Laura was nine, and Pa told her she was as strong as a little French horse. She helped pack the wagon while Mary tended Freddie and kept track of five-year-old Carrie. When the Ingalls family left Walnut Grove, Laura wondered if she would ever see it again.
On the trip to Iowa, the Ingallses stopped to visit Uncle Peter and Aunt Eliza and their children, who had lived near them in the big woods. Uncle Peter invited Laura’s family to visit for several weeks in eastern Minnesota. The cousins spent the long summer days playing together and helping with the chores.
During the visit at Uncle Peter’s, nine-month-old Freddie was sick. Pa and Ma did all they could to help him, but at the end of August Freddie died. He was buried near Uncle Peter’s farm. When the time came for the Ingalls family to leave for Iowa, they sadly left Freddie behind in his little grave.
As the wagon headed toward Iowa, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Carrie mourned for the baby. Laura remembered Ma saying, “Always be happy with what you have.” She was grateful she still had Pa and Ma and Mary and Carrie.
Laura loved Pa for his fiddling and stories. She loved Ma for being so calm and patient and loving. And Carrie and Mary were her best friends. Though Mary was so perfect and so smart that Laura was sometimes jealous, she admired her. Once she wrote a poem just for Mary:
Who is it trusts me
without doubt
And ere she knows what
I’m about?
Who will come quickly
to help me out?
My sister Mary
Mary and Laura wondered what Burr Oak would be like. Pa told them it was an old town, not a prairie settlement like Walnut Grove. When the wagon finally arrived in Burr Oak, Laura saw brick houses standing solid on the hills. Stores and houses and a church stood close together on a winding street. Pa stopped the horses in front of a big, wooden hotel. Laura saw lamplight from the windows, and from the front doors came sounds of people laughing and chattering and smells of supper cooking. Other wagons stood in the yard of the hotel.
Laura had never lived among so many people. Her family crowded in with the Steadmans, who owned the hotel, and all the people who stayed there. Laura and Mary were very busy. They helped with the hotel work, especially with the piles of dishes to wash.
Laura and Mary and Carrie attended the redbrick Burr Oak school. Laura was excited about learning how to spell more words and read books. She memorized and recited long poems. Arithmetic was not her favorite subject, but Laura learned the multiplication tables by singing them along with the class.
Pa and Ma soon realized that the hotel was no place for their family. It was too noisy and crowded. They found a brick house to rent on the edge of town and were happy to live alone once more. In May 1877 a new baby was born there, a blue-eyed sister named Grace. That summer ten-year-old Laura had two chores: fetching the cows from their pasture and helping Ma with Grace.
Pa worked hard at several jobs in Burr Oak, but it seemed there was never enough money to support their family of six. One day a lady in Burr Oak named Mrs. Starr came visiting and asked Ma if she might adopt Laura. The Starr children were all grown, and Mrs. Starr was lonely. She thought she could help out the large Ingalls family by taking one of their children. Laura was horrified! She was relieved when she heard Ma refuse Mrs. Starr gently, saying, “Mr. Ingalls and I couldn’t possibly spare Laura!”
Laura longed to go west again, and in 1878 she and her family did. They left Burr Oak behind and returned to Walnut Grove. How Laura enjoyed traveling in the covered wagon! She couldn’t decide what was best: mornings, with the beautiful sunrise at their backs, or driving into the setting sun in the evening while they searched for a camping spot.
Back in Walnut Grove, Pa built a little house in the middle of a meadow in town. Pa had sold the farm on Plum Creek, so Laura and Mary and Carrie were now town girls. They returned to the Walnut Grove school, and every Sunday they went to the Congregational church with Pa and Ma. School, church, and chores kept Laura very busy.
Mary worried that Laura was a tomboy, because at recess she ran as fast as the rowdy boys and even beat them at baseball. When Mary told Ma how wild Laura was, Laura couldn’t resist: She stuck her tongue out at Mary and called her a tattletale!
