Little Author in the Big Woods (5 page)

To Laura, the hotel seemed very grand. On the street level, there was a parlor, the hotel office, and a tavern. Right off the parlor was a big bedroom occupied by the hotel's wealthiest boarder. Down below were the kitchen, the dining room, and a sleeping area. Upstairs, there were four small bedrooms.

Life at Burr Oak was busy from morning until night. Guests were always coming and going; they lined up in the dining room to get their meals. The hotel was also used for weddings and dances. Some people lived there permanently; they were called steady boarders, and the hotel establishment took great pains to keep them happy.

Laura's jobs included going out behind the barn to the springhouse to retrieve butter and eggs. The one-room springhouse was built over a brook. The cool water maintained a constant temperature inside the house all year long. Perishable food would not spoil as quickly.

Laura and Mary also made beds, washed dishes, and waited on tables in the dining room. Ma and Pa were busy all the time too. There was plenty of work for everyone at the inn.

Pa and Ma didn't like the noisy tavern and the constant flow of people. And they especially didn't like the saloon right next door. To Ma, saloons were nothing but trouble: rough men, rough language, and bad behavior. Late one night, the saloon caught fire. Ma quickly woke Mary, Laura, and Carrie and hustled them outside. The girls stood and watched as the bucket brigade—men who stood in a line by the town pump, passing pails of water along to douse the flames—was finally able to get the blaze under control. Ma and Pa were so grateful that the fire had not spread to the inn and that none of their family had been hurt. But they were still frightened.

After that, Pa and Ma didn't want to live so close to the saloon, so they moved from the inn to a redbrick house that stood near an oak forest. Pa bought a cow, and it was Laura's job to take her out to the pasture in the morning and home again at night.

One day, Laura came home late from an errand that had taken a long time. There she found a brand-new baby sister, with Mary's blond hair and Pa's blue eyes. Ma named her Grace Pearl.

Now that the family had four girls, Pa had to work even harder to make ends meet. Though he could always get work as a carpenter or help out on a farm, he still needed more money. Laura did not fully understand this. Her family lived in a nice house. They had enough to eat, and they were happy. They were not poor. Or were they? Other people in town seemed to think so, and one of them, Mrs. Starr, asked if she could help them out by having Laura come live with her. Her own girls were grown and gone; she was lonely and wanted Laura's companionship. Laura was horrified. Leave Ma and Pa, and her sisters? Never! She was so glad when Ma thanked Mrs. Starr for her kindness but said no, they could not spare Laura.

Clearly, they needed to do something. And Laura had a hunch that she knew what it was: Pa was hankering to set out again. Laura knew just how he felt, because she shared his passion. “No one, who has not pioneered, can understand the fascination of it … storms, blizzards, grasshoppers, burning hot winds, and fires … yet it seemed that we wanted nothing so much as we wanted to keep going west!” she later wrote. Yes, life on the prairie was hard. But they all had pulled together to make the best of it.

In the fall of 1877, the Ingalls family made the long journey from Iowa back to Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Their arrival in town was celebrated as a kind of homecoming, and they were invited to stay with their good friends the Ensigns until Pa could build them a house of their own. Pa and Ma knew the family from church, and Laura knew their children—Willard, Anna, and Howard—because they had often played together. Doubling up was a common practice on the frontier, and no one seemed to mind making room for neighbors until they could get back on their feet again.

Almost immediately, Pa found a job in a store. And because he was such a skilled carpenter, he was able to get carpentry work on the side too. Ma took care of baby Grace, and she helped Mrs. Ensign with all the chores. Mary, age 13, Laura, age 10, and Carrie, age 8, went off to school every day.

Just like before, Laura was happy in school. She was quickly reacquainted with her old friends and sometimes rivals, like Nellie and Willie Owens. And she made friends with the newcomers too. The children of Walnut Creek were a rowdy bunch. Before class began in the mornings, and during recess, they had raucous snowball fights and fast races. Laura loved all the activity and energy; she jumped right into whatever game her classmates were playing.

