Little House on the Prairie

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

  “No,” Ma said.

  When she shut the door behind him, she pulled the latch-string in, though darkness had not yet come. Laura and Mary could see the creek road plainly, and they watched it until the dark hid it. Then Ma closed and barred the wooden window shutter. Pa had not come.

  They ate supper. They washed the dishes and swept the hearth, and still he had not come. Out in the dark where he was, the wind shrieked and wailed and howled. It rattled the door-latch and shook the shutters. It screamed down the chimney and the fire roared and flared.

  All the time Laura and Mary strained their ears to hear the sound of wagon wheels. They knew Ma was listening, too, though she was rocking and singing Carrie to sleep.

  Carrie fell asleep and Ma went on rocking. At last she undressed Carrie and put her to bed. Laura and Mary looked at each other; they didn’t want to go to bed.

  “Bedtime, girls!” Ma said. Then Laura begged to be allowed to sit up till Pa came, and Mary backed her up, till Ma said they might.

  For a long, long time they sat up. Mary yawned, then Laura yawned, then they both yawned. But they kept their eyes wide open. Laura’s eyes saw things grow very large and then very small, and sometimes she saw two Marys and sometimes she couldn’t see at all, but she was going to sit up till Pa came. Suddenly a fearful crash scared her and Ma picked her up. She had fallen off the bench, smack on the floor.

  She tried to tell Ma that she wasn’t sleepy enough to have to go to bed, but an enormous yawn almost split her head in two.

  In the middle of the night she sat straight up. Ma was sitting still in the rocking-chair by the fire. The door-latch rattled, the shutters shook, the wind was howling. Mary’s eyes were open and Jack walked up and down. Then Laura heard again a wild howl that rose and fell and rose again.

  “Lie down, Laura, and go to sleep,” Ma said, gently.

  “What’s that howling?” Laura asked.

  “The wind is howling,” said Ma. “Now mind me, Laura.”

  Laura lay down, but her eyes would not shut. She knew that Pa was out in the dark, where that terrible howling was. The wild men were in the bluffs along the creek bottoms, and Pa would have to cross the creek bottoms in the dark. Jack growled.

  Then Ma began to sway gently in the comfortable rocking-chair. Fire-light ran up and down, up and down the barrel of Pa’s pistol in her lap. And Ma sang, softly and sweetly:

  “There is a happy land,

  Far, far away,

  Where saints in glory stand,

  Bright, bright as day.

  “Oh, to hear the angels sing,

  Glory to the Lord, our King—”

  Laura didn’t know that she had gone to sleep. She thought the shining angels began to sing with Ma, and she lay listening to their heavenly singing until suddenly her eyes opened and she saw Pa standing by the fire.

  She jumped out of bed, shouting, “Oh Pa! Pa!”

  Pa’s boots were caked with frozen mud, his nose was red with cold, his hair wildly stood up on his head. He was so cold that coldness came through Laura’s nightgown when she reached him.

  “Wait!” he said. He wrapped Laura in Ma’s big shawl, and then he hugged her. Everything was all right. The house was cozy with firelight, there was the warm, brown smell of coffee, Ma was smiling, and Pa was there. The shawl was so large that Mary wrapped the other end of it around her. Pa pulled off his stiff boots and warmed his stiff, cold hands. Then he sat on the bench and he took Mary on one knee and Laura on the other and he hugged them against him, all snuggled in the shawl. Their bare toes toasted in the heat from the fire.

  “Ah!” Pa sighed. “I thought I never would get here.”

  Ma rummaged among the stores he had brought, and spooned brown sugar into a tin cup. Pa had brought sugar from Independence. “Your coffee will be ready in a minute, Charles,” she said.

  “It rained between here and Independence, going,” Pa told them. “And coming back, the mud froze between the spokes till the wheels were nearly solid. I had to get out and knock it loose, so the horses could pull the wagon. And seemed like we’d no more than started, when I had to get out and do it again. It was all I could do to keep Pet and Patty coming against that wind. They’re so worn out they can hardly stagger. I never saw such a wind; it cuts like a knife.”

