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

by Vikki Kestell

  “This water will attract much wildlife,” Karl warned. “Venomous snakes, too.”

  “Ja,” Jan replied. “We must be careful, especially at night. Perhaps, though, one evening we will lay in wait for antelope to come?”

  “Good, fresh meat!” Karl laughed. “That would be nice, eh?”

  The slough was not the only thing they discovered that day. Søren called excitedly from beyond the slough. “Pappa! Onkel! Come quick!”

  When the men trudged around the slough to other side of the mound, Søren was waiting for them, his face animated. “Look! This must be where Herr Gloeckner and his family lived!”

  On the side of the hillock the faint outlines of a dugout’s exterior wall could be seen. The wall was built from blocks of sod. Karl and Jan were as enthused as Søren. They fetched tools and, with a little effort, were able to clear and prize open the rough, weathered door.

  Inside the air was cool. Neither Jan nor Karl could stand fully upright inside the room, but they immediately grasped the blessing of the place.

  “Let us call the women to see this,” Karl suggested.

  Elli and Amalie hung back, outside the door, unsure about going in.

  “It is safe,” Jan assured them. “The door has been closed for more than a year—maybe two years. We have checked and found no bugs or snakes inside.”

  Amalie frowned, still unsure about a “dirt house.” Elli screwed up her courage and followed Jan. Inside he lit a candle. In the yellow glow she found a modest room about eight feet by eight feet. She looked up. The ceiling had been hard packed and she was just able to stand upright.

  “Karl and I think we could dig farther back,” Jan said, “making it a little bigger. Until we have the barn built, this would be better than the tents.”

  “It is very small,” Elli answered carefully, “and you know how Amalie is with bugs.”

  “I do not see any bugs,” Jan looked about him. He held the candle up and examined the corners of the room and then down to search the “floor.” “Do you see anything?”

  “Nooo,” Elli responded.

  “Feel how cool it is in here? What a blessing it will be when the heat of summer is on us, nei? And it is dry, too.”

  His last remark got Elli thinking about the rain they had received the night before. Yes, they had sheltered under the wagons and under the tarps, but the ground had become wet. The edges of their blankets were still drying out.

  “Amalie, come in,” Elli called to her.

  Reluctantly, Amalie ducked under the doorway. She stood up inside and gazed around in surprise. “Ach! I thought it would be wet. Moldy.”

  Elli took the candle from Jan. “Look. Look, no bugs, Søster.”

  Amalie huffed but took the candle and scrutinized the room, floor to ceiling. “Hmph. I do not know if I could stay in a dirt house.”

  “You will find more bugs on the ground under our wagons,” Elli replied practically. “Perhaps snakes, too.” Amalie huffed again, nervously, but said nothing more.

  They stepped outside, and the men pushed the soddy door closed, making sure it was snug. Jan asked Karl, “What if we built out this soddy, Bror, and made it bigger? It would not take long, and I would feel better if we had a good roof over our families, even a dirt one, wouldn’t you?”

  Yesterday they had decided to build a small barn near the division of their properties. It would be large enough for their stock for a number of years and, initially, they had planned for the two families to set up housekeeping in the barn. Now, though, they were considering the advantages of expanding and moving into the soddy.

  Karl nodded. “It is a good idea. Let us think on this more. Come,” he said, putting their discussion on hold. “We need to get water. We should drive down to the creek and bring back drinking water.”

  The sun was crossing into the west when they loaded the water can, washtub, and cauldrons into the wagon. Jan and Søren finished yoking two oxen to the wagon and they set off toward the creek. As they approached, their neighbors saw them coming and came down to their side of the creek, waving.

  “Ja, we saw you arrive yesterday,” a young man hollered in Swedish. “Välkomna! Welcome! Come across and have some tea!”

  Karl pointed the oxen into the rushing creek. The stream was running high from spring runoff, but the water looked clean and clear.

  The young couple introduced themselves as Henrik and Abigael Anderson. Their toddler, Abel, watched the strangers soberly and clung to his mother’s skirt.

  Abigael was obviously “expecting.” She spread a quilt under the sparse shade of a young cottonwood tree and offered them cold tea from a jug cooling in the stream.

  “We have been here two years,” Henrik told them. “My family settled in Illinois fifteen years ago when I was a little boy, but of course Abigael and I wanted to have our own land. You are Norsk, ja? We are Svenska, but now Americans!”

  “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 thin
gs 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.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 8

  “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 increase
d.

  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!”