Settlers of the Marsh Read Free Page A

yard to the stable where she began to harness a team of horses. They were big, powerful brutes, young and unruly. But she handled them with calm assurance and unflinching courage as she led them out on the yard.
    â€œThey’re famous run-aways,” Nelson said.
    â€œAnd he lets the girl handle them!”
    â€œYea …” Nelson replied. “But they don’t run away with her. It’s him they smash up every once in a while.”
    â€œDoes she work on the farm?”
    â€œLike a man,” Nelson said.
    She tied the horses to a rail of the fence and went to join her father. Between them, the two lifted the wagon-box from the wheel-truck, in order to transfer it to the bob-sleighs.
    Niels ran over and took hold of the girl’s end; but she did not yield without reluctance. A frown settled between her brows. Without a word she went to get the horses.
    Nelson had gone on with his work; and Niels rejoined him while Amundsen and his daughter placed two barrels into the wagon-box.
    The girl drove away; Amundsen returned to the stable.
    â€œBetter not take too much notice of the girl,” Nelson said when the man had disappeared. “Amundsen might show you off the place.”
    When Amundsen, after a while, emerged from the stable, he was leading a team of older, steadier horses which he hitched to a hay-rack still on wheels. He worked in his slow, deliberate way, without a lost motion, and giving to the veriest trifle an importance and a sort of dignity which seemed laughable or sublime.
    Niels watched him covertly till he drove away.
    Meanwhile he and Nelson worked silently, with the steady team-work peculiar to Swedes.
    Then the girl returned from the creek. As she drove in on the yard, she happened to look at Niels. It was a level, quiet look, unswerving and irresponsive. It did not establish a bond; it held no message, neither of acceptance nor of disapproval; it was not meant to have any meaning for him; it was an undisguised, cool, disinterested scrutiny.
    Niels coloured under the look. He lowered his eye and went on with his work, a little too eagerly perhaps: he was self-conscious. In order to shake off his embarrassment, and in an impulse of defiant self-assertion, he dropped his pick, straightened his back, wiped his forehead, and sang out, in Swedish, “A penny for your thoughts, miss.”
    But he repented instantly; for the look of the girl assumed a critical, disapproving expression; the frown settled back between her brows. Thus she turned her attention to her horses and ignored the men at their work.
    Nelson, too, had straightened and looked at Niels, grinning. “You’ve got your nerve,” he said admiringly.
    Nelson felt still more embarrassed; but he laughed and fell to work again.
    Some time during the afternoon Niels had an occasion to go into the house. When he entered the kitchen, the door to the second room stood open; and he had a glimpse of the bed in which the sick woman lay. Ellen was sitting on the edge of the bed and holding her mother’s hand.
    The woman’s face seemed to be all eye: large, dark eyes in large, cavernous sockets. Ear, nose, and cheek had a waxy transparency.
    Ellen was in sheep-skin and tam, as she had come in from the yard. When she heard a footfall, she looked back over her shoulder, rose, and closed the door.
    Niels felt ashamed of his behaviour in the morning.
    At night, after the day’s work had reluctantly been brought to a close, the three men sat in the kitchen. Nelson smoked a pipe; Amundsen partook of a dram; Niels declined both tobacco and “schnapps.”
    â€œDone any breaking yet?” Amundsen asked.
    â€œYes,” said Nelson. “Three acres last summer. Too late for a crop, though. I’ll clear enough to break four or five more in spring.”
    â€œThat’s good,” said Amundsen in his slow, deliberate way. “You’ve bought horses. Where are they?”
    â€œAt