  The wind had begun while he was in town. People there told him he had better wait until it blew itself out, but he wanted to get home.

  “It beats me,” he said, “why they call a south wind a norther, and how a wind from the south can be so tarnation cold. I never saw anything like it. Down here in this country, the north end of a south wind is the coldest wind I ever heard of.”

  He drank his coffee and wiped his mustache with his handkerchief, and said: “Ah! That hits the spot, Caroline! Now I’m beginning to thaw out.”

  Then his eyes twinkled at Ma and he told her to open the square package on the table. “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t drop it.”

  Ma stopped unwrapping it and said: “Oh, Charles! You didn’t!”

  “Open it,” Pa said.

  In that square package there were eight small squares of window-glass. They would have glass windows in their house.

  Not one of the squares was broken. Pa had brought them safely all the way home. Ma shook her head and said he shouldn’t have spent so much, but her whole face was smiling and Pa laughed with joy. They were all so pleased. All winter long they could look out of the windows as much as they liked, and the sunshine could come in.

  Pa said he thought that Ma and Mary and Laura would like glass windows better than any other present, and he was right. They did. But the windows were not all he had brought them. There was a little paper sack full of pure white sugar. Ma opened it and Mary and Laura looked at the sparkling whiteness of that beautiful sugar, and they each had a taste of it from a spoon. Then Ma tied it carefully up. They would have white sugar when company came.

  Best of all, Pa was safely home again.

  Laura and Mary went back to sleep, very comfortable all over. Everything was all right when Pa was there. And now he had nails, and cornmeal, and fat pork, and salt, and everything. He would not have to go to town again for a long time.

  Chapter 18

  The Tall Indian

  In those three days the norther had howled and screeched across the prairie till it blew itself out. Now the sun was warm and the wind was mild, but there was a feeling of autumn in the air.

  Indians came riding on the path that passed so close to the house. They went by as though it were not there.

  They were thin and brown and bare. They rode their little ponies without saddle or bridle. They sat up straight on the naked ponies and did not look to right or left. But their black eyes glittered.

  Laura and Mary backed against the house and looked up at them. And they saw red-brown skin bright against the blue sky, and scalp-locks wound with colored string, and feathers quivering. The Indians’ faces were like the red-brown wood that Pa had carved to make a bracket for Ma.

  “I thought that trail was an old one they didn’t use any more,” Pa said. “I wouldn’t have built the house so close to it if I’d known it’s a highroad.”

  Jack hated Indians, and Ma said she didn’t blame him. She said, “I declare, Indians are getting so thick around here that I can’t look up without seeing one.”

  As she spoke she looked up, and there stood an Indian. He stood in the doorway, looking at them, and they had not heard a sound.

  “Goodness!” Ma gasped.

  Silently Jack jumped at the Indian. Pa caught him by the collar, just in time. The Indian hadn’t moved; he stood as still as if Jack hadn’t been there at all.

  “How!” he said to Pa.

  Pa held on to Jack and replied, “How!” He dragged Jack to the bedpost and tied him there. While he was doing it, the Indian came in and squatted down by the fire.

  Then Pa squatted down by the Indian, and they sat there, friendly but not saying a word, while
Ma finished cooking dinner.

  Laura and Mary were close together and quiet on their bed in the corner. They couldn’t take their eyes from that Indian. He was so still that the beautiful eagle-feathers in his scalp-lock didn’t stir. Only his bare chest and the leanness under his ribs moved a little to his breathing. He wore fringed leather leggings, and his moccasins were covered with beads.

  Ma gave Pa and the Indian their dinners on two tin plates, and they ate silently. Then Pa gave the Indian some tobacco for his pipe.

  They filled their pipes, and they lighted the tobacco with coals from the fire, and they silently smoked until the pipes were empty.

  All this time nobody had said anything. But now the Indian said something to Pa. Pa shook his head and said, “No speak.”

