“As it turned out, it’s lucky I did, though I didn’t know it then. But going to town, the wind went right through me, It was cold enough to freeze the nose off a brass monkey. And seemed like my old coat didn’t even strain that wind. So when Fitch told me to pay him when I sell my trapped furs next spring, I put that buffalo coat on over my old one.
“As soon as I was out on the prairie I saw the cloud in the north-west, but it was so small and far away that I thought I could beat it home. Pretty soon I began to run, but I was no more than halfway when the storm struck me. I couldn’t see my hand before my face.
“It would be all right if these blizzard winds didn’t come from all directions at once. I don’t know how they do it. When a storm comes from the north-west, a man ought to be able to go straight north by keeping the wind on his left cheek. But a fellow can’t do anything like that in a blizzard.
“Still, it seemed I ought to be able to walk straight ahead, even if I couldn’t see or tell directions. So I kept on walking, straight ahead, I thought. Till I knew I was lost. I had come a good two miles without getting to the creek, and I had no idea which way to turn. The only thing to do was to keep on going. I had to walk till the storm quit. If I stopped I’d freeze.
“So I set myself to outwalk the storm. I walked and walked. I could not see any more than if I had been stone blind. I could hear nothing but the wind. I kept on walking in that white blur. I don’t know if you noticed, there seem to be voices howling and things screaming overhead, in a blizzard?”
“Yes, Pa, I heard them!” Laura said.
“So did I,” said Mary. And Ma nodded.
“And balls of fire,” said Laura.
“Balls of fire?” Pa asked.
“That will keep, Laura,” said Ma. “Go on, Charles. What did you do?”
“I kept on walking,” Pa answered. “I walked till the white blur turned gray and then black, and I knew it was night. I figured I had been walking four hours, and these blizzards last three days and nights. But I kept on walking.”
Pa stopped, and Ma said, “I had the lamp burning in the window for you.”
“I didn’t see it,” said Pa. “I kept straining my eyes to see something, but all I saw was the dark. Then of a sudden, everything gave way under me and I went straight down, must have been ten feet. It seemed farther.
“I had no idea what had happened or where I was. But I was out of the wind. The blizzard was yelling and shrieking overhead, but the air was fairly still where I was. I felt around me. There was snow banked up as high as I could reach on three sides of me, and the other side was a kind of wall of bare ground, sloping back at the bottom.
“It didn’t take me long to figure that I’d walked off the bank of some gully, somewhere on the prairie. I crawled back under the bank, and there I was with solid ground at my back and overhead, snug as a bear in a den. I didn’t believe I would freeze there, out of the wind and with the buffalo coat to keep warmth in my body. So I curled up in it and went to sleep, being pretty tired.
“My, I was glad I had that coat, and a good warm cap with earlaps, and that extra pair of thick socks, Caroline.
“When I woke up I could hear the blizzard, but faintly. There was solid snow in front of me, coated over with ice where my breath had melted it. The blizzard had filled up the hole I had made when I fell. There must have been six feet of snow over me, but the air was good. I moved my arms and legs and fingers and toes, and felt my nose and ears to make sure I was not freezing. I could still hear the storm, so I went to sleep again.
“How long has it been, Caroline?”
“Three days and nights,” said Ma. “This is the fourth day.”
Then Pa asked Mary and Laura, “Do you know what day this is?”
“Is it Sunday?” Mary guessed.
“It’s the day before Christmas,” said Ma.
Laura and Mary had forgotten all about Christmas. Laura asked, “Did you sleep all that time, Pa?”
“No,” said Pa. “I kept on sleeping and waking up hungry, and sleeping some more, till I woke up just about starved. I was bringing home some oyster crackers for Christmas. They were in a pocket of the buffalo coat. I took a handful of those crackers out of the paper bag and ate them. I felt out in the snow and took a handful, and I ate that for a drink. Then all I could do was lie there and wait for the storm to stop.
“I tell you, Caroline, it was mighty hard to do that, thinking of you and the girls and knowing you would go out in the blizzard to do the chores. But I knew I could not get home till the blizzard stopped.
“So I waited a long time, till I was so hungry again that I ate all the rest of the oyster crackers. They were no bigger than the end of my thumb. One of them wasn’t half a mouthful, and the whole half-pound of them wasn’t very filling.
“Then I went on waiting, sleeping some. I guessed it was night again. Whenever I woke I listened closely, and I could hear the dim sound of the blizzard. I could tell by that sound that the snow was getting thicker over me, but the air was still good in my den. The heat of my blood was keeping me from freezing.
“I tried to sleep all I could, but I was so hungry that I kept waking up. Finally I was too hungry to sleep at all. Girls, I was bound and determined I would not do it, but after some time I did. I took the paper bag out of the inside pocket of my old overcoat, and I ate every bit of the Christmas candy. I’m sorry.”
Laura hugged him from one side and Mary hugged him from the other. They hugged him hard and Laura said, “Oh Pa, I am so glad you did!”
