RR05 - Tender Mercies by Lauraine Snelling Page A

just sit and watch and listen to their chatter. Instead she slowly raised her gun and sighted. With six shots she had five geese and another couple that were wounded. With a beating of wings and honks of protest, the flock rose. She downed another on the wing with the last shell.
    Ingeborg moved swiftly, dispatching with her knife the two that she’d wounded and gathering up the carcasses. She cut throats and held each up to bleed out. She’d have to build a travois like Metiz had taught her to get them all home. They were far too heavy to carry even with some tied across her shoulders. Farther out in the field more geese settled down.
    She jingled the shells in her pocket. That was another good thing about britches. They had deep pockets. She could go for more, but then she would be so late getting home. Eight wasn’t bad. Even Roald would have been impressed with that. But then Roald was long gone, and Haakan would be pleased because she was pleased. Even though he’d tease her about her britches, secretly—or not so secretly to an observant wife—he’d wish she wouldn’t wear them any longer. Why were men so set against women wearing pants? Kneeling in the garden to weed was far easier without skirts and apron. So was driving the team during harvest, getting up and down the wagon wheels. All the while the thoughts ran through her head, she searched for straight saplings to use as poles.
    Taking her knife, Ingeborg slashed down the two slender trunks she’d decided on and stripped off some thicker branches. Then using the twine she’d brought for this purpose, she tied those farther toward the tops on the saplings and wove more branches in to create a bed. Laying the geese on the woven bed along with the empty rifle, she took a pole in each hand and began the trip home, dragging the load behind her. Metiz had shown her how to fashion a harness for her shoulders, but the load wasn’t that heavy nor the distance that far.
    Paws announced her arrival, yipping and dancing beside her as she slowly trudged her way into the yard. Even though the temperature was falling, she’d worked up quite a sweat on the walk home.
    Thorliff came running out of the house. “What’d you get, Mor?” Seeing the pile of geese, his mouth became a big O. Along with his eyes. “How many?”
    “Eight.” Ingeborg laid down the poles. “You want to help me pick them?”
    “I’ll get Bestemor.” He headed back for the house.
    The jingle of harnesses told her that Haakan was on his way in with the team, so she dragged her load over by the well house, where a wide bench was attached to the building for just this purpose. She slung the geese up on the flat top and leaned the rifle against the wall. Once they were gutted, the geese could be left to hang until plucked or skinned in the morning. She ran a hand over the breast of one of the birds, feeling the dense down that made for such warm sleeping in the winter months.
    “Whoa.” The jingling stopped, and one of the horses snorted. “Easy, boy.”
    “Haakan.”
    “Ja.”
    “Come see what I got.” She stuck her head around the corner of the building.
    “You been fishing?”
    “No.”
    “What then?”
    She could hear him removing the harnesses while the horses stamped their feet, impatient to be released in the pasture. Swiftly she gutted each of the geese and tied their feet together to hang them. Saving the gizzards and livers, she tossed the rest in a pail to feed to the pigs. Paws whined at her side, so she gave him a gizzard. Eight livers wasn’t enough for all of them for supper, but chopped with eggs in the morning would taste good. The gizzards she’d chop into stuffing.
    The screech of the gate, a slap on a horse’s rump, more gate noises, then she could hear Haakan coming toward her. Quickly she hooked the tied legs of the last goose over the pegs in a board farther up on the wall and stepped back.
    “You got all of those? And back home by yourself?” He put an