AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Please, Ma, let me stay up too,” Laura begged.
“I believe I won’t go to bed,” said Ma. “Not for a while, anyway. I’m not sleepy. It’s no use to go to bed when you’re not sleepy.”
“I’m not sleepy, Ma,” Laura said.
Ma turned down the lamp and blew it out. She sat down in the hickory rocker that Pa had made for her in Indian Territory. Laura went softly on her bare feet across the ground and sat close beside Ma.
They sat in the dark, listening. Laura could hear a thin, faint humming in her ears; it seemed to be the sound of her listening. She could hear Ma’s breathing and the slow breathing of Grace, asleep, and the faster breathing of Mary and Carrie lying awake behind the curtain. The curtain made a faint sound, moving a little in the air from the open doorway. Outside the doorway there was an oblong of sky and stars above the faraway edge of dark land.
Out there the wind sighed, the grass rustled, and there was the tiny, ceaseless sound of little waves lapping on the lake shore. A sharp cry in the dark jerked all through Laura; she almost screamed. It was only the call of a wild goose, lost from its flock. Wild geese answered it from the slough, and a quacking of sleepy ducks rose.
“Ma, let me go out and find Pa,” Laura whispered.
“Be quiet,” Ma answered. “You couldn’t find Pa. And he doesn’t want you to. Be quiet and let Pa take care of himself.”
“I want to do something. I’d rather do something,” Laura said.
“So would I,” said Ma. In the dark her hand began softly to stroke Laura’s head. “The sun and the wind are drying your hair, Laura,” Ma said. “You must brush it more. You must brush your hair a hundred strokes every night before you go to bed.”
“Yes, Ma,” Laura whispered.
“I had lovely long hair when your Pa and I were married,” Ma said. “I could sit on the braids.” She did not say any more. She went on stroking Laura’s rough hair while they listened for the sound of shooting.
There was one shining large star by the black edge of the doorway. As time went on, it moved. Slowly, it moved from east to west, and more slowly still the smaller stars wheeled about it.
Suddenly Laura and Ma heard footsteps, and in an instant the stars were blotted out. Pa was in the doorway. Laura jumped up, but Ma only went limp in the chair.
“Sitting up, Caroline?” Pa said. “Pshaw, you didn’t need to do that. Everything’s all right.”
“How do you know that, Pa?” Laura asked. “How do you know Big Jerry—?”
“Never mind