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Then one Sunday while Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura were all sitting at the dinner table, talking about that day’s Sunday school, Pa said, “If I’m going to keep on going ou
t among dressed-up folks, I must get a pair of new boots. Look.”
He stretched out his foot. His mended boot was cracked clear across the toes.
They all looked at his red knitted sock showing through that gaping slit. The edges of leather were thin and curling back between little cracks. Pa said, “It won’t hold another patch.”
“Oh, I wanted you to get boots, Charles,” Ma said. “And you brought home that calico for my dress.”
Pa made up his mind. “I’ll get me a new pair when I go to town next Saturday. They will cost three dollars, but we’ll make out somehow till I harvest the wheat.”
All that week Pa was making hay. He had helped put up Mr. Nelson’s hay and earned the use of Mr. Nelson’s fine, quick mowing-machine. He said it was wonderful weather for making hay. He had never known such a dry, sunny summer.
Laura hated to go to school. She wanted to be out in the hay-field with Pa, watching the marvelous machine with its long knives snickety-snicking behind the wheels, cutting through great swathes of grass.
Saturday morning she went to the field on the wagon, and helped Pa bring in the last load of hay. They looked at the wheat-field, standing up taller than Laura above the mown land. Its level top was rough with wheat-heads, bent with the weight of ripening wheat. They picked three long, fat ones and took them to the house to show Ma.
When that crop was harvested, Pa said, they’d be out of debt and have more money than they knew what to do with. He’d have a buggy, Ma would have a silk dress, they’d all have new shoes and eat beef every Sunday.
After dinner he put on a clean shirt and took three dollars out of the fiddle-box. He was going to town to get his new boots. He walked, because the horses had been working all that week and he left them at home to rest.
It was late that afternoon when Pa came walking home. Laura saw him on the knoll and she and Jack ran up from the old crab’s home in the creek and into the house behind him.
Ma turned around from the stove, where she was taking the Saturday baking of bread out of the oven.
“Where are your boots, Charles?” she asked.
“Well, Caroline,” Pa said. “I saw Brother Alden and he told me he couldn’t raise money enough to put a bell in the belfry. The folks in town had all given every cent they could, and he lacked just three dollars. So I gave him the money.”
“Oh, Charles!” was all Ma said.
Pa looked down at his cracked boot. “I’ll patch it,” he said. “I can make it hold together somehow. And do you know, we’ll hear that church bell ringing clear out here.”
Ma turned quickly back to the stove, and Laura went quietly out and sat down on the step. Her throat hurt her. She did so want Pa to have good new boots.
“Never mind, Caroline,” she heard Pa saying. “It’s not long to wait till I harvest the wheat.”
Chapter 25
The Glittering Cloud
Now the wheat was almost ready to cut. Every day Pa looked at it. Every night he talked about it, and showed Laura some long, stiff wheat-heads. The plump grains were getting harder in their little husks. Pa said the weather was perfect for ripening wheat.
“If this keeps up,” he said, “we’ll start harvesting next week.”
The weather was very hot. The thin, high sky was too hot to look at. Air rose up in waves from the whole prairie, as it does from a hot stove. In the schoolhouse the children panted like lizards, and the sticky pine-juice dripped down the board walls.
Saturday morning Laura went walking with Pa to look at the wheat. It was almost as tall as Pa. He lifted her onto his shoulder so that she could see over the heavy, bending tops. The field was greeny-gold.
At the dinner table Pa told Ma about it. He had never seen such a crop. There were forty bushels to the acre, and wheat was a dollar a bushel. They were rich now. This was a wonderful country. Now they could have anything they wanted. Laura listened and thought, now Pa would get his new boots.
She sat facing the open door and the sunshine streaming through it. Something seemed to dim the sunshine. Laura rubbed her eyes and looked again. The sunshine really was dim. It grew dimmer until there was no sunshine.
“I do believe a storm is coming up,” said Ma. “There must be a cloud over the sun.”
Pa got up quickly and went to the door. A storm might hurt the wheat. He looked out, then he went out.
The light was queer. It was not like the changed light before a storm. The air did not press down as it did before a storm. Laura was frightened, she did not know why.
