On The Banks Of Plum Creek (15 page)

Laura knew how true that was. When she repeated those verses she thought, “through all the land of Minnesota.”

Then Ma read the promise that God made to good people, “to bring them out of that land to a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.”

“Oh, where is that,Ma ? ” Mary asked, and Laura asked, “How could land flow with milk and honey?” She did not want to walk in milky, sticky honey.

Ma rested the big Bible on her knees and thought. Then she said, “Well, your Pa thinks it will be right here in Minnesota.”

“How could it be?” Laura asked.

“Maybe it will be, if we stick it out,” said Ma. “Well, Laura, if good milk cows were eating grass all over this land, they would give a great deal of milk, and then the land would be flowing with milk. Bees would get honey out of all the wild flowers that grow out of the land, and then the land would be flowing with honey.”

“Oh,” Laura said. “I'm glad we wouldn't have to walk in it.”

Carrie beat the Bible with her little fists and cried: “I'm hot! I'm prickly!” Ma picked her up, but she pushed at Ma and whimpered,

“You're hot!”

Poor little Carrie's skin was red with heat rash. Laura and Mary were sweltering inside their underwaists and drawers, and petticoat-waists and petticoats, and long-sleeved, high-necked dresses with tight waistbands around their middles. The backs of their necks were smothering under their braids.

Carrie wanted a drink, but she pushed the cup away and made a face and said, “Nasty!”

“You better drink it,” Mary told her. “I want a cold drink, too, but there isn't any.”

“I wish I had a drink of well water,” said Laura.

“I wish I had an icicle,” said Mary.

Then Laura said, “I wish I was an Indian and didn't have to wear clothes.”

“Laura!” said Ma. “And on Sunday!”

Laura thought, “Well, I do!” The wood smell of the house was a hot smell. On all the brown streaks in the boards the juice was dripping down sticky and drying in hard yellow beads. The hot wind never stopped whizzing by and the cattle never stopped mourning, “Moo-oo, moo-oo.” Jack turned on his side and groaned a long sigh.

Ma sighed, too, and said, “Seems to me I'd give almost anything for a breath of air.”

At that very minute a breath of air came into the house. Carrie stopped whimpering. Jack lifted up his head. Ma said, “Girls, did you—”

Then another cool breath came.

Ma went out through the lean-to, to the shady end of the house. Laura scampered after her, and Mary came leading Carrie. Outdoors was like a baking-oven. The hot air came scorching against Laura's face.

In the north-west sky there was a cloud. It was small in the enormous, brassy sky. But it was a cloud, and it made a streak of shade on the prairie. The shadow seemed to move, but perhaps that was only the heat waves. No, it really was coming nearer.

“Oh, please, please, please!” Laura kept saying, silently, with all her might. They all stood shading their eyes and looking at that cloud and its shadow.

The cloud kept coming nearer. It grew larger. It was a thick, dark streak in the air above the prairie. Its edge rolled and swelled in big puffs. Now gusts of cool air came, mixed with gusts hotter than ever.

All over the prairie, dust devils rose up wild and wicked, whirling their dust arms. The sun still burned on the house and the stable, and the cracked, pitted earth. The shadow of the cloud was far away.

Suddenly a fire-white streak zigzagged, and a gray curtain fell from the cloud and hung there, hiding the sky beyond it. That was rain.

Then a growl of thunder came.

“It's too far away, girls,” Ma said. “I'm afraid it won't get to us. But, anyway, the air's cooler.”

A smell of rain came on streaks of coolness through the hot wind.

“Oh, maybe it will get to us, Ma! Maybe it will!” Laura said. Inside themselves they were all saying, “Please, please, please!”

The wind blew cooler. Slowly, slowly, the cloud shadow grew larger. Now the cloud spread wide in the sky. Suddenly a shadow rushed across the flat land and up the knoll, and fast after it came the marching rain. It came up the knoll like millions of tiny trampling feet, and rain poured down on the house and on Ma and Mary and Laura and Carrie.

“Get in, quick!” Ma exclaimed.

The lean-to was noisy with rain on its roof.

Cool air blew through it into the smothery house. Ma opened the front door. She fastened back the curtains and opened every window.

A sick smell steamed up from the ground, but the rain poured down and washed it away.

