The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [277]
In this winter, there were three occasions when Ofeig was seen, and two when it seemed to Jon Andres that they might catch him. The first of these happened shortly after the first winter nights. Early one morning, long before sunrise, Jon Andres was lying with Helga in their bedcloset, when a boy came into the steading, and declared that there was a bear in the byre at Mosfell Stead, and that the farm folk had risen up upon realizing that Ofeig was in the byre and set boulders by the door, but indeed, there were some sheep and goats and other goods in the byre, and if Ofeig were to wake up, then surely he would kill these. Now Jon Andres leaped from his bed, and found his ax and his crossbow, and gathered his men, and they went on horseback over the frozen ground to this steading, which was not as nearby as Jon Andres might have wished it to be.
Mosfell Stead sat on a neck of land between two ponds that flowed out of Broad Lake, which was the second lake of Vatna Hverfi district. The steading sat on a hill looking down upon the lake, and the byre sat lower, so that from the steading, the turves over its roof seemed to blend into the hillside. The farmer on the steading was a woman who had three sons, but whose husband had died in the hunger, and it was this woman, whose name was Ulfhild, who had thought of rolling the stones against the byre door. When Jon Andres and his men rode up to the steading, Ulfhild and her sons and their children were standing in front of the steading and looking down at the byre, and the bleats of sheep and the cries of goats were coming from the byre, but muffled by the turves. Ulfhild said to Jon Andres, “Now, my man, you must kill this devil, for a poor woman loves her sheep more than she loves her children, for the one puts food in her mouth, and the other takes it out, and I can tell the voices of my beauties as they cry out below.”
But the eldest son was discontented with this, and fell to bickering, saying that the whereabouts of Ofeig Thorkelsson was no business of theirs, and that they were better to have let the fellow sleep out his fill and rise up and go off.
Ulfhild tightened her lips. “And who is to say, my fool, that he would not have gone off up the hill to our steading and rummaged about there? It seems to me that you think of nothing, and had better close your mouth than open it.” And Jon Andres and his men dismounted and tethered their horses to the birch scrub that stood about the steading.
Jon Andres went down the hill to the door of the byre and shouted, “Folk say that bears have returned to Greenland.” There was no reply. Now Jon Andres went on, “Folk say that in former days, it took ten men to capture a bear, but only six to kill it. We have ten men here, and would hate to use only six of them, for all are ready for a fight.” Still there was no sound of human words, only the crying of beasts. But suddenly there was a great crash against the door, and the door shook with it. There was another crash, and the door shook again, and Jon Andres stepped back, and gestured to two of his men to come up to him, and this was their plan, that they would quickly and silently roll back the stones, so that Ofeig would crash out of the door and fall forward at their feet, and then they and the others would use their weapons against him, and capture him or kill him. The other seven men gathered in a tight circle some paces below the door, and the first three began to roll back the stones, but it happened that as one of the men was pushing on his stone, quite a large one, Ofeig crashed against the door, which slammed into this fellow and knocked him down, then broke, and fell