Wild Heart on the Prairie (A Prairie Heritage, Book 2) (7 page)

“It is good to hear words we can understand,” Karl declared
after introducing their families. “We have two claims across the creek. So much
to do! We hardly know where to start—because too many things clamor to be done first.”

After drinking the tea, the men and Søren climbed to the top
of the bluff to see Henrik’s field. The women looked over Abigael’s garden. “I
planted it two weeks ago,” she mentioned, “the day after Henrik put his corn in
the ground.”

Amalie surprised Elli by saying to Abigael, “We have found
the Gloeckner’s old dugout. Our men are talking about living in it for a time,
but I am not so sure,
ja
? Would you mind showing us what yours is like
inside?”

The women and children filed into the little room stepping
over a high threshold. “It is not a big house, but is nice and warm in the
winter and always cool in the summer. Even when the wind blows hard, we do not
feel it much in here.”

Amalie and Elli were both pleasantly surprised at how
Abigael kept her house, a single room dug into the bluff but with a sod face. Abigael’s
small stove was piped through the sod wall. Neatly stacked boxes acted as
cupboards. The dirt floor was packed and swept.

Three stools and a tiny table with a colorful cloth were
pushed against one wall and a bed against the back wall. A closed trunk sat
against the edge of the bed near its foot. Someone had hammered pegs into the
walls of the soddy. Clothes hung from some pegs and baskets from others.

Light came from the open doorway and a small window near the
stove with shutters on the outside. The window was not paned with glass but
with thin muslin. Abigael could not see through the muslin but it did allow a
little light through.

“Ach! What a clever idea,” Elli praised.

“We have not much glass out here, for sure,” Abigael agreed.
“In the summer the muslin keeps the flies and gnats outside but lets a little
air in. When the wind blows, we close and latch the shutters.”

“Do snakes come in the soddy?” Amalie asked, more than a little
impressed. “Ants? Bugs?”

“No more than one would find in a house out here,” she
answered. “You see our high threshold? That keeps out water when it rains hard.
But be careful for snakes,
ja
? We have many here—not all venomous, but
some. Of the venomous we mostly see prairie rattlers and, where it is wet, what
the Indians call
massasauga
.”

She added seriously, “It is good to always check your shoes
in the morning and never put your hand where you haven’t checked first.”

Elli and Amalie’s eyes went wide; if Abigael noticed their
chagrin, she did not let on. “One thing can easily tell you if a snake is dangerous
or not,” she told them. “The eyes of a venomous snake are like a cat’s,
ja
?
With the slit? But harmless snakes have round eyes.”

“I do not wish to ever be close enough to check a snake’s eyes,”
Amalie murmured.

“So? But you cannot avoid snakes out here. The prairies may look
wide and empty, but be sure, they are not. They are home to many things. Everywhere
is the tall prairie grass, and many things live and move in the grasses—prairie
dogs, rabbits, and mice—all things snakes eat.”

She added, “I keep my little boy where the grass is short.
Please teach your children to take care in the tall grass?”

Elli noticed how white Amalie had grown by the time Abigael
finished talking about snakes. Amalie called Sigrün to her and held the girl’s
hand until they left.

After the Thoresens had filled their vessels with water and returned
to their camp, they spent an hour discussing the location of a green garden.
The men would plow up the garden space on the morrow and the women would put
the garden in while the men began to build the barn.

No one brought up adding on to the Gloeckner’s dugout or
moving into it again. As it turned out, the weather decided the matter for
them.

~~**~~

“I think we will be fine camping out this way while we build
the barn,
ja
?” Karl said to Jan as they surveyed the proposed outline of
their barn. “Many settlers traveling west sleep under their wagons the entire
journey. What do you think?”

The men had chosen the site for the barn and were determined
to begin work on it as soon as they had plowed up the garden area. They planned
to take the empty wagon down the creek to the river, a journey of several
hours, and bring back a load of large river rock to begin the barn’s foundation
as soon as the garden was plowed.

“Sure. We might have some rain, eh?” Jan replied, focused on
the plans for the barn. “But we had some rain as we were coming from the train.
It was not bad.”