Rain drummed on the roof, rain poured from the eaves. Rain washed the air and made it good to breathe. Sweet air rushed through the house. It lifted the heaviness out of Laura's head and made her skin feel good.

Streams of muddy water ran swiftly over the hard ground. They poured into its cracks and filled them up. They dimpled and swirled over the pits where the grasshoppers' eggs were and left smooth mud there. Overhead the lightning flickered sharp and thunder crashed.

Carrie clapped her hands and shouted; Mary and Laura danced and laughed. Jack wiggled and scampered like a puppy; he looked out at the rain from every window, and when the thunder banged and crashed he growled at it,

“Who's afraid of you!”

“I do believe it is going to last till sunset,”

Ma said.

Just before sunset the rain went away.

Down across Plum Creek and away across the prairie to the east it went, leaving only a few sparkling drops falling in the sunshine. Then the cloud turned purple and red and curled gold edges against the clear sky. The sun sank and the stars came out. The air was cool and the earth was damp and grateful.

The only thing that Laura wished was that Pa could be there.

Next day the sun rose burning hot. The sky was brassy and the winds were scorching. And before night tiny thin spears of grass were pricking up from the ground.

In a few days there was a green streak across the brown prairie. Grass came up where the rain had fallen, and the hungry cattle grazed there. Every morning Laura put Sam and David on picket lines, so they could eat the good grass, too.

The cattle stopped bawling. Spot's bones did not show any more. She gave more milk, and it was sweet, good milk. The knoll was green again, and the willows and the plums were putting out tiny leaves.

All day long Laura missed Pa, and at night when the wind blew lonesomely over the dark land, she felt hollow and aching.

At first she talked about him; she wondered how far he had walked that day; she hoped his old, patched boots were lasting; she wondered where he was camping that night. Later she did not speak about him to Ma. Ma was thinking about him all the time and she did not like to talk about it. She did not like even to count the days till Saturday.

“The time will go faster,” she said, “if we think of other things.”

All day Saturday they hoped that Mr. Nelson was finding a letter from Pa at the post-office in town. Laura and Jack went far along the prairie road to wait for Mr. Nelson's wagon.

The grasshoppers had eaten everything, and now they were going away, not in one big cloud as they had come, but in little, short-flying clouds. Still, millions of grasshoppers were left.

There was no letter from Pa. “Never mind,”

Ma said. “One will come.”

Once when Laura was slowly coming up the knoll without a letter, she thought, “Suppose no letter ever comes?”

She tried not to think that again. But she did. One day she looked at Mary and knew that Mary was thinking it, too.

That night Laura could not bear it any longer. She asked Ma, “Pa will come home, won't he?”

“Of course, Pa will come home!” Ma exclaimed. Then Laura and Mary knew that Ma, too, was afraid that something had happened to Pa.

Perhaps his boots had fallen to pieces and he was limping barefooted. Perhaps cattle had hurt him. Perhaps a train had hit him. He had not taken his gun; perhaps wolves had got him. Maybe in dark woods at night a panther had leaped on him from a tree.

Thenext Saturday afternoon, when Laura and Jack were starting to meet Mr. Nelson, she saw him coming across the footbridge.

Something white was in his hand. Laura flew down the knoll. The white thing was a letter.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” Laura said.

She ran to the house so fast that she could not breathe. Ma was washing Carrie's face. She took the letter in her shaking wet hands, and sat down.

“It's from Pa,” she said. Her hand shook so she could hardly take a hairpin from her hair.

She slit the envelope and drew out the letter.

She unfolded it, and there was a piece of paper money.

“Pa's all right,” Ma said. She snatched her apron up to her face and cried.

Her wet face came out of the apron shining with joy. She kept wiping her eyes while she read the letter to Mary and Laura.

Pa had had to walk three hundred miles before he found a job. Now he was working in the wheat-fields and getting a dollar a day. He sent Ma five dollars and kept three for new boots. Crops were good where he was, and if Ma and the girls were making out all right, he would stay there as long as the work lasted.

They missed him and wanted him to come home. But he was safe, and already he had new boots. They were very happy that day.

Now the winds blew cooler and the sun was not so hot at noon. Mornings were chilly, and the grasshoppers hopped feebly until the sunshine warmed them.

