Little House on the Prairie

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

  He split a long, straight sapling down the middle. He pegged one end of half of it to the side of the seat, and curved it up and over and down, and pegged the other end to the other side of the seat. That made a high, curved back to the chair. He braced it firmly, and then he wove the thin willow-strips across and up and down, under and over each other, till they filled in the chairback.

  With the other half of the split sapling Pa made arms for the chair. He curved them from the front of the seat to the chair-back, and he filled them in with woven strips.

  Last of all, he split a larger willow which had grown in a curve. He turned the chair upside down, and he pegged the curved pieces to its legs, to make the rockers. And the chair was done.

  Then they made a celebration. Ma took off her apron and smoothed her smooth brown hair. She pinned her gold pin in the front of her collar. Mary tied the string of beads around Carrie’s neck. Pa and Laura put Mary’s pillow on the chair-seat, and set Laura’s pillow against its back. Over the pillows Pa spread the quilt from the little bed. Then he took Ma’s hand and led her to the chair, and he put Baby Carrie in her arms.

  Ma leaned back into the softness. Her thin cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled with tears, but her smile was beautiful. The chair rocked her gently and she said, “Oh, Charles, I haven’t been so comfortable since I don’t know when.”

  Then Pa took his fiddle, and he played and sang to Ma in the firelight. Ma rocked and Baby Carrie went to sleep, and Mary and Laura sat on their bench and were happy.

  The very next day, without saying where he was going, Pa rode away on Patty. Ma wondered and wondered where he had gone. And when Pa came back he was balancing a watermelon in front of him on the saddle.

  He could hardly carry it into the house. He let it fall on the floor, and dropped down beside it.

  “I thought I’d never get it here,” he said. “It must weigh forty pounds, and I’m as weak as water. Hand me the butcher knife.”

  “But, Charles!” Ma said. “You mustn’t. Mrs. Scott said—”

  Pa laughed his big, pealing laugh again. “But that’s not reasonable,” he said. “This is a good melon. Why should it have fever ’n’ ague? Everybody knows that fever ’n’ ague comes from breathing the night air.”

  “This watermelon grew in the night air,” said Ma.

  “Nonsense!” Pa said. “Give me the butcher knife. I’d eat this melon if I knew it would give me chills and fever.”

  “I do believe you would,” said Ma, handing him the knife.

  It went into the melon with a luscious sound. The green rind split open, and there was the bright red inside, flecked with black seeds. The red heart actually looked frosty. Nothing had ever been so tempting as that watermelon, on that hot day.

  Ma would not taste it. She would not let Laura and Mary eat one bite. But Pa ate slice after slice after slice, until at last he sighed and said the cow could have the rest of it.

  Next day he had a little chill and a little fever. Ma blamed the watermelon. But next day she had a chill and a little fever. So, they did not know what could have caused their fever ’n’ ague.

  No one knew, in those days, that fever ’n’ ague was malaria, and that some mosquitoes give it to people when they bite them.

  Chapter 16

  Fire in the Chimney

  The prairie had changed. Now it was a dark yellow, almost brown, and red streaks of sumac lay across it. The wind wailed in the tan grass, and it whispered sadly across the curly, short buffalo grass. At night the wind sounded like someone crying.

  Pa said again that this was a great country. In the Big Woods he had had to cut hay and cure it and stack it and put it in the barn for winter. Here on the High Prairie, the sun had cured the wild grass where it stood, and all winter the mustangs and the cow could mow their own hay. He needed only a small stack, for stormy days.

  Now the weather was cooler and he would go to town. He had not gone while the summer was hot, because the heat would be too hard on Pet and Patty. They must pull the wagon twenty miles a day, to get to town in two days. And he did not want to be away from home any longer than he had to.

  He stacked the small stack of hay by the barn. He cut the winter’s wood and corded it in a long cord against the house. Now he had only to get meat enough to last while he was gone, so he took his gun and went hunting.

  Laura and Mary played in the wind outdoors. When they heard a shot echo in the woods along the creek, they knew that Pa had got some meat.

