Berserker Series, Book 1

by Emmy Laybourne

  Her brother marched away to prepare for the afternoon class. Hanne sighed and began to think of how she might persuade Sissel to eat some supper.

  CHAPTER TEN

  No one in Helena would hire Owen Bennett. Between his smashed-up face and the rumors Mandry and Whistler were spreading in the ranching circles, and the fact that half the town had seen him passed out in front of the doctor’s office, no one would even hear Owen out.

  He started giving a different name when he asked for work. If his shameful reputation somehow found its way back to the ranch, it would anger his father to hear Owen had been publicly drunk.

  Owen sold his oilskin coat to the owner of a general store. He only got one dollar fifty for it. He must have looked pretty down in the mouth, selling his coat, because the owner threw in a couple of days’ worth of hardtack and some jerky for free. Owen found it acceptable to take this small measure of charity. The coat was only a year old and still quite water repellent.

  Since the sky looked like snow, and since he wasn’t eager to run into any members of his former outfit, most of whom were still enjoying the pleasures Helena had to offer, Owen set out for Winston in the afternoon.

  He camped in the woods that night, beside a smoky fire. He split a piece of hardtack with Daisy and then slept deeply, warm enough in his bedroll with Daisy at his feet.

  Winston was smaller than Helena, and the residents even less eager to offer a job to a beat-up drifter.

  Owen had given himself a frigid bath in a stream, and tried to clean up. He’d never gotten to send his clothes to the Chinese laundry Hoakes had told him about in Helena. Now he couldn’t imagine parting with a dime for such a luxury. He knew he looked bad. His hair was matted down into a greasy ring around his head. The bruises were ripening along his jaw, and his left eye had been thoroughly blackened. But by the time those bruises faded, he’d have to sell his saddle or his horse, and he couldn’t bear to part with either. There was a title for a cowboy without a proper rig: It was farmhand.

  Standing outside the Florence Hotel, he wished he looked a bit more spruce. His plan was to spend fifteen cents on luncheon, impress the cook with how polite and well mannered he was, then ask for a job.

  Daisy was following at his heel. “Down,” he told her. “Stay.”

  He pushed the door open and came face-first into a wall of smells so delicious that he saw spots for a moment. On the right was a large room which served as the dining hall.

  Two long tables were set with platters of food. Rough men sat on backless benches pulled up to the tables. At the ends were a couple of proper chairs.

  Two harried serving girls brought out platters heaped with food from the kitchen. Owen smelled biscuits and gravy and a stew, venison maybe.

  “I’m all full up, dear,” said a fat woman carrying a plate of fried potatoes. She had a thick Scottish accent. “I’m sorry, love. Canna fit another body to table.”

  A man with stringy hair and a badly horse-bit face sitting at the near end of the table eyed Owen. He nudged the man to his left and indicated Owen with a nod. His comrade was large and beefy, a redheaded man with a ruddy, beery complexion.

  “I was wondering—” Owen found the courage to say, but the woman had already hustled away. He stood there holding the brim of his hat with both hands.

  The redheaded man looked up from a scroll of dirty papers he was carrying. The sheaf of papers curled up around one another, having long been wrapped that way. The man leafed through a couple of the pages and shook his head. Owen realized with a start that the papers were wanted posters. A sheaf of wanted posters!

  The Scottish lady bustled back again, this time with a tureen of beans.

  “I was wondering—” Owen said again. But she didn’t hear him. The smells were making him dizzy. He staggered a little and put his hand against the wall to steady himself. He hadn’t eaten anything besides hardtack and jerky since supper two days ago, their last meal on the trail.

  “Are you hungry, boy, or drunk?” the horse-bit man said.

  “Better let that one sit down afore he falls down,” a kind-looking man seated at the center of the table said to the lady.

  “No room!” she said, removing an empty platter from the table.

  “Aw, come on, Mrs. Dunlop, you can fit him in somewhere!” the man said good-naturedly.

