Chapter Two

      The hem of Ingrid’s dress hung heavy with mud, and she dreaded the mess her worn, black, high-top shoes would be by the time she finished gathering eggs and feeding the pigs. According to her diary entry of one year ago, Nebraska experienced a freak snowstorm this time last year. This spring was just the opposite. Although she did not doubt more cold weather was ahead, today was unusually warm and humid. Only partially thawed, the ground beneath her feet was a quagmire. In some places she literally had to yank her feet out of the mud.

      Basket in hand, she made her way to the chicken coop, glancing first at a larger shed to see her ten-year-old brother throwing pebbles into a mud puddle. “Johnny Svensson, you are supposed to be milking the cow!” she shouted.

      Looking startled, the towheaded boy turned and ran back into the shed.

      “When will that boy learn to stay with one job until it is finished?” Ingrid muttered.

      She stooped to enter a small sod chicken coop, wanting to hurry with her own chores so she could get breakfast started. Her father, always the first one up and out, was checking the fields to see if he might be able to plow some furrows to prepare for planting.

      A farmer’s work was never done. Even in winter Albert Svensson was out in the barn every day sharpening tools, sorting baskets and taking care of other endless winter chores in preparation for spring planting and a long, hot summer of farming. In spite of a painful back problem that had plagued him the past two years, her tall, strong father never shunned work and considered it the only way to heaven.

      “Perhaps it is,” she said to the chickens. Hard work kept a person busy, with no time to think about, let alone act on, sinful ways. She remembered her mother telling her that when she was just a little girl.

      Hens pecked at her hands as she shooed them away from their nests so she could collect their eggs. She laid the still-warm eggs in her basket, glad to find plenty to cook a big breakfast.

      She ducked out of the hen shed, enjoying the warm morning sun. It was times like this when she missed her mother the most. Yolanda Svensson would have gloried in a morning like this. Although she’d died ten years ago when Johnny was born, Ingrid still had vivid memories of the strong, brave woman.

      She headed back to the family’s soddy, where coffee was still warming on her proudest possession, a Concord cooking range ordered from Pennsylvania through Grooten’s Dry Goods in nearby Plum Creek. In winter it warmed the house much better than their stone fireplace ever had. How her mother would have enjoyed that stove!

      Before she reached the house, the long wail of another Union Pacific locomotive cried out through the morning air. That would be the 7:00 a.m. She’d never ridden a train—couldn’t afford it—but she could time her day by their regularity.

      She went into the house and set her basket of eggs on a small table near the entrance, being careful not to get mud on the wood plank floor. After her father had laid that floor last year she’d felt as though she were living in luxury. The soddy’s mud-plastered walls were now whitewashed, and two real glass windows let in sunlight. The sod roof had been replaced two years ago with real wood beams, wood planks and shingles, so she no longer had to hang blankets under the ceiling to catch dirt and bugs, which pleased her greatly.

      She turned around and made her way to the cowshed, stepping inside to see that her brother had collected enough milk to garner a good amount of cream for making butter.

      “Good job, Johnny,” she praised him, taking the bucket. Together they headed back to the house, the disappearing locomotive still wailing in the distance and leaving a trail of smoke on the horizon.

      “Ingrid?” Johnny asked.

      “What is it?”

      “What if I don’t want to be a farmer when I grow up?”

      Ingrid stopped walking and faced him. “Of course you will be a farmer, Johnny. That is why Far is building up this land,” she reminded him, affectionately using the Swedish term for father. “This farm will be yours someday.”

      Johnny looked across the flat expanse of farmland at the lingering smoke in the air. “Maybe I’ll want to be a locomotive engineer, or ride the caboose. Maybe I’ll just get on a train and go as far as it will take me.”

      Ingrid could just imagine the picture of adventure trains conjured up for a boy of ten, the whistle beckoning a child’s spirit to explore a faraway land. “When you are older you will see what is truly important, Johnny. Honoring your father is important. Working the land is important. Perhaps you might leave for a while, but this is your home, and you will always come back.”

      Johnny frowned. “How do you know?”

      These were times when Ingrid missed her beloved mother the most, sure the woman would always have the right answers. “I just know it, Johnny, in my heart. The only thing that matters in life is our loved ones, the land and our faith in God.”

      Johnny just shrugged. “After church Sunday can I go watch the trains?”

      “You will have to ask Far. It depends on how much we need in the way of supplies and if we need your help loading them. I don’t want Far lifting too much because of his back.”

      “Well…” Johnny regarded his sister. “Why don’t you marry Carl? He could help us a lot, and Far wouldn’t have so much work to do.”

      Ingrid shook her head at her brother’s reference to their closest neighbor, another Swede named Carl Unger, who had hinted more than once to her father that he was interested in marrying her. “Marriage is not something to take lightly, Johnny. And I do not love Carl in the right way to marry him.”

      “But he’s a real good man, and I really like him.”

      “I know, Johnny, I know.” At nineteen, Ingrid knew she should most certainly be thinking about marriage, but there was so much to do on the farm, plus all