  The wind was cooler now, and all along the creek bottoms flocks of wild ducks were rising, flying, settling again. Up from the creek came long lines of wild geese, forming in V’s for their flight farther south. The leader in front called to those behind him. “Honk?” he called. All down the lines the wild geese answered, one after another. “Honk.” “Honk.” “Honk.” Then he cried, “Honk!” And, “Honk-honk! Honk-honk!” the others answered him. Straight away south he flew on his strong wings, and the long; lines evenly followed him.

  The tree-tops along the creek were colored now. Oaks were reds and yellows and browns and greens. Cottonwoods and sycamores and walnuts were sunshiny yellow. The sky was not so brightly blue, and the wind was rough.

  That afternoon the wind blew fiercely and it was cold. Ma called Mary and Laura into the house. She built up the fire and drew her rocker near it, and she sat rocking Baby Carrie and singing softly to her,

  “By lo, baby bunting.

  Papa’s gone a-hunting,

  To get a rabbit skin

  To wrap the baby bunting in.”

  Laura heard a little crackling in the chimney. Ma stopped singing. She bent forward and looked up the chimney. Then she got up quietly, put Carrie in Mary’s arms, pushed Mary down into the rocking-chair, and hurried outdoors. Laura ran after her.

  The whole top of the chimney was on fire. The sticks that made it were burning up. The fire was roaring in the wind and licking toward the helpless roof. Ma seized a long pole and struck and struck at the roaring fire, and burning sticks fell all around her.

  Laura didn’t know what to do. She grabbed a pole, too, but Ma told her to stay away. The roaring fire was terrible. It could burn the whole house and Laura couldn’t do anything.

  She ran into the house. Burning sticks and coals were falling down the chimney and rolling out on the hearth. The house was full of smoke. One big, blazing stick rolled on the floor, under Mary’s skirts. Mary couldn’t move, she was so scared.

  Laura was too scared to think. She grabbed the back of the heavy rocking-chair and pulled with all her might. The chair with Mary and Carrie in it came sliding back across the floor. Laura grabbed up the burning stick and flung it into the fireplace just as Ma came in.

  “That’s a good girl, Laura, to remember I told you never to leave fire on the floor,” Ma said. She took the water-pail and quickly and quietly poured water on the fire in the fireplace. Clouds of steam came out.

  Then Ma said, “Did you burn your hands?” She looked at Laura’s hands, but they were not burned, because she had thrown the burning stick so quickly.

  Laura was not really crying. She was too big to cry. Only one tear ran out of each eye and her throat choked up, but that was not crying. She hid her face against Ma and hung on to her tight. She was so glad the fire had not hurt Ma.

  “Don’t cry, Laura,” Ma said, stroking her hair. “Were you afraid?”

  “Yes,” Laura said. “I was afraid Mary and Carrie would burn up. I was afraid the house would burn up and we wouldn’t have any house. I’m—I’m scared now!”

  Mary could talk now. She told Ma how Laura had pulled the chair away from the fire. Laura was so little, and the chair was so big and so heavy with Mary and Carrie in it, that Ma was surprised. She said she didn’t know how Laura had done it.

  “You were a brave girl, Laura,” she said. But Laura had really been terribly scared.

  “And no harm’s done,” Ma said. “The house didn’t burn up, and Mary’s skirts
didn’t catch fire and burn her and Carrie. So everything is all right.”

  When Pa came home he found the fire out.

  The wind was roaring over the low stone top of the chimney and the house was cold. But Pa said he would build up the chimney with green sticks and fresh clay, and plaster it so well that it wouldn’t catch fire again.

  He had brought four fat ducks, and he said he could have killed hundreds. But four were all they needed. He said to Ma, “You save the feathers from the ducks and geese we eat, and I’ll shoot you a feather bed.”

  He could, of course, have got a deer, but the weather was not yet cold enough to freeze the meat and keep it from spoiling before they could eat it. And he had found the place where a flock of wild turkeys roosted. “Our Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys,” he said. “Great, big, fat fellows. I’ll get them when the time comes.”

