An Untamed Land (48 page)

She felt a familiar surge of fury. It had not been Roald’s job to take care of the entire world, for heaven’s sake.

Her milk ran out at the same time the cow calved.

“Andrew will have to learn to drink from a cup, that is all.” She glared at the whiny baby who could crawl across the room faster than a beetle could scoot.

“If you’d . . .” Kaaren stopped at the glare now directed at her.

“Well, at least we’ll have plenty of milk for him. When he gets hungry enough, he’ll take it.”

But Andrew had inherited stubbornness from both sides of his family. By the third night of his crying and fussing, Ingeborg was about out of her mind. They’d tried dipping a cloth in milk and letting him suck. They’d spooned in gruel made of cooked oats and milk. They added molasses, then sugar. He’d drink just enough to take the edge off his hunger and then turn away. He pulled at her shirt, nuzzling her breast and crying until Ingeborg didn’t even want to hold him.

She fled to the barn, now understanding why the men had sought solace out there the first year in the soddy. No babies cried in the barn.

After all the chores were finished, she and Thorliff returned with milk buckets brimming. Another cow was due to freshen soon. They would have plenty of milk.

When they entered the soddy, all was quiet. Kaaren sat knitting in the rocker that had become hers. Andrew played with a sock full of beans on the rug at her feet. The aroma of bread baking and beans cooking filled the air.

“What did you do?” Ingeborg set the milk pails on the table.

Kaaren smiled up at her. “A glove and honey.”

Ingeborg stopped. She looked from the smiling baby to the woman who also wore a smile.

“You know those deerskin gloves you made for Roald?”

Ingeborg nodded.

Kaaren held up a cup with a funny-looking cap. “I cut a hole in the thumb, sealed the seams and stretched it wet over the cup. See, here’s the thong I tied it down with. Now he can suck. The honey made him like the milk and”—she raised her hands in the air—“we have one happy baby who already has a sweet tooth, just like his father and his uncle did.”

“How clever of you.” Roald had never worn the soft gloves she’d made so carefully. Instead, he’d chosen the knit ones inside the deerskin mittens. Ingeborg pushed aside both the thought and the lump that swelled in her throat at the mention of Roald’s name. There was no time for any more useless regrets. Besides, she’d vowed never to cry again.

Spring finally did come, and as soon as the ground thawed enough, they had the community funeral. Kaaren sobbed as they lowered one long box and two smaller ones into the ground. But there was no raw timber box for Roald. Dry-eyed, Ingeborg stood beside Kaaren, holding Thorliff’s hand. They’d chosen the southwest corner of the Bjorklund land, the place where Roald and Carl had agreed that one day they would build a school. Kaaren had insisted they build a church also, and finally the brothers had agreed. But instead of the two buildings so needed by the growing group of settlers, they started with a graveyard.

The prairie wind carried away the voice of Joseph Baard as he read the words. “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes . . .” He finished with the Twenty-third Psalm. Everyone joined in, their voices drifting across the burgeoning prairie. All, that is, but Ingeborg. As soon as the men began filling in the graves, she turned and headed for their wagon. She had spring plowing to do. The acres closest to the river
were dry enough to work. Let the others get together over food and talk if they liked. But she had no time; she had better things to do.

Day after day, Ingeborg plowed in the fields as though driven by an invisible force. She discovered that she could begin work with one team as soon as dawn lightened the sky, even before the first rooster crowed. She could drive them straight through until dinnertime, then hitch up the oxen and keep going until it was too dark to see the furrow. On bright moonlit nights, she could continue even longer. Her body grew hard as whipcord, and with the straw hat pulled down over her forehead, she could have passed for a man any day.

“There’s talk, you know.” Kaaren set the plate in front of Ingeborg with a thump. The children were long in bed, and she wanted nothing more than to be there also.

Ingeborg paused with her fork in the air. “Talk?”

“About you wearing men’s clothes and working the fields.”

Ingeborg snorted and dug into her stew. While she chewed, she buttered a thick slice of bread and took a bite. “What do they expect me to do? Give up the land and move to town so I can be nice and respectable like?”

“That isn’t a bad idea, you know.”

The fork clattered on the table. “Are you losing your mind?” She cut it off before adding “again.” “I don’t want to hear such talk ever again. We will prove this land or die trying.”

That night before undressing, she stood looking down at her sleeping sons. Was she losing them, too, in this battle for the land? She never had time for them anymore. She shook her head and breathed in a sigh of resolve. The land—she would save the land. That much she could control.

