An Untamed Heart by Lauraine Snelling Page A

they stopped in the springhouse to get the milking buckets and dashed across the puddling yard to join the laughing boys in the barn.
    They had just sat down to milk when Hjelmer came running. “Ingeborg, we are missing two hens. The others are all in the pen.”
    “Look all through the barn first and then the sheds. Chickens don’t like to be wet either.”
    Surely something hadn’t snatched the chickens already. She could hear the boys calling as she dumped her bucket into the milk can. Please, Lord, protect the hens and children. The prayer went up without thought on her part. It was probably the young hens that had not been crated and hauled before. Even chickens could remember, she had always thought. The younger ones were usually the ones to get in trouble first. Something like humans. The hens wouldn’t be setting already.
    She dumped a bucket for Gunlaug and ambled over to the doorway, the rain-laden wind blowing air so fresh even the barn odors disappeared. She inhaled with her eyes closed. This is what freedom smelled like and felt like.
    “We found them,” someone called from one of the outbuildings.
    Thank you for even caring about our chickens. She would remind the others of that while they ate.
    “Ingeborg, do you have something for my hands?” Tor rolled his hands so she could see his palms. Weeping blisters on blisters made her shake her head.
    He added, “We got the fence done. Almost.”
    “Did you not wear leather gloves?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t have any.”
    “What? You were told to bring gloves along.” She opened the cupboard door to where she had stored her medical supplies, bringing out a tin of salve and a roll of soft cloth torn into strips for bandages. On her mor’s reminder she had stocked the box even more so. “Go scrub with the soap. We can’t have your hands getting infected.”
    “It stings,” he muttered at the bucket.
    “Scrub and make sure there is no dirt left in there. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Boys, she thought at his flinch.After smoothing the slippery unguent in place, she wrapped his hands and tied the strips in knots on the back of his hands. “We do not throw these bandages away,” she told him. “We wash them.”
    He nodded, teeth clamped on his lower lip.
    She hoped this didn’t portend a summer full of injuries and illness, like the one they had a few years earlier. But it was sure starting out that way.

9

    Ingeborg sat up in bed. What was that noise?
    She closed her eyes again. Hail of course. It sounded like something determined to shred whatever it touched. Hail did that. She lay back down. Surely they had closed all the windows here. She hoped the others had made it home. Even if they hadn’t, hail didn’t usually cover large areas at a time. Thoughts of every other thing that could break under the onslaught made her grit her teeth.
    But what can you do about it? The question stopped her. Nothing. There was nothing she could do. Other than fret and worry. The words Fear not tiptoed into her mind like a fawn approaching a meadow. The doe would say, Come on , but the tiny fawn would still tiptoe. It was that part of him that nature instilled to protect him. Was that what all these silly thoughts were doing to her?
    As her mor would say, although she didn’t always live it, “Only God can control the weather, and we don’t have to be afraid . ” His Word says so. Fear thou not, for I am with thee. . . .
    Ingeborg breathed a sigh and settled back on her pallet.The floor was hard underneath her quilt, but she’d fallen asleep readily before and must do so again. Morning would come soon enough, even though it was still lighter than dusk outside. The hail clouds made it darker than a usual late May night. She ordered herself to close her eyes and clear her mind. Do not think about hail. Do not think about all that needs to be done. Do not think, period. When all else fails, pray. Perhaps that was the problem. Maybe she should be