Lauraine Snelling - [Red River of the North 02]

by A New Day Rising

  “Hey, keep the noise down over there!” The man in the corner added a few pungent words to the first, and the grunts from the others said they agreed.

  “If you’d been sleepin’ rather than drinkin’, you’d be ready to greet this glorious new day.” Haakan slammed the lids down on the stove with more than necessary vigor. He broke the ice in the top of the drinking bucket and ladled water into the kettle to set on the stove. Today he would wash and shave to greet his beloved looking his best. He dug out his last clean shirt, whistling a tune and dreaming of what was to come.

  When Haakan entered the cookshack with his corn-silk golden hair still darkened by the water he’d used to make it lie flat against his head, a strange man in a black wool suit sat at the end of the bench closest to the kitchen. With one hand on his shoulder, Mrs. Landsverk was refilling the man’s coffee cup. His hand covered hers and he was looking up at her with eyes brimming with love. The man certainly didn’t look old enough to be her father. Where on earth had he come from?

  Haakan tried to take a deep breath, but the ax that split his breastbone wouldn’t allow it. He started to turn, but she caught his movement and, with a smile to dim a summer sun, said, “Come, Mr. Bjorklund, I want you to meet a very good friend of mine from home. We lived on neighboring farms growing up.”

  Feeling as if his life’s blood were running down his shirt, Haakan did as she asked. After the introduction and a stiff handshake, which took every ounce of civility he possessed, he shook his head at her offer of coffee.

  “Then I will tell you my wonderful news. Since his wife died, Reverend Jorge has been looking high and low for me, and now that he found me, we will be married next week in Duluth. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  The axhead drove deeper into his heart. Haakan dipped his head in the briefest of nods. “I am very happy for the two of you. Now, if you will excuse me . . .” He turned and forced his legs to walk, not run, to the outside door, and he straight-armed it open. The resounding bang sent ice and snow crashing from the roof to the stoop. He headed out one of the skid roads, his long legs covering twice the ground as usual. When he was out of sight of the camp, he broke into a run, his corked boots spurting snow behind him.

  By the time he returned to camp, he was no longer calling himself every kind of fool. His legs had cramped and forced him to stop more than once to stretch them out, but his breathing had returned to normal. No one could see the sweat still soaking his long johns. He looked like a man who’d been out for a Sunday stroll, but for the set of his jaw and the ice in his eyes.

  It was his own fault, he knew, which didn’t make it any easier. If only he’d spoken earlier . . .

  The coming nuptials were the talk of the camp. One logger began collecting donations from each of the men so they could buy a present or give the newlyweds the money. Heaven only knew that preachers didn’t make much. Haakan tossed in a dollar.

  The night they left he won every hand at the poker table. No one dared argue with him.

  By the end of the week, he had all but put Mrs. Mary Landsverk and the wedding out of his mind. Or so he thought. When the new cook—a man who closely resembled a potbellied stove—drove up with the supply sledge, Haakan said not a word. But then the few he’d uttered all week didn’t equal the fingers of one hand.

  Life in the logging camp continued at the same steady pace. A blizzard kept everyone confined to camp for three days, and by the end of the third, Haakan had ignored three bloody fights.

  “What’s with you, man?” the foreman asked.

  “Nothing, why?” Haakan cocked one eyebrow.

  “I counted on you to keep order around here. Now I got one man with a broken arm and ta other with cracked ribs. They was kickin’ the life out of him, and you sat back and did nothin’.”

  Haakan crossed his arms across his chest. “I wasn’t hired to be peacemaker.” He didn’t add, And if you’d been sober instead of drunk on your bunk, you could have broken up the fights yourself. But he must have thought it plenty loud because the foreman glowered back at him.

  “The men respect you.”

  “Ja.”

  The foreman slammed his hands on the desk. “Don’t expect no favors from me when it comes time to hire at the mill. You know they go on my say-so.”

  Haakan felt his muscles tense. Grabbing the man by the checkered shirt front and slamming him against the wall would only relieve the anger burning in his belly for now. It wouldn’t solve anything. He’d come so close to joining in the brawl last night, he’d had to leave the bunkhouse.

