A New Day Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

settling their guest, the two older people took the two chairs on the other side of the dining table. Mattie set the kerosene lamp to the side, and with coffee refilled for all of them, they both took a cookie from a filled plate set in the center of the table.
    "Now, we can just visit." Mattie dunked her cookie in the coffee and rolled her eyes as if this were her own bit of heaven.
    Haakan felt sure it was. By the time he'd cleaned his plate after the heaping refill Mattie insisted he accept, he leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I'm thinking you saved my life this night."
    "I doubt it. You look to be pretty self-sufficient to me. But you surely made our evening brighter. Until the spring work starts, we live pretty much by ourselves. Once we can get out on the fields, the men make their way back, and then we have a full bunkhouse and a cook to help Mattie, besides."
    "Ach, how those men love to eat." Mattie's smile of reminiscence said as much for her love of cooking as it did for the men who enjoyed eating it.
    - Haakan could tell she liked having others to care for. The socks warming his feet said as much for her knitting skills. There were no bumps to cause blisters on unwary feet in the smoothly turned heel.
    "How many men work here?"
    "During the winter, just us and our foreman. As far as Bonanza farms go, we're pretty small, but the owners let us run it like it was our own. We repair machinery all winter long and get it ready so breakdowns won't slow us down come spring."
    "What really is a Bonanza farm? I've heard all kinds of tall tales about the tons of wheat grown." Haakan leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table.

    "There are hundreds and even thousands of acres in one farm. We can handle it since the machinery got so much better. The farms are usually owned by someone back East and managed by folks like us. We made them rich, we did. You be looking for work?"
    Haakan shook his head. "I left logging in the north woods to come help some relatives of mine over on the Dakota side. Their husbands died a winter ago."
    Ernie and Mattie swapped glances. "What did you say was your last name?"
    "Bjorklund. Why? Do you know them? Kaaren and Ingeborg Bjorklund?"
    "Well, I never ... Small world we live in, for sure." Mattie leaned her elbows on the table. "Such a tragedy, them two young women left all alone like that. And that Ingeborg. She's some worker, that one."
    "How do you know them?"
    "Why, Ingeborg and her sister-in-law bring us cheese and butter, chickens, and produce in the summer. They sell to the Bonanza farm to the south of us, too. I don't know how'they do it. And that little Thorliff, he's taken on a man's job, and he's only seven, or is it eight now?" Mattie turned to her husband for confirmation.
    He'd finally gotten his pipe drawing and nodded around the fragrant smoke that wreathed his head. "Eight, I think. I surely hope they stood the winter all right. Of course, it helps now that Lars Knutson-he used to run a threshing crew-and the other Miz Bjorklund married last fall. They surely did need a man's help if'n they was to keep the land. Those two Bjorklund brothers was working fools, too. I told 'em they could come work for me anytime, but they was too busy breakin' sod."
    Haakan nodded, grateful for the information. "I'm not surprised. Their father, Gustaf, has a fine reputation at home, and I'm sure he trained his sons to be like him." I could have stayed in the north woods, he thought, or gone back to the farm I worked at last summer and saved myself a trip.
    "Yah, you Norwegians be good workers, that's for certain sure. As I said, if'n you want work, you come to me."
    "I will think on it, but my mor would be mighty put off if I don't help out our relatives. I have a job back in the Minnesota north woods come winter, so perhaps I will stop on the way back." Haakan took one of the cookies when Mattie pushed the plate closer to him. "Thank you."

    "Or you could come with the women when they