Wild Heart on the Prairie (A Prairie Heritage, Book 2) (8 page)

Jan climbed out from under the wagon. He was wet, stiff, and
cold. A chilly breeze ruffled his damp hair. He shivered and looked around in
the dripping morning light. Here and there patches of hail remained.

“Ach!” he moaned. The chicken coop and pigpen were
destroyed. He ran to them. Dead chicks lay motionless in puddles. The little chicken
hutch rested on its back; he looked inside. Nothing.

He strode to the demolished pigpen. The pig’s shelter lay
flat; the fencing had been taken by the wind.
No, there it is, across the garden
spot against the empty wagon!

Jan ran toward the wagon. Molly raised her head and bawled
pathetically. She had not been milked last evening. He slowed as he drew near
to her . . . and heard a wonderful noise, the muffled grunting
of two piglets rooting for a warmer, dryer spot against Molly’s back.

O thank you, Lord!
Jan rejoiced. Of all the animals,
he would hate most to lose his father’s pigs. He scratched the piglet’s backs.
They would be safe with Molly for a bit.

Jan saw Karl emerge from behind the wagons, saw him run his
hand through his wet hair. “The pigs?”

“They are here, Karl. With Molly.”

“Thank you, God in heaven!” Karl replied. He saw the dead
chicks and shook his head. An ox bellowed, begging their attention.

Jan and Karl strode toward the oxen together. One of the
oxen bellowed again, and Jan heard pain in its call.

The oxen were lying on the ground, bunched together,
something unnatural in their arrangement. Jan and Karl approached the oxen
cautiously, careful of their horns and hooves, but trying to figure out what
was wrong.

As the oxen saw them coming, they struggled to stand—and
could not. With the struggle another bellow of pain erupted from one of them.
The closer Jan and Karl came, the harder the oxen struggled, and the louder ox
bawled.

The rope Jan had strung from the two stakes had come loose,
and somehow the hobbled oxen had tangled themselves in that rope and the one
that tied them together.

Jan reached the first ox and placed his hand on its head, speaking
calming words. The other oxen still struggled in agitation. Jan could not
loosen the wet knot that held the ox, so he pulled his knife and sawed through
it.

A moment later he removed the ox’s hobble and the beast
struggled to standing. Jan and Karl, working as quickly as they could, loosed
each ox in turn until they came to the last one.

It was the temperamental ox, the one that had given them
some trouble. He bellowed piteously but lay still. He could not rise, and the
reason was apparent. His near foreleg pointed in an unnatural direction.

The brothers looked at each other and shook their heads.
They could do only one thing for this poor animal.

Søren, Kristen, and Sigrün picked up the dead chicks and
placed them, one by one, in a hole Elli dug. Five dead chicks.

“Who knows what has become of the rest?” Elli sighed. She
glanced at Amalie with concern. Her sister-in-law sat on one of the benches
with her arms wrapped tightly about herself, haggard from lack of sleep.

Elli heard the report of a rifle and knew that Jan or Karl
had dispatched the poor ox. Jan walked toward her, his face grim, and hung the
gun on the side of the wagon.

“Søren, set the tools upright to dry in the sun,
ja
?”
Jan asked. He saw Elli tip her head toward Amalie.

Ja, I see, Wife
. He shook his head and set his mouth.
Lord, what are we to do?
Such a storm he had never experienced—and he
did not intend for his family or his brother’s family to suffer through another
like it again, uncovered to the elements.

The tarps covering the packed wagons had held against the
wind, rain, and hail; the food and other things were safe and dry. Karl and Jan
quietly re-erected the tent while Elli and Amalie hung soaked and muddy bedding
out to dry. Amalie’s movements were stilted, mechanical. She had not spoken
yet.

Elli wanted to warm the stew from the night before, but
could not get a fire started. All their fuel was drenched. She crossed her arms
in frustration.

“
Pappa! Pappa!
” Søren’s cry for help roused them all.
He was standing near the tools with a hoe raised above his head—and then he was
striking the ground over and over.

As they rushed to his side they heard the frantic
cheep!
cheep!
of baby chickens. Huddled together among the fallen tools were six very
bedraggled and frantic chicks.

Near them was a snake, its head newly severed from its thick
body. The tail of the snake twitched and Søren struck it with the hoe once
more, separating the snake’s rattles from its body.

No one spoke until Søren said in a tiny voice, “It was after
our chicks,
Pappa
. I couldn’t let it get our chicks.”

