The First Four Years (7 page)

F
all plowing was begun as soon as haying was finished, but the work was too hard for Skip
and Barnum to do even with the help of the ponies. Trixy and Fly were small and could not pull with strength. They were
intended only for riding. Fly objected strenuously at times, kicking savagely when her
tugs were being hitched.

Once when Laura was helping Manly hitch the horses to the plow and keeping watch of Rose
at the same time, she lost sight of Rose. Immediately she stopped working with the
harness, and looking quickly around the yard, said, “Manly, where is Rose?”

And a little hand pulled Fly's tail away from her body, on the opposite side of the four
horses abreast, a little face showed between Fly and her tail, and Rose's little voice
said, “Here I am!”

Now Manly's hands were not nearly so stiff and clumsy. Perhaps he could soon hitch the
straps and buckle the buckles himself.

The team was tired at night. Laura could hardly bear to see them at the unhitching, Skip
with his gay head hanging and Barnum's dancing feet standing so patiently still.

Manly said he would have to get another team, for he wanted to break the 60 acres of sod
and have the whole 160 acres ready to seed in the spring.

“But the three years are up. Do you call this farming a success?” Laura objected.

“Well, I don't know,” Manly answered. “It is not so bad. Of course, the crops have been
mostly failures, but we have four cows now and some calves. We have the four horses and
the colts and the machinery and there are the sheep. . . . If we could only get one crop.
Just one good crop, and we'd be all right. Let's try it one more year. Next year may be a good crop year and we are all fixed for farming now, with no money to start
anything else.”

It sounded reasonable as Manly put it. There didn't seem to be anything else they could
do, but as for being all fixedthe five hundred dollars still due on the house worried
Laura. Nothing had been paid on it. The binder was not yet paid for and interest payments
were hard to make. But still Manly might be right. This might be when their luck turned,
and one good year would even things up.

Manly bought two Durham oxen that had been broken to work. They were huge animals. King
was red and weighed two thousand pounds. Duke was red-and-white spotted and weighed
twenty-five hundred pounds. They were as gentle as cows, and Laura soon helped hitch them
up without any fearbut she fastened Rose in the house while she did so. They were cheap:
only twenty-five dollars each and very strong. Now Skip and Barnum took the ponies' places and did the light work, while the cattle hitched
beside them drew most of the load.

T h e plowing was finished easily and the breaking of the sod was done before the ground
froze. It was late in doing so for it was a warm, pleasant fall.

T h e winter was unusually free of bad blizzards, though the weather was very cold and
there was some snow.

T h e house was snug and comfortable with storm windows and doors, and the hard-coal
heater in the front room between the front door and the east window. Manly had made the
storm shed, or summer kitchen, tight by battening closely all the cracks between the board
sheeting, and the cook-stove had been left there for the winter. The table had been put in
its place in the front room between the pantry and bedroom doors, and Peter's cot-bed
stood against the west wall of the room where the table used to stand. Geraniums blossomed
in tin cans on the window sills, growing luxuriantly in the winter sunshine and the warmth
from the hard-coal heater.

The days passed busily and pleasantly. Laura's time was fully occupied with her housework
and Rose, while Rose was an earnest, busy little girl with her picture books and letter blocks and the cat, running around the house, intent on
her small affairs.

Manly and Peter spent much of their time at the barn, caring for the stock. The barn was
long, from the first stalls where the horses and colts stood, past the oxen, King and
Duke, the cows and the young cattle, the snug corner where the chickens roosted, on into
the sheep barn where the sheep all ran loose.

It was no small job to clean out the barn and fill all the mangers with hay. Then there
was the grain to feed to the horses, and they had to be brushed regularly. And all the
animals must be watered once a day.

On pleasant days Manly and Peter hauled hay in from the stacks in the fields and fed the
animals from that, leaving some on the wagon in the sheep yard for the sheep to help
themselves.

