A New Day Rising (34 page)

athing Andrew in cool water brought down his fever. Haakan stood beside her, his presence a comfort in her fear. All the while she bathed the little boy's hot spotted body, she prayed for God to make him better and protect all the rest of them in case this was something dangerous.

"You know, Ingeborg, when Strand's baby had it, the spots were gone in a couple of days."

"You think I am overly concerned?" She wrung out the cloth and laid it on Andrew's tummy.

"No, I am just trying to make you feel better." He nudged her aside. "You go make supper, and I will do this."

Ingeborg raised her gaze to his. "You would do that?"

"Of course. Once he falls asleep, I will go do the chores. Thorliff has already started them." Haakan dipped the cloth in the basin. When he tickled Andrew's tummy, the baby smiled, but his eyes drifted closed, only to open and whimper for his mother.

After Haakan and Hjelmer had gone to the barn for the night, Ingeborg sat in the rocking chair holding the sleeping Andrew. Too easily the memories returned of that terrible winter when cool cloths were not enough to save Kaaren's two little girls nor Carl. A tear meandered down Ingeborg's cheek, soon joined by another. Gunny would be four years old now and Lizzie two, like Andrew. What good friends these cousins would have been. What do parents do when they don't believe in our Heavenly Father and a place where we will all be together again, she wondered. And the baby I lost, I will see him or her, too. God must have a special place for those unborn souls.

She tucked Andrew into her bed and leaned over to kiss Thorliff's cheek.

"'Night, Mor," Thorliff whispered, not even opening his eyes.

"'Night, my son." She stroked his hair back. The swelling had diminished somewhat in the bad eye and gone away in the other. His bruises showed black-and-purple, edged in green splotches. Would that all his bruises in life healed so easily.

Andrew twitched restlessly beside her, whimpering in his sleep. She laid a hand on his belly to feel him burning with fever. With all her strength, Ingeborg fought against the demons of the year before. She picked the child up and rocked him against her shoulder while she poured more water in a basin. Sitting in the rocking chair, she stripped off his nightclothes and dipped and wrung the cloth to spread on him till it, too, was hot.

Trying to keep Gunny, Kaaren, and Carl alive had taken the same motions, the only difference being that no blizzard howled about the house this time.

"Dear Lord, please." She could barely mouth the words. They kept pace in the frantic corridors of her mind. Gunny, Lizzie, Kaaren, and Carl so sick. Dear Lord, deliver us.

With both hands she grabbed back her sanity from the marauding wolf of depression and whispered her verses over and over. "God is my strength and my fortress. I will rejoice in God my Savior." And finally, as the little body on her lap cooled, and the child slept comfortably, she whispered the name above all names. "Jesus, thank you. Jesus. Jesus. Amen."

Haakan found her and Andrew asleep in the chair. He took the baby from her arms.

"No!" Ingeborg clasped Andrew to her breast. But when she opened her eyes and saw it was Haakan, she blinked and stared around the room.

"I was just going to put him in the bed. Why didn't you call me? I would have helped you."

"I ... I didn't think of it." She rubbed her gritty eyes with her fingertips. "Put him in my bed," she whispered. "I don't want Thorliff to catch whatever it is."

The next day while Andrew alternately slept, whimpered, and scratched, ingeborg resolutely kept her mind from the still little bodies she had laid to rest that dreadful winter and kept up her litany of prayer and praise. The time spent rocking Andrew gave her needed rest and time to pray for all the others of the family. "Thank you, Jesus" said over and over brought a song to her heart and music to her lips. "Thank you, Jesus" could be set to all kinds of melodies.

Within two days Andrew was back to full speed and calling her to come see. Everything was exciting for him, and he wanted to share his finds with both Mor and Tante Kaaren. Keeping track of Andrew was becoming more and more of a chore.

"It must have been a kind of measles," Kaaren said. "Scarlet fever would have lasted longer."

"I know. I am just so grateful that was all of it."

On Sunday, Hjelmer again left to visit the Baards.

"Tell Agnes and Joseph hello for me," Ingeborg called as the young man trotted Jack out of the yard.

' Ja, I will."

"And Penny, too." Ingeborg couldn't resist the barb. To that she received no answer.

"I have an idea," she said to Lars and Haakan later as they leaned back in their chairs, full from a meal of fried fish, thanks to the efforts of Thorliff and Baptiste the day before.

"What's that?" Lars asked.

"What if we made a three-sided fence, kind of a cage or platform, and attached it to the frame of the disc. That way the person could ride, and the added weight would drive the disc deeper."

Haakan looked at her through squinted eyes that showed he was giving her idea consideration. He leaned back in his chair. "It could be dangerous."

"Not really. Falling backward in case of an accident or something wouldn't be so bad, depending on how hard the ground was. With a waist-high or even higher railing, you could make it double-barred for more safety. Seems to me the chances of one getting flipped over the front would be pretty slim. If the team bolted for'some reason, you'd fall out the back, wouldn't you?"

"I can see you've given this some thought."

"Ja, I thought about a seat like the one on our mower, but one could get dumped easily that way."

"Speaking of which, we better get those teeth sharpened and the thing well oiled. The hay looks about ready to cut."

"Ja, and if ours is about ready, Joseph's must be ready now. His fields dry out faster." Lars polished a bowl he'd been carving for Kaaren.

Ingeborg started to interrupt but thought the better of it. She'd given them her idea, and now she would wait to see if something came of it. If she had her way, she'd be outside with the disc right now figuring how to make it work. But today was supposed to be a day of rest.

Later in the garden when she stooped to pull a handful of weeds, she could hear her mor's voice. "All the weeds you pull on Sunday will be double there on Monday." Ingeborg had never checked it out, but to be sure there were always more weeds every day. Her fingers itched to get the hoe and go at them.

