An Untamed Land (51 page)

Ingeborg strapped Andrew into the sling she wore to hold him and joined them outside. A rocking chair shared space with a four-lid cookstove, the metal glinting in the setting sun. Sacks of flour, beans, sugar, and other staples took up more space, but the piece that drew Ingeborg’s eyes stood roped against the back of the seat for support. A lovely kitchen cabinet, with glass doors fronting the upper shelves, carved wooden ones covering the lower section, and a work space in between, took her breath away.

“Oh my.” She touched the white paint with a reverent finger. It had been a long time since she had seen such a fine piece. Roald’s father built wonderful furniture in the old country, but here, in America, they had been much too busy working their homestead to think about grand furnishings. Ingeborg ran her fingers over the smooth surface again. “How beautiful.” A decal of pink flowers with vines and leaves graced the carved trim on the top. The counter space of speckled enameled metal begged for a cook to roll cookies there.

“See the bins for flour and sugar.” Kaaren leaned over the edge of the wagon to point them out. “Have you ever seen anything so fine?”

“No, never,” Ingeborg said, shaking her head.

“And look at this.” Kaaren unwrapped the corner of a soft package. “Blue and white dimity. I hoped we could make my wedding dress from it. Will you help me?”

“Ja, of course.” Was it relief she felt, or regret? Ingeborg wasn’t sure.

Thorliff climbed up in the wagon. “Look, new plowshares and a bucket.” He heard a funny noise and, after looking up at Kaaren for permission, climbed over the sacks and opened a box that had holes in the sides. With a squeal of delight, he picked up a brown puppy with white spots on its back and chest. Both front feet sported white toes, and to the laughter of all, one eye was ringed in white. The puppy licked the boy’s chin with a pink tongue and peed down his shirtfront.

“Put him down to do his business,” Ingeborg ordered. Why hadn’t she thought to find a puppy for her son? The look on his face told her she should have. She would have to remedy that.

Thorliff set the fat ball of fluff on the ground, and it immediately
whined to be picked up again. “He already did his business”—he held his shirt away from his body—“on me.” When he picked the puppy up again, he got a nose lick that set him giggling.

“Do you like him?” Lars stroked the puppy’s soft back.

“Like him?” Thorliff hugged the little dog. “Like him?” His voice squeaked.

“Well, we thought as how you’ll be watching Andrew more of the time, you might need a helper. And this little feller’s mother and father are good sheep dogs. He’ll help you round up your flock.” He turned to Ingeborg. “That is, if it is all right with your mother.”

“Mor?”

The hopeful, pleading look on her son’s face would have melted a heart of Norwegian granite. “Ja, that is a fine idea.” Ingeborg reached for the puppy. “You will have to come up with a good name for him.”

“Paws.”

The three adults looked at the little boy in astonishment. “Paws?”

Thorliff held up the two front feet. “The spots, see. I don’t want to call him Spot or Shep, but Paws fits.”

“It surely does.” Ingeborg held the squirmy body up to her cheek, which also got a quick swipe. “He will be a good watchdog and sheepherder.”

Andrew babbled at them and reached for the puppy with a pudgy fist. His belly laugh at the quick doggy kiss made them all smile.

“I found a farmer who has a mule to sell, so we will have three teams again. And Baard said he wanted to buy a binder next fall with us. I saw something today, Ingeborg, that you will like. A plow you can ride on, like the hay mower. They said you can plow two acres a day with it instead of one, and it’s easier on the team.”

Ingeborg raised an eyebrow. “What is this world coming to?”

“You should take a trip with me to the bonanza farms. You wouldn’t believe the different kinds of machinery I saw in my threshing days. Some say we will be doing all our field work with steam engines one day soon. Horses, mules, and oxen will become obsolete.”

Ingeborg snorted. “I have a hard time believing that.”

“Wait and see.” Lars swung back up on the seat. “Jump on back, and we’ll go unload all this.”

“I have supper ready,” Ingeborg reminded them.

“Good, then we can come back here to eat. Are the chores done yet?”

“Mor and me, we finished them already.” Thorliff held the puppy close to his chest. “I have to show Paws the way to your house.”

