Escape to Fort Abercrombie

by Candace Simar

  “Enough of such talk,” Mrs. Tingvold said. “No one knows for sure.” She glared at Johnny until he squirmed in his seat. “We must pray for Martin and all our boys fighting in the South.”

  “And you . . .” She turned her attention to Klara, tapping the willow rod against her leg as she spoke. “Only babies suck their thumbs.”

  Klara’s lips quivered as she stuck her hand in her apron pocket. Last year, for the same infraction, Mrs. Tingvold had struck Klara’s hand hard enough to leave a mark. Back then, Martin jumped between the teacher and his little sister, defiantly taking the switches in her stead. Ryker should protect her now, but it was Sven who put his arm around his sister and glared at the teacher.

  Gunshots cracked in the distance from the direction of the Schmitz farm. How odd for Mr. Schmitz to be hunting with field work undone. A fly droned around Ryker’s face, and he flicked it away. He stretched his neck to look out the window, but the only thing in his line of vision was a sandhill crane standing in the cow yard next to a rock pile.

  Mrs. Tingvold should be upset with Johnny, not Klara. Johnny was teacher’s pet because his family was better off than the others. The Schmitzes lived in a log home and owned a pair of horses and a cutter. Johnny bragged that his father had earned good money working at the sawmill in Slab Town. They enjoyed flour, even during spring starving time. With two cows, they never watered down their milk. Johnny boasted they would slaughter their shoat as soon as the weather cooled. Ryker couldn’t remember the taste of pork.

  “Ryker will now report on Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Mrs. Tingvold announced to the students, as if to change the subject to something more pleasant. “Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book explains why we are fighting this terrible war.” She smiled a gap-toothed smile. “It puts a human face on the issues. Fiction tells many truths, and some folks blame Mrs. Stowe for causing this war.” She paused and looked at Ryker. “You may begin.”

  Ryker hunched down and squirmed. “I’m not quite finished,” he said. Papa kept him busy until it was too dark to read. More gunshots sounded in the distance. The wind moaned around the eaves of the log barn.

  Mrs. Tingvold frowned but did not scold. Instead she lectured about slavery, the secession of southern states that caused the war, and President Lincoln’s leadership of the northern army. Ryker counted dust motes floating on the shafts of light. He would rather read about Topsy’s woes than listen to Mrs. Tingvold. While reading, he forgot the hard work, war in the South, and his missing brother. A faint smell of smoke wafted through the barn door. Ryker craned his neck to look out the window but saw only the green leaves of the lilac bushes growing next to the barn.

  Before he went missing, Martin’s last letter said that smoke from cooking fires blanketed the encampments in the Shenandoah Valley like one of Mama’s down quilts. He said there were enough trees to fuel a million cook stoves or build a whole city of real houses. His description of the green forest made Mama homesick for the land of her youth. Maybe that was why she clung to the old ways, wearing a kerchief instead of a bonnet, refusing to learn the strange English words, and searching for angels in the clouds.

  Martin hadn’t left for war because of any of the reasons in Mrs. Tingvold’s lecture. Martin wanted excitement. He only left to find adventure—and get away from farm chores.

  Absently Ryker fingered a lone whisker on his chin. Papa said some boys developed beards in their early teens. Ryker hoped he was one of them. If he grew whiskers, Papa would surely let him take over the scythe.

  “Hurry home, now,” Mrs. Tingvold said. “School is in recess until after the harvest.”

  A whoop went up from the other students, but Ryker didn’t join the celebration. He gathered his slate and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He wanted to know more about Topsy, the girl with skin the color of soot.

  Mrs. Tingvold had loaned him the book after she learned of Martin’s disappearance. “Reading will help your English,” she had said while handing him the book wrapped in a cotton cloth to keep it clean. She wasn’t always crabby.

  Ryker painstakingly translated each word into Norwegian so he could understand what the story was about. It took a long time. The night before he had come to the exciting part where Topsy ran away from the overseer. He hated to return the book before the end of the story.

  He handed the book to Mrs. Tingvold, but she pushed it back into his hands.

  “You may keep it a while longer,” she said with a gentle smile. “It’s good to understand why your brother fights with the Union.”

