Rebecca's Reward
Rebecca’s
Reward
Books by
Lauraine Snelling
Golden Fill Collection One*
Golden Filly Collection Two*
Secret Refuge (3 in 1 )
DAKOTA TREASURES
Ruby • Pearl
Opal • Amethyst
DAUGHTERS OF BLESSING
A Promise for Ellie • Sophie’s Dilemma
A Touch of Grace • Rebecca’s Reward
HOME TO BLESSING
A Measure of Mercy
No Distance Too Far
RED RIVER OF THE NORTH
An Untamed Land
A New Day Rising
A Land to Call Home
The Reaper’s Song
Tender Mercies
Blessing in Disguise
RETURN TO RED RIVER
A Dream to Follow • Believing the Dream
More Than a Dream
* 5 books in each volume
LAURAINE
SNELLING
Rebecca’s
Reward
Rebecca’s Reward
Copyright © 2008
Lauraine Snelling
Cover design by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-7642-0202-5
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Snelling, Lauraine.
Rebecca’s reward / Lauraine Snelling.
p. cm.—(Daughters of Blessing; 4)
ISBN 978–0—7642–0202–5 (pbk.)
1. Norwegian Americans—Fiction. 2. Family—Fiction. 3. Frontier and pioneer life—Fiction. 4. North Dakota—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.N39R44 2008
813’.54—dc22
2008028308
* * *
DEDICATION
TO MY FAMILY, BOTH IN AMERICA AND NORWAY
for my rich heritage and the beginning of my stories.
Who ever would have dreamed of all this?
To God be the glory.
Table Of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter: 1
Chapter: 2
Chapter: 3
Chapter: 4
Chapter: 5
Chapter: 6
Chapter: 7
Chapter: 8
Chapter: 9
Chapter: 10
Chapter: 11
Chapter: 12
Chapter: 13
Chapter: 14
Chapter: 15
Chapter: 16
Chapter: 17
Chapter: 18
Chapter: 19
Chapter: 20
Chapter: 21
Chapter: 22
Chapter: 23
Chapter: 24
Chapter: 25
Chapter: 26
Chapter: 27
Chapter: 28
Chapter: 29
Chapter: 30
Chapter: 31
Chapter: 32
Chapter: 33
Chapter: 34
Chapter: 35
Chapter: 36
EPILOGUE
LAURAINE SNELLING is an award-winning author of over sixty books, fiction and nonfiction, for adults and young adults. Her books have sold over two million copies. Besides writing books and articles, she teaches at writers’ conferences across the country. She and her husband, Wayne, have two grown sons, a basset named Chewy, and a cockatiel watch bird named Bidley. They make their home in California.
1
Late December 1902
Blessing, North Dakota
“GUS BAARD, YOU ARE the most stubborn brother a girl could ever have.” Rebecca glared, hands clamped on her hips. Since she only had two living brothers, it wasn’t much of a contest, but still, why could he never, ever see her point of view? To keep herself from launching a full attack, she slammed the kitchen cabinet door. The dishes rattled inside.
“You know we don’t have any money for your silly dream, so quit wasting time on it. Destroying the cattle killed a lot of dreams.”
“I know that, but if thinking about my soda shop makes me happy, what’s wrong with a bit of happy?” What else could she slam, other than his head? “Besides, I have my graduation money.” Every year each graduate of the Blessing school received one hundred dollars from Mr. Gould, a wealthy man in New York who’d been a friend of the Bjorklunds since the homesteading days.
“Money that should go into the bank to help replace our livestock.” Gus shook his head. “Grow up, Rebecca. What’s more important—our farm and keeping our heads above water or …”
She glared at him, anything to keep from bursting into tears again. Crying never did any good. All the tears she’d shed over the destruction of the cows, pigs, and sheep had only given her a headache. That and all the smoke from the burning carcasses. Hoof-and-mouth disease had decimated all the cloven-footed animals west of the Mississippi. They had gone for months without milk, cream, butter, and meat other than chicken, fish, or rabbit, unless they paid the exorbitant prices for that brought in on the train. With no milk to sell to Ingeborg Bjorklund’s cheese house, they’d had no income until after harvest.
So what was wrong with dreaming? If only she could talk these things over with her mother, but Agnes Baard had died nine years earlier, leaving a hole in her youngest child’s heart the size of North Dakota.
“You’re not going to cry now, are you?”
The tone of his voice set her off again. “Gus Baard, you better get out of my kitchen before I … before I …” She started toward him, no plan in mind, but the look on her face must have convinced him that even though he was eight inches taller than she and a lot heavier, retreat was wiser than confrontation. She slammed the door behind him and collapsed on a kitchen chair. “Lord, I hate winter, I hate the cattle dying, and I hate all the sorrow around here. I just thought I could bring some people a little happiness, and look what it gets me. A never-ending fight with my brother. And the sad thing is, he’s probably right. I hate it when he is right!”