Karl clapped Jan on his back. “So. We must work hard to
build the barn
and
put in a crop. We don’t have any extra time. It is
summer, and we will be fine under the tent and wagons for now.”

Jan and Søren unpacked the field tools and stood them
upright against the lumber. “Søren,” Jan said, “You will clean the tools when
they are used and wipe them dry,
ja
? See this oilcloth and rope? After
you clean the tools each day, you will cover them to keep the rain off them.
When we have a barn, we will always hang the cleaned tools in a dry place.”

“Yes,
Pappa
,” Søren answered. “Just like at home!”

“This
is
our home now, eh?” Jan smiled. “It will just
take some time and work to make it feel like home.”

Karl yoked and hitched a pair of oxen to the sod cutter
while Jan watched to see how the new tool would work. Karl shouted to the oxen
to pull. After a few feet he frowned. He realized he could not get the cutter to
“bite.” He gestured to Jan.

“Stand on the cutter, will you?” he asked, pointing. “It is
not heavy enough to dig into the sod.”

The cutter was a flat, sled-like frame with a wide blade on
the underside of the tool. Jan stepped atop the cutter in front of Karl. Karl called
to the oxen and the beasts strained; the cutter dug down into the grass.

After Karl had cut a swath of about twelve feet, Jan dropped
back to check the results. Søren was already lifting up a sod block.

“It is so heavy,
Pappa
!” Søren exclaimed. Jan agreed.
They were both amazed at the weight of the sod blocks still damp from the rain.

Karl called to them. “So? What are you looking at?”

“Come see,” Jan pointed.

Karl left the oxen standing in the garden and bent over to
look. He lifted one of the blocks. “So thick, these grass roots! We should
thank
Herr
Rehnquist for selling us a sod cutter,” Karl muttered.

Jan nodded. “Heavy, too. Søren and I should hitch the wagon
to carry them.”

Progress was slow. By late morning Karl had cut the swathes
of sod for the garden. Jan and Søren had removed about half of them, stacked
them onto the wagon, hauled them away, and taken them off the wagon.

“I will clean and oil the cutter and then help you finish
removing the sod,” Karl told them. “After that I will plow the garden for the
women.” He wiped his face with a sleeve. “I see now why it is so hard to plant
this ground the first time. It is good, rich soil, but a man must work hard to
get to it!”

He looked up at the sky. “I think by the time we finish, it
will be too late to go to the river for rock today. And I do not like the looks
of the horizon.

Jan and Søren looked where Karl was gazing. Dark, heavy clouds
were building to the west. Just then Amalie called them to their midday meal.

“We will have your garden plowed soon,” Karl told the women
as they ate. “But it is too late for us to go to the river today. We will go
first thing in the morning.”

“
Ja
, we had thought to be planting it by now,” Amalie
replied. “But we can see how hard it was to cut out the grass! We will plant it
this afternoon when you are done.”

Karl plowed the quarter-acre garden three times, first one
way, then across, and again the first way. Jan and Søren walked behind the plow
breaking up clods and tossing out rocks. Kristen and Sigrün piled the rocks on
the edge of the garden.

Karl unhitched the oxen and Jan and Søren led the team away with
the other oxen and the cow to the slough to drink. Karl lifted the plow onto
his shoulder and carried it to where the other tools rested against the lumber.
He wiped it clean, covered it with oilcloth, and tied the cloth with a piece of
rope.

He glanced at the sky again and his brows drew together.
“Amalie! I think it will rain soon. Let us make sure everything is covered up,
ja
?”

The women and girls retrieved drying laundry and made sure the
families’ food supplies in the wagons were safely under canvas and tied down.
Karl checked the chicken coop and pigpen. The pens for the chicks and pigs provided
some shelter from the rain; it was the oxen and the cow he was concerned for
now. He went to find Jan and Søren and hurry them along.

“Eh! There is a storm coming, I am sure. I think we should
tie the oxen together,” Karl told Jan as they brought the animals back from the
slough. “We don’t know how they will act if there is thunder.”

“The cow, too,” Jan agreed. “Molly we can tie to the empty
wagon, but not the oxen. If they panic, they might tear it apart. I will drive
some stakes into the ground and run a rope between them. We can tie the oxen to
the rope. If they break free, they are still hobbled and tied together. Surely
they will not go far.”

