An Untamed Land (18 page)

“Ingeborg, you’ll have to help Pearl in the dining room today,” Mrs. Johnson said a few hours later. “Amelia just went home sick;
we couldn’t have her contaminating the food.”

Ingeborg swung around from the stove where she’d been turning out flapjacks as fast as she could flip them. She needed to make new batter, too. Everyone in town must have come to the Headquarters Hotel for Sunday breakfast.

“But I can’t speak English well enough,” Ingeborg made excuse.

“You will deliver the food to the tables, and Daniel will clear away. We are short handed and will have to make this work.” Mrs. Johnson broke eggs into a large bowl to make more batter. “You’d best put on a clean apron and wipe that smudge of flour off your nose. I knew I should’a hired another girl when I had the chance.”

For a while there was a lull in the arrival of customers, allowing Ingeborg to keep up with her cooking. She put two hams in the oven for the noon meal and set Daniel to washing the pots and pans. But it wasn’t long before she was dishing sausage, eggs, and pancakes onto the plates as fast as she could flip the eggs in the pan.

“You help serve now.” Mrs. Johnson took over the position at the stove. “Table three.”

Ingeborg lifted the tray full of plates of food and backed out the kitchen door into the dining room. She turned and headed to the right, where four men sat around the cloth-covered table, all wearing shirts and waistcoats that spoke of the East. She carefully placed a plate in front of each guest, then looked up to find a pair of familiar brown eyes studying her.

“Mrs. Bjorklund?”

“Ja.” She felt her heart leap within her breast. “Mr. Gould!”

T
he weather held clear for the trip north. Roald and Carl followed the well-worn trek up the east side of the frozen river. The first night, they reached Georgetown and asked at the livery if they could sleep in the hay in the barn. Rolled close together in their quilts and covered with hay, they slept comfortably through the night.

In the morning, they ate cold bread from the sack Kaaren had packed and welcomed the hot coffee the livery owner had brewing on the back of his forge. Thanking the man for his hospitality, Roald and Carl gathered their things, mounted, and headed out.

Long before the sun reached its zenith, the men dismounted and walked for a time, both to warm themselves and to save the horses. The wind kicked up snow granules to sting their faces even as the sun warmed their backs.

When they mounted again, Roald let his thoughts return to Ingeborg. Would he ever understand her, or was it man’s lot to . . . he shook his head. She sure had gotten her dander up. All she had to do was tell them about the Mainwrights when she first walked in the door. Would have saved a heap of time. He looked over at Carl, who appeared half-asleep. Keeping their eyes closed enough to not become snow blind and yet stay awake took some doing.

They stopped that night in an abandoned soddy. “Why you suppose these folks left?” Carl asked when he came in from caring for the horses.

Roald blew on the bit of flame he’d finally coaxed from his flint and the pile of tinder he’d shaved so carefully. He added other sticks and gradually some larger pieces they’d broken off a tree. Soon they had a nice fire crackling. They both held out their hands to the heat.

“Maybe they got sick or just didn’t want to work hard enough.
Like Probstfield said, not everyone is cut out to prove up a homestead in Dakota Territory.”

“Maybe we should look into this one.” Carl turned around to get some heat on his backside.

“Nei, too close to the neighbors. We couldn’t add enough land to our original section.”

“Ja, you are right.” They boiled some of their dried meat in the coffeepot and drank the broth too. Along with the cornmeal mush they made, they both were filled. Exhausted from the long ride and warmed by the hot food, they rolled up in their quilts in front of the fire and, quickly drifting off, passed a peaceful night.

Late the third night, cold clear through and wishing for some hot food and coffee, they crossed the bridge into Grand Forks.

“We should have stopped back at that soddy,” Carl said as he slid off the horse in front of the livery stable. He clutched the horse’s mane to keep from crumbling to the ground. “My feet have no feeling whatsoever.”

“Ja, perhaps we should have waited out the cold.” Roald tried moving his own toes but couldn’t even tell where his feet were. They should have gotten off their horses and walked more often. He shuffled his boots on the ice-packed snow. The horse snorted and stamped its feet.

“Ja, you are hungry too. As soon as I can move, you will go inside and be fed.” Slowly the feeling came back, burning and piercing like miniature knives cutting his flesh. He ignored the pain, grateful he had the feeling back in his feet. Many men had lost their feet from frostbite, as well as other parts of their faces and hands. They would have to be more careful.

Roald pounded on the stable door, waited, and pounded again. Surely the owner had at least a hired man sleeping on the premises.

Finally the door slid open a crack, and a tousled young man eyed them balefully. “Yer out kinda late, ain’t ya, mister?”

Understanding the tone but not the words, Roald answered, “Our horses need feed and hay.”

“All right.” The boy switched to Norwegian and pulled the door back on its runners just far enough for the horses to come through.

The warmth of the barn felt like a summer’s day compared to the frigid air outside. Roald inhaled both the heat and the smell of horses, hay, and manure, overlaid with the acrid odor of the now silent forge. He led his horse after the boy and tied the weary animal in the appointed stall.

“That’ll be two bits for each horse. You can pay Jorgeson in the morning.”

“Ja, that will be good. And might my brother and I sleep in your haymow?”

The boy dumped a mound of oats in each feedbox and added a forkful of hay. “I guess, but don’t go lighting any lamps or smoking. Jorgeson has strict rules about smoking in the barn.”

“We do not smoke,” Carl assured the boy, then turned and shook out the quilt he’d been sitting on and folded it over his arm. “Do you have hot coffee? Or food? We will be glad to pay.”

“No, the fire went out hours ago.” He pointed to a ladder leading to a square hole in the ceiling. “You can sleep up there.”

