A Land to Call Home (27 page)

Penny snorted.

“You think you could come help Kaaren tomorrow or the next day? If the weather holds, I need to make a last run to the Bonanza farm. I’d like Solveig to come with me.”

“Sure she can,” Agnes answered right quick, in case Penny tried to say no.

After the final good-byes, Ingeborg turned the sleigh toward home, thanking God for such a time as they’d shared. An idea popped into her head halfway home. They would have a barn dance in the next week or so at the first wood-framed barn in the area. She hoped Haakan would agree. She felt another surge of queasy stomach with the rocking of the sleigh on the way home. Tonight she’d better tell Haakan their wonderful news before he caught her throwing up and figured it out for himself.

“When?” he asked after stifling a shout of joy and hugging her hard. He’d propped himself up on one elbow so he could look down into her face. The bed creaked and rustled as he shifted his weight.

“Somewhere late in the spring or the beginning of summer.” She paused, loving the intense look she saw in his eyes. “If all goes well.” Her thoughts had swung to the baby they so recently buried.

Haakan nodded. “Agnes is doing better now?”

“Ja.”
How did you know what I was thinking?
She kept the thought
inside. So often he knew, just as she did with him. She reached up and stroked her fingertips down the side of his face. “You are pleased?”

“Oh, Inge, you have no idea.” He quivered under her loving fingers.

“Ja, I do.” She lifted her head to meet his lips. “This baby is a prayer answered for me too.”

The weather held still and cold so the snow stayed on the ground, but not so cold so as to be confining. The men finished off the roof of the soddy addition, cut a doorway through the sod wall to the main house, and built two sets of bunk beds along the walls. Olaf immediately began working on cupboards with real doors that closed for the third wall and nailed a board of pegs along the other. Shelves fit below that.

“I’ll make a cupboard for your kitchen this winter,” he promised Ingeborg. “You need more storage places that the mice can’t get into.”

“You do such fine work, I can’t imagine how we ever got along without you.” She fingered the leather hinges he’d attached to the doors.

“One day I’ll get time to pound out some iron ones, but these will do for now.”

“You want I should buy you some in St. Andrew?”

He shook his head. “No sense spending money for that. I can make them just as well.”

That afternoon Ingeborg took the three mattress tickings she had sewn out to the straw stack and, burrowing under the wet, pulled out dry straw and stuffed it into the mattresses.
One day
, she promised herself,
we will all have feather beds to sleep on
.

They had the sleigh loaded long before dawn lightened the sky. To the north the aurora borealis danced on the horizon and far into the heavens. Their breath made steam clouds in front of them.

“I could go, you know.” Haakan swung one of the smoked haunches into the straw-lined bed.

“I know, but I can do this, and that will leave you free to work
on the barn or your workshop. Think how it will feel to move the milk cows into that bright building. Line them all up at once instead of them taking turns.” She eyed the stack of cheese rounds. “With that many cows, we sure have been able to turn out the cheese and butter. You know, if we had some goats, I could make gammelost.”

Haakan’s laugh exploded on the frigid air. “And if you had herring, you could make sur sild. Inge, will you never quit?”

“Not as long as something can bring in money to pay off the land and our bills. Just think, only a few more months and the homestead will be proved up. The sooner I can pay off the note on the half section Roald bought, the sooner we can buy more.”

“And a steam engine for the lumber mill.”

“I know, I know. And it will be used for threshing too.” She tucked the edges of the hides in around their wares. “Perhaps I should take Andrew with me.”

“Let him sleep. You know he loves being in the barn with us men. I swear that if I gave him a hammer, he’d help put up the stalls for the horses.”

“He can’t begin too soon. That’s what my far always said.”

“He was right. Now you be careful, you hear? If the temperature drops or that north wind starts to blow, you stay somewhere warm.”

“I promise.” She held up her hand. “But I’ll be back after dark, so leave a light in the window.”

“If you’re not, I’ll come looking for you.”

With those words ringing in her ears, Ingeborg let him assist her up to the seat and slapped the horses’ reins. Solveig had better be ready.

“But I don’t want to go.” Solveig turned back again at the door, sending a pleading look to Kaaren. “You need help with the babies.”

“You know Penny is coming to help me.” Kaaren tucked an oven-heated rock into a sack. “This will keep your feet warm.” With that, she threw her heavy wool shawl around her shoulders and pushed her sister out the door. Solveig drew her muffler over the side of her face and across her mouth, effectively hiding the scar.

“See you tonight.” Ingeborg clucked the horses forward and waved to Kaaren.

Solveig didn’t say a word until after the sun was well up.

Ingeborg gave up trying to talk with her, wondering if this hadn’t been a bad idea after all. Thorliff and Baptiste had clamored to go. She should have let them come and left this unhappy soul at home.

The ford at the Little Salt River was frozen solid just as Ingeborg
expected. With the water so low in the fall, it didn’t take too many days of real cold to cover the sluggish river. The river looked more like a good-sized creek at this time of year.

