An Untamed Land (13 page)

When they reached Minneapolis, they would have to change trains again. Ingeborg awoke to hear Carl and Roald discussing the move. The thought of solid ground under her feet made her cautiously lift her head.

“Good, you are awake.” Kaaren leaned forward from across the seat. “Here, I have some flatbread for you. A woman several seats up said if you eat this before you move, it will help the sickness.”

Ingeborg looked at the offered treat. At this point she would try anything. Is this what Kaaren had felt like on the ship? No wonder she’d moaned about turning around and going home to Norway. Ingeborg nibbled on the dry bread, gratefully keeping her eyes closed and her mind off the bustle of passengers preparing to disembark. She should be helping, not lying here like an invalid.

“Don’t even consider moving.” Kaaren leaned forward again. “It is our turn to care for you.”

Ingeborg felt so much better, she smiled in return. “You will make a good schoolteacher someday. Who could not do what you say when you sound so stern?”

“Please, God, that I may.” Kaaren shifted the baby in her arms and, getting to her feet, placed the sleeping infant beside Ingeborg. “Here, if you must feel useful, mind Gunny. Then I’ll have my arms free to carry something.”

For a change, Ingeborg did as she was told. As she cuddled her tiny niece to her breast, she closed her eyes to better experience the joy of it. Soon she would have her own baby to hold, to nurse, and to love.

Dawn had barely tinted the gray sky when they pulled into the station at Minneapolis. By this time, each station on this halt-and-hurry journey had run into the next in her mind, all of them a dissonance of huffing trains and human misery.

As soon as they entered the vaulted waiting room, she looked around for the necessary.

“Over there,” Carl pointed, correctly interpreting her distress.

“Mange takk.” Ingeborg pushed Thorliff toward his uncle and told him to hang on to Carl’s hand. By the time she found the necessary after traversing a long marble-floored hall, she also found fresh stains.

Panic returned with a vengeance. So easy it was for others to say that if a babe didn’t go full term, surely the loss was God’s will. So easy to say—except when it is your own. A son that your husband has dreamed of, counted on. A son to inherit the land they were striving for, crossing continents to discover, and giving up home and family for the chance at a new life.

All these thoughts passed through her mind as she unpinned her hair and let the braids fall to their full waist length. The thoughts continued to thunder through her mind while she unplaited the golden ribbons, brushed out the waves, and rebraided her hair. By the time she pinned the coronet back in place, the thoughts and fears had calmed to murmurs, and except for the ache in the small of her back, she felt more like herself than she had for days.

She could hear her mother’s voice as clearly as if she stood right behind her shoulder.
This too shall pass, Ingeborg
. What she would give for her mother’s wise presence right now.

“Are you all right?” Kaaren came up behind her and laid a hand on Ingeborg’s shoulder.

“Ja.” Ingeborg kept the fearful secret deep in her heart. She’d
have to trust the baby to God’s will, for Kaaren didn’t need any more to worry about than she already had. Their gazes met in the mirror—two women trying with all their strength to endure an arduous journey that sent weaker sisters screaming for home. Or just plain screaming.

Ingeborg raised her hand and, with gazes locked in the mirror, patted her sister-in-law’s comforting hand. “We will make it. The end of the journey isn’t too far off now.”

Sitting on the wooden seats in the waiting room, Ingeborg took out the letter. Maybe writing would keep her mind off the queasiness in her stomach. She reread the page she had already written. Yes, she had told them of the difficulties of the voyage but made light enough of it that others wouldn’t be too afraid to come. A smile quirked the corner of her mouth at the recounting of her adventure in New York. Mor would be scandalized, but it made for a good story. She dipped her pen in the small inkpot and continued the tale of their adventures so far.

“We are in Minneapolis, Minnesota, now, and the end of the journey is in sight. Roald is anxious to find our land so we can begin planting as soon as the snow is off the ground. Our good news is that we will have another member in our family come fall next year. Of course, Roald plans on our having a son.

“I miss you all terribly”—Ingeborg felt the tears fill her eyes—“I cannot tell you how much. Greet each one for us, and please continue your prayers in our behalf, as we do for you daily. Your loving daughter, Ingeborg.”

She blew on the ink and folded the flimsy paper carefully, inserting it in the envelope she had already addressed. If only she had the money herself for the postage, so she wouldn’t have to ask Roald for it. He had already made it clear that letters to home were a luxury.

She sighed.

“What is it?” Kaaren looked up from nursing the baby.

Ingeborg held the letter up.

Kaaren reached out and took it. “Say no more. Carl will mail this for us. You know that all of our families will pass it around until the letter is worn out.” She called Carl over and explained what she wanted.

Carl looked up with a smile and a wink. Both of them warmed Ingeborg’s heart. He slipped the envelope in his pocket and strode
across the marble floor to ask a question of the man behind the ticket window.

Thank you, God, for that man who goes out of his way to make the journey easier for us
.

Roald was nowhere in sight.

Later that afternoon, with snow still falling, they boarded the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway for Fargo, Dakota Territory, by way of Glyndon, Minnesota.

Carl and Roald settled their families in the facing seats and excused themselves to join a group of men gathered around the stove in the rear of the car. Most of the men spoke Norwegian and were comparing the weather outside to the storms back in the old country.

“You think it will turn into a blizzard?” asked one of the men, a wad of snoose ballooning his cheek. He sent a stream of amber liquid toward the brass cuspidor at the base of the stove. Most of it landed in the right place.

“The way I hear it, blizzards in Dakota Territory make any others look like mild snow flurries. The winds come down from the north, and there’s nothing to stop them.”