  “He don’t have the money to buy a plate,” said the horse-bit man. “Look at him. Clear as day he’s come to beg for work. Go on, kid. GET!” He gave a half lunge at Owen, making all the men howl with laughter. Owen couldn’t let that kind of an insult stand. He took a step toward the ugly man.

  “No, no, no,” Mrs. Dunlop clucked. She took Owen by the arm and led him down the table and away from the bounty hunters.

  “Emery. Harper, shove over,” she said. “We can fit one more in down here.”

  Two men scooted over, and Owen lifted one boot over the bench and got settled. A plate and fork appeared. Then rich venison stew was ladled onto his plate. To either side, the men were eating fast and with purpose. The biscuits came around, and were they ever good! Light and fluffy and golden brown. Owen slipped one into his pocket for Daisy.

  WHAP! He felt the back of a wooden spoon on his shoulder.

  “No squirreling away victuals, there!” said Mrs. Dunlop. The men at the table laughed. Owen felt his neck go red.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” And here he was, trying to make a good impression. “It was for my dog.”

  “That your dog, there?” she asked, nodding out the window at Daisy. “Ah, she’s a bonny thing. Makes me think of ours back home. You come to the kitchen after the meal, and I’ll give you some bones for her.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Owen said. He relaxed then, and ate with gusto. It’d be the perfect opening to ask about work.

  But later, in the kitchen, Mrs. Dunlop said she had nothing for him.

  “I’m sorry, Owen Bennett. You do seem a nice sort of boy, but I’ve got no work these girls can’t do for me,” she said.

  Behind her back, the two kitchen girls exchanged a resigned look. One of them sighed. They couldn’t be much older than fourteen.

  Owen nodded and looked down at his hands.

  “Are you a good worker?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you a good cowboy?”

  Again, Owen nodded.

  “Do you drink?”

  “The one time I drank, which was the day before yesterday, I got beat up. I ruined my good name and got robbed of my pay for a month on the trail,” Owen said, meeting her eye. “I’m not inclined to ever drink again, ma’am.”

  “I believe you, son. I’ll give you a lead. My brother’s the railway stationmaster down in Livingston. Jerry Walsh is his name. You go on down there and tell him I’ve sent you a good reference. Tell him you remind me of our uncle Oliver. That way he’ll know ’twas really myself what sent you. He knows everyone down that way. He’ll help you find something good.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Then she gave him a package wrapped in brown paper. “Here’s for your dog. And, Betsy, give me the rest of the day’s biscuits for the boy.”

  Owen stood and put his hat on. He wasn’t used to the company of women. He knew Mrs. Bennett. He knew Lucy, the cook at the ranch. She was slightly off in the head and kept up a continual conversation with herself, mostly about the weather.

  Outside of them, he’d only spoken to a handful of women in his whole life. But he knew he needed to find some good, rich words to show his appreciation.

  “Ma’am, you have done me a great kindness today and I appreciate it. I thank you most sincerely.”

  Mrs. Dunlop’s whole countenance softened. She put a hand to her heart.

  “Ach, you do remind me of Oliver, though. He was a good man. Quiet and polite, but he held his own in a fight.”

  Here she reached out her plump arms and drew Owen into a warm hug. The kitchen girls looked at each other in surprise.

  Owen stood ther
e, experiencing the embrace. His stepmother, if she could be called that, had rarely touched him at all, and while Lucy had hugged him a few times, she was lean and bony.

  It felt awfully nice, to be hugged by a mother. Even if she didn’t belong to him.

  Mrs. Dunlop released him, and Owen stepped back. He hadn’t realized he’d been leaning in, but he had.

  “You’re a good boy. You’ll be all right,” she said. She cleared her throat and took stock of the dirty kitchen, the sink stacked with plates. “Now take your beef bones and go.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you again, ma’am,” he said.

  “Girls, let’s get a start on the biscuits. Supper will be here before long!”

  Owen looked around the kitchen as the three women began their work. Mrs. Dunlop’s kitchen had an abundance of warmth and practical kindness. He rather wished he could stay. But she had no work for him. Out he must go.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The trip across the ocean by steamship from Liverpool to New York City had only taken eleven days. The immigration processing at Castle Garden seemed to take eleven more.

