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“It’s all new lumber, Caroline, fresh and clean as a whistle,” Uncle Henry said, holding up the lantern so they could see the new board walls and the bunks built up against them. There was a bunk on one side for Ma and Pa, and on the other side two narrow bunks, one above the other, for Mary and Laura and Carrie and Grace. The beds were already spread in the bunks; Cousin Louisa had seen to that.
In no time at all, Laura and Mary were cuddled on the rustling fresh hay-mattress with the sheet and quilts drawn up to their noses, and Pa blew out the lantern.
Chapter 8
Silver Lake
The sun had not yet risen next morning when Laura let down the pail into the shallow well by Silver Lake. Beyond the lake’s eastern shore the pale sky was bordered with bands of crimson and gold. Their brightness stretched around the south shore and shone on the high bank that stood up from the water in the east and the north.
Night was still shadowy in the northwest, but Silver Lake lay like a sheet of silver in its setting of tall wild grasses.
Ducks quacked among the thick grasses to the southwest, where the Big Slough began. Screaming gulls flew over the lake, beating against the dawn wind. A wild goose rose from the water with a ringing call, and one after another the birds of his flock answered him as they rose and followed. The great triangle of wild geese flew with a beating of strong wings into the glory of the sunrise.
Shafts of golden light shot higher and higher in the eastern sky, until their brightness touched the water and was reflected there.
Then the sun, a golden ball, rolled over the eastern edge of the world.
Laura breathed a long breath. Then hurriedly she pulled up the pail of water, and carrying it she hurried back toward the shanty. The new shanty stood alone by the lake shore, south of the cluster of shanties that was the graders’ camp. It shone yellow in the sunshine; a little house almost lost in the grasses, and its little roof sloped all one way, as if it were only half a roof.
“We have been waiting for the water, Laura,” Ma said, when Laura went in.
“Oh, but Ma! the sunrise! You should have seen the sunrise!” Laura exclaimed. “I just had to watch it.”
She began quickly to help Ma get breakfast, and while she hurried she told how the sun came up beyond Silver Lake, flooding the sky with wonderful colors while the flocks of wild geese flew dark against them, how thousands of wild ducks almost covered the water, and gulls flew screaming against the wind above it.
“I heard them,” Mary said. “Such a clamoring of wild birds, it was like bedlam. And now I see it all. You make pictures when you talk, Laura.”
Ma smiled at Laura too, but she only said, “Well, girls, we have a busy day before us,” and she laid out their work.
Everything must be unpacked and the shanty made tidy before noon. Cousin Louisa’s beds must be aired and returned, and Ma’s ticking mattresses stuffed with fresh clean hay. Meanwhile, from the company store Ma brought yards of bright-figured calico for curtains. She made a curtain and they hung it across the shanty, shutting the bunks behind it. Then she made another curtain and hung it between the bunks; so there were two bedrooms, one for her and Pa, the other for the girls. The shanty was so small that the curtains touched the bunks, but when the bunks were made up with Ma’s mattresses and featherbeds and patchwork quilts, it all looked fresh and bright and snug.
Then in front of the curtain was the room to live in. It was very small, with the cookstove at the end by the door. Ma and Laura placed the drop-leaf table against the side wall, before the open front door. Mary’s rocking chair and Ma’s they put on the other side of the room. The floor was bare ground, with humps of obstinate grass roots in it, but they swept it clean. The wind blew softly in from the open doorway, and the railroad shanty was very pleasant and homelike.
“This is another kind of little house with only half a roof and no window,” said Ma. “But it’s a tight roof, and we don’t need a window, so much air and light come through the doorway.”
When Pa came to dinner, he was pleased to see everything so nicely settled and arranged. He tweaked Carrie’s ear and swung Grace up in his hands; he could not toss her, under that low roof.
“But where’s the china shepherdess, Caroline?” he asked.
“I haven’t unpacked the shepherdess, Charles,” said Ma. “We aren’t living here, we’re only staying till you get our homestead.”
Pa laughed. “I’ve got plenty of time to pick the right one too! Look at all this great prairie with nobody on it but the railroad graders and they’ll go away before winter comes. We can just about take our pick of the land.”
“After dinner,” Laura said, “Mary and I are going to take a walk and look at the camp and the lake and everything.” She took the water pail and ran out bareheaded to get fresh water from the well for dinner.
The wind was blowing steady and strong. Not a cloud was in the huge sky, and far and wide on the immense land there was nothing but shimmering light passing over the grasses. And down wind came the sound of many men’s voices, singing.
The teams were coming into camp. In a long, dark, snakelike line as they came over the prairie, horses plodding side by side in their harness, and men marching, bareheaded and bare-armed, brown-skinned in their striped blue-and-white shirts and gray shirts and plain blue shirts, and all of them were singing the same song.
They were like a little army coming across the vast land under the enormous empty sky, and the song was their banner.
Laura stood in the strong wind, looking and listening, till the last of the column came into the crowd that gathered and spread around the camp’s low shanties, and the song blurred into the sound of all their hearty voices. Then she remembered the water pail in her hand. She filled it from the well as quickly as she could, and ran back; slopping water on her bare legs in her hurry.
“I just had—to watch the—teams coming into camp,” she panted. “So many of them, Pa! And all the men were singing!”
“Now, Flutterbudget, catch your breath!” Pa laughed at her. “Fifty teams and seventy-five or eighty men are only a small camp. You ought to see Stebbins’ camp west of here; two hundred men and teams according.”
“Charles,” Ma said.