Would hunting be considered work? No more than fishing, she decided. If Thorliff kept an eye on Andrew when he woke up from his nap, she could be at the game trail at dusk when the deer were going down for a drink.

She told Thorliff what she planned, and with Haakan still at Kaaren's talking to Lars, she slipped into her britches and left at a trot. One of these days, she would have to teach Thorliff to shoot the gun. While he kept them in rabbits with his snares and fish from the river, he had pleaded more than once to learn to shoot. So far, they hadn't dried any fish, just eaten all he caught.

Entering the woods that bordered the river was like stepping into another world. The leafy green bower shaded her from the hot sun now sinking toward its rest. Birds stopped their tweeping and twittering at her arrival but resumed as she walked on. Much of the underbrush had been cleared in their quest for firewood, so now slipping through the woods was much easier. The river sang its own song, more restful since the spring runoff was past. She watched the paddlewheel boat slosh its way downstream without hallooing it. The short stacks of wood Lars and Haakan cut had been purchased on one of the first runs. In other years the wood had gone a long way to paying for their supplies. Perhaps this winter Lars and Hjelmer would be able to cut enough again to make a difference.

Lars and Hjelmer. As she leaned against a rough-barked tree, she thought of the man who wielded an ax with such dexterity. If he were here to help through the winter, there'd be no end to the amount of wood to sell. She sighed. But he wouldn't be here, and there was no use wasting time dreaming about it. She pushed herself away from the comforting tree and made her way to the game trail, where she hunkered down in the brush behind a fallen tree they'd left there for this very purpose. Resting the rifle at the perfect angle, she settled down to wait.

Soon the birds began their music again, and the rustlings resumed in the underbrush. Ingeborg sat so still that a rabbit stopped not three feet, away, and raising on its haunches, nose twitching, it inspected her carefully before hopping on about its business.

With the setting sun, the woods deepened to purple, and the whine of the mosquitoes about drowned out the evening calls of the other flying creatures. A bat darted about, scooping up the flying bugs. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the buck stop and test the breeze. Two does followed him with their fawns-still wearing the spots of babyhood-at their sides.

ingeborg gripped the butt of the rifle, snugging it into her shoulder and lining the sights on the head of the buck. She used to go for heart or neck shots because they were more sure, but no longer. None of the meat or hide was destroyed with a head shot. Lars would be pleased with the antlers, too.

He took another step and paused. One more step and she had him lined up perfectly. She squeezed the trigger. The woods exploded with crows screeching, the roar of the gun, and the does bounding away. The buck lay where he'd stood. She quickly leaped over the log, and with knife in one hand and rifle in the other, she crept up on the prostrate animal. When she nudged him with the toe of her boot, he didn't move, but she wasn't surprised. He'd been dead before he hit the ground. She cut the jugular so he could bleed out and looked around for some saplings to cut for poles to drag him on a travois. Metiz had shown her how to create such a handy cart without wheels.

"That was some shot." Haakan stepped from behind a giant oak.

"Oh!" ingeborg put her hand over her heart. "You near frightened me to death. Why didn't you tell me you were here?"

"I'd have scared the deer away." He crouched beside her and shook his head in amazement. "You are an incredible shot. No wonder they let you do the hunting."

"Mange takk." Ingeborg slit the belly and carefully cut out the musk glands before gutting the animal. She tossed the intestines into the woods. "To feed the other creatures," she explained, keeping the heart and liver for their own meals.

"You want me to cut a pole? We can carry it together."

"If you'd like. I was about to make a travois." She wiped her knife blade off on some leaves and stuck it back in its sheath. She'd noticed he had his ax. He wore it like another arm and just as naturally.

Within minutes he'd cut a sapling and tied the feet of the deer to it with the vine of a creeper. They boosted the ends of the pole to their shoulders and started the half-mile trek for home. Ingeborg could feel the grin tip up the corners of her mouth. She couldn't stop it, but then she didn't try very hard. He'd come for her, come to help her bring home the deer.

He stopped, and she nearly stumbled at the jolt on her shoulder. He pointed off to the right and ahead of them. The gray wolf sat next to a tree, nearly invisible in the dusk.

"Don't worry, that's only Wolf." ingeborg sucked in a deep breath. The pole had grown heavy and the stop brought relief. To think of all the times she'd dragged the game back by herself.

"How do you know?"

"What other wolf would sit there like that? They'd be gone long before we saw them, or there would be a pack and they'd attack. But with all the game available now, they'd never attack." She raised her voice. "I left the innards for you back there. If you hurry you can get them before anything else does." The wolf faded out of sight, silent as a shadow.

"Well, I'll be. He didn't understand you." Haakan looked at her over his shoulder. "Did he?"

"Who knows? But he usually shows up when I've shot a deer or elk. He hunts, but more important, he keeps the predators away from my sheep and my family. Metiz says it's because he has accepted us as part of his pack." She could feel his doubts as if they were fingers touching her arm. So be it, he'll learn.

The next morning Ingeborg had moved the table outside so she could cut the meat in thin slices for smoking. She already had the haunches soaking in salt water to be cured and smoked. Thorliff had a good bed of coals going and was stringing the meat on the drying racks as fast as his mother could slice it.

"Mor, come see." Andrew called from the front of the house. When she didn't respond, he called again, more urgently. "Mor, come."

"Andrew, I will in a minute. Right now I'm busy."

"Please."

Shaking her head at his wheedling, she left the knife on the table and followed his voice. He stood next to the wild rose bush Roald had planted two years earlier. Taking her hand, he pointed to a pink rose, petals opened flat and the golden center reflecting the sun. "See, pretty." He looked up at her. "Mor's fowler." He had some trouble getting all his sounds in the right order.