“Coffee would have been mighty good.” Carl pulled more hay over their quilt-padded bodies. His rumbling stomach said more than his words.

“Ja, that it would,” Roald replied.

Finally, with the combined warmth of their bodies, along with the quilts and the hay, they fell asleep.

In the morning, they brushed the hay off their clothes, and after asking directions of the blacksmith who owned the livery, they headed for a small building up the street. When they had stuffed themselves full of pancakes, eggs, and ham, they continued on to the land office.

To their frustration, no one in the office spoke Norwegian.

Roald clenched his fists and jaw. The morning was wasting.

“I’ll go get Jorgeson,” Carl said. “He can interpret for us.”

Roald nodded and turned to study the map of Dakota Territory hanging on the wall. He located Fargo and traced their route up to what he knew was Grand Forks. Beyond that, few towns dotted the prairie land. At the northern border lay Pembina, too far north for his liking. He traced the rivers that flowed into the Red Valley. Land along the river with trees and good prairie to turn under for wheat; that was what he wanted. There looked to be plenty of it available.

Time seemed to drag like a dull plowshare. When Carl and the blacksmith finally returned, Roald had reminded himself of the virtue of patience more times than he wanted to count.

“He needed to finish shoeing the horse first,” Carl said by way of apology.

“Mange takk. I’m grateful to you for coming.”

“Us Norwegians, we must stick together.” Jorgeson brushed a clump of manure and straw off his leather apron. “Glad to be of
some help. We need good farmers up here.”

But when they asked about homesteading the land to the north, the clerk simply shrugged. “That land is not platted yet, so if you find a piece you like, you cannot file on it. You’ll have what’s called squatter’s rights.”

Squatter’s rights? The question burned in Roald’s brain. Squatter’s rights wasn’t enough. “So, how do we make it legally ours?”

“When the surveyors go through in the spring, you’ll have to come back here and file your claim. You’ll pay your fourteen dollar fee at that time, and we’ll draw up your documentation. You’ll get your final deed when you’ve proved it up.”

“In seven years.”

“Only if you do all the improvements you’re required by law to do.”

“I know that I am to build a house, break ten acres, and live on the land.”

“Yes, that is what the law says, but you must keep in mind that . . .”

“I must do more than that to live.”

Roald shot his brother a quick look and saw the small grin that indicated he recognized Roald’s heavy sarcasm. That mouse behind the window surely didn’t understand the Bjorklund brothers.

“We each want a quarter section of prairie and the same amount for a tree claim. All that is permissible?” Roald’s eyebrows were dangerously close to meeting, a sure sign he was not pleased with the tone of the official. “And yes, I know we cannot have all of that at once.”

“Yes, that is permissible . . .”

“Mange takk. We will find our land.” Roald turned and headed out the door. He was glad he didn’t understand what the man sputtered after them. Officious little prig. From the look of his hands, he hadn’t done a decent day’s work in his entire life.

The three men strode up the street to the smithy without a word, snow crackling beneath their boots and their breaths staining the crystal air for brief seconds. The sun turned the melting snow to flashing diamonds.

“Mange takk for your assistance.” Roald thrust out his hand and shook that of Jorgeson’s. “I will not forget that you took time to help a newcomer.”

“That is what the Good Book says—to befriend strangers. And anyone who comes from Norway is not a stranger, but a brother
from the past. I will look forward to shoeing your horses in the future.”

“Ja.” Roald nodded and dug in his pocket for the feed money.

Jorgeson shook his head and waved the coins away. “You keep that. You will need it more than I do right now.”

“But . . .”

“No, you do something good for a stranger, and he does something good for someone else, and the cycle goes on. Go with God.” The smithy left them standing by the stalls of their horses and went to pump the bellows on his forge.

“That is a good man.” Roald lifted down his bridle from the peg on the stall post and patted the big bay on the rump. “Easy, boy, now we must get back on the trail. Move yourself over like a good boy.”

Within a few minutes, bits jingling and hoofs crackling the icy road bed, they headed northward out of town, following the stagecoach road to Manvell.

Three days later, after having scouted the Turtle and the Forest Rivers, they still hadn’t found the perfect place. Some of the land they wanted was already taken, and other sections had too many settled farms already in the vicinity. Each night they found a soddy, or in a rare case, a log or frame house to beg shelter. And in the ways of the prairie, they were always made welcome. In some places they found fellow Norwegians and could talk and share the news they’d heard. In others, nods and smiles were the best form of communication, but the people freely shared what they had, proud to show off what they’d accomplished.

Late one afternoon they could see black clouds building on the western horizon, and the wind no longer teased their horses’ manes but tried to tear the hair from their necks. While the men hadn’t planned to stop so soon, they turned their horses to the east. Off over the rolling snowdrifts, they could see a corral. As they drew closer, they knew the two largest drifts around the corral must be the sod house and the barn. The horses whinnied a welcome that was difficult to hear over the rising wind.

A dog barked at their approach.

Before they could dismount, a man who made Roald and Carl look like growing boys stepped from under the mound of snow connected to the corral.

“God dag.” His voice rolled around in a barrel chest and came out like thunder, but the smile that stretched from earflap to earflap made them forget the clouds had eaten the sun.

“God dag to you.” Roald stumbled a bit on his nearly wooden feet but met the man in between the house and the barn. The giant looked so familiar that Roald took a moment to study the roughhewn face. “Do I know you?”

“The name’s Ole Haugrud, and I left Oslo just two years ago. My brother, Swen, is planning on emigrating this summer. Where are you from?”

“Valdres. Did your brother work on a fishing boat in the North Sea?”

Ole chuckled deep in his chest. “He did and still does. You knew him, then?”

“We met.” Roald shook his head. “Who’d think in all this space we’d meet someone from so close to home.”