  Pa went whistling to mix mud and cut green sticks and build the chimney up again, while Ma cleaned the ducks. Then the fire merrily crackled, a fat duck roasted, and the cornbread baked. Everything was snug and cozy again.

  After supper Pa said he supposed he’d better start to town early next morning. “Might as well go and get it over with,” he said.

  “Yes, Charles, you’d better go,” Ma said.

  “We could get along all right, if I didn’t,” said Pa. “There’s no need of running to town all the time, for every little thing. I have smoked better tobacco than that stuff Scott raised back in Indiana, but it will do. I’ll raise some next summer and pay him back. I wish I hadn’t borrowed those nails from Edwards.”

  “You did borrow them, Charles,” Ma replied. “And as for the tobacco, you don’t like borrowing any more than I do. We need more quinine. I’ve been sparing with the cornmeal, but it’s almost gone and so is the sugar. You could find a bee-tree, but there’s no cornmeal tree to be found, so far as I know, and we’ll raise no corn till next year. A little salt pork would taste good, too, after all this wild game. And, Charles, I’d like to write to the folks in Wisconsin. If you mail a letter now, they can write this winter, and then we can hear from them next spring.”

  “You’re right, Caroline. You always are,” Pa said. Then he turned to Mary and Laura and said it was bedtime. If he was going to start early in the morning, he’d better start sleeping early tonight.

  He pulled off his boots while Mary and Laura got into their nightgowns. But when they were in bed he took down his fiddle. Softly he played and softly sang,

  “So green grows the laurel,

  And so does the rue,

  So woeful, my love,

  At the parting with you.”

  Ma turned toward him and smiled. “Take care of yourself on the trip, Charles, and don’t worry about us,” she told him. “We will be all right.”

  Chapter 17

  Pa Goes To Town

  Before dawn, Pa went away. When Laura and Mary woke, he was gone and everything was empty and lonely. It was not as though Pa had only gone hunting. He was going to town, and he would not be back for four long days.

  Bunny had been shut in the stable, so she couldn’t follow her mother. The trip was too long for a colt. Bunny whinnied lonesomely. Laura and Mary stayed in the house with Ma. Outdoors was too large and empty to play in when Pa was away. Jack was uneasy, too, and watchful.

  At noon Laura went with Ma to water Bunny and to move the cow’s picket-pin to fresh grass. The cow was quite gentle now. She followed where Ma led, and she would even let Ma milk her.

  At milking-time Ma was putting on her bonnet, when suddenly all Jack’s hair stood up stiff on his neck and back, and he rushed out of the house. They heard a yell and a scramble and a shout: “Call off your dog! Call off your dog!”

  Mr. Edwards was on top of the woodpile, and Jack was climbing up after him.

  “He’s got me treed,” Mr. Edwards said, backing along the top of the woodpile. Ma could hardly make Jack come away. Jack grinned savagely and his eyes were red. He had to let Mr. Edwards come down from the woodpile, but he watched him every minute.

  Ma said, “I declare, he seems to know that Mr. Ingalls isn’t here.”

  Mr. Edwards said that dogs knew more than most folks gave them credit for.

  On his way to town that morning, Pa had stopped at Mr. Edwards’ house and asked him to come over every day to see that everything was all right. And Mr. Edwards was such a good neighbor that he had come at chore time, to do the chores for Ma. But Jack had made up his mind not to let anyone but Ma go near the cow or Bunny while Pa was gone. He had to be shut in the house while Mr. Edwards did the chores.

  When Mr. Edwards went away he said to Ma, “Keep that dog in the house tonight, and you’ll be safe enough.”

  The dark crept slowly all around the house. The wind cried mournfully and owls said, “Who-oo? Oo-oo.” A wolf howled, and Jack growled low in his throat. Mary and Laura sat close to Ma in the firelight. They knew they were safe in the house, because Jack was there and Ma had pulled the latch-string in.

  Next day was empty like the first. Jack paced around the stable and around the house, then around the stable and back to the house. He would not pay any attention to Laura.