  A while longer they all sat silent. Then the Indian rose up and went away without a sound.

  “My goodness gracious!” Ma said.

  Laura and Mary ran to the window. They saw the Indian’s straight back, riding away on a pony. He held a gun across his knees, its ends stuck out on either side of him.

  Pa said that Indian was no common trash. He guessed by the scalp-lock that he was an Osage.

  “Unless I miss my guess,” Pa said, “that was French he spoke. I wish I had picked up some of that lingo.”

  “Let Indians keep themselves to themselves,” said Ma, “and we will do the same. I don’t like Indians around underfoot.”

  Pa told her not to worry.

  “That Indian was perfectly friendly,” he said. “And their camps down among the bluffs are peaceable enough. If we treat them well and watch Jack, we won’t have any trouble.”

  The very next morning, when Pa opened the door to go to the stable, Laura saw Jack standing in the Indian trail. He stood stiff, his back bristled, and all his teeth showed. Before him in the path the tall Indian sat on his pony.

  Indian and pony were still as still. Jack was telling them plainly that he would spring if they moved. Only the eagle feathers that stood up from the Indian’s scalp-lock were waving and spinning in the wind.

  When the Indian saw Pa, he lifted his gun and pointed it straight at Jack.

  Laura ran to the door, but Pa was quicker. He stepped between Jack and that gun, and he reached down and grabbed Jack by the collar. He dragged Jack out of the Indian’s way, and the Indian rode on, along the trail.

  Pa stood with his feet wide apart, his hands in his pockets, and watched the Indian riding farther and farther away across the prairie.

  “That was a darned close call!” Pa said. “Well, it’s his path. An Indian trail, long before we came.”

  He drove an iron ring into a log of the house wall, and he chained Jack to it. After that, Jack was always chained. He was chained to the house in the daytime, and at night he was chained to the stable door, because horse-thieves were in the country now. They had stolen Mr. Edwards’ horses.

  Jack grew crosser and crosser because he was chained. But it could not be helped. He would not admit that the trail was the Indians’ trail, he thought it belonged to Pa. And Laura knew that something terrible would happen if Jack hurt an Indian.

  Winter was coming now. The grasses were a dull color under a dull sky. The winds wailed as if they were looking for something they could not find. Wild animals were wearing their thick winter fur, and Pa set his traps in the creek bottoms. Every day he visited them, and every day he went hunting. Now that the nights were freezing cold, he shot deer for meat. He shot wolves and foxes for their fur, and his traps caught beaver and muskrat and mink.

  He stretched the skins on the outside of the house and carefully tacked them there, to dry. In the evenings he worked the dried skins between his hands to make them soft, and he added them to the bundle in the corner. Every day the bundle of furs grew bigger.

  Laura loved to stroke the thick fur of red foxes. She liked the brown, soft fur of beaver, too, and the shaggy wolfs fur. But best of all she loved the silky mink. Those were all furs that Pa saved to trade next spring in Independence. Laura and Mary had rabbit-skin caps, and Pa’s cap was muskrat.

  One day when Pa was hunting, two Indians came. They came into the house, because Jack was chained.

  Those Indians were dirty and scowling and mean. They acted as if the house belonged to them. One of them looked through Ma’s cupboard and took all the cornbread. The other took Pa’s tobacco-pouch. They looked at the pegs where Pa’s gun belonged. Then one of them picked up the bundle of furs.

  Ma held Baby Carrie in her arms, and Mary and Laura stood close to her. They looked at that Indian taking Pa’s furs. They couldn’t do anything to stop him.

  He carried them as far as the door. Then the other Indian said something to him. They made harsh sounds at each other in their throats, and he dropped the furs. They went away.

  Ma sat down. She hugged Mary and Laura close to her and Laura felt Ma’s heart beating.

  “Well,” Ma said, smiling, “I’m thankful they didn’t take the plow and seeds.”

  Laura was surprised. She asked, “What plow?”

  ‘The plow and all our seeds for next year are in that bundle of furs,” said Ma.