This was usually finished well before chore time, but one afternoon they were delayed in
starting. Because the snow drifts were deep, they were hauling hay with King and Duke. The
oxen could go through deep snow more easily than horses, but they were slower, and darkness came while Manly and Peter were still a mile
from home.

It had begun to snow: not a blizzard, but snow was falling thickly in a slow, straight
wind. There was no danger, but it was uncomfortable and annoying to be driving cattle,
wallowing through snow in the pitch dark and the storm.

Then they heard a wolf howl and another; then several together. Wolves had not been doing
any damage recently and there were not so many left in the country, but still they were
seen at times, and now and then they killed a stray yearling or tried to get into a
flock of sheep.

“That sounds toward home and as though they were going in that direction,” Manly said. “Do
you suppose they will go into the sheep yard?“ ”Not with Laura there,” Peter answered. But Manly was not so sure and they tried to hurry faster on their way.

At home Laura was beginning to be anxious. Supper was nearly ready, but she knew Manly and
Peter would do the night chores before they ate. They should have been home before now and she wondered what could have happened.

Rose had been given her supper and was sleeping soundly, but Nero, the big, black dog, was
uneasy. Now and then he raised his head and growled.

Then Laura heard itthe howl of a wolf! Again the wolf howled, and then several together,
and after that, silence.

Laura's heart stood still. Were the wolves coming to the sheep yard? She waited,
listening, but could hear nothing but the swish of the snow against the windows; or was
that a sheep blatting?

Must she go to the sheep yard and see that they were all right? She hesitated and looked
at Rose, but Rose was still asleep. She would be all right if left alone. Then Laura put
on her coat and hood, lighted the lantern, and taking it and the dog with her, went out
into the darkness and the storm.

Quickly she went to the stable door, opened it, and reaching inside secured the five-tined
stable fork; then shutting fast the door again, she went the length of the barn, flashing
her lantern light as far as she could in every direction. Nero trotted ahead of her, sniffing the air.

Around the sheep yard they went but everything was quiet except for the sheep moving
restlessly around inside. There was no sight nor sound of the wolves until, as Laura stood
by the yard gate listening for the last time before going back to the house, there came
again the lone cry of a wolf. But it was much farther to the north than before. The wolves
had gone by on the west and all was well, though Nero growled low in his throat. Laura
hadn't known she was frightened until she was safely in the house; then she found her
knees trembling and sat down quickly.

Rose was still asleep and it was not long before Manly and Peter were there.

“What would you have done if you had found the wolves?” Manly asked.

“Why, driven them away, of course. That's what I took the pitchfork for,” Laura answered.

In December Laura felt again the familiar sickness. T h e house felt close and hot and she
was miserable. But the others must be kept warm and fed. The work must go on, and she was the one who must do it.

On a day when she was particularly blue and unhappy, the neighbor to the west, a bachelor
living alone, stopped as he was driving by and brought a partly filled grain sack to the
house. When Laura opened the door, Mr. Sheldon stepped inside, and taking the sack by the
bottom, poured the contents out on the floor. It was a paper-backed set of Waverly
novels.

“Thought they might amuse you,” he said. “Don't be in a hurry! Take your time reading
them!” And as Laura exclaimed in delight, Mr. Sheldon opened the door, closed it behind
him quickly, and was gone. And now the four walls of the close, overheated house opened wide, and Laura wandered with brave knights and
ladies fair beside the lakes and streams of Scotland or in castles and towers, in noble
halls or lady's bower, all through the enchanting pages of Sir Walter Scott's novels.

She forgot to feel ill at the sight or smell of food, in her hurry to be done with the
cooking and follow her thoughts back into the book. When the books were all read and Laura came back to reality, she found herself feeling much
better.

It was a long way from the scenes of Scott's glamorous old tales to the little house on
the bleak, wintry prairie, but Laura brought back from them some of their magic and music
and the rest of the winter passed quite comfortably.

