Blessing in Disguise Read online

  While Soren read, Augusta glanced around the room. If she went to Amerika, she would have nothing, for there was no money to ship household things. Suddenly all the things she’d taken for granted looked achingly familiar and dear. So many years since she’d lived in this house, so many years she’d wanted a home of her own, complete with husband and children, the good Lord willing. Instead she took care of other people’s homes and other people’s children.

  “It sounds like your mor needs you.”

  “But what about Elmer? Two years we’ve been engaged. Six months since he emigrated, and not one word have I heard from him. How will he ever find me in that flat land they call Dakota?” She shook her head. “No. I must stay here until I hear from him.”

  Soren handed the letter back. “I think you should talk with Johann about this.”

  The tone of her voice snapped Augusta out of her reverie. “You know something you haven’t told me?”

  “You must ask Johann.” Soren turned back to the dry sink and dipped water from the bucket into her pan to begin scrubbing the vegetables.

  Heading out, Augusta closed the screen door without letting it bang. The spring needed fixing again. When Far was alive, things like that had never gone without repair. He always fixed things before they broke. But then Far had sons and daughters to help him work the land, while Johann had none. And though the parcel of land wasn’t large enough to support two families, there was too much work for one man. A great-nephew helped Johann in the fields sometimes, but last she heard, he’d been talking of emigrating too.

  She kicked a pebble ahead of her as she strolled down the road to the fields. So strange to have time of her own. She drew in a deep breath of brisk mountain air, that, too, far different from the city where she’d been working. If it hadn’t been for Elmer Willardson, she could have gone to Amerika with the Larsgaards, the family she’d labored for these last two years.

  Elmer, where are you?

  If she’d been living at home, she’d be up in the high mountain summer pastures now with the cattle, sheep, and goats like all the other unmarried young women. They’d be caring for the stock, making cheese, and dreaming of the day a strong Viking lad would woo and win their tender hearts. But young I’m not. Not any longer.

  While Augusta knew she wasn’t ugly, she didn’t look at her long neck and straight nose as part of beauty either. Nor the full lips that so often got her in trouble for saying more than she should. But she knew how to work hard—all the Bjorklund sons and daughters did. She’d been known as the bossy one, and Katja, dear Katy, as they called her in Amerika, had had the gift of laughter. If she went to that Dakota country, she’d have to admit that Katy really did no longer live on this earth. Living on this side of the ocean, it was easier to pretend that Katy was still alive and making all the family over there laugh as she had here at home.

  Augusta would be thirty-one tomorrow and well on her way to spinsterhood.

  “Where in heaven’s name is Elmer?” For two long years he’d been stealing kisses and promising they’d be married soon. But the cat twining about her ankles said nothing more than a mew, which changed to a rumbling purr when she leaned over to scratch its back. When Augusta straightened, she heard the crinkle of paper from her pocket. Taking all her resolve in hand, she strode down the hill to where she could see her brother with the team. She should have brought a jug of cool water. Now, that he might have appreciated.

  She waited at the fence until he stopped the team in front of her.

  “What is it? Have you come to help?” Johann set the brake on the mower and climbed off, checking the doubletree and hooks before he made his way to where she was petting the necks of the horses she used to drive before she had headed to the city for work.

  “No, not really. I came out because I need an answer, and from the look on Soren’s face, I have a feeling you know more than you are telling.”

  “Now, if that isn’t clear as mud.” He lifted his hat and wiped his forehead with the half-rolled-back sleeve of his loose-fitting white shirt.

  “Did you bring water?” At her headshake, he asked, “Coffee, then?

  ” Again she shook her head and handed him her letter. She pulled and fed the horses bits of clover while she waited for him to read it.

  “So Mor needs you. And you have no job right now, so this is a good time for you to go.”

  “Johann, I have not heard from Elmer since he emigrated six months ago. I promised him I’d come as soon as he sent for me.”