“You better wait ’til he’s a bit bigger, or he’ll get lost in the grass. You ride along.”

Ingeborg sat with her feet dangling over the edge of the wagon.
Don’t be selfish
, she ordered herself.
It is a man’s place to take over the charge of our farms
. But part of her mind whispered,
But you’ve been running things just fine. We don’t need a man around here. What if he tries to take over everything?

“Oh, Ingeborg, I nearly forgot.” Kaaren dug in her reticule when they reached the other soddy. “Here’s a letter for you. I was hoping for one from Norway, but not to be.” She handed Ingeborg the crumpled envelope. The return postmark said New York.

While Kaaren and Lars hauled their supplies into the soddy, Ingeborg leaned against the wall and read her letter.

Dear Mrs. Bjorklund, I think of you often and wonder how my friend is doing on the Dakota prairies. I learned of your tragic loss and want to tell you how my heart aches for you. I know that our God is watching over you and keeping you safe and strong
. Ingeborg looked up at the cloud puffs so white against the cerulean sky. Mr. Gould thought of her. Wasn’t that a miracle? She continued reading.

My biggest news is that I have married in the last year. My wife’s name is Elizabeth, and we have known each other since we were children. My father is very pleased with the union, as Elizabeth is of a fine family. He closed with, Please accept our condolences. Your friend, David Jonathan Gould
.

Ingeborg put the letter in her pocket. She would read it again later.

When she answered it a few days later, she wished Gould well in his new life and thanked him for his concern. The long-overdue letter to her mother was much more difficult to write. In the end, she kept it brief also, knowing that her mother would read between the lines.

Ingeborg wrestled with thoughts about Lars over the days and weeks after the wedding. She tried not to feel resentful when he started taking over things, but it was difficult for her to realize that she was no longer responsible for everything. She
had
done a good job running the farm since Roald and Carl had died. The only antidote she found was the one she’d always used: hard work, and
more hard work. It wasn’t difficult to find plenty of that. While she preferred to be out busting sod, she now had a house to care for, cows to milk, and most of all, one crawling baby and a young boy to care for. Both of them needed meals and clean clothes and all the other things a mother usually did for her children, things which Kaaren had been doing the last months. While Kaaren repeatedly offered to help, Ingeborg stubbornly refused. After all, the newlyweds needed some time to themselves, and they had plenty to do on their own homestead.

Lars had cut trees down at the river and sunk posts for a corral adjoining their sod barn. He had started digging them a well, and the day the Baards came over to help, Ingeborg made sure she was out working in the field, just as she’d been the afternoon after returning from St. Andrew where the marriage had been performed in the church. She still felt pangs of guilt for not helping serve at the wedding party the Baards had hosted. She knew the entire community had come. Thorliff told her all about it, whether she wanted him to or not.

Would Agnes ever speak to her again? Did she care anymore?

As the days passed, the load felt heavier, and the cloud surrounding her grew darker. She helped with the fall butchering, drying and storing the produce from the garden, snapping corn off the dry stalks and tossing it into the corn crib Lars had built. She filled a bin in the barn so she could shell the corn for the chickens throughout the winter.

Cheese wheels were ripening in the root cellar, and since they now had a well, she could keep milk and butter cool in a bucket down there.

One day she left Thorliff and Andrew with Tante Kaaren and, taking the gun, set out to shoot a deer and hopefully some ducks and geese as well. The birds had been flying in trailing Vs, patterning the skies on their way south for weeks and setting her mouth to watering for roast duck or goose. They could use more feathers for feather beds to help keep them warm during the cold winter.

Sitting along her favorite game trail, she heard a twig snap behind her and turned to see what it was. Metis stepped from the brush into the small clearing; Wolf was pacing not far off to her right. She sat down beside Ingeborg and rested her arms on her knees. Between the two of them, they’d learned enough of each other’s language, mixed with a little English, to be able to communicate.

“My friend not well,” Metis said after the greeting.

“Ja, I am fine,” Ingeborg said softly so as not to disturb the game. She didn’t bother to ask Metis how she had found her. Wolf, lying under a bush and nearly invisible, would have seen to that.

