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Authors: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Children, #Young Adult, #Historical, #Biography, #Autobiography, #Classic

The Long Winter (12 page)

BOOK: The Long Winter
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The blizzard grew worse. It was by far the most vio-lent blizzard that they had ever heard.

The room grew colder. There was no heat from the front room to help the cookstove. The cold had crept into the front room and was sneaking in under the door. Beneath the lean-to door it was crawling in too.

Ma brought the braided rugs from the front room and laid them, folded, tightly against the bottoms of the doors.

At noon Pa went to the stable. The stock did not need feeding at noon, but he went to see that the horses and the cow and the big calf were still safely sheltered.

He went out again in midafternoon. “Animals need a lot of feed to keep them warm in such cold,” he explained to Ma. “The blizzard is worse than it was, and I had a hard tussle this morning to get hay into the stable in these winds. I couldn't do it if the haystack wasn't right at the door. Another good thing, the snowdrifts are gone. They've been scoured away, down to the bare ground.”

The storm howled even louder when he went out into it, and a blast of cold came through the lean-to though Ma had pushed the folded rug against the inner door as soon as Pa shut it.

Mary was braiding a new rug. She had cut worn-out woolen clothes in strips, and Ma had put each color in a separate box. Mary kept the boxes in order and remembered where each color was. She was braiding the rag-strips together in a long braid that coiled down in a pile beside her chair. When she came to the end of a strip, she chose the color she wanted and sewed it on. Now and then she felt of the growing pile.

“I do believe I have nearly enough done,” she said.

“I'll be ready for you to sew the rug tomorrow, Laura.”

“I wanted to finish this lace first,” Laura objected.

"And these storms keep making it so dark I can hardly see to count the stitches."

“The dark doesn't bother me,” Mary answered cheerfully. “I can see with my fingers.”

Laura was ashamed of being impatient. “I'll sew your rug whenever you're ready,” she said willingly.

Pa was gone a long time. Ma set the supper back to keep warm. She did not light the lamp, and they all sat thinking that the clothesline would guide Pa through the blinding blizzard.

“Come, come, girls!” Ma said, rousing herself.

“Mary, you start a song. We'll sing away the time until Pa comes.” So they sang together in the dark until Pa came.

There was lamplight at supper, but Ma told Laura to leave the dishes unwashed. The y must all go to bed quickly, to save the kerosene and the coal.

Only Pa and Ma got up next morning at chore time.

“You girls stay in bed and keep warm as long as you like,” Ma said, and Laura did not get up until nine o'clock. The cold was pressing on the house and seep-ing in, rising higher and higher, and the ceaseless noise and the dusk seemed to hold time still.

Laura and Mary and Carrie studied their lessons.

Laura sewed the rag braid into a round rug and laid it heavy over Mary's lap so that Mary could see it with her fingers. The rug made this day different from the day before, but Laura felt that it was the same day over again when they sang again in the dark until Pa came and ate the same supper of potatoes and bread with dried-apple sauce and tea and left the dishes unwashed and went to bed at once to save kerosene and coal.

Another day was the same. The blizzard winds did not stop roaring and shrieking, the swishing snow did not stop swishing, the noise and the dark and the cold would never end.

Suddenly they ended. The blizzard winds stopped.

It was late in the third afternoon. Laura blew and scraped at the frost on a windowpane till through the peephole she could see snow scudding down Main Street low to the ground before a straight wind. A reddish light shone on the blowing snow from the setting sun. The sky was clear and cold. Then the rosy light faded, the snow was blowing gray-white, and the steady wind blew harder. Pa came in from doing the chores.

“Tomorrow I must haul some hay,” he said. “But now I'm going across to Fuller's to find out if anybody but us is alive in this blame town. Here for three whole days we haven't been able to see a light, nor smoke, nor any sign of a living soul. What's the good of a town if a fellow can't get any good of it?”

“Supper's almost ready, Charles,” Ma said.

“I'll be back in a jiffy!” Pa told her.

He came back in a few minutes asking, “Supper ready?” Ma was dishing it up and Laura setting the chairs to the table.

“Everything's all right in town,” Pa said, “and word from the depot is that they'll start work tomorrow morning on that big cut this side of Tracy.”

“How long will it take to get a train through?”

Laura asked.