  A grin stretched Ryker’s face. She said fight instead of fought, meaning she thought him alive. Maybe Mama would allow a candle to read a few pages before bed. “Mange takk,” he said. Harvest wouldn’t be so bad if the book waited at the end of each day. “Many thanks. I’ll be careful with it.”

  “You’ll guard it with your life,” Mrs. Tingvold said with a laugh, shooing him off with a wave of her hands. “Now hurry. You’ve work to do.”

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  Ryker tucked the book under his arm and stepped out into the sunlight. Other students scattered towards their homes, but the twins waited in the shade of the barn with Johnny. A meat cleaver and ax wedged into the flat surface of the blood-stained stump used for dressing meat. Next to the stump sat a foot-powered grinder for sharpening knives, scythes, and plow shares.

  Klara sucked her thumb, Sven rubbed the edge of a homemade knife against the grinding stone, and Johnny pedaled. A sunbeam bounced off Sven’s white hair. Mama said the twins took after her side of the family, with their fair skin and blue eyes, while Ryker looked more like his father’s side with dark hair and brown eyes. “Black Norwegians,” she had called them, always laughing and teasing with a decided twinkle in her eye.

  Mama hadn’t laughed since Martin went missing.

  “For shame, Klara!” Ryker said with a disapproving frown.

  Klara pulled the thumb out of her mouth. Her sunbonnet dangled down her back by its strings, and she wore a faded calico dress far too short for her gangly legs.

  “Leave her be,” Sven said. “You’re not the boss of us.”

  Martin always kept the younger children in line. Ryker sighed. He wished Martin were here now.

  “Hurry,” Ryker said. “Papa needs us at home for the harvest.”

  “We’re going over to Johnny’s first,” Sven said.

  “Ma baked molasses cookies,” Johnny said. They seemed to have forgotten their argument. “And I caught a baby fox.”

  “Not today,” Ryker said. The thought of cookies weakened his knees. Lately their table had been bountiful with prairie chickens, milk, and eggs. But they hadn’t seen bread for months, and no sugar since Christmas. Even so, Ryker knew Papa would keep them chained to the barley field, birthday or not.

  “It’s our birthday,” Sven said.

  Ryker didn’t want to work in the fields either. He wanted to finish his book.

  “Forget it,” Ryker said. He felt as crabby as Mrs. Tingvold.

  The smell of smoke grew stronger. Ryker shielded his eyes against the noonday sun and watched a plume of smoke rise above the Schmitz farm to the east of the Tingvold place, just beyond a swell in the prairie.

  “Pa’s burning the slough,” Johnny said. “I’d best get home.” Johnny trotted toward the east along the well-worn path snaking through the prairie.

  Sven whined about the lack of cookies on his birthday. Instead, he chewed handfuls of wild rose petals plucked from bushes growing alongside the path. Ryker gathered rose petals, too. They puckered his lips but tasted almost sweet. Klara dawdled. The prairie looked flat as a pancake, but it dipped and swelled with rises and gullies. They walked through an ancient buffalo wallow toward their farm.

  Overhead a cloudless sky. Songs of wren and meadowlarks added to the music of rustling grass and gentle breeze. Klara gathered a dried stalk with a cluster of leaves like a head of yellow hair. She cradled it in her arms, crooning as if to a baby. Sven c
aught a snake and chased after Klara until she screamed.

  “Get that nasty thing away from us,” Klara said, pulling the makeshift doll close against her body to shield it. “Ryker, make him stop.”

  Ryker sometimes imagined how different everything would be had his sisters survived the smallpox. Sissel and Bertina would be tall girls now, with blond hair tied back with ribbons. They would care for Elsa and help their mother with the endless household chores. They would milk the cow and make butter and cheese. Then he imagined Martin coming home to pick up the rake and work the harvest.

  That was what was wrong with their family. People were missing. Bertina had been a shy girl, with large teeth and a gentle smile; Sissel with blond hair like Elsa’s.

  “Last one home is a rotten egg,” he said. They sprinted down the path and veered off across the prairie toward home.