Metis gave her a look that spoke volumes of disbelief. “You need a husband.”

“Who are you to talk? You’re alone and have been far longer than I.” Ingeborg could feel her anger stir.

“Me old, you young. You have young sons, need father.” Metis looked at her friend out of the corner of her eye.

Wolf raised his muzzle and sniffed the wind. Ingeborg caught his move and shook her head to signal silence. Two deer ambled down the trail, pausing on the edge of the open space. Downwind from them, Ingeborg knew that unless the deer saw the hunters, they wouldn’t detect them. She raised her rifle slowly and sighted down the barrel. If she waited a few seconds longer, she might be able to bring down both of them. One she would give to Metis.

The deer started forward. Ingeborg fired the first shot, dropped the leader, and fired again as the second deer leaped at the sound. It, too, fell.

“Good shoot.” Metis sprang to her feet at the same moment as Ingeborg, and together they ran to the fallen deer. One struggled to get up at their arrival, but Ingeborg shot it again while Metis slit the throat of the first to bleed it quickly.

With each of them working on a deer, they gutted them, being careful to remove the musk glands without nicking them. Being far from home, they threw the guts out in the brush for the scavengers. Once the deer were finished, Metis removed her hatchet from her belt and cut two long sticks for a travois. They lashed some crosspieces on with willow and loaded the deer aboard.

On the way back to the farm, Ingeborg made several detours to bring down three geese and a brace of ducks, leaving Metis to pull the travois.

“You need some rabbit or fish too?” Metis pulled steadily.

Ingeborg looked at her, ready to defend herself at the implied criticism, but shook her head. Metis wore that glint in her eyes that said she was teasing. “Not today. But some rabbit pelts would make a fine coat or vest for Andrew.”

“I make that, hood lined with fur. Keep him warm.”

“Thank you. You will take one of these deer.”

“No, you need.”

“Metis, you have done many things for our families, just say
‘thank you’ and take the deer home with you. I don’t have time right now to work with two deer.”

“You give to . . .” Metis stopped and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, disappearing into the wrinkles that grooved her cheeks. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.” For some reason the ever-present cloud seemed to have lightened just a little.

But as the days grew shorter and colder, and Ingeborg could no longer take Andrew out of the house with her, her temper shortened too. Everything seemed to grate on her nerves: the wind whistling about the eaves, Andrew’s whining with cutting new teeth, the stove going out in the middle of the night, snow that didn’t come to cover the ground, and snow that didn’t quit falling for days when it did. Paws got under her feet, as did Andrew, and Thorliff looked as if she’d struck him when she told him to keep them away while she was cooking. The space that had seemed so large when Kaaren moved back to her own soddy now closed around her like a pit. At least in the barn, the animals didn’t argue or cry to be fed or held.

When the neighbors gathered to discuss building a school and also using it for a church until they could build one, she resolutely refused to go. “I donated the land, that’s enough,” she told Lars when he came to offer her a ride with them.

By now, the man knew the folly of arguing with her. “Suit yourself.” He shook his head, and after patting Thorliff’s head and tweaking Andrew’s nose to bring forth the belly laugh, the man left.

Thorliff stared wistfully out the window. “Can we go to Tante Kaaren’s?”

“No, the weather is too bad for Andrew to be out. Maybe when it warms up a bit we can go.”

“Can I have a cookie?”

“You know they are all gone.”

“You could bake some more.”

Ingeborg looked up from the harness she was mending. She pounded one rivet in place and then the next. Andrew, now walking, toddled into her legs and clung. His nose was running, and he had a bruise on the right side of his forehead where he had fallen against the corner of the trunk the day before. When he rubbed his face on her pants, she made a sound of disgust and, digging a bit of cloth from her pocket, wiped his nose and then wiped the smear off her clothing.

“Uff da,” she muttered and picked up the child. He was soaked
again, so she changed his diaper, using the next to the last clean one. She hadn’t taken time to wash any for several days. She set him back down in the middle of the bed.

“Come play with Andrew while I haul water,” Ingeborg said to Thorliff.
How could I forget such an important thing? Every woman knows babies come first
. But lately, it seemed that everything needed to be done first. She was falling more behind every day.