In the middle of a clear moonlit night, Anna hitched the old cart to… herself. She put the harness straps over her shoulders, with Fritz pushing from behind. They walked for hours in the biting cold until they reached the ruins of the barn. With a crowbar, Anna ripped out six wooden beams. Each creak of the wood sounded like a gunshot in the stillness of the night, but the fear of being discovered was nothing compared to the fear of seeing her children freeze to death.
They dragged the timber back. Their shoulders bled beneath the leather straps, but by dawn, the beams were back on their land.
He laid the beams, then a layer of willow branches, then a layer of dry straw he had gathered with his children, and finally, a layer of thinner turf blocks to seal it all. The finishing touch was the $1.12 glass. He installed it in a small, south-facing wooden frame to catch every ray of winter sun.
When it was finished, the “house” barely rose above the horizon. It looked like a small natural hill. But inside, it was a refuge. The earth acted as a natural thermal insulator. While outside the wind howled in sub-zero temperatures, inside, with a small fire burning on the iron stove, the temperature remained steady.
The Winter of Truth
The first big snowstorm arrived in November. It was a blizzard that wiped the world out. For three days, Anna and her children couldn’t go outside. The snow completely covered the thatched and earth house. From the outside, nothing could be seen but a white desert.
In the village, Silas Murdoch remarked in the tavern, “That woman must be dead by now. It’s a shame; she was a good man.” Even Hinrich Folkmeer felt a pang of guilt. He must have forced her into his cart.
But beneath the snow, life went on. Anna read to her children the few books they had by the light of a tallow candle. Fritz and Greta were warm. They ate porridge and small pieces of meat that Anna had managed to salt weeks before. The house didn’t collapse. The roots of the lawn, now frozen, formed an impenetrable shell. Anna’s downward-facing design had been their salvation: the wind passed over them, not through them.
When the storm subsided, Anna dug a tunnel through the snow to get out. When she poked her head out, she saw a world of white glass. She was alive. Her children were alive. She had built a home from nothing, with her own hands and two dollars.
The Return of Those Who Doubted
Weeks later, when the roads became barely passable, Hinrich Folkmeer rode to Anna’s property, expecting to find a tragedy. He brought an extra blanket and a small coffin in his cart, convinced of the worst.
When she arrived, she saw nothing at first. Only a column of smoke rising directly from the ground. Suddenly, a wooden door opened in the snow and Anna stepped out, wearing her threadbare coat but with her cheeks flushed from the warmth of the stove.
Hinrich was speechless. He dismounted and walked toward the structure. Upon entering, he was amazed. The walls were coated with a mixture of lime and sand that Anna had found in the stream, making them white and gleaming. The earthen floor was packed down until it was as hard as stone and covered with rugs made from flour sacks. It was the warmest home Hinrich had ever visited in his life on the prairie.
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