“You know,” Karl said slowly. “We could have built two walls
of a sod pen today with the sod we cut. I think we should do that tomorrow. We
must give our animals
some
protection from storms while we are building
a barn.”

The women were heating a stew for supper when the first
rolls of thunder reached their ears. White arrows of lightning streaked the sky
to the west, and the clouds were certainly closer, heading their way.

“We won’t have time to bake biscuits,” Elli noted, watching
the storm march toward them. “I will get out a loaf of bread instead.”

A gust of wind, a precursor to the storm, caught the tenting
over their table and lifted it for a long moment. Amalie and Elli looked at
each other.

“What if the wind tears away the canvas?” Amalie asked, her
voice trembling.

“Then we will get wet,” Elli replied shrugging.

Lightning sizzled not far away. The women felt the static in
the air. Thunder answered immediately and the air freshened. Rain was near. They
could see it sheeting from the clouds to the ground, still hundreds of feet
away, but closing quickly on the Andersons, and then them.

At the thunder, the oxen began to panic, their bellows loud
and frantic, their eyes huge and wild. Molly pulled at her rope then lowered
herself to the ground and cowered there, partially under the wagon.

“Children! Come!” Amalie called. She grabbed up the pot of
stew while Elli banked the fire. The children were already huddled at the table
when the women ducked underneath the tent. The men were right behind.

Thunder split the air. Kristen and Sigrün screamed, and each
climbed into her mother’s lap. Søren gripped Elli’s arm until she winced.

As the wind howled and screeched, thunder crashed and echoed
over them, so loud they could not hear each other. The tent canvas jumped and
fell. For several minutes they sat, still and waiting, yet the storm did not
abate. Rather, it increased.

The wind grabbed the canvas, whipping it up and down, up and
down. Jan and Karl reached for the outside edges of the tent and held on, but
they could feel the canvas being ripped from their hands.

Jan shouted to Karl. “Get our families under the wagons! Let
us take the canvas down and wrap ourselves in it before it is torn away!”

Karl, his booming baritone barely heard over the storm,
commanded, “Amalie! Take Sigrün! Under the wagon! Hurry!”

Elli, not waiting to be told, grabbed up Kristen and rolled
under their wagon. Søren scooted in, and Elli opened her arms to him. She could
see Amalie under the opposite wagon, her mouth open, her face white with terror.

Jan ran to the outside of one of the wagons and untied the
ropes holding one of the tarpaulins forming their tent. Karl untied his side, wrestled
with the flapping canvas, and pulled it in, shoving it at Elli. “Grab this!
Hold it tight!”

As Jan loosed the second canvas, Karl dragged it to the
ground. The table and benches were now uncovered, the pot of stew left sitting alone.
Karl crawled under their wagon, clutching the canvas, trying to spread it over
Amalie and Sigrün.

Just before Jan dove for cover, he stared into the heart of
the storm . . . at something he had never seen before. A narrow
funnel dropped from the clouds to the ground. It skipped and jumped, backed and
skittered sideways. And then the clouds sucked the funnel up and it was gone.

Jan stared.
What was that?
Another crash of thunder
jolted him, and the funnel—wider, fully formed, and whirling—dropped from the
sky not far from them.

Jan’s mouth opened in astonishment and fear. Then he leapt
for cover under their wagon.

Lightning burned their closed eyes and thunder cracked over
their heads. And then it was raining. Water poured from an angry sky pounding
the ground and the wagons, whipping sideways, streaming under them.

The rain pelting the wagons hardened and became even louder.
Jan felt something heavy strike his head. He pulled back the canvas and found a
rock made of ice—perhaps a quarter the size of his fist—lying near him!

Hail pounded the wagons, terrifying in its fury. Over the
shrieks of the storm Elli and Jan heard something else—Amalie, screaming in
terror: “
Nei! Nei!
Make it stop! Karl, make it stop!”

Jan held Elli as tightly as he could, Kristen and Søren sandwiched
between them. He drew the canvas over all of them, pulled it in as tight as he
could, and prayed for morning.

~~**~~