Roald nodded. “Ja, that is what I hear too. But we came through some heavy snows before Chicago, and we did just fine.” He scratched the side of his nose with one finger. “What have you heard about land in the Red River Valley?”

The discussion continued for a time, but when no new information was forthcoming, Roald excused himself and returned to his family. Ingeborg sat staring out the window, gently stroking the curls of the little boy who lay asleep with his head on her lap. She had some color back in her cheeks and looked to be about half asleep herself. Kaaren and her babe both slumbered in the seat facing him.

Roald lifted Thorliff, so he now held the sleeping child in his lap. After nodding to the question on Ingeborg’s face, he lay his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. Like Ingeborg, Anna had been ill with their second child. Would Ingeborg suffer the same fate? He shuddered at the painful memory and jerked his eyes open. He turned to study the profile of the sober woman beside him. Where had her smile gone? With a pang, he realized he missed it.

But the Bible says women are to suffer in bearing children; that is their lot
. He sighed. He wanted sons so badly, strong sons and beautiful daughters.
Lord God, keep this woman of mine safe. And our babe.
He stroked Thorliff’s leg and his shoe.
And thank you for this fine son I have
.

Roald placed his hand palm up on the seat between them. He watched as Ingeborg looked at him, glanced down at his hand and back to his face. A ghost of a satisfied smile touched her pale lips, and she placed her hand in his. Roald curled his fingers over hers and squeezed them gently.

Roald glanced back when peals of laughter burst forth from the keepers of the stove. Carl straightened from inserting another chunk of coal, and the laughter on his face told Roald who it was that was entertaining the small gathering of men. Unclasping her hand he laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder but put a finger to his lips when she looked up at him with a question on her face. For a change, those around them were either sleeping or knitting. One grizzled man leaned over a growing pile of shavings, industriously carving and smoothing a handle for a hand tool.

I should be doing the same
, Roald reminded himself, thinking of the carving tools his father had so carefully shined and sharpened before packing them in the flat wooden box. Chisels and knives, rasps and planes that had belonged to his father before him. All things that he could eventually pass along to his own second son, since the land always went to the first. Roald glanced out the window. He could see nothing but driving snow, so dense that it made the interior of the car darken like night.

The conductor pushed open the rear door and began lighting the lamps—a large one swaying from the overhead hook and smaller ones on the walls between the windows. The bite of lighted kerosene added to the already ripe odors of unwashed bodies, drying wool, and wet babies. Someone had brought Limburger cheese, its strong smell rising above the others.

Roald felt his stomach rumble at the odor of cheese. If only they had some of their good gammelost left from home. As soon as they owned a cow again, Ingeborg could save some of the milk and make cheese. She made such good cheese that surely they could sell the extra and perhaps pay for a second cow. He rubbed the side of his nose with a cracked finger. So many things to buy and do. And here they were slowed down by the snow again. Surely their plans of being on their own land by the first of March were as elusive as summer
clouds hugging the mountaintops above the fjords of Norway.

The train ground to its first halt well before midnight.

“All you strong backs get bundled up. We’ve got some shoveling to do.” The conductor stopped and threw another chunk of coal in the fire, then turned to address the women. “Make sure the coffee stays hot and the fire keeps burning extra smart to warm these fellas up when they come back in. It’s cold as the arctic out there.”

Carl and Roald staggered to their feet, shrugged into their heavy coats, and wrapped hand-knit scarves around their necks, ready to pull up over their faces to protect their skin and lungs from the biting cold.

The wind pummeled them and sucked their breath away as soon as they slid open the door. Snow pellets stung their exposed skin even as they wrapped their scarves tighter. They took snow shovels from the train attendant and plodded in a single line through drifting snow to the front of the train, broken into the semblance of a trail by the three men in front of them. Roald could see one of the men, but the two five feet in front of him had disappeared into a swirling white wall.

“Better rope up.” A man at the head of the engine screamed to be heard above the screeching wind and puffing train. Carl and Roald dutifully tied the ropes around their waists and stepped from behind the protection of the huffing black engine. The wind caught them and tried to hurl them back against the steel cow catcher on the front of the engine.

Roald said something to Carl, but the words were ripped from his mouth and flung to the far reaches of the icy prairie. Instead, he pointed ahead and dug his shovel into the waist-deep snow. He had a feeling the drifts would only get deeper the farther they went.

He dug until the bitter air sent his lungs into a coughing frenzy, and then he threw his weight into the shovel and dug some more. Hoarfrost beaded on his heavy brows and blocked his vision—what little was left from the snow swirling and driving in front of his eyes—until it was easier to dig with them closed. A shout beside his ear and a tug on his rope told him they’d finally broken through the first drift.

“You go on back inside,” the train employee shouted when the train pulled up even with them. “We have another crew to do the next one. If it gets much worse we’ll just have to shut her down and wait it out.”

Worse?
Roald brushed his sleeve across his forehead where the
sweat had turned instantly to ice. Never in his life had he seen a blizzard like this, and Norway was known for having some of the worst winter weather in the world.

When the men stumbled into the warm car, Kaaren and Ingeborg brushed off what snow they could with a broom and shook the ice coating off the men’s clothing as soon as it was removed.

“Ach, what has this storm done to you?” Ingeborg took a handful of snow from the back of Roald’s coat and rubbed the white spots on the crest of his frozen cheeks. Even in the short time he’d been out there, frostbite had already set in.

“Enough, woman.” He drew back, the sting making him flinch.