“So am I, Pa! So am I!” said Mary. They were truly glad.
“Well,” Pa said, “we’ll have a big wheat crop next year, and you girls won’t have to wait till next Christmas for candy.”
“Was it good, Pa?” Laura asked. “Did you feel better after you ate it?”
“It was very good, and I felt much better,” said Pa. “I went right to sleep and I must have slept most of yesterday and last night. Suddenly I sat up wide awake. I could not hear a sound.
“Now, was I buried so deep in snow that I couldn’t hear the blizzard, or had it stopped? I listened hard. It was so still that I could hear the silence.
“Girls, I began digging on that snow like a badger. I wasn’t slow in digging up out of that den. I came scrabbling through the top of that snow bank, and where do you suppose I was?
“I was on the bank of Plum Creek, just above the place where we set the fish-trap, Laura.”
“Why, I can see that place from the window,” said Laura.
“Yes. And I could see this house,” said Pa. All that long, terrible time he had been so near. The lamp in the window had not been able to shine into the blizzard at all, or he would have seen its light.
“My legs were so stiff and cramped that I could hardly stand on them,” said Pa. “But I saw this house and I started for home just as fast as I could go. And here I am!” he finished, hugging Laura and Mary.
Then he went to the big buffalo coat and he took out of one of its pockets a flat, square-edge can of bright tin. He asked, “What do you think I have brought you for Christmas dinner?”
They could not guess.
“Oysters!” said Pa. “Nice, fresh oysters! They were frozen solid when I got them, and they are frozen solid yet. Better put them in the lean-to, Caroline, so they will stay that way till tomorrow.”
Laura touched the can. It was cold as ice.
“I ate up the oyster crackers, and I ate up the Christmas candy, but by jinks,” said Pa, “I brought the oysters home!”
Chapter 40
Christmas Eve
Pa went early to do the chores that evening, and Jack went with him, staying close to his heels. Jack did not intend to lose sight of Pa again.
They came in, cold and snowy. Pa stamped the snow from his feet and hung his old coat with his cap on the nail by the lean-to door. “The wind is rising again,” he said. “We will have another blizzard before morning.”
“Just s
o you are here, Charles, I don’t care how much it storms,” said Ma.
Jack lay down contentedly and Pa sat warming his hands by the stove.
“Laura,” he said, “if you’ll bring me the fiddle-box I’ll play you a tune.”
Laura brought the fiddle-box to him. Pa tuned the fiddle and rosined the bow, and then while Ma cooked supper he filled the house with music.
“Oh, Charley he’s a fine young man,
Oh, Charley he’s a dandy!
Charley likes to kiss the girls
And he can do it handy!
“I don’t want none of your weevily wheat,
“I don’t want none of your barley,
I want fine flour in half an hour,
To bake a cake for Charley!”
Pa’s voice rollicked with the rollicking tune, and Carrie laughed and clapped her hands, and Laura’s feet were dancing.
Then the fiddle changed the tune and Pa began to sing about sweet Lily Dale.
“’Twas a calm, still night,
And the moon’s pale light
Shone soft o’er hill and vale…”
Pa glanced at Ma, busy at the stove, while Mary and Laura sat listening, and the fiddle slipped into frolicking up and down with his voice.
“Mary put the dishes on,
The dishes on, the dishes on,
Mary put the dishes on,
We’ll all take tea!”
“And what shall I do, Pa?” Laura cried, while Mary ran to get the plates and cups from the cupboard. The fiddle and Pa kept singing, down all the steps they had just gone up.
“Laura take them off again,
Off again, off again,
Laura clear the table when
We’ve all gone away!”
So Laura knew that Mary was to set the table for supper and she was to clear away afterward.
The wind was screaming fiercer and louder outside. Snow whirled swish-swishing against the windows. But Pa’s fiddle sang in the warm, lamp-lighted house. The dishes made small clinking sounds as Mary set the table. Carrie rocked herself in the rocking-chair and Ma went gently between the table and the stove. In the middle of the table she set a milk-pan full of beautiful brown baked beans, and now from the oven she took the square baking-pan full of golden corn-bread. The rich brown smell and the sweet golden smell curled deliciously together in the air.
Pa’s fiddle laughed and sang,
“I’m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,
I feed my horse on corn and beans
Although ’tis far beyond my means, for
I’m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines!
I’m Captain of the army!”
Laura patted Jack’s furry smooth forehead and scratched his ears for him, and then with both hands she gave his head a quick, happy squeeze. Everything was so good. Grasshoppers were gone, and next year Pa could harvest the wheat. Tomorrow was Christmas, with oyster stew for dinner. There would be no presents and no candy, but Laura could not think of anything she wanted and she was so glad that the Christmas candy had helped to bring Pa safe home again.
“Supper is ready,” Ma said in her gentle voice.
Pa laid the fiddle in its box. He stood up and looked around at them all. His blue eyes shone at them.
“Look, Caroline,” he said, “how Laura’s eyes are shining.”
The End
On the Banks of Plum Creek Page 17