Jan laid his hand gently on Søren’s shoulder. “Well done,
Sønn
.
Well done.”

Elli swallowed, grateful for Søren’s courage, thankful for
his safety. Amalie, behind Elli’s shoulder, moaned and her moan rose, turning
to a keening wail.

“Karl! You will move us to the soddy! You must! You must! Today!”
Amalie’s words were shrieked; she was both hysterical and angry. “I-I cannot, we
cannot
stay outside under the sky! I-I, the sky is too big, Karl! You
must move us to the soddy, Karl! Please, Karl!
Please
!”

The children—and the adults—were wide-eyed and Sigrün began
to cry. Karl pulled Amalie into his arms and away from the dead snake. He
wrapped his arms about her and pushed her face into his shoulder.

“There, there, my love! It is all right. You will see. It
will be all right.” Karl spoke as if to Sigrün, his words soft and patient.

“I don’t want to be outside in the lightning and the rain,
Karl! Please!” Amalie sobbed. “
Please!
”

“Yes, all right. I will do as you ask, Amalie,” Karl
reassured her. His face was stricken and unsure when he raised his eyes to Jan
and Elli.

“We went into the Andersons’ dugout,” Elli said quietly. “She
saw that it was safe. Please. It would be better for Amalie to live in one for
now than under the wagons,
ja
?”

Karl nodded and pressed his lips onto Amalie’s hair. “We
will move into the dugout, Amalie.”

Søren, Kristen, and Sigrün crowded Jan and Elli, seeking
comfort. “
Pappa
,” Søren whispered, “Is
Tante
Amalie all right?”

“She will be,
Sønn
,” Jan answered quietly, hoping he
was right.

~~**~~

The morning was miserable for all of them. They could find
no dry grass or chips to start a fire, so breakfast was cold bread and cheese
with milk. No coffee. No tea. Nothing to warm them on this wet morning.

Karl unpacked a dry quilt and wrapped Amalie in it. He sat
her at the table under the canvas tent. He placed Sigrün on the bench cuddled
up to her
mor’s
side
.
After a while Amalie laid her head on the
table and slept. Karl, his face resolute, headed toward the dugout.

Jan was about to follow when he looked west at the faint
sound of “hallo!” The Andersons were walking toward them, Abel on his father’s
shoulder.

“We came to see how you fared,” Henrik said. He looked about
with concern. “We saw the twister.” Abigael was carrying a heavy basket. She
nodded to Jan and went to talk with Elli.

“We did not think you would be able to start a fire this
morning,” she said quietly to Elli, “so we brought some hot food. Just simple
things—coffee and hot cereal.”

“
Mange takk!
” Elli exclaimed. “You cannot know how we
thank you. It was terrible!” She looked cautiously toward the tent and lowered
her voice. “Amalie is having a very bad time of it. I did not know she was
terrified of thunder and lightning. She is . . . distraught.”

Abigael nodded slowly. “I am so sorry. We will pray for all
of you. What is your plan for shelter?”

Elli glanced toward the tent again. She took Abigael’s arm
and they walked out of Amalie’s earshot. “Our husbands had planned to build the
barn first and we would also live in it until we have a crop and can build
houses. But it will take some time to put up the barn.”

She shook her head. “We thought we could live under the tent
this summer while they built the barn, but oh! Never have we seen a storm like
last night! This morning Amalie . . . insisted we move into the
Gloeckner’s soddy.” Elli looked at Abigael. “She was so frightened, not in her
right mind.”

“What do you think you will do?” Abigael sounded concerned.

“Karl has promised he will move her into the dugout. It is
very small, big enough only for them.” Elli sighed. “It is a ways from here,
but we will manage. I suppose we can move the wagons and the tent.”

She thought for a moment. “Unless Jan wants us to live in
there, too. I don’t know how, but perhaps we could all sleep there for a time.”

Elli looked toward the children. Søren was trying valiantly
to put the coop back together. Kristen and Sigrün were “helping.” “We lost some
chicks. Half of them. We thought we had lost our weaners, but we found them.
Thank you, God in heaven!”

Shuddering, she added, “Søren found the missing chicks just
as a rattlesnake was about to get one of them. He chopped off its head!” She
smiled a little. “I am very proud of my boy.”

“Oh, that is good! I would be proud, too!”

“Eh. One of our oxen also broke his leg. We will have to
slaughter him today. I am sure we will give you some of the meat.”

Abigael’s eyes shone. “That would be wonderful! Not that we are
happy you will lose your ox, but still, to have as much fresh meat as one wants!”

