The First Four Years (9 page)

When she opened it again, a few minutes later, the whole inside of the kitchen was ablaze:
the ceiling, the hay, and the floor underneath and wall behind.

As usual, a strong wind was blowing from the south, and by the time the neighbors arrived
to help, the whole house was in flames.

Manly and Peter had seen the fire and come on the run with the team and load of hay.

Laura had thrown one bucket of water on the fire in the hay, and then, knowing she was not
strong enough to work the pump for more water, taking the little deed-box from the bedroom
and Rose by the hand, she ran out and dropped on the ground in the little half-circle
drive before the house. Burying her face on her knees she screamed and sobbed, saying
over and over,

“Oh, what will Manly say to me?” And there Manly found her and Rose, just as the roof was
falling in.

The neighbors had done what they could but the fire was so fierce that they were unable to
go into the house.

Mr. Sheldon had gone in through the pantry window and thrown all the dishes out through it
toward the trunk of the little cottonwood tree, so the silver wedding knives and forks and
spoons rolled up in their wrappers had survived. Nothing else had been saved from the fire
except the deed-box, a few work clothes, three sauce dishes from the first Christmas
dishes, and the oval glass bread plate around the margin of which were the words, “Give us
this day our daily bread.”

And the young cottonwood stood by the open cellar hole, scorched and blackened and dead.

After the fire Laura and Rose stayed at her Pa's for a few days. The top of Laura's head
had been blistered from the fire and something was wrong with her eyes. The doctor said
that heat had injured the nerves and so she rested for a little at her old home, but at the end of the week Manly came for her.

Mr. Sheldon needed a housekeeper and gave Laura and Manly houseroom and use of his furni
ture in return for board for himself and his brother. Now Laura was so busy she had no
time for worry, caring for her family of three men, Peter, and Rose, through the rest of
the haying and while Manly and Peter built a long shanty, three rooms in a row, near the
ruins of their house. It was built of only one thickness of boards and tar-papered on the
outside, but it was built tightly, and being new, it was very snug and quite warm.

September nights were growing cool when the new house was ready and moved into. T h e
twenty-fifth of August had passed unnoticed and the year of grace was ended.

Was farming a success? “It depends on how you look at it,” Manly said when Laura asked him the question. They had had a lot of bad luck, but anyone was liable to have bad luck even if he weren't a farmer. There had been so many dry
seasons now that surely next year would be a good crop year. They had a lot of stock. The two oldest
colts would be ready to sell in the spring. Some newcomer to the land would be sure to
want them, and there were the younger colts coming on. There were a couple of steers ready
to sell now. Oh, they'd likely bring twelve or thirteen dollars apiece. And there were the sheep, twice as many as last year to keep, and some lambs and the six old sheep to sell.

By building the new house so cheaply, they had money left to help pay for proving up on
the land.

Maybe sheep were the answer. “Everything will be all right, for it all evens up in time.
You'll see,” Manly said, as he started for the barn.

As Laura watched him go, she thought, yes, everything is evened up in time. The rich have
their ice in summer, but the poor get theirs in winter, and ours is coming soon.

Winter was coming on, and in sight of the ruins of their comfortable little house they
were making a fresh start with nothing. Their possessions would no more than balance their debts, if that. If they could find the two hundred
dollars to prove up, the land would be theirs, anyway, and Manly thought he could.

It would be a fight to win out in this business of farming, but strangely she felt her
spirit rising for the struggle.

The incurable optimism of the farmer who throws his seed on the ground every spring, bet
ting it and his time against the elements, seemed inextricably to blend with the creed of
her pioneer forefathers that “it is better farther on” only instead of farther on in space, it
was farther on in time, over the horizon of the years ahead instead of the far horizon
of the west.

She was still the pioneer girl and she could understand Manly's love of the land through
its appeal to herself.

“Oh, well,” Laura sighed, summing up her idea of the situation in a saying of her Ma's:
“We'll always be farmers, for what is bred in the bone
will
come out in the flesh.” And then Laura smiled, for Manly was coming from the barn and he was singing:

“You talk of the mines of Australia, They've wealth in red gold, without doubt; But, ah!
there is gold in the farm, boys If only you'll shovel it out.”

The oval glass bread plate Laura and Manly bought for their first Christmas together. The
plate survived the fire and was found among Rose Wilder Lane's things after her death. It
is now at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association in Mansfield, Missouri, for all
visitors to see.

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