Greta’s beloved old horses Ruth and Cheryl

Greta’s beloved old horses Ruth and Cheryl are more than part of Greta Loewen’s team: when Klaas Loewen claims he must take them, Autje Loewen and Neitje Friesen risk a secret nighttime journey to keep them from auction. Their return to Greta’s barn secures a place for them in the women’s departure from Molotschna and makes the horses a concrete part of the escape plan.

Identity and Importance

Ruth and Cheryl are Greta Loewen’s old horses and beloved team. Their importance is practical as well as personal: the women plan to take them, along with the other women’s teams, to help carry them on their journey. Greta also includes pigs, cows, and chickens among the animals needed to provide food, and identifies animal feed and clean straw as necessary supplies. The horses therefore belong to a larger effort to make departure possible, but their threatened loss gives that effort a particular urgency for Greta.

Threat and Secret Removal

Klaas Loewen tells Greta Loewen that he is taking her team. When Greta protests that he cannot take Ruth and Cheryl, he says he has no choice and directs the women to return to milking, then go home to their children and prepare food. His announcement makes the horses’ fate a point of conflict within a plan that the women are trying to carry out without the men’s control.

As Neitje Friesen recounts at the women’s meeting, Autje Loewen slipped out after Klaas left to have a rotten tooth pulled by Agata Friesen and ran to fetch her. With Neitje’s father and uncle away in the city with the other men, the two young women went to Greta’s barn in complete darkness, saddled Ruth and Cheryl, and rode them to Chortiza Colony. There, behind the church and near an open pit used to burn animal carcasses, they found the Koop brothers. The spot was familiar as a place where young people from both colonies spent leisure time on Wednesday and Sunday evenings.

Shelter, Return, and the Women’s Journey

Autje and Neitje persuaded the Koop brothers to shelter the horses overnight in their barn. Early the next morning, after Klaas had gone to the city without Ruth and Cheryl, the brothers returned them to Greta’s barn. Klaas was angry to have left without the horses, though he was grateful to have had his tooth removed. The temporary hiding place thus protected Greta’s team while avoiding a lasting separation from her.

Greta thanks the young women for saving Ruth and Cheryl from being auctioned and says she will always be grateful. The horses’ return is also a practical condition of the women’s preparations: when Ona Friesen lists what they must take, she includes Ruth and Cheryl and the other women’s teams, and the others echo the horses’ names. Their presence in this inventory links the episode of clandestine rescue to the larger decision to leave: the women are planning not only to go, but to bring the animals and supplies needed along the way.