Although Laura could be a tomboy, she was also very responsible. She was eleven when she got her first job. Mrs. Masters, who ran the Walnut Grove hotel, asked Laura to help. Again Laura was busy in a hotel, washing dishes and setting tables. Her favorite job was arranging spoons in a holder, just like a bouquet. Each week Laura earned fifty cents, which she gave to Ma.
Laura turned twelve in the winter of 1879. Snow and blizzard winds kept Pa at home, so he took out his fiddle and played dance music. Pa and Ma taught Laura and Carrie to waltz and polka. When they had learned the steps, they sailed around and around the room, dancing to the music of the fiddle.
In the spring of 1879, Mary became very sick. The doctor said that Mary had brain fever, which was very serious. Her fever was so high that all of her lovely long blond hair was cut short to cool her. Mary finally began to recover, but the sight in her eyes had faded. Mary was blind.
Laura knew how important it was when Pa told her that she must serve as Mary’s eyes. Her duty was to tell Mary what happened around her. She started immediately, describing to Mary everything she saw: clouds, sunsets, people, and places. Laura hoped her words would help Mary imagine the things she could no longer see.
Chapter Four
Homesteading in Dakota
PA LEFT WALNUT GROVE in the summer of 1879 to take a job with the railroad company that was building tracks west into Dakota Territory. Pa’s job was to keep track of the workers’ wages and pay them. He wanted to move west, but he needed money to start farming again. The railroad job paid him fifty dollars a month, which he carefully saved.
Laura knew that Pa was looking for a homestead. Ma agreed that it would be nice to farm again, but she also asked Pa to promise that going to Dakota was their last move. Pa agreed; he was eager to get another chance at Uncle Sam’s land.
Laura helped Ma pack some of their belongings for the move, and they sold the rest. Laura was surprised when Ma told her they would make part of the journey on the railroad. They had never traveled by train. All in a morning, the swift train took them to Tracy, Minnesota.
Pa met his family where the railroad tracks ended in Tracy. They traveled on by wagon across the prairie to the Silver Lake railroad camp where Pa worked. The family lived in a tiny shanty near the lake. The one-room shanty was the smallest house Laura had ever lived in and was built with only a single thickness of pine lumber. From the doorway, Laura saw in the distance clouds of dust and plows and scrapers and horses and men. Everyone was hurrying to finish the railroad before snow and cold weather arrived.
When the Silver Lake camp closed for the winter, Pa was offered a new job. The railroad company asked him to stay behind and guard the camp. The surveyors who measured out the railroad tracks wanted to go back east for the winter. Their roomy, comfortable house at the edge of the lake was empty, and the Ingalls family could move in. It was full of food and fuel, enough to last until spring.
Laura was excited that they could stay in Dakota Territory. Now that all the workers were gone for the winter, the prairie was empty. There were no neighbors for miles around. Best of all, Pa found a homestead he liked on the other side of Silver Lake, just a mile from where a town would be built in the spring.
The Ingalls family had a cozy winter on Silver Lake. Laura and Carrie slid on the ice and played in the snow. Pa fiddled in the warm house. Laura read stories aloud so that Mary could enjoy them. They feasted on supplies left in the surveyors’ pantry. There were sacks of beans and potatoes, barrels of flour and cornmeal, and even some canned pickles and peaches.
When the snow melted, homesteaders flocked into Dakota to stake their land claims. All over the empty prairie, men claimed land where they would build houses and farms. Pa said they were livi
ng in the Dakota land rush. Suddenly a new town named De Smet appeared. Laura’s quiet prairie was gone.
Laura was happier when Pa moved them to his homestead claim, a mile from De Smet. He quickly built a tiny shanty, and they squeezed everything inside. Pa planned to add rooms to the little house when he had more time and money. There was so much to do on the homestead that thirteen-year-old Laura was Pa’s helper once again. They built a stable and planted a garden. All summer Laura helped Pa cut and stack prairie grass for hay. Hay could be sold, and it was needed to feed Pa’s horses and the family’s new cow.