  In spite of his best efforts, thoughts of Mrs. Landsverk, now Mrs. Jorge, tormented him night and day. He hadn’t realized he loved her this much or had so counted on her going west with him in the spring. If he’d had the sense of a mosquito, he’d have spoken sooner.

  One day toward the end of March, he heard his name called above the din of men eating. Another letter. He rose to get the paper square and returned to his place on the bench. Two letters so close together. What could have happened at home?

  He slit the envelope carefully and drew out the paper. Perusing it quickly, his heart sank. His mother sent another request for him to help save the widows. Surely there were plenty of men in Dakota Territory who wouldn’t mind meeting up with a widow woman and working her land for her. He shook his head. It wasn’t for him. He liked the logging life, and lumbering liked him.

  Two days later, he woke up prone and found himself being hauled back to camp in the middle of the afternoon on the sledge.

  “What happened?” He could hardly speak around the vise that held his head in a grip that continued to tighten.

  “You was struck by a widow-maker.” The driver spit a blob of tobacco into the snowbank. “You was lucky. Two inches closer and you wouldn’t know nothing ever again.”

  Haakan gritted his teeth against the movements of the sledge, each one cranking on the vise handle, intensifying the pain. “Swede?”

  “Just scratched up some. He had a sense of it and drove you forward with his shoulder. I seen it. That one was close.”

  Haakan lifted his hand to his head and drew it away covered in blood.

  “Not to worry. That cookie, he’ll stitch you up good as new. You Norwegians got good hard heads.”

  Four men hauled Haakan off the sledge and carried him into the cookshack to lay him on one of the ten-foot tables. He closed his eyes against the agony, stemming the nausea rising in his throat.

  “Easy, son, you’ll be good as new when I’m done with you.” Cookie pressed around the gash with gentle fingers. “Don’t seem to be nothing broken, fer as I can tell. ’Course a crack in that solid skull of your’n could cause plenty problems too. Seen men go blind and deef after something like this.”

  Haakan clamped his hands around the edge of the table. “Just get on with it.”

  “Better go get the whiskey. This sure do call for it.” The grizzled man’s fingers continued their probing. When the driver arrived back from the kitchen with the amber-filled bottle, the cook took a slug himself and then poured some into the wound. The fire burning Haakan’s head jackknifed him near upright.

  He finally opened his eyes again to see Cookie waving the bottle in front of him.

  “Drink up.”

  He’d never tried drinking lying flat on his back.

  “Here, let me help.” The driver worked his arm under Haakan’s shoulders and lifted him carefully. With his other hand he propped the bottle at the injured man’s lips. “Drink quick.”

  Haakan started to refuse, but when the cook ordered him to drink, he did. The liquid burned like wildfire clear to his gullet. He took a few more swallows, doing his best not to cough at the heat. It wasn’t that he had never drunk, but nursing a drink through an evening of cards and chugging it down were two different things. He’d never seen any sense in being pie-eyed and sicker’n a dog the next day.

  Right now he didn’t care. He’d do anything to dull the vicious pain squeezing hi
s head.

  He passed out about the third stitch. From then on he would have a permanent part on the right side of his head. It wasn’t perfectly straight, but then cracked heads rarely are. He woke up two days later to see Cookie peering into his eyes.

  “Hey, son, dat’s good.” Cookie leaned back in the chair he’d pulled up to the lower bunk where they’d made the injured man comfortable. “You gonna feel right better soon. I ain’t never lost a man I stitched up. Know your name?”

  Haakan closed his eyes against the dancing firelight. Someone must have left the door open on the stove. His name? Of course he knew his name. Nothing came to mind, however.

  “I see. Know where you’re at?”

  Haakan looked at the rough-sawn boards overhead, the patchwork quilt covering his body. Moving his head set the anvil to pounding again. He closed his eyes and let the questions lie.

  When he woke again, he remembered everything. His name, the logging camp, and the swoosh of a falling widow-maker. That branch had done it’s best to kill him, but here he was.