“Can't tell,” Pa replied. "That one clear day we had, they cleaned it out, ready to come through next day. But they shoveled the snow up, both sides of the cut, and now it's packed full, clear to the top of the banks. Something like thirty feet deep of snow, frozen solid, they've got to dig out now."

“That won't take very long in pleasant weather,”

Ma said. “Surely we're bound to have that. We've already had more, and worse, storms than we had all last winter.”

FAIR WEATHER

Morning was bright and clear but there was no school. There would be no more school until the train came bringing coal.

Outdoors the sun was shining but frost was still on the window and the kitchen seemed stale and dull. Carrie gazed out through the peephole in the frost while she wiped the breakfast dishes, and drearily Laura sloshed the cooling water in the dishpan.

“I want to go somewhere!” Carrie said fretfully.

“I'm tired of staying in this old kitchen!”

“We were thankful enough for this warm kitchen yesterday,” Mary gently reminded her. “And now we may be thankful the blizzard's over.”

“You wouldn't go to school, anyway,” Laura said crossly. She was ashamed as soon as she heard the words, but when Ma said reproachfully, “Laura,” she felt more cross than before.

“When you girls have finished your work,” Ma went on, covering the well-kneaded bread and setting it before the oven to rise, “you may put on your wraps, and Mary may, too, and all go out in the yard for a breath of fresh air.”

That cheered them. Laura and Carrie worked quickly now, and in a little while they were hurrying into their coats and shawls and hoods, mufflers and mittens. Laura guided Mary through the lean-to, and they all burst out into the glittering cold. The sun glare blinded them and the cold took their breath away.

“Throw back your arms and breathe deep, deep!”

Laura cried. She knew that cold is not so cold if you are not afraid of it. The y threw back their arms and breathed the cold in, and through their cringing noses it rushed deep into their chests and warmed them all over. Even Mary laughed aloud.

“I can smell the snow!” she said. “So fresh and clean!”

“The sky is bright blue and the whole world is sparkling white,” Laura told her. “Only the houses stick up out of the snow and spoil it. I wish we were where there aren't any houses.”

“What a dreadful idea,” said Mary. “We'd freeze to death.”

“I'd build us an igloo,” Laura declared, “and we'd live like Eskimos.”

“Ugh, on raw fish,” Mary shuddered. “I wouldn't.”

The snow crunched and creaked under their feet. It was packed so hard that Laura could not scoop up a handful to make a snowball. She was telling Carrie how soft the snow used to be in the Big Woods of Wisconsin when Mary said, “Who's that coming? It sounds like our horses.”

Pa came riding up to the stable. He was standing on a queer kind of sled. It was a low platform made of new boards and it was as long as a wagon and twice as wide. It had no tongue, but a long loop of chain was fastened to the wide-apart runners and the whiffle -

trees were fastened to the chain.

“Where did you get that funny sled, Pa?” Laura asked.

“I made it,” Pa said. “At the lumberyard.” He got his pitchfork from the stable. “It does look funny,” he admitted. “But it would hold a whole haystack if the horses could pull it. I don't want to lose any time getting some hay here to feed the stock.”

Laura wanted to ask him if he had any news of the train, but the question would remind Carrie that there was no more coal or kerosene and no meat until a train could come. She did not want to worry Carrie. The y were all so brisk and cheery in this bright weather, and if sunny weather lasted for a while the train would come and there would be nothing to worry about.

While she was thinking this, Pa stepped onto the low, big sled.

“Tell your Ma they've brought a snowplow and a full work train out from the East and put them to work at the Tracy cut, Laura,” he said. “A few days of this fine weather and they'll have the train running all right.”

“Yes, Pa, I'll tell her,” Laura said thankfully, and Pa drove away, around the street corner and out along Main Street toward the homestead.

Carrie sighed a long sigh and cried, “Let's tell her right away!” From the way she said it, Laura knew that Carrie had been wanting to ask Pa about the train too.

“My, what rosy cheeks!” Ma said when they went into the dusky, warm kitchen. The cold, fresh air shook out of their wraps while they took them off.

The heat above the stove made their cold fingers tingle pleasantly, and Ma was glad to hear about the work train and the snowplow.

“This good weather will likely last for some time now, we have had so many storms,” Ma said.