One morning a thick frost covered the ground. It coated every twig and chip with a white fuzz and it burned Laura's bare feet.

She saw millions of grasshoppers sitting perfectly stiff.

In a few days there was not one grasshopper left anywhere.

Winter was near, and Pa had not come. The wind was sharp. It did not whiz any more; it shrieked and wailed. The sky was gray and a cold gray rain fell. The rain turned to snow, and still Pa did not come.

Laura had to wear shoes when she went outdoors. They hurt her feet. She did not know why. Those shoes had never hurt her feet before. Mary's shoes hurt Mary's feet, too.

Al the wood that Pa had chopped was gone, and Mary and Laura picked up the scattered chips. The cold bit their noses and their fingers while they pried the last chips from the frozen ground. Wrapped in shawls, they went searching under the willows, picking up the little dead branches that made a poor fire.

Then one afternoon Mrs. Nelson came visiting. She brought her baby Anna with her.

Mrs. Nelson was plump and pretty. Her hair was as golden as Mary's, her eyes were blue, and when she laughed, as she often did, she showed rows of very white teeth. Laura liked Mrs. Nelson, but she was not glad to see Anna.

Anna was a little larger than Carrie but she could not understand a word that Laura or Mary said, and they could not understand her.

She talked Norwegian. It was no fun to play with her, and in the summertime Mary and Laura ran down to the creek when Mrs. Nelson and Anna came. But now it was cold.

They must stay in the warm house and play with Anna. Ma said so.

“Now girls,” Ma said, “go get your dolls and play nicely with Anna.”

Laura brought the box of paper dolls that Ma had cut out of wrapping-paper, and they sat down to play on the floor by the open oven door. Anna laughed when she saw the paper dolls. She grabbed into the box, took out a paper lady, and tore her in two.

Laura and Mary were horrified. Carrie stared with round eyes. Ma and Mrs. Nelson went on talking and did not see Anna waving the halves of the paper lady and laughing.

Laura put the cover on the paper-doll box, but in a little while Anna was tired of the torn paper lady and wanted another. Laura did not know what to do, and neither did Mary.

If Anna did not get what she wanted she bawled. She was little and she was company and they must not make her cry. But if she got the paper dolls she would tear them all up.

Then Mary whispered, “Get Charlotte. She can't hurt Charlotte.”

Laura scurried up the ladder while Mary kept Anna quiet. Darling Charlotte lay in her box under the eaves, smiling with her red yarn mouth and her shoe-button eyes. Laura lifted her carefully and smoothed her wavy black-yarn hair and her skirts. Charlotte had no feet, and her hands were only stitched on the flat ends of her arms, because she was a rag doll.

But Laura loved her dearly.

Charlotte had been Laura's very own since Christmas morning long ago in the Big Woods of Wisconsin.

Laura carried her down the ladder, and Anna shouted for her. Laura put Charlotte carefully in Anna's arms. Anna hugged her tight. But hugging could not hurt Charlotte.

Laura watched anxiously while Anna tugged at Charlotte's shoe-button eyes and pulled her wavy yarn hair, and even banged her against the floor. But Anna could not really hurt Charlotte, and Laura meant to straighten her skirts and her hair when Anna went away.

At last that long visit was ended. Mrs. Nelson was going home and taking Anna. Then a terrible thing happened. Anna would not give up Charlotte.

Perhaps she thought Charlotte was hers.

Maybe she told her mother that Laura had given her Charlotte. Mrs. Nelson smiled.

Laura tried to take Charlotte, and Anna howled.

“I want my doll!” Laura said. But Anna hung on to Charlotte and kicked and bawled.

“For shame, Laura,” Ma said. “Anna's little and she's company. You are too big to play with dolls, anyway. Let Anna have her.”

Laura had to mind Ma. She stood at the window and saw Anna skipping down the knoll, swinging Charlotte by one arm.

“For shame, Laura,” Ma said again. "A great girl like you, sulking about a rag doll.

Stop it, this minute. You don't want that doll, you hardly ever played with it. You must not be so selfish."

Laura quietly climbed the ladder and sat down on her box by the window. She did not cry, but she felt crying inside her because Charlotte was gone. Pa was not there, and Charlotte's box was empty. The wind went howling by the eaves. Everything was empty and cold.