  The Landstads’ sod house nestled into the side of a low hill. Papa chose the site because of a small cluster of willow trees growing along the edge of a slough. Some of their neighbors enjoyed cabins with logs hauled from Fort Abercrombie’s sawmill. Logs cost money. Papa said they charged fifteen dollars per hundred board feet—unheard of prices, but, then, the prairie had no trees. It would take a long while to save enough to build a house. They’d be in the soddy for a while yet.

  Ryker watched the hot August wind ripple across the tops of the prairie grass. Plowing virgin prairie, even with two oxen and a sharpened plow, tried the strength of grown men. Martin had the muscles to do it, but Ryker’s arms and legs turned to jelly after only a few minutes at the task.

  Papa planned to break sod on the westernmost end of their property. He said they would plant more corn next year and that Ryker would help with the plowing. The thought sickened Ryker. He couldn’t yet measure up to his brother’s strength, but Martin would be surprised to find more land under tillage. His brother would look at Ryker with admiration and tease him about his bulging muscles.

  They neared the homestead from the north, coming up to the soddy along the edge of the barley field. His father wasn’t in sight.

  “Here, Beller,” Sven called, but their dog did not bound out of the grass with his usual welcome. “Come, boy!”

  “Off hunting rabbits,” Klara said. “He’ll be back.” She stopped to gather a handful of yellow daisies peeking through the tall grass. “Aren’t these pretty?”

  Fire and Brimstone’s pen stood empty with the gate open. Papa had talked about moving them to the west pasture after they finished harvesting the barley, but the barley waved in the breeze, the heads hanging low and full. Loose oxen would destroy standing grain. Ryker shielded his eyes but saw only grass.

  In front of the door lay the dead gander, its wingtips smeared with blood, its naked rump showing shadows of new growth. Beside it lay the goose and rooster. Ryker’s heart thumped. He stepped over the birds and pushed into the dugout with a lump in his throat the size of Brimstone’s choking turnip. He called for his mother.

  No one answered.

  Mama’s collection of feathers fluttered in the air. Broken dishes littered the floor. Eggs splattered against the dirt walls. Someone had overturned Mama’s crock of dills. The room reeked of vinegar. No sign of Baby Elsa or his parents. Only the green vines grew undisturbed on the walls.

  Sven and Klara stared in disbelief, holding hands and staying close to Ryker.

  “What happened?” Sven said.

  “Hush,” Ryker hissed.

  The rifle pegs over the door stood empty. Ryker swallowed hard, remembering the gunshots and the smoky smells. He ran outside with the twins close behind him and searched behind the barn. Near the outhouse, Papa lay crumpled in the weeds, still holding his rifle. An arrow stuck in his chest. Sven knelt beside him, calling his name. Klara stood as if in shock, sucking her thumb and staring. Blood covered Papa’s shirt, his skin as white as their mother’s linen tablecloth.

  Ryker froze, afraid to touch him, as a wave of nausea roiled his belly. He had never seen a dead person except those laid out in wooden coffins. Papa fluttered his eyelids, clutched the rifle, and groaned.

  Papa lived. Thank God.

  “What happened?” Ryker said. “Where’s Mama and Elsa?”

  Papa mumbled, and Ryker fell to his knees to hear the words. “Indians took them,” Papa said. He dropped his hand to the arrow in his chest. “Couldn’t stop.”

  Ryker’s mind whirled in confusion. They had no argument with Indians. Mama always gave them bread.

  “I took the gun for prairie chickens . . . for birthday supper.” Papa struggled to sit up, but fell back with a gasp of pain. “Beller barked . . . and then screams.” His eyelids fluttered. “Run,” he said, and it seemed to take all his wind to speak. “Hide. All of you. Root cellar.”

  “Don’t talk,” Ryker said. “Save your strength.”

  Voices sounded beyond the slough. Indians!

  “Hurry,” Sven said. “Help Papa to the root cellar.”

  Sven and Ryker half carried, half dragged Papa to the willow tree. Klara lugged Papa’s rifle and opened the trap door. Ryker brushed away the tracks in the dirt leading to the door of the root cellar hidden beneath the branches of the willow tree and scrambled in behind them. Darkness closed around them like a grave. Klara closed the door, as a blood-curdling scream bristled the hair on Ryker’s neck. They huddled closer. Klara’s small hand touched his, as small as a baby rabbit.