  Johann looked at the ground as if memorizing every blade of grass.

  “Soren says you know something.”

  He shook his head. “No, she didn’t.”

  “Actually she said to ask you. And that’s what I am doing. What do you know about Elmer that you haven’t told me?”

  “Gussie.” He wiped the back of his neck with a handkerchief pulled from a trouser pocket.

  “Don’t ‘Gussie’ me. I haven’t gone by that name for years, and you know it. Now . . .” She crossed her arms over her chest. It must be something awful if he won’t say. Maybe Elmer is dead, and I didn’t even know it.

  “It’s only hearsay, and you know I don’t listen to hearsay.”

  “Johann!”

  “All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Swen Odegaard wrote to his mor that Elmer took up with a woman on the boat going over and they were married soon as they set foot in Amerika. I always told you he was no good.” Johann kicked a rock under the mower, the clank causing the horses to flick their ears.

  “Ah.” If he had punched her in the middle, she would have felt about the same. When she could breathe, she squeaked out, “Elmer? Are . . . are you sure?”

  “Sorry, but that’s what I heard. Didn’t want to tell you in case it wasn’t really so.” Johann gathered his reins and climbed back aboard the mower. “You can come down and start draping the hay over the fences anytime.”

  Augusta straightened her back, her Bjorklund blue eyes sparking off bits of fire. She spun on her heel and stalked back up the lane to the house.

  “Where are you going?” Soren asked Augusta as she was leaving the house again after having just arrived back from the field, but this time with her hat pinned firmly in place.

  “Down to send a telegram. I’ll leave to help Mor as soon as they can get the ticket money to me.” Calling Elmer every name she could think of and some she’d just created, she slung her reticule over her arm and stormed down the hill to the village. Thank God for the telegraph. She wouldn’t have to wait for a letter to get there, and if she could keep herself angry enough, she wouldn’t cry.

  Elmer Willardson, that whey-faced womanizer, wasn’t worth crying over. Whatever made her think she was in love with him? Besides, she comforted herself with the thought, there are a lot more men than women in Dakota. She corrected her thought. North Dakota. Mor had said so more than once.

  Chapter 3

  Northwest of Ipswich, South Dakota

  Mid-August

  Would she like the ranch well enough to stay?

  Thomas Elkanah Moyer, known as Kane to his friends, most of whom were Indian of the Mandan tribe, strode twenty paces east of his rambling log cabin home and turned to stare at the structure built by his father just before he had left for the war. He studied the long low porch fronting the house, the stone steps leading to it, and the stone chimney built right up the middle of the shake roof. While his pa had decried the number of windows, his ma had insisted on having them. Right now he was glad she had. Women seemed to like polishing windows and looking out, besides letting the sunshine in.

  Since he was so rarely in the house during daylight hours, it didn’t much matter to him.

  Except now. His mail-order bride from Norway was due to arrive in two weeks. If she thought that he, at thirty-five, was getting up there in years, would she like the house? One thing or another had to make her want to stay.

  Not that they wouldn’t be married immediately.
After all, a real lady didn’t ride off in a buckboard with a man barely known to her without either a chaperon or the benefit of that bit of paper with the proper words said over it. Leastways that’s what he’d surmised from the few newspapers he bought on his thrice-yearly trips to the general store in Ipswich.

  Would she mind being so far from everything?

  “Can’t help that,” he said softly, shaking his head. “I warned her ’bout the distances out here in that first letter.” She had agreed to come. That in itself was a miracle of sorts.

  Unless she was plain-out desperate. Or had some physical deformity she hadn’t told him about.

  Those and other thoughts had nagged at him more than once. He knew that a woman needn’t be pretty to bear strong children, but how he hoped she was at least passable. He heard horses whinnying and knew Lone Pine, his half-breed friend and foreman, was bringing in a remuda to be broke and trained so they could be sold to the settlers, who were burrowing into the land like prairie dogs. And twice a year the army supply master came by to see what he had. He’d never had horses left over at the end of the season, or livestock either for that matter.