  Sleeping, waking, and finally clear headed, he found thoughts of Mrs. Landsverk always drifting through. He should have made his intentions known sooner, before that Reverend Jorge had found her.

  It took two weeks before he could rejoin his crew, and by then, much of the snow had melted in the first of the spring thaws.

  “So, what you gonna do next?” Swede asked one day. “They already chose up the men to go work the mills. Didn’t see your name on the list.”

  “I know.” Haakan thought back to the scene with the foreman that night weeks ago. The man had a long memory. He rubbed at the scar on his head that glowed pink in the sunlight. “I think I’m heading west. I got some relatives who be needing a hand in Dakota Territory, and after I get them straight, I’ll keep on going. I heard there’s some mighty big trees in Oregon Territory and an ocean with fjords beside. What about you?”

  Their axes continued the rhythm of branch-stripping as they talked.

  “Ah, you know that neighbor to the west of the dairy farm where I worked the last two summers?”

  “Ja.”

  “Well, she be needing some help, too. I’m tinkin’ I might stay on there, if she needs me, a’ course.”

  “Just don’t waste too much time before you ask her.” Haakan swung and cut clear through a six-inch branch. He pushed it to the side with his axhead. “If you care for her, just ask her right out.”

  “M-marryin’, ya mean?” Swede stuttered over the words.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Ja, ja. That it is.” Swede leaned his ax against a branch and wiped his forehead with a faded red bandanna. “I tink I may like felling trees better, you know?”

  The two men looked at each other and shook their heads. Their laughter rang high, accompanied by the sharp ring of ax on wood.

  Early one morning a few days later, Swede joined the men on the final wagon going to town. “You find your land, you write to me, ya hear?” he called as the driver slapped the reins on the backs of the two teams. “You know what town I be near.”

  “Ja, I will.” Haakan waved a last time at the hooting and hollering men. Should I be with them? He shook his head and bent down to pick up his pack. It contained all his worldly goods, a knife, cooking pot, cup and small utensils, a change of clothes, extra socks, the Bible his mor insisted he take, fishing line and hooks, flint and tinder, and some food he’d begged from the kitchen. He’d topped it all with a quilt and a blanket all wrapped in a tarp he bought off the owner of the lumbering outfit. He shoved his arms into the ropes he’d fashioned, and with his ax firmly anchored to his belt, he started walking west.

  A hundred paces or so up the drag road he turned and looked back. Shutters covered the windows. The buildings were all set on logs carved with up-turned ends to make pulling them easier. Soon teams would hitch up and drag the camp farther north to where prime trees still blotted out the sun. Would he make it in the west, or would he be back here again next fall just before snow-fly and asking for his job back? Or, just as they had hammered shut the doors of the buildings, was he slamming shut a time of his life?

  “Widows Bjorklund, here I come. If I can find you.”

  The morning sun shone over his shoulder, casting his shadow ahead of him and leading the way to the western territories.

  Skiing would certainly have been an easier mode of travel if he’d started west earlier in the season.

  Haakan paused after crossing a swollen stream by way of a fallen log. Bridges like that were few and far between. He dug in his pocket for his last biscuit, hard as one of the pine trees he’d felled, and dunked it in the tin cup he’d filled with ice-cold water from a clean trickle. Starting a fire took too much time, and where would he find dry wood, anyway? While a couple of times he’d found a farm where he could sleep in the barn, most nights he’d spent wrapped in his quilt in the tarp.

  Sometimes cold, often wet, he’d fought to keep the thoughts of Mrs. Landsverk at bay. What was the matter with him that he let her leaving bother him so? He called himself all kinds of fool and a few other names as well, but the memory of her smile kept coming back, especially in his dreams.

  One night, howling wolves forced him to make his bed in the crook of a towering maple tree. He was so tired he tied himself in and slept anyway. Whatever had possessed him to start on this fool journey before summer, or at least spring, was well established?

  He stopped to ask about the road he ran across, with grooves deeper than his knees, in the Minnesota rolling hills just before the Red River Valley.