While Søren finished putting the coop and pigpen to rights
and putting their residents within them, Jan and Karl asked Henrik if he would butcher
the ox in return for a share of the meat. He readily agreed. This freed Jan and
Karl to work on the dugout.

The sun rose and the earth gradually warmed; the grasses all
around them steamed in the sun. Abigael went home to fetch some dry fuel, and then
Elli was at last able to get a fire started. The women, including Abigael, were
roasting a great piece of the ox for dinner. Amalie seemed more like herself,
chatting and working with a will.

No one spoke of Amalie’s actions during or after the storm,
but Jan suggested to Karl that perhaps it would be best to expand the dugout for
both families. Karl was relieved.

“We must shelter our animals this way, too, eh?” Jan added,
“and after that get our crops in before it is too late this season. Perhaps we
planned wrong; perhaps we must build the barn last.”

“
Ja
, I think you are right,” Karl agreed.

Søren found the men, bent on getting their families under a solid,
safe roof as quickly as possible, marking the outline for additional walls. The
outline they had marked was about 16 feet by 10 feet. When finished, the old dugout
would open into the new soddy.

“What will you do here,
Pappa
?” Søren asked, curious.

“This house is dug into this hillside. We are going to build
on to it,
Sønn
, making a new room on the outside.” Jan answered. “We
will hang a curtain across the room so our family has a private place to sleep.
The rest of the new room will be our kitchen and where we will eat. Onkel and
his family will sleep in the dugout room. We will still build the barn where we
decided, but we will live here until then.”

The men dug down and cut out the sod where the floor and
walls would be. They were building against the hillock, so they scraped its
side flat to shape the back wall. They used the sod they removed for the floor and
the sod cut from the garden spot to lay the first foot of the outside walls. They
framed in a door about half a foot off the ground.

The cut sod was very wet from the storm, but Henrik, who offered
to lend a hand, told them, “It is good that it is still wet,
ja
? Sod
that dries out before you use it does not grow together and make a strong wall.
Then the walls do not last very long.”

“I hope we will not need this house very long,” Karl
muttered, “but we do not know what the future will bring. Thank you for telling
us this.”

At the same time, Elli and Amalie began to make mattresses.
They spread a piece of canvas upon the ground near the wagons. Together they hauled
a bale of hay to it and cut the twine holding it together.

The women and their daughters spread the hay over the canvas
so the sun would dry it. Amalie had the girls turn the hay to dry it evenly as
the day wore on. Then she sent the girls to gather sticks and chips. They
placed them in a box under one of the wagons. She and Elli would not be foolish
and leave their fire fuel in the open again.

“Every day it is the same: We have to gather more sticks and
chips,” Kristen grumbled, digging in the dirt with her “snake” stick, the one
she used to warn snakes of their approach.

“
Ja
, I know. And every day it is the same: You wish
to eat, eh?” Elli answered.

Kristen sulked a little but quickly caught up with little
Sigrün. She knew better than to let Sigrün wander into the grasses without her.

Elli dug in the wagons until she found the striped ticking
they had bought from
Herr
Rehnquist. She and Amalie cut lengths of the
ticking for mattresses and began to stitch them together.

Over the next days they would sew mattress covers for
themselves and their husbands and smaller ones for the children. As the sweet-smelling
hay dried, they would stuff the mattress covers with it and then stitch them
closed. During these days the families ate all the fresh ox meat they wanted;
some of it Elli and Amalie sliced thin and hung over the fire to dry.

Karl and Jan worked until dark that day cutting more sod and
laying all the bricks they cut. The weather was calm that night; Amalie was calm,
too, seemingly comforted by the progress the men were making.

Early in the morning Jan and Karl returned to cutting more
sod. They chose a new spot for the garden, closer to the dugout, and cut the
sod from it. Jan finished plowing the garden while Karl laid sod.

Then they chose their first field and began cutting sod from
it. It was slow, backbreaking work, but they kept at it. By late evening, the outside
walls of the soddy were four feet high.

The next day was the same. The men and Søren cut and laid
sod; the women and girls worked in the new garden and kept turning and drying
hay for the mattresses.

Jan and Karl spent an hour after lunch planting the “old”
garden area in corn. “We will have one small crop of corn for sure before our
other crops come in,” Karl said this with a satisfied air, but Jan fretted.

He was anxious to finish the soddy so they could attack
their first large field. Once their families and animals were safely under a
roof, planting a good-sized crop was the next priority.