The horses stepped out tentatively, but when the ice held, they trotted on across. Bob only slipped once and that did nothing more than kick Ingeborg’s heart into a fast tempo. She glanced at her companion to see Solveig clutching the edge of the seat with both hands.

“The Red won’t be frozen yet, so young MacKenzie will have the ferry running. His far owns the Mercantile. You’ll like the missus. She’s the one gave me that slip of geranium growing in my window.”

“Do they sell dress goods at the Mercantile?”

Ingeborg clutched at the reins, causing the horses to toss their heads and set the bells to ringing even more. Solveig had actually asked a question. “Why yes, and about anything else anyone needs. They bring their supplies in on the paddle-wheeler, you know, the one we traveled home on.”

“That seems like years ago.” Solveig shifted her injured leg.

“Ja, it does.”

By the time they reached St. Andrew, Solveig was looking around with interest and commenting on the things she saw. Ingeborg figured that a definite improvement. Perhaps there was hope for the young woman sitting beside her after all.

What Solveig didn’t yet understand was that as soon as the word got out there was a woman of marrying age at the Bjorklund farm, suitors, however suitable or not, would come calling. Had she thought to give George Carlson, manager of the Bonanza farm, an unexpected advantage? She shook her head at the absurdity of the idea. But the scar wasn’t nearly so noticeable now as Solveig thought, since time and the concoction applied by Metiz had done their healing work. Solveig was still a beautiful young woman.

MacKenzie’s son pulled the ferry, really a large raft, across the Red by way of the rope that lay on the bottom of the river until needed. The paddle-wheeler had stopped running for the winter several weeks before. The slow moving, mud-colored river flowed low like the Little Salt.

“Why do they call this the Red River?” Solveig relaxed again once the sleigh reached the Minnesota shore. The horses dug their feet in to pull the sleigh up the sloping bank. While wheels might have done better here, the mud allowed the runners to slip fairly easily.

“I wondered the same thing. Someone told me it’s because the
river looks red when the sun hits it just right. The silt in it causes that, I guess.”

Solveig gave her a raised eyebrow look.

Ingeborg smiled. “That’s what I thought too.”

When they arrived at the Bonanza farm, Mrs. Carlson, mother of the manager, George, came to the door as soon as the dogs heralded a welcome. “Why, Mrs. Bjorklund, how wonderful to see you. I was afraid our supplier was done for the winter.” She beckoned with her hand. “Come in, come in. One of the hands will unload and take care of the horses for you. Surely you have time for something to eat, a cup of coffee, at least.”

“It’s good to see you too.” Ingeborg swung down from the wooden seat, stamping her feet to get the blood flowing before she tried walking on them. In spite of the elk robe that covered their legs, her feet had gone somewhat numb. She came around the rig to help Solveig down. “Be careful. Your feet may be asleep.”

“If not frozen off.”

Ingeborg looked up in time to see a smile flit across Solveig’s face. She was joking! Solveig was joking. The smile brought back memories of the laughing young girl she’d known in Nordland.
Thanks be to God
. “No, I can see them. They’re still attached to the bottoms of your legs.”

Another smile. This one stayed long enough that Ingeborg could see the scar disappear in the smile lines so seldom used of late. Actually, the scar made the dimple that lurked there more obvious. She handed Solveig the crutch when she stood on solid ground, and together they made their way up the walk to the back door of the two-story square house, hugged by a wide porch on three sides. Solveig negotiated the four steps with ease.

“Mrs. Carlson, I’d like you to meet Kaaren’s younger sister, Solveig. She came to us from Norway a month or so ago.”

“My land, child, whatever happened to your leg?” Mrs. Carlson spoke Norwegian, albeit not well.

Solveig sucked in a deep breath. “I was hurt in a terrible train wreck east of Chicago. Many people died, so I am lucky to be alive.” She gestured to her leg. “It is healing. Soon I’ll be walking without my crutch.”

Thanks be to thee, oh, heavenly Father
. Ingeborg wanted to shout the praise from the top of the porch. Instead she removed her coat and gloves, knowing Mrs. Carlson would take them to be hung up. Solveig watched her and did the same.

“You just go right on in the kitchen there. That’s the warmest room in the house. I made a pot of soup this morning, and we will have a bowl of that. George should be in from the machine shed any minute now.” The guests turned to the sunny room where geraniums bloomed on the windowsills and the fragrance of something baking beckoned all to make themselves to home. A white cat snoozed on the braided rug by the polished wood range, yawning and showing its pink tongue as the visitors entered. A canary chirped from a cage beside the window.

Solveig looked at Ingeborg with wide eyes.
If only she could see the rest of the house
, thought Ingeborg.

“Sit down, sit down.” Mrs. Carlson, her black bombazine gown rustling with every motion, quickly set two more places at the round oak table, which was covered with a pansy embroidered tablecloth. The napkins wore matching pansies in one corner.

Someday
. Ingeborg renewed the promise to herself every time she came to this farm.
Someday I will have a kitchen like this, a house like this. Someday
.