Not Mary. She never wanted to join in. Unlike Laura, Mary was a lady. She even tried to keep Laura from acting so adventurous. One day, Laura was rushing out to join a snowball fight that was already in progress. Mary grabbed Laura by the hair to keep her from going out. But Laura would not be stopped. She just dragged Mary to the open door, and the two girls were both pelted with snowballs. When she finally broke free, Laura ran out into the snow so she could get her revenge on her attackers.

Even though she was a “wildcat” (her cousin's word), she was an excellent student. She loved history and spelling and could often outspell the whole class when the teacher arranged spelling bees. Pa bought her a new schoolbook—she had to share it with Mary—for 61 cents. The book was all about the history of the United States. Laura read it avidly and was very proud when Pa informed her that some of his ancestors had come to Plymouth Colony on the
Mayflower
.

Things were going well for the family. In the spring of 1878, Pa bought a patch of land in the pasture behind a new hotel owned by a man named William Masters. Pa then had the taxing job of building a new house. Ma was so glad to have her own place again. She loved the Ensigns, but enough was enough. Although she missed farming, she was grateful that they could stay in one place for the time being. Now Pa could play the fiddle in the evenings again; he taught the girls how to dance, and sometimes they even performed for company.

Later that spring, he got the notion that Walnut Grove needed a butcher shop. During the long, cold winters, people used up their store of cured meats and needed more. So he opened one, though he continued to do his carpentry too.

Laura stayed in school, which ran right through to the summer. Ordinarily this would have made her very happy, but she found herself constantly irritated by a snobby girl from New York, Genevieve Masters, who was the niece of the teacher, Sam Masters. Pa told her to ignore Genevieve, but she just couldn't do it. Genevieve soon became rivals with Nellie Owens. Both girls tried to gain control of all the others at school; it became a fierce competition between them.

Laura kept aloof. Though Genevieve tried to sweet-talk her and Nellie tried to bribe her with little gifts from the store her father owned, their tactics did not work. Somehow, Laura's independent spirit caught the attention of the other girls. To her surprise, she soon found that she was the most popular girl of all. And it wasn't just the girls who courted her favor. The boys always wanted her to play with them: ante I over, pull away, prisoners' base, handball, and baseball. There was only one boy in the school who could run faster than Laura.

The school term ended in June, and Laura, now 11, was offered a job. Mrs. Masters asked her to work at the hotel, where she would earn 50 cents an hour waiting on tables, washing dishes, making beds, and looking after Mrs. Masters's grandbaby. Laura liked her work. During the quiet times between meals, Mrs. Masters let her slip off to read. Laura made her way through a big stack of the
New
York
Ledger
, a weekly paper, losing herself in their exciting stories. She didn't know it, but her future life as a writer was already beginning, right there amid the pages of those newspapers. When she was all done with her chores and her reading, she could walk across the pasture to her home.

Other people in Walnut Grove began to notice what a good worker Laura was: careful, responsible, and capable. Soon she was running errands and doing all sorts of odd jobs for friends and neighbors. The nickels and dimes she earned made her—and her parents—proud.

On Sundays, the Ingalls family attended the Congregational church and Sunday school, and in the afternoons, Laura went to services at the Methodist church as well. The Methodists were offering a prize to the girl or boy who could repeat the golden texts and central truths from the Bible. This was just the sort of challenge Laura loved. There were 104 verses to remember, and Laura was determined to master them all. Like in a spelling bee, the children tried to recite all the verses, only to fail and be disqualified. Finally, just Laura and one other boy were left—both had recited the verses perfectly. Although there was just one prize Bible, the minister's wife told Laura that if she was willing to wait, a nicer, even fancier version would be ordered and given to her. Laura agreed—it was a prize worth waiting for.

Laura had just turned 12 in the winter of 1879 when Mary suddenly became very sick. She complained of a throbbing in her head, and her fever spiked so high that Ma cut off all her lovely blond hair—the hair Laura, a brunette, had always envied—in a desperate effort to cool her down. The doctor came, but he could do nothing to help her get better. Ma and Pa were sure she would die.