The frost was melting on the window and freezing into thin sheets of ice over the cold glass. With little trouble Laura pried it off and wiped the panes dry.

She settled herself in the bright daylight and knitted her lace, looking out now and then at the sunshine on the snow. There was not a cloud in the sky and no reason to worry about Pa though he did not come back as soon as should be expected.

At ten o'clock he had not come. At eleven there was still no sign of him. It was only two miles to the homestead and back, and half an hour should load the sled with hay.

“I wonder what's keeping Pa?” Mary said finally.

“Likely he's found something to do at the claim,”

Ma said. She came to the window then and looked at the northwestern sky. There was no cloud in it.

“There's no cause to worry,” Ma went on. “It may be the storms have done some damage to the shanty, but that's soon mended.”

At noon the Saturday baking of bread was out of the oven, three crusty golden hot loaves, and the boiled potatoes were steaming dry and the tea was brewed, and still Pa had not returned.

The y were all sure that something had happened to him, though no one said so and no one could think what it might be. The steady old horses would surely not run away. Laura thought of claim jumpers. Pa had no gun if claim jumpers were in the deserted shanty. But claim jumpers could not have come through the blizzards. There were no bears or panthers or wolves or Indians. There was no river to ford.

What could happen to hinder or hurt a man driving gentle horses, in good weather, only a mile in a sled over the snow to the homestead and the same way back again with a load of hay?

Then Pa came driving around the corner of Second Street and by the window. Laura saw him going by, snowy on the mound of snowy hay that hid the sled and seemed to be dragging on the snow. He stopped by the stable, unhitched the horses and put them in their stalls and then came stamping into the lean-to. Laura and Ma had put the dinner on the table.

“B y George! that dinner looks good!” said Pa. “I could eat a raw bear without salt!”

Laura poured hot water from the teakettle into the washbasin for him. Ma said gently, “Whatever kept you so long, Charles?”

“Grass,” said Pa. He buried his face in his hands full of soapy water and Laura and Ma looked at each other amazed. What did Pa mean? In a minute he reached for the roller towel and went on, "That confounded grass under the snow.

“You can't follow the road,” Pa went on, wiping his hands. "There's nothing to go by, no fences or trees.

As soon as you get out of town there's nothing but snowdrifts in all directions. Even the lake's covered up. The drifts are packed hard by the wind, and frozen, so the sled slides right along over them and you'd think you could make a beeline to wherever you wanted to go.

"Well, first thing I knew, the team went down to their chins in that hard snow. I'd hit the slough, and the snow looks as hard there as anywhere, but underneath it there's grass. The slough grass holds up that crust of snow on nothing but grass stems and air. As soon as the horses get onto it, down they go.

“I've spent this whole morning rassling with that dumb horse, Sam...”

“Charles,” Ma said.

“Caroline,” Pa answered, “it's enough to make a saint swear. David was all right, he's got horse sense, but Sam went plumb crazy. The r e those two horses are, down to their backs in snow, and every try they make to get out only makes the hole bigger. If they drag the sled down into it, I never will get it out. So I unhitch the sled. Then I try to get the team up onto hard going again, and there's Sam gone crazy-wild, plunging and snorting and jumping and wallowing all the time deeper into that confounded snow.”

“It must have been a job,” Ma agreed.

“He was threshing around so, I was afraid he'd hurt David,” said Pa. "So I got down into it and unhitched them from each other. I held on to Sam and I tramped the snow down as well as I could, trying to make a hard enough path for him to walk on, up onto the top of the drifts. But he'd rear and plunge and break it down till I tell you it'd wear out any man's patience."

“Whatever did you do, Charles?” Ma asked.

“Oh, I got him out finally,” Pa said. “David followed me as gentle as a lamb, stepping carefully and coming right on up. So I hitched him onto the sled and he dragged it around the hole. But I had to hang on to Sam all the time. There was nothing to tie him to. Then I hitched them both up together again and started on. We went about a hundred feet and down they went again.”

“Mercy!” Ma exclaimed.

“So that's the way it was,” said Pa. “The whole morning. Took me the whole half a day to go a couple of miles and get back with one load of hay, and I'm tireder than if I'd done a hard day's work. I'm going to drive David single this afternoon. He can't haul so big a load but it'll be easier on both of us.”

BOOK: The Long Winter
9.46Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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