While they were planting the small cornfield, Jan planted
his two apple saplings. He wanted the trees to grow on a softly sloping rise
not far from where he intended to build their house.

This is a good spot
, he told himself.
We will be
able to see them in the spring when they are full of flowers. And someday we
will add more fruit trees here
. He made two cages of chicken wire, placed
them around the little trees, and staked the cages to the ground to keep them
from blowing away.

As the walls of the soddy rose to six feet, they framed in a
small window with shutters in the common room wall. Now they were ready to
build a roof.

The roof did not have to be made of wood. Henrik had showed
them they could save their precious lumber by placing poles across the walls,
filling the spaces between the poles with thatch, and then laying long strips
of sod crosswise over the poles and thatch.

Before quitting for the day, the men and Søren drove the
wagon to the slough and cut bundles of rushes. The women would tie rushes
together to make thatch for the roof, but they would need a great many rushes
for the job, more than the slough had.

Pressing forward the next day, Karl and Jan hitched the
wagon and loaded their ax, hatchets, and saw. With Søren in the back of the
wagon, they drove far up the creek to a stand of saplings growing on the creek
bank.

They cut three dozen saplings and set to work trimming the
branches from them. Jan showed Søren how to use the hatchet to bump little
branches from the trunks. When they had the poles ready, they loaded them in
the wagon. Then they scoured the creek banks for more rushes. After they had filled
the wagon they returned to the women.

Because the soddy backed against the hill, they dug holes for
the poles in the hill just above the roof line. Jan and Karl hammered the poles
into the holes until they were solidly anchored.

It would not be a flat roof; they hammered the poles into
the mound about six inches higher than the outside walls and rested the poles on
the front wall of the soddy, making a slope. Rain would run off the roof toward
the front of the house. After the roof was done, they would fill the gaps on
the sides left between the top of the wall and the rise in the roof.

Early in the morning, Jan and Karl began to lay the bundles
of rushes between the poles. Elli and Amalie had worked tirelessly to tie
enough bundles to fill all the spaces.

About noon they drove to their field and began to cut sod in
long lengths they would lay across the poles. It was difficult to handle the
long, heavy swathes of sod. They wrestled them into the wagon and drove back to
the soddy. Then the men stood in the wagon bed to hoist the thick lengths onto
the roof. Little by little, they covered the roof’s frame with sod.

When they finished laying sod on the roof, the poles stuck
out about a half a foot over the edge of the walls but the sod stuck out only a
couple inches. Karl mixed mud in a bucket. He and Jan filled the gaps along the
top of the wall where the thatch lay between the poles. Then they chopped sod
bricks to fit into the gaps on the side between the roof and the wall.

“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Karl reminded Jan. “We should rest and
spend time with God.”

“
Ja
, sure.” Jan’s response was half-hearted. He wouldn’t
admit it, but it irritated him to stop before the job was done.

Lord, I am enjoying this land you have given me!
he
thought.
I just want to work it and see a harvest
.

The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few . . .
Unbidden, those words came to him. Jan felt conviction under the
implications of those words.

Ja, Lord, you are right. I do need to spend time with
you. Your harvest is more important than my harvest. Ja, I see this.

With the roof complete, the men and Søren set to leveling
and packing the house’s dirt floor. They scraped away uneven places and used
mallets and rocks to pack the dirt. They then poured water on the dirt and created
a mud slurry that they spread evenly across the floor and left to dry.

The house was done but the floor needed to cure for a few
days, so the men worked on pens for the animals. For two days they cut and laid
sod. Off one side of the soddy they built a chest-high wall that followed the
curve of the hillock; Karl built a crude gate across the end of the pen.

That evening Søren spread newly cut prairie grass inside the
pen. After he and Jan watered Molly and the oxen at the slough, they led the
animals into the pen. Their five beasts had enough room to turn about and to
lie down. The sod wall provided them good shelter from the wind.

The oxen could not break out of the pen and, if a wolf or
coyote came near, Jan and Elli would be sleeping on the other side of the pen’s
wall. They would hear the oxen’s distress.

For the pigs, the men laid a shorter wall, perhaps three
feet high, off the other side of the soddy. They built a wall to divide the pen
in half and gates for each pen. Next spring after they mated the boar and the
sow, the dividing wall would keep the boar away from the sow and her piglets.

Jan reinforced the chickens’ house and placed it at the end
of the pigs’ enclosure. He and Søren built a strong coop around the chickens
and their house, one that would not so easily be blown down by a storm.