  He should have been out on the roundup with them, but getting his house in order took preference.

  Morning Dove, Lone Pine’s Mandan wife and their cook and housekeeper, had been helping him up until the day before, when she took a short break to have her son. It was the first baby to be born on the ranch since Kane’s brother, who hadn’t made it past the age of two. Lone Pine’s first wife died having his baby.

  Now Morning Dove stood straight in the doorway, babe in a sling on her back, and beckoned him with one hand.

  “What is it?” He stopped his assessing and headed for the door. “Flowers, that’s what’s needed. All women want flowers,” he said as he leaped up the three steps and entered the house, relishing the drop in temperature. The thick, well-chinked log walls did much to keep out the heat of this South Dakota August. One of the hottest, far as he could remember, and driest.

  “Okay, Dove, what is it? Where are you?”

  “Here.” Her voice came from the bedroom on the north side of the great fireplace.

  Kane followed the sound and found her stringing the ropes of the new four-poster bed he’d built from trees cut along the Little John River that bordered his nearly one-thousand-acre ranch. A year-round creek ran a hundred yards behind the house, providing water for both house and livestock, much of which was out on pasture now being herded by one of his ranch hands. One of these days he hoped to fence off the property, but so far, there’d never been the extra cash needed to buy that much barbed wire. Besides, fencing would cut off the trail the Mandan followed on their treks to hunt and return to their lodges along the James River.

  He’d promised himself and Morning Dove that he’d always welcome her relatives to his home. Several of the tribe had become wranglers for him, and a younger girl helped sometimes with the garden and chickens and such.

  “I told you I’d do this.” He took hold of the end of the rope and helped her snug the webbing tight so the bed would be well supported. With a corn-shuck mattress covered by a goose-down feather bed, he and his new wife would be very comfortable indeed.

  “I know.”

  He glanced up to see Morning Dove smiling at him, a knowing look in her eye. He’d always slept on a board not much softened by a pallet filled with either corn shucks or fresh hay. “Now, don’t you go getting any ideas.” He shook his finger at her, only to get a laugh in return.

  “Missus like new bed.”

  “I surely do hope so. I hope she likes everything out here.”

  “What not to like?” Her dark eyebrows rose in question.

  Oh, my friend, you have no idea what a world there is out there beyond our sandy hills. I don’t know much about it either, but from what I read . . .

  For a man who had never attended school in his life, Kane had learned to look at the world through the eyes of the few books he inherited from his parents and others he purchased when he could. Money was dear, but his mind cried out for knowledge. Before his father went off to fight on the Yankee side of the war, his mother spent hours with him, teaching him his letters and numbers and making sure he became proficient in the three Rs. Beyond that, he’d grown up with the Bible, Shakespeare’s Complete Works, and The Farmer’s Almanac by Benjamin Franklin. He devoured newspapers whenever he could get them.

  But living forty miles from the nearest town of any size made keeping current with the news next to impossible, so instead he kept a journal, recording life around him, the vagaries of cattle and horse raising, his income and expenses, his thoughts on statehood, his desires for a family, for a wife who would love him as his mother had loved his father. The leather-bound volumes stood beside the other books on the bookshelf next to the fireplace.

  No one else knew how to read anyway.

  Morning Dove had washed the sheets he’d taken from his mother’s trunk earlier, and now Kane watched as she put them on the bed, along with a quilt of the same vintage. He looked around the room one more time. He’d keep sleeping on his hard bunk until he brought her here.

  Thoughts of what lay ahead in this room made his throat hot and his ears burn.

  “Oh, Lord, do let her be comely. I know that is trivial in thy sight, and I promise to be grateful for the woman you have brought all this way.” He stifled the “but” and, after another glance around the room, went out, closing the door behind him.