  “I’m scared,” Klara whispered. “Where’s Mama?”

  “Something’s burning,” Sven whispered.

  Smoke filtered around the door frame. Angry shouts sounded from outside. Near at first, and then farther away.

  “The haystacks,” Ryker said with a groan. “All that raking for nothing.”

  They huddled in the darkness, listening to their father’s moans. Ryker lifted Papa’s head to his lap. Ryker’s mind swirled in confusion, trying to make sense of what was happening. Soon the bad dream would be over. He tried to shake himself awake, but the smell of blood and touch of Klara’s hand convinced him that it was really happening. His father had been shot with an arrow, his mother and sister taken by the Sioux. They were in mortal danger.

  Klara sniffled, and Ryker pulled her close.

  “What will happen to us?” she whispered in the darkness. “Where’s Mama?”

  “Have to find them,” Papa said with a fierceness that frightened Ryker. Papa’s breath came in gasping shudders, and he grasped Ryker’s arm and pulled him closer until Ryker’s ear was in front of Papa’s mouth. Papa smelled of blood and sweat, his voice barely a whisper. “New baby coming.”

  His mother had been tired lately, and thicker around the middle, but Ryker hadn’t known of another baby. His cheeks burned, and he was glad for the darkness. Such things weren’t talked about, and the news made him feel very grown up, at least as old as Martin. The knowledge felt heavy as a stone.

  Once he had read a story about a white woman captured by Indians. They forced her to marry a brave. Her children grew up to hate whites. They made war upon their own people. That could not happen to Mama.

  “Is there a light?” Papa said.

  The earthen walls sucked the strength from his voice. Ryker brushed a spider web away from his face, as Sven struck a lucifer and lit a candle stub. Sven held the candle high, and a feeble ray of light fell over them.

  “Stuff that old sack under the door, so they won’t see the light,” Ryker said to Sven.

  “Help me.” Papa grasped the shaft of arrow in his chest and pulled. Nothing budged. Papa’s hands trembled violently. “Ryker, pull it out. I don’t have the strength.”

  Ryker did not know how to obey his father. Just looking at the arrow imbedded in his father’s chest caused dark spots to float before his eyes. Ryker grasped the end of the arrow. Papa cried out in pain, and Ryker let go.

  “Nei,” Papa said. “Just do it. Pull. Pull harder.”

  Ryker grasped the arrow shaft with both hands. He braced his feet and
pulled with all his might. The arrowhead moved a little, causing Papa to cry out with pain.

  “Don’t stop,” Papa said. “I can take it.”

  Ryker yanked with all his might. The arrow moved about an inch. Papa screamed and then swooned. Ryker listened for signs the Indians had heard. Nothing but silence.

  “You killed him,” Sven said. He held the light closer to Papa’s white face.

  Ryker shook him, calling his name, but Papa didn’t respond. It smelled musty as a tomb. Klara kept close to the light, sucking her thumb.

  “He’s only sleeping,” Sven said with a sigh of relief. “Pull it out before he wakes up.”

  Ryker grasped the arrow again with both hands and pulled as hard as he could. The shaft broke off in his hand, leaving the arrowhead in Papa’s body.

  Sven pushed Ryker aside and retrieved the folding knife from Papa’s pocket. He opened it and wiped the blade across his pant leg. “Here,” Sven said, handing Ryker the knife.

  It would be scarier to cut out the arrow than it had been to push the knife into Brimstone’s side to cure the bloat. He couldn’t do it.

  Sven handed the candle to his sister and bent low with the knife. He inserted the blade into the wound, scraping it against the rocky edges of the arrowhead.

  “It’s not too deep,” Sven said. “I think I can get it.” Another twist of the blade and he was able to grasp the sharp stone. He pulled it out with a cry of triumph. “Here. I got it.”

  Sven laid the arrowhead in Klara’s hand. Ryker bent to staunch the flow of blood seeping around the wound, tearing Papa’s shirttail for a bandage. There was a lot of blood. It soaked through the bandage, and Ryker added another strip of cloth from Papa’s shirt.

  “What do we do now?” Klara said in a whisper.

  Ryker could only shrug his shoulders and shake his head.