Laura worked so hard that summer that sometimes her legs and back ached. But she never complained. One evening in the flickering lamplight, she wrote:
If you’ve anything to do
Do it with all your might.
Don’t let trifles hinder you
If you’re sure you’re right.
Work away, work away,
Do it with all your might.
In October 1880, soon after Laura and Pa had cut and stacked the last of the hay, a blizzard swept over the prairie. Pa knew they could not survive in the thin-walled shanty through the winter. He had built a store to rent out along Main Street in De Smet, and it stood empty. Quickly Pa moved the family to his building in town. Then the blizzards started blowing regularly.
For a while Laura and Carrie attended the first school in De Smet. Soon even going to school became too dangerous. No one knew when a blizzard would hit and strand the children in the schoolhouse, which was just three blocks from Main Street. Snowdrifts mounted, and trains from the East carrying supplies were blocked. De Smet quickly ran out of food and coal.
Blizzards often lasted two or three days. While the fierce winds blew, it was not safe to leave the house. The snow was so thick that Laura could see only a white blur outside the window. During the blizzards everyone sat close to the stove, huddled in quilts and shawls. Throughout the long hours Ma read aloud, Pa played the fiddle, and they often sang to drown out the sounds of the raging wind. They went to bed early to save fuel and kerosene for the lamp.
By January 1881, the family had little left to eat. They had eaten all the potatoes. The flour sack was empty. Sugar was gone. Then Pa brought in a sack of wheat from the Wilder brothers’ feed store. Laura helped grind the wheat into flour, and every day Ma baked a loaf of brown bread. For each meal they ate bread and drank hot tea.
The coal was also gone, so between blizzards Pa hauled in the hay he and Laura had cut from the homestead. Pa showed Laura how to twist strands of hay into sticks to use as fuel. She and Pa twisted hay constantly to keep the stove warm. Still, the house was never very warm because the temperature outside was often forty below zero.
On days when the blizzard winds died down, Pa visited the stores along Main Street. He learned that all of De Smet was cold and hungry, and there was no wheat left for anyone.
In February two young men, Cap Garland and Almanzo Wilder, went in search of wheat that was rumored to be stored in a homesteader’s shanty. The rumor was true. They bought it all and hauled it back to town just before another blizzard struck. Each family in De Smet bought enough wheat to survive until spring.
The blizzards finally stopped in April. Slowly the huge snowdrifts melted, and everyone waited for the first supply train to arrive.
When Laura heard the whistle of the train bringing food and supplies, she knew that she had helped her family survive the worst winter they had ever known, and she had learned how powerful nature could be.
Chapter Five
Laura, Manly, and Rose
AFTER THE LONG, HARD WINTER, Pa and Ma enrolled Mary in a college for blind students in Vinton, Iowa. Pa and Ma traveled with Mary by train to settle her in the school. There Mary was taught Braille, studied music, and learned crafts. Every evening as Laura studied her lessons at home, she imagined Mary, far away, doing the same.
Laura became the best student in the De Smet school. She studied reading, geography, spelling, arithmetic, history, and writing. She also had fun with her classmates. She was still shy, but she went skating and attended parties. Laura wanted to be fashionable, and she earned money for clothes by sewing for the dressmaker in De Smet.
In De Smet the finest team of horses was driven by Almanzo Wilder, one of the young homesteaders who had gone in search of wheat the previous winter. Each time she saw them, Laura wished she might ride behind those horses. One day at church, Laura was surprised when Almanzo asked if he could walk her home. Laura was so tongue-tied, she could hardly speak as they walked together. He told her he was from New York State, but he had a homestead north of De Smet.
Soon after Laura met Almanzo, she passed a teacher’s examination and was asked to teach for two months at a school twelve miles from De Smet. Laura hadn’t expected to teach so soon, but the school offered her twenty dollars a month in wages. Even though she did not want to leave home to teach, she knew that her earnings would help keep Mary in college.
The Bouchie school was in an abandoned shanty sitting alone on the white, snow-covered prairie. When Laura met her five pupils, she discovered that two of them were older than she was. She wondered if she could teach them all. But Laura quickly organized the little school into classes and assigned lessons.