As spring passed into summer, Ingeborg withdrew into a world of her own making. She never spoke except in monosyllables, and then only when absolutely necessary. She never asked for help from her neighbors, and when it was offered by the Baards, she shrugged, and said, “Suit yourself.”

But Ingeborg did accept the help of Kaaren and Thorliff. It took all three of them to do the work of their land. As soon as Ingeborg finished plowing and dragging a five-acre section, Kaaren and Thorliff threw out the seed, and then she followed behind with the drag.
By the time they called it quits, they had twenty acres of wheat, ten of oats, and five of corn. Their garden covered another acre and a half.

No sooner had she finished the planting than Ingeborg began shearing the sheep. By the end of the day, her back ached so fierce she walked bent over, locked in the same position she stood for shearing. They kept enough to spin for their own yarn and shipped the remainder off on the riverboat to Grand Forks.

The Baards dropped by on their way to Grand Forks just before Ingeborg started to cut grass for hay.

“I have a proposition for you,” Joseph Baard said after they’d had the ritual coffee and Kaaren’s now famous egg cake.

Ingeborg nodded.

“How about we buy one of them ride-on mowers together? We could split the cost, and it would cut so fast we could both put up more hay than before.”

“How many horses to pull it?” Ingeborg broke off a corner of her cake and put it in her mouth. Sitting here was costing her precious hours.

“Two. By using both our teams and the mules, we could go about all day. They have a new fangled rake too, if you think we could manage it. Petar could probably get our money back hiring out after we done ours.”

Ingeborg stared at him, nodding her head. “You have a good idea. That way we could buy a couple more head of cows knowing we had the hay and grain for them.”

“Good, then I’ll bring it back out with me if they have one in stock. You want to do the rake too?”

Ingeborg looked over at Kaaren. Could they afford this without taking out more of a loan at the bank?

Kaaren nodded. “I have the egg and cheese money, and the young chickens are about ready to butcher. Mr. Hemlicher at the bonanza farm said he’ll take whatever we can bring him. I say let’s do it. Anything to make Ingeborg’s life out there easier.”

“Knowing her, she’ll just find more to do,” Agnes muttered, who was large with child.

Ingeborg refused to let the comment bother her. Agnes was a good friend, even though a mite outspoken at times.

Haying went so well that she had two stacks by each sod barn when they had finished. How much more pleasant the labor was when the two families joined together. She caught herself almost smiling at the three boys and their teasing. Though the youngest, Thorliff held his own both with wit and brawn.

One day shortly after the haying was finished, Ingeborg came back to the soddy for the noon meal just as a rickety wagon drove up, pulled by a horse that looked as if it might fall over at any time.

“Halloo, Miz Bjorklund.” Abel Polinski pulled his wagon to a halt.

Ingeborg turned from the grinding wheel where she’d been sharpening the sod-busting shares. She planted her hands on her hips and glared at him from under her hat brim. What a mistake his parents had made giving this sorry excuse for a man the name Abel.

Looking as rickety as his horse, Polinski climbed carefully over the wagon wheel and lifted a sack from the bed. “I found this when I got to plowing that stretch of land by the creek. I thought of you, that . . .” He stuttered to a close, stepping back from the fierce glare she didn’t bother to conceal. “Well, I thought you might recognize it.” He quit fumbling with the sack and held it out to her. “But then again, it coulda been something else.”

Ingeborg accepted the sack, a feeling of dread weakening her knees. “This is all you found?” Pulling out a warped and twisted bridle, she recognized it instantly. Carl had always braided the noseband a certain way. He said it gave the horse a better fit, but they all knew he just liked the look of it. “How closely did you search the area?”

“Wal, you know I ain’t been feeling so good, so I . . .”

Ingeborg took a step forward, her hands itching to loop the leather around his scrawny neck and twist. She understood now what people meant by seeing red. Rage roiled, red and black and shot with sparks like those she pounded off the iron.

“Show me!”

“Yessum.” He looked toward the house from which the smell of cooking floated, then turned and climbed back in the wagon. “You want to ride with me?”

“No, I’ll catch up.” She opened the door and told Thorliff not to bother with the horses today. He could go fishing if he liked. At his shout of delight, she added, “I’ll be back later.” She shut the door on Kaaren’s questioning look and went to the corral and bridled a horse. Throwing herself on Belle’s broad back, Ingeborg rode out.

As she’d suspected, Polinski hadn’t gotten far ahead of her. Should she have asked Kaaren to come help? But what if Thorliff found—no, she’d done the right thing.