  “That there’s the Red River carts’ track,” the storekeeper said. “Used to haul supplies north from St. Paul and furs south from the fur traders. Them big-wheeled carts could be heard for miles, they squawked so. ’Tween them wheels squallin’, the oxen bellerin’, and them French Canadians swearing, those long lines were something to behold.” He ran his thumbs under his apron strings. “Now, I ain’t got nothing ’gainst the railroad, but it ain’t nearly as colorful as the Red River carts. You be needing some supplies?”

  Haakan nodded and gave the man his brief list. After asking directions, he set off at a northwestern angle to catch the ferry crossing the Red River at St. Andrew. Unbeknownst to him, he’d swung too far south in his western trek. It wasn’t long before he crossed the railroad tracks running north and south. How much easier his trip would have been could he have caught a train.

  Ice floes still joined the flotsam of the Red River in full spate.

  Haakan stood on the east bank and stared across the muddy river. Too high for swimming, that was for certain, besides being far too cold. None of the folks he’d talked with had mentioned a bridge except for the one down south in Grand Forks. The town on the other side of the river hunkered down like the falling rain might wash it away, just as the river had obviously done with trees that once stood along the banks. Water-logged trees bumped branches with each other and with those still standing as they bobbed their way to the river mouth north on Lake Winnipeg. Perhaps he should go upstream and catch himself a ride on one of those floating logs. Surely he could steer it to the opposite bank at some point.

  Water dripped from the brim of his hat, some missing the tarp he wore like a poncho, and ran freezing its way down his back. He needed to find shelter of some kind, that was for certain. He watched from under the partial protection of a tree as the biting rain turned to snow.

  A cable hooked around the trunk of the solid tree farther back on the bank disappeared into the swirling river. Looked like in the summer, at least, they had a ferry to take travelers across. As the snowfall thickened, the wind caught the flakes, driving them directly into his face. There’d be no crossing the river this night. The afternoon light was quickly fading under the onslaught of the snow and wind.

  He had a choice to make: camp here and hope for a better tomorrow or return to the farm he’d passed a mile or so back on the road. Haakan shivered under th
e meager protection of his tarp. As wet as it was, he knew he’d never get a fire going. And the snow still lying in the shaded places was wet as a puddle anyway.

  The big question was, would this miserable weather turn into a full-blown blizzard or just remain an irritating snowstorm? He rose from his hunkered-down position by the trunk of the tree and headed back in the direction he’d just come.

  Only thanks to the early lit lamps did he see the house off to the left through the swirling snow. Even so, if the dog hadn’t barked, he might have trudged right on by, so easy it was to lose track of the distance in the now heavily falling snow. As he walked up to the back porch, Haakan heaved a sigh of relief. He would be safe now from the unsettled weather. When a man answered the knock, Haakan greeted him in his accented English, then stated his request.

  “Do you think you could let me sleep in your barn tonight? I’ve been traveling some time, and—”

  “The barn! Heavens no, you’d nearly freeze out there. You come on in. Had supper yet?” While the man only came up to Haakan’s chest bone, his welcome filled the porch and followed them into the warm and cheery kitchen.

  “Let me take my boots off out here.” Haakan pointed to the porch.

  “No, no, it won’t be the first snow that’s made it fer as the rug. Though Mattie don’t like it when I track up her kitchen floor. You make yourself to home, and I’ll go get her.” With a gesture to indicate the chair and the stove, the man charged out of the room and headed for the stairs.

  Haakan could hear him calling “Mattie, darlin’ ” as he climbed to the second floor. After removing his boots and hanging his dripping tarp on the enclosed porch, he hung his coat and hat on the tree by the door. Perhaps after supper they would let him put his things by the stove so they would be dry by morning. He looked around the spotless kitchen and extended his hands to the welcome heat emanating from the cast-iron cookstove. Now this was what a home should look like. White wainscoting halfway up the walls with sky blue paint covering the rest. Glass-fronted cupboards for the dishes, and counters enough for several people to work at once. He eyed the coffeepot shoved to the back so it would still be hot but not bubbling. How long had it been since he’d had hot coffee. Days? A week?