At least Knute, the older of the two brothers, didn’t try to boss her around all the time, but then, she didn’t live with him, at least not anymore. Besides, he had his wife, Dorothy, and three little kids to worry about. Gus just had too much time on his hands.
Rebecca shook her head and, realizing her hair was about to tumble about her face, unpinned it, finger combed the thick mass, and twisted it into a coil to repin at the base of her skull.
Was she really being selfish, as he’d said many times before, or was keeping a dream alive important? Maybe she would ask the girls after church, or perhaps Gerald would have time to talk. It was a good thing she had friends, because it might be a week before Gus spoke to her after this round.
If only the wind would quit shrieking around the eaves and sneaking through the tiniest cracks to freeze everything it touched. Her mother had said that when the wind got the better of her, she would get herself into the Word of God, because only God could order the wind about. The Bible didn’
t seem to make a whole lot of sense to Rebecca, at least not like it had to her mother.
The more she thought of what Gus had said, the madder she got. Did he think she was lazy? After all, he was the one for whom she’d been cooking and cleaning and washing, doing all the things that women usually do for husbands and children. Before she graduated last spring, she went to school and still managed to plant a full-sized garden. Her mor or far would have been disappointed with the spring housecleaning, however. Overbearing—that fit her brother. She stared at the table, seeing Gus. It wouldn’t take too long for him to be married. Even if he didn’t seem to notice how the girls looked at him.
He’d turned into one handsome young man—broad of shoulder, hovering right about six feet tall, with hair that nearly matched hers, a warm brown that glinted bits of fire when the sun hit it just right. Their mother had said the cleft in his chin was the fingerprint of an angel, put there when he was born. He was two years older than she but didn’t get his full growth until the last few years, so some folks had thought they were twins when they were younger, a comment that always made their mother laugh. Agnes said she knew for a fact she’d never carried two babies at a time and thanked God for not sending them that blessing.
Best she get to the duties for the day. They were out of bread.
Rebecca had the bread dough rising on the warming oven when Gus returned.
“You’ve gone and ripped the knees out of those pants.” She huffed a sigh. The mending pile was growing again, almost as if clothes were breeding in the basket.
He looked down at his pants, shrugged, and shook his head. “Can’t help it. Maybe next time you can put double patches on ’em right from the beginning.”
Amazing. He was talking to her. “You better marry some girl who loves to patch and mend, that’s for certain sure.”
After their parents’ death, the two of them had stayed at the family home with their older brother Knute. Since the eldest, Swen, was already married to Dorothy, the couple helped as substitute parents. But life took another turn for the worse when Swen was killed by a bull, leaving a pregnant wife. Dorothy named the baby boy Swen, after his father, and nearly two years later, Knute married his sister-in-law. When Gus and Rebecca grew old enough to manage on their own, they moved back into their parents’ farmhouse.
Gus stared at her until she put a hand to her hair to see if it was falling out of the rat she’d wound it around that morning. Wearing her hair in a pouf in front made her look older—at least she thought so.
“What now?” She knew her voice still sounded sharp, but he had started the battle.
“Nothing. I’m going out to work in the machine shed with Knute. If I can’t fix that piece, I’m going to take it in to Sam. He said he thought he could make a new part.”
“Couldn’t you just order it?” She thought of the catalog she’d been daydreaming over, which was what had set him off in the first place. Only instead of machinery parts, this catalog had round tables with black iron pedestals, chairs with heart-shaped wire backs, and best of all, pictures of soda dispensers and refrigerated display cases. How she loved that word display, a place where she would show off her flavors of ice cream in the summer and scoop it out for everyone to enjoy.
No matter what some people seemed to think, Blessing really needed a place where people could come and have a good time eating and visiting, and perhaps young people could be courting there. And just maybe some stranger would walk in and she would fall in love and live happily ever after. Since she was the youngest child in the family and had always spent a lot of time alone, she’d always had a good imagination and invented fairy tales of her own. A shining knight on a white horse was all she wanted. Just liked the stories Mor used to tell her when she was little.
Onkel Olaf had already said he would build her display shelving and booths with gingerbread cutouts on the sides and pedestal tables for her soda shop. She’d had to cancel the order last summer when the great devastation hit. She heaved another sigh.
“You know we’d never spend the money on new parts if we can get it done cheaper here. Without the milk money, we have to be careful.”
He stared at her as if studying the machine part to be fixed, but at least he wasn’t yelling.
“Do you need anything from town if I should go?” He spit out the need as if daring her to ask.