  First they had anchored at the quarantine point. After waiting a day and a half, officials finally boarded the ship. Sissel was excited to see her first American, even if the three men who arrived were, to a man, short, fat, and mustachioed. They wore crisp suits, and their shoes shone like lacquer.

  After marching over every inch of the deck and checking the throats, eyes, and hands of a good number of random passengers, they declared the ship to be free of cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, and smallpox.

  Passing this inspection meant that the ship was allowed to draw closer to New York City—to America!—and dock in the harbor. Then came more waiting. The first class passengers, of whom Hanne and her siblings had not seen much during the trip, were then free to disembark. Steerage passengers, however, had to wait to be “processed.”

  There were customs forms to fill out. The issue of surname came up. In Norway, patronymic surnames were in use. Thus, Hanne was Hanne Amundsdotter, “Amund’s daughter,” while Knut’s last name was Amundsson.

  The customs official explained that this could not be so in America. They must all use one name. Stieg saw a chance to better hide from those who might seek them out.

  “We shall be the Hemstads,” he told the agent.

  “But why?” Sissel asked. “We are not from Hemstad—”

  Hanne stepped on her sister’s foot, and Sissel shut her mouth. She glared at Hanne.

  “Stieg Hemstad,” Stieg said, trying the name out in his mouth and liking it. “Yes, that will do. And you are Sissel Hemstad.”

  Hanne wished to herself it might be so easy to change as to simply call yourself something new.

  Hanne Hemstad. Who was that?

  Regrettably, she would surely discover it to be her own self.

  Next came a cursory medical exam. All the “Hemstads” but for Sissel were declared hale and hearty by a tall, stringy Norwegian-speaking nurse with severe wire spectacles.

  The nurse said Sissel was too thin. She prescribed iron pills and something called Lydia Pinkham’s Blood Purifier, and sent them on their way to an appointment with the immigration agent.

  There would be more waiting, but now, at least, they were finally permitted to leave the ship and enter the Castle Garden immigration depot. As they walked down the gangplank, Stieg clutched his carpetbag and a large flour sack that held the boys’ clothing, as well as several books he’d brought from home. Knut carried the beautiful old trunk their aunty Aud had given them, with their bedding atop it, bound up in a great bundle and tied with rope. Hanne carried the girls’ clothing in a valise they had purchased in England. Sissel, excused because of her limp, carried only the few provisions that remained and their wooden plates, tin mugs, and cutlery in a gunnysack.

  Stieg and Knut had broad grins as they clattered down the gangplank. Sissel clung to Hanne’s arm, while Hanne kept an eye out for trouble.

  The sky was overcast, a wash-water gray. From the boat next to them, another stream of steerage passengers just as weary and dirty as they filed out onto the dock.

  The people streamed and milled together, all heading toward large doors. There was a press now—men, women, and children all pushing, moving together.

  Hanne’s heart pounded. There was so much to guard against. So many people.

  “Stay together,” she called to Stieg. She had a good grip on Sissel’s wrist. She pushed a German man to the side and put her hand on Stieg’s shoulder. Knut was in front.

  “You’re hurting me!” Sissel whined.

  “We must stay together!” Hanne said, and at that point the crowd had ferried them inside, and Hanne’s jaw dropped.

  Above them was a vast round ceiling. Pillars rose up and up. At the center of the ceiling there was a perfectly round window. A balcony ran around the wall, encircling the upper level.

  Everywhere there were people.

  People waited on long lines in front of booths near the walls and in a maze of desks and partitions at the center of the ground floor. Against the walls, on the stairways, and anywhere they could find, families waited for their turn. Children sprawled out, some playing with the dirty leaflets that littered the floor. Old men chatted with one another, while their sons waited on the long lines. Some women nursed babies without shame or modesty.

  The Hemstads stood in a tight knot as strangers milled around them. They gazed up at the ceiling, as grand as any cathedral.

  “It’s a new life,” Stieg said.

  “We are in America,” Knut said.

