsteps he heard behind them? He saw no one, but the hairs on his arms and neck stood at attention.