  “I’ll be down in the barn,” he said to Morning Dove as she headed for the kitchen.

  “Dinner in an hour or so,” she replied.

  “All right. Lone Pine brought in more horses.” With the hay cut and the grain not yet ready to harvest, this time was spent breaking and training the horses that were old enough and strong enough. Some of the better fillies he would keep for breeding, and one would be a wedding present for his new wife.

  He’d already been working with her. The bright sorrel filly sported a star between her eyes and a tiny diamond between her nostrils. Two white socks flashed in the sun when she trotted. Her canter could eat up the miles at a smooth gait. Morning Dove had been working with the filly too, so she was already accustomed to a woman.

  She nickered when she saw him coming and came to the fence, draping her head over the top rail so he would rub her ears. “Ah, little girl, we need to find you a name, but I been thinking that maybe we should let the missus name you after she gets here.” He still had a hard time referring to his future wife by her given name. After all, they hadn’t even met yet.

  The filly rubbed her forehead on his chambray shirt, leaving both red and white hairs on the fabric. She nosed the leather vest he wore and sniffed his pockets. When he didn’t respond, she snuffled the hair curling just under his ears and tipped his flat-brimmed hat back, nearly off his head.

  “Stop that now.” He leaned his chin on his crossed arms on the post. Where could he find a rosebush to plant by the front steps? Surely his wife would appreciate a sweet-smelling rosebush. He rubbed the filly’s neck again, then turned and looked toward the sandy hills to the north. Where had he seen roses blooming that spring? The elm tree his father planted at the southwest corner of the house now shaded the porch and half the roof. Several oaks had grown from the acorns tossed out in back, and willows grew along the spring. Off to one side the apple trees that had come across the country in his father’s mule pack hung low with a heavy apple crop. The garden lay close to the creek for when they had to carry water to keep it growing. Like this year.

  But the rosebush his mother planted by the front steps had died a couple of years after she did. Roses were tender things compared to the native flowers and trees. They took some pruning, fertilizing with manure once in a while, and watering. He remembered his mother always saved the dishwater for her rosebush.

  Kane rubbed a callused hand along his jaw and, lifting his hat, brushed walnut-toned hair with a touch of gray back off his forehead and
secured his hat again. “I’m going in early to get new duds, a haircut, and a real honest shave before the train pulls in. What do you think of that?” He turned and nudged the filly’s nose. She blew in his face, then turned and trotted across the corral, twitching her tail and nickering to the horses in the other pen.

  When a rangy sorrel whinnied, she perked up and pranced some more.

  Kane figured right away they’d better get the knife out. The young colt giving her the eye wasn’t quality enough to keep for stud, but with some added weight, he’d be plenty strong enough to pull some settler’s plow. Gelding would settle him too.

  Walking on around the filly’s corral to the larger one where the newly rounded-up horses were shaking off the dust of the run, some still inspecting the six-rail-high fencing for an escape route, Kane automatically judged the horses inside. They looked to be a good crop. Spring and summer pasture had fattened them right up after the lean winter. Lone Pine had told him they’d lost some due to the terrible blizzards.

  “How do the mares and foals look?” Kane asked when Lone Pine joined him at the fence.

  “Good. We got some without our brand, some with no brand.” He pointed to a heavy dark bay that stood looking over the fence. “Like him.”

  “He’s been broke. Look at the harness scars. Someone didn’t take too good care of him.” Kane hawked and spat, a direct comment on a man who would abuse his livestock. “Guess we’ll have to keep him here till someone comes looking, but”—he shook his head—“I hate to send any animal back to be mistreated.”

  After the fall work was finished, many of the farmers turned their horses loose to fend for themselves on the prairie. Most rounded them up again in the spring, which was not a hard job, for the released horses tended to band together instinctively. The men sorted them according to brands and took their own horses home for the spring fieldwork.

  Several in this herd just hadn’t been claimed.

  “Funny that no one’s come looking for them yet.”