  Hanne could not help but smile at the excitement on his face.

  “I wish we’d come for a different reason, but it is good we are here,” Hanne said. She did not wish to dampen her brothers’ delight.

  “My leg hurts,” Sissel said.

  “Yes!” Stieg said. “But it hurts in America!” He tapped Sissel playfully on the nose.

  She swatted at his hand, but had a little smile on her lips.

  People were coming in behind them. Hanne wondered how more people could fit into the space. It didn’t seem possible. Yet more were coming, so those who were inside must make room.

  Stieg led the way through the throngs, spotting a family decamping from an area near a corner.

  “Hanne and Sissel, you wait here. I’ll send Knut back for you when it comes our turn.”

  “More waiting?” Sissel said. Knut set down the trunk, and Sissel sank down to sit on it.

  Hanne was glad to stand in the corner and observe. She had nursed a fear that they might be arrested on the spot when they arrived in America. But no one seemed to be paying them much attention at all.

  Not long after Stieg and Knut left, a swarthy, handsome young man came around passing out leaflets. He wore a well-cut suit with a waistcoat and had snappy black eyes.

  “You ladies need a map?” he asked. Hanne shook her head, but he pressed one into her hand. “Union Pacific—we can take you all the way to California.”

  “California!” Sissel exclaimed. The young man gave her a wink. Now he was the sort of American she had hoped to meet.

  “It’s always warm, the crops grow year round—and there’s gold, for those brave enough to seek it.”

  “I like to go,” Sissel ventured in tentative English.

  “Here’s a girl with good sense!” the man said loudly. “She’s going to take the Union Pacific all the way to California, the land of sunshine and gold claims!”

  “Now, now, Niccoluchi,” said another young man, this one shorter but with a similar, boisterous, cheerful energy. “These girls look like they know how to farm. They’ll want to be heading to Minnesota or the Dakota Territory. The land is as flat as a pancake, and there’s no rocks in the soil! A farmer’s paradise!”

  “He’s not mentioning the years of drought,” the one named Niccoluchi said. “Fickle weather, in the center of the country.”

  Strangers listened now as
the two young men bantered back and forth. Hanne had the feeling they’d done this many times before.

  “Nonsense!” said the short one. “Why, the rain follows the plow. It’s a scientific phenomenon, known only to the Great Plains of North America. The plow metal draws the rain out.”

  “Well, this girl’s up for an adventure,” Niccoluchi said, tucking Sissel under the chin. “Aren’t you, dolly?”

  Sissel smiled back. She had never held the attention of such a handsome young man. Sickly, thin as a rail, and having a limp, why should she have? Now her pale eyes glittered from his attention.

  Hanne stepped between them.

  “We thank you for your map. Now, leave us.”

  People around them laughed. Hanne didn’t like it.

  “Ha! That’s right. Older sister knows what’s best. Here, miss. Come take a ride on the Northern Pacific. Why, we run all the way to Washington Territory!”

  The man held out a map, and Hanne took it.

  “You’ll be on the coast in six short days! Fancy that!”

  Nodding her thanks, she turned her back on the two men and placed the map against the wall. She studied it. NORTHERN PACIFIC, ROUTES AS OF SEPTEMBER 1883.

  The map was broken up by boxes; they must be the states and territories. “Pennsylvania.” “Wisconsin.” “Dakota Territory.” And there, at the other side of the page, “Montana Territory.”

  It was a big country.

  * * *

  ROLF WAS TIRED of waiting, and he was tired of the company of Ketil Nilsen.

  They had traveled quickly, not sparing their fine horses, to reach Gamlehaugen after they had learned all they could at the dead Shipwright’s farm.

  Ketil had wanted to speak with the Baron Fjelstad, but Rolf insisted on a private conversation with his friend and employer.

  Fjelstad was distracted, looking out the windows onto the autumn grasses on the hills around the estate as Rolf described what they had learned about the Nytteson children.

  “This is the perfect opportunity for you to do some research in America. We might find many Nytteson among the emigrants there,” Fjelstad said.