Free Wild Heart on the Prairie (A Prairie Heritage, Book 2) by Vikki Kestell Page B

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