Laura’s first week teaching at the Bouchie school was lonely. She lived with Mr. and Mrs. Bouchie in their shanty near the school. Each evening Laura continued studying her own lessons, but she missed Pa and Ma and her sisters. On Friday of her first week as a teacher, Laura dreaded spending the weekend so far from home.
Just as Laura dismissed her students on Friday, she heard sleigh bells jingling across the snowy prairie. Almanzo, whom Laura now called Manly, had arrived in his cutter to drive her home for the weekend!
Each Friday Manly drove Laura home. Every Sunday he returned her to the Bouchies. Each week Laura grew more confident teaching. She was always homesick, but her students liked her and she liked them. They were sorry when the term ended and Laura returned to De Smet and became a student once again.
In the spring Manly asked Laura to go buggy riding with him on the prairie. All summer they took long rides together across the prairie, with the tall grasses and wild red roses swishing against the black buggy wheels. Laura discovered that she liked Manly better than any of the boys she knew in De Smet.
Laura taught at a second school the next year, this time just a short walk from home. Manly continued visiting, and he took Laura to dances and socials and to a singing school at the church. He told Laura about his homestead land, his crops, and the house he planned to build on the prairie. Manly asked Laura to marry him and Laura said yes. After Laura and Manly were engaged, she taught at one more school. She was eighteen and felt very grown up, teaching at her third school and wearing a shiny engagement ring.
On August 25, 1885, Laura and Manly were married. Laura had asked to remove the word “obey” from the wedding ceremony. She later wrote, “We started even each alike promising to love, honor and respect the other.” Laura and Manly ate a wedding dinner with Pa and Ma and Carrie and Grace. Then it was time for Laura to leave for her new home with Manly.
On his homestead tree claim a mile from De Smet was the prettiest little gray house she had ever seen. Manly had built it for their new life together. The house had three rooms: a sitting room, a bedroom, and a kitchen with a pantry. Through the windows Laura could see miles and miles of rolling green prairie land and blue sky. Beyond the house were ten acres of little trees that Manly had planted to provide shade and to break the wind. Past the trees were fields of ripening grain. Laura and Manly discussed plans for the farm, and they decided that they would be equal partners in the business of wheat farming.
In June 1886 it seemed that all of Dakota Territory was covered with wild roses. Manly drove Laura over the prairie to admire the pink blossoms. On the drive Laura told Manly that she was expecting a baby. Manly wondered about a name for their child. Laura was certain that the child w
ould be a girl, and she wanted to call her Rose. Laura was right. On December 5, 1886, a pretty, blue-eyed girl was born and they named her Rose.
All through the winter Laura and Manly watched their Rose grow big and healthy. They wrapped her well and took her sleigh riding to see Pa and Ma. Pa had given up his homestead and built a house in De Smet for the family. He became De Smet’s carpenter, declaring that his farming days were finished.
It seemed to Laura that farming brought nothing but misfortunes in the years after Rose was born. Manly worked hard, but in 1887 the drought years in Dakota began. Hail leveled their wheat fields. They could not pay their debts. Laura worried and wondered if they should give up homesteading.
Then Laura and Manly became very ill with diphtheria, a contagious respiratory disease. Rose was safe with Pa and Ma during the weeks they recovered. Manly’s strength was slow to return. He shuffled through his chores, and often Laura left her work in the house to help him in the barn and in the fields.
In 1889 they had their saddest year. A baby son was born in August, but two weeks later he died suddenly. One day soon after, Laura heard the crackling sound of fire. Hay had caught fire near the cookstove, and the kitchen was ablaze. Laura grabbed Rose and rushed out onto the prairie. The little gray house burned, and only a black hole remained.
After the fire Laura and Manly became wanderers. They traveled with Rose to Minnesota to spend the summer with Manly’s parents. Manly was still weak from his illness, so they took the train to the panhandle of Florida, thinking the warm weather would help. It didn’t seem to do any good, so after a year they returned to De Smet.
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