  That afternoon Mrs. Scott came to visit with Ma. While they visited, Laura and Mary sat politely, as still as mice. Mrs. Scott admired the new rocking-chair. The more she rocked in it, the more she enjoyed it, and she said how neat and comfortable and pretty the house was.

  She said she hoped to goodness they would have no trouble with Indians. Mr. Scott had heard rumors of trouble. She said, “Land knows, they’d never do anything with this country themselves. All they do is roam around over it like wild animals. Treaties or no treaties, the land belongs to folks that’ll farm it. That’s only common sense and justice.”

  She did not know why the government made treaties with Indians. The only good Indian was a dead Indian. The very thought of Indians made her blood run cold. She said, “I can’t forget the Minnesota massacre. My Pa and my brothers went out with the rest of the settlers, and stopped them only fifteen miles west of us. I’ve heard Pa tell often enough how they—”

  Ma made a sharp sound in her throat, and Mrs. Scott stopped. Whatever a massacre was, it was something that grown-ups would not talk about when little girls were listening.

  After Mrs. Scott had gone, Laura asked Ma what a massacre was. Ma said she could not explain that now; it was something that Laura would understand when she was older.

  Mr. Edwards came to do the chores again that evening, and again Jack treed him on the woodpile. Ma had to drag him off. She told Mr. Edwards she couldn’t think what had got into that dog. Maybe it was the wind that upset him.

  The wind had a strange, wild howl in it, and it went through Laura’s clothes as if the clothes weren’t there. Her teeth and Mary’s teeth chattered while they carried many armfuls of wood into the house.

  That night they thought of Pa, in Independence. If nothing had delayed him, he would be camping there now, near the houses and the people. Tomorrow he would be in the store, buying things. Then, if he could get an early start, he could come part way home and camp on the prairie tomorrow night. And the next night he might come home.

  In the morning the wind was blowing fiercely and it was so cold that Ma kept the door shut. Laura and Mary stayed by the fire and listened to the wind, screaming around the house and howling in the chimney. That afternoon they wondered if Pa was leaving Independence and coming toward them, against the wind.

  Then, when it was dark, they wondered where he was camping. The wind was bitterly cold. It came even into the snug house and made their backs shiver while their faces roasted in the heat of the fire. Somewhere on the big, dark, lonesome prairie Pa was camping in that wind.

  The next day was very long. They could not expect Pa in the morning, but they were waiting till they could expect him. In the afternoon they began to watch the creek road. Jack was watching it, too. He whined to go out, and he went all around the stable and the house
, stopping to look toward the creek bottoms and show his teeth. The wind almost blew him off his feet.

  When he came in he would not lie down. He walked about, and worried. The hair rose on his neck, and flattened, and rose again. He tried to look out of the window, and then whined at the door. But when Ma opened it, he changed his mind and would not go out.

  “Jack’s afraid of something,” Mary said.

  “Jack’s not afraid of anything, ever!” Laura contradicted.

  “Laura, Laura,” Ma said. “It isn’t nice to contradict.”

  In a minute Jack decided to go out. He went to see that the cow and calf and Bunny were safe in the stable. And Laura wanted to tell Mary, “I told you so!” She didn’t, but she wanted to.

  At chore-time Ma kept Jack in the house so he could not tree Mr. Edwards on the woodpile. Pa had not come yet. The wind blew Mr. Edwards in through the door. He was breathless, and stiff with cold. He warmed himself by the fire before he did the chores, and when he had done them he sat down to warm himself again.

  He told Ma that Indians were camping in the shelter of the bluffs. He had seen the smoke from their fires when he crossed the bottoms. He asked Ma if she had a gun.

  Ma said she had Pa’s pistol, and Mr. Edwards said, “I reckon they’ll stay close in camp, a night like this.”

  “Yes,” Ma said.

  Mr. Edwards said he could make himself right comfortable with hay in the stable, and he would spend the night there if Ma said so. Ma thanked him nicely, but said she would not put him to that trouble. They would be safe enough with Jack.

  “I am expecting Mr. Ingalls any minute now,” she told him. So Mr. Edwards put on his coat and cap and muffler and mittens and picked up his gun. He said he didn’t guess that anything would bother her, anyway.