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With that he shambled off the porch and disappeared around the corner.
    "Mange takk." Haakan raised his voice, then snorted when no polite response answered him. He scraped some more mud off his boots on the step and mounted to enter the store. A bell tinkled over the door, and a plethora of smells-the same of general stores worldwide-made him sniff in appreciation. Leather and spices, kerosene and pickles, tobacco and new metal buckets, to mention only a few. He stopped for a moment, caught by the variety of goods stacked on shelves, hanging from the walls and ceiling, filling crates and barrels. Clear out here in what seemed to be the ends of the earth, if he had the money, it looked like he could buy about whatever he could dream of.

    "Can I help you?" The man's spectacles shone as brightly as the dome rising from his hair. His apron, perhaps white in the beginning, now hung in gray folds from the string around his neck. As he came to greet his customer, the storekeeper reached behind and tied the dangling strings so the apron fit like it ought to.
    "I ... ah, I need two peppermint sticks and a pound of coffee." Haakan looked around, wondering if there was something besides coffee he could buy for Roald's widow. Perhaps that Lars fellow wouldn't appreciate a stranger bringing his wife a present. What would they be out of now after a long winter? Sugar? Of course. "Give me a couple pounds of sugar too and add half a dozen of those candy sticks."
    As the man wrapped the items in paper, he looked up at Haakan from under caterpillar eyebrows. "You new to the Territory?"
    "Ja, how can you tell?"
    "I ain't never seen you here before, and I heard you asking Abe out there for directions to the Bjorklunds." He handed the packet, now wrapped in brown paper and string, across the counter. "He ain't one to volunteer much."
    "I saw that." Haakan dug in his pocket for his money. "Know where I could stay for the night and maybe get a meal?"
    "Well, Widow MacDougal runs a small hotel, but she took a trip down to Fargo for the winter. Won't be back till the riverboat runs. St. Andrew kind of closes up in the winter 'cept for me and the blacksmith. Guess you could try over to the Lutheran church. If the pastor is around, he maybe could help you. That'll be a dollar."
    Haakan laid the money on the counter and picked up his parcel. "Mange takk."
    "We don't get much travelers this time of year, what with the mud and rising rivers. Soon though, we'll have settlers moving west like fleas on a dog." He came around the counter and walked with Haakan to the door. Now that cash money had changed hands, it seemed to loosen the man's tongue. "You had a horse, he could swim you across the Little Salt, but without one, you're facing five miles or more before you can ford it. And then it'd be dangerous. You shoulda come before the ice went out."
    "I'll keep that in mind." Haakan let himself out the door, the bell tinkling again.
    "You'll find the Lutheran church couple blocks west on the outskirts of town. Can't miss it, white steeple and all."
    "Thank you again." Haakan tipped his hat and followed the boardwalk along the front of the next two buildings before he had to step back in the gumbo. His boots weighted up fast as he could step. Getting to the Bjorklunds looked to be a mite farther than he had thought.

    When no one answered at the church or the small frame house beside it, he decided to keep on going west. There was no sense wasting the remaining hours of daylight. Surely there would be another farm along the way. The snow from the day before had mostly melted, so the road that followed the Little Salt River was clearly visible. Perhaps, he decided, if he stayed on the shoulder where grass from the year before lay brown and could be seen through the remaining snow, he wouldn't mud up so bad.
    He spent the night in an abandoned sod house that had since been used for storing hay and feed. Wrapped in his quilt on the tarp in front of a fire, his