  When Pa came home they told him about those Indians, and he looked sober. But he said that all was well that ended well.

  That evening when Mary and Laura were in bed, Pa played his fiddle. Ma was rocking in the rocking-chair, holding Baby Carrie against her breast, and she began to sing softly with the fiddle:

  “Wild roved an Indian maid,

  Bright Alfarata,…

  Where flow the waters

  Of the blue Juniata.

  Strong and true my arrows are

  In my painted quiver,

  Swift goes my light canoe

  Adown the rapid river.

  “Bold is my warrior good,

  The love of Alfarata,

  Proud wave his sunny plumes

  Along the Juniata.

  Soft and low he speaks to me,

  And then his war-cry sounding

  Rings his voice in thunder loud

  From height to height resounding.

  “So sang the Indian maid,

  Bright Alfarata,

  Where sweep the waters

  Of the blue Juniata.

  Fleeting years have borne away

  The voice of Alfarata,

  Still flow the waters

  Of the blue Juniata.”

  Ma’s voice and the fiddle’s music softly died away. And Laura asked, “Where did the voice of Alfarata go, Ma?”

  “Goodness!” Ma said. “Aren’t you asleep yet?”

  “I’m going to sleep,” Laura said. “But please tell me where the voice of Alfarata went?”

  “Oh I suppose she went west,” Ma answered. “That’s what the Indians do.”

  “Why do they do that, Ma?” Laura asked. “Why do they go west?”

  “They have to,” Ma said.

  “Why do they have to?”

  “The government makes them, Laura,” said Pa. “Now go to sleep.”

  He played the fiddle softly for a while. Then Laura asked, “Please, Pa, can I ask just one more question?”

  “May I,” said Ma.

  Laura began again. “Pa, please, may I—”

  “What is it?” Pa asked. It was not polite for little girls to interrupt, but of course Pa could do it.

  “Will the government make these Indians go west?”

  “Yes,” Pa said. “When white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on. The government is going to move these Indians farther west, any time now. That’s why we’re here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country, and we get the best land because we get here first and take our pick. Now do you understand?”

  “Yes, Pa,” Laura said. “But, Pa, I thought this was Indian Territory. Won’t it make the Indians mad to have to—”

  “No more questions, Laura,” Pa said, firmly. “Go to sleep.”

  Chapter 19

&nbs
p; Mr. Edwards Meets Santa Claus

  The days were short and cold, the wind whistled sharply, but there was no snow. Cold rains were falling. Day after day the rain fell, pattering on the roof and pouring from the eaves.

  Mary and Laura stayed close by the fire, sewing their nine-patch quilt blocks, or cutting paper dolls from scraps of wrapping-paper, and hearing the wet sound of the rain. Every night was so cold that they expected to see snow next morning, but in the morning they saw only sad, wet grass.

  They pressed their noses against the squares of glass in the windows that Pa had made, and they were glad they could see out. But they wished they could see snow.

  Laura was anxious because Christmas was near, and Santa Claus and his reindeer could not travel without snow. Mary was afraid that, even if it snowed, Santa Claus could not find them, so far away in Indian Territory. When they asked Ma about this, she said she didn’t know.

  “What day is it?” they asked her, anxiously. “How many more days till Christmas?” And they counted off the days on their fingers, till there was only one more day left.

  Rain was still falling that morning. There was not one crack in the gray sky. They felt almost sure there would be no Christmas. Still, they kept hoping.

  Just before noon the light changed. The clouds broke and drifted apart, shining white in a clear blue sky. The sun shone, birds sang, and thousands of drops of water sparkled on the grasses. But when Ma opened the door to let in the fresh, cold air, they heard the creek roaring.

  They had not thought about the creek. Now they knew they would have no Christmas, because Santa Claus could not cross that roaring creek.

  Pa came in, bringing a big fat turkey. If it weighed less than twenty pounds, he said, he’d eat it, feathers and all. He asked Laura, “How’s that for a Christmas dinner? Think you can manage one of those drumsticks?”