Spring came early and warm. By the first of April a good deal of seeding had been done and
men were busy in all the fields. The morning of the second was sunny and warm and still.
Peter took the sheep out to graze on the school section as usual, while Manly went to the
field. It was still difficult for him to hitch up the team, and Laura helped him get
started. Then she went about her morning's work.

Soon a wind started blowing from the northwest, gently at first but increasing in
strength until at nine o'clock the dust was blowing in the field so thickly that Manly
could not see to follow the seeder marks. So he came from the field and Laura helped him
unhitch and get the team in the barn.

Once more in the house they could only listen to the rising wind and wonder why Peter
didn't bring the sheep in. “He couldn't have taken them far in such a short time and he
surely would bring them back,” Manly said. Dust from the fields was blowing in clouds so
dense that they could see only a little way from the windows, and in a few minutes Manly
went to find Peter and the sheep and help if help were needed.

He met Peter with the sheep about four hundred yards or one-quarter of a mile from the
barn. Peter was on foot, leading his pony and carrying three lambs in his arms. He and the
dog were working the sheep toward their yard. The sheep could hardly go against the wind
but they had to face it to get home. They had not been sheared and their fleeces were long
and heavy. The poor sheep with their small bodies and little feet carrying such a load
of fluffy wool caught too much wind. If a sheep turned ever so little sideways, the wind
would catch under the wool, lift the sheep from its feet and roll it over and over,
sometimes five or six times before it could stop. Against the strength of the wind it was impossible for the sheep to get to its feet. Peter would lift it up and stand it on its feet headed right so
it could walk into the wind. He was tired and the sheep dog and pony were powerless to
help, so it was time for Manly to be there.

It took them both over an hour to get all the sheep the four hundred yards and into the
yard.

After that they all sat in the house and let the wind blow. Their ears were filled with
the roar of it. Their eyes and throats smarted from the dust that was settling over the
room even though the doors and windows were tightly closed.

Just before noon there came a knock at the door, and when Manly opened it, a man stood on
the step.

“Just stopped to tell you, your wheels are going round,” he said, and with a wave of his
hand toward the barn, he ran to his wagon, climbed in, and drove on down the road. His
face was black with dust and he was gone before they recognized him as the man who had
bought their homestead.

Laura laughed hysterically. “Your wheels are going round,” she said. “What did he mean?”
She and Manly went into the kitchen and looked from the window toward the barn and then they knew. Between the house and the barn, the hay
wagon with the big hayrack on it had been left standing. The wind had lifted it, turned it
over and dropped it bottom side up. The wagon rested on the rack underneath, leaving the
wheels free in the air, and every one of the four wheels was turning in the wind. There was only a cold bite to eat at noon, for no one felt like eating and it was not safe to light a fire.

About one o'clock Laura insisted that she could smell fire and that there must be a
prairie fire near, but no smoke could be seen through the clouds of dust.

The wind always rises with a fire, and on the prairie the wind many times blows strongly
enough to carry flame from the fire to light grass ahead of the burning, so that the fire
travels faster than the grass burns. Once Manly and Peter had raced toward a fire trying
to save a large haystack that stood between it and them. They ran their horses' heads up
to the stack and jumped off just as a blown flame lit the opposite end of the haystack. Each had a wet grain sack to fight the fire. They scrambled up the stack and
slid down the end, scraping the fire off and putting it out at the ground after it had
burned back a little way from the end of the stack. They let it run down each side as a
back fire and the main fire raced by and on, leaving the haystack with Manly and Peter and
horses untouched. T h e horses had stood with their heads against the stack where they
could breathe.

The wind reached its peak about two o'clock, then slackened gradually, so slowly at first
it was hardly noticeable, but it died away as the sun went down and was still.

Rose lay asleep with her tired, dusty little face streaked with perspiration. Laura felt
prostrated with exhaustion, and Manly and Peter walked like old men as they went out to
the barn to see that the stock was all right for the night.