“I’ll start a list. I sure wish Penny still had the store. That Mr. Jeffers doesn’t carry half the things we need.” Besides, the man made her feel extremely uncomfortable when she went in there, as if he were sizing her up or something. She’d heard he was looking for a wife, but the thought of even being near him gave her the shudders. There was something about the man that just wasn’t right. I’d rather be a spinster than married to him.
“Well, at least he carries men’s pants. I’ll get a new pair while I’m there.”
“I thought you weren’t going to spend any money.”
He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “I got to have warm pants.” He motioned to the red long johns peeking through the rips. “You’re the one who does the fixing.”
“All right. Help me bring the sewing machine down where it’s warm, and I’ll do the mending instead.” Instead of what, she wasn’t about to say. As he’d said, mooning over the catalog and lost dreams sure wasn’t going to get her anywhere. “If you fill the woodbox before you go out, I’ll bake rabbit pie for dinner.”
At least with the weather so cold, they didn’t have to worry about what meat they had spoiling. Gus had shot and smoked a dozen geese, and the two Baard families had gone together and bought a dressed hog that had been brought in on the train. They were running snares for rabbits, and now that the river was frozen over, they’d be ice fishing. All these years they’d had plenty to eat, but with the cattle, sheep, and hogs destroyed, the larder was pretty slim. Good thing she’d canned jars of chicken when she had so many roosters this year from the hatchings, along with all the vegetables that filled the cellar. She led the way upstairs to get the machine.
“Let’s set it in the kitchen, where it is warmest.” When they did, she went back to secure the blanket they had nailed over the bottom of the stairway to keep the heat from going upstairs. They’d also blocked off the heat register over the stove.
The wind tried to tear the door from his hands as Gus went out to bring in wood. Since the stack on the porch was dwindling, he took the time to haul some up to the porch from the stack along the side of the house. Even though they’d closed off the upstairs and Rebecca had shut the doors to the two bedrooms, keeping the downstairs even close to comfortable took a lot of firewood and coal.
She wrapped her shawl closer around her shoulders and gave the grate in the cookstove a turn before putting more wood in the firebox to heat the oven. Maybe this was why she was feeling like an old maid. She had all the responsibilities of caring for a home, but—
She cut off the thinking there. What was she complaining about? She had food enough to eat and a comfortable home, and now that winter was here, she even had time to read when she wanted to. Probably it was just the wind. Her mother had always said that the North Dakota wind could drive a person crazy if one didn’t pray against it. Surely it was the wind making her morose. The party coming up would be just the thing to get her out of it.
Maybe the wind was ony part of the problem. She’d found her mother’s prayer list, a small book actually, in some of her things, and reading through it had sent her into the doldrums. Life had been so much harder back in the early days. Her mother, Agnes, had been such good friends with Kaaren Knutson and Ingeborg Bjorklund that Rebecca had almost felt jealous. Here she was, no longer a girl yet not one of the women either. She’d always dreamed of being a shopkeeper like her cousin Penny, who’d started the general store, serving all of Blessing and the area around it. She’d read so many notes about Penny in the little book and about her mother’s praying for Penny’s husband, Hjelmer, too. She had been a praying wom
an; that was for sure. And God had answered those prayers. The answers were written down too and the dates.
Why did she feel like God didn’t answer her prayers? Like for her dream of having a soda shop? Or saving them all from the hoofand-mouth epidemic, and most important of all, keeping her mother and father alive. She slammed the door shut on those thoughts and measured out the flour for pie crust. It wasn’t just a figment of her imagination. God really didn’t answer when she prayed. After all, her loved ones had died and all the cloven-footed animals had needed to be destroyed and thus her dream. Her dream that began with Mor’s stories. A dream that would keep Mor close to her every day, not just sometimes. What would she do when Gus married?
She cut the rabbit meat off the bones, added potatoes, onions, and carrots, crumbled up several leaves of the sage she had dried during the summer, and added part of a jar of string beans, along with enough flour to thicken the liquid. After rolling the dough thicker than for a fruit pie, she fitted the crust into a cast-iron frying pan, poured in the filling, and rolled out the top crust. She sealed the edges of the crusts and slid the meat pie into the oven, checking the clock on the wall automatically. An hour and a half until dinnertime.
She rolled the remaining crust, lined a regular pie pan, crimped the edges, and slid that into the oven. She would make a chocolate pie tomorrow, using milk from the cow they shared with Knute and his family, thanks to the Bjorklunds. Gus loved chocolate pie; not that she didn’t, but he was especially partial to that treat. Though why she would want to make him a special treat when he was acting so grumpy was an excellent question.
“You have your list ready?” Gus asked as he came in a while later.
“Couldn’t get it to work?” she asked.
“No! Wish Far were here. He always knew how to fix the machinery.”
“Along with everything else.” She could feel moisture collecting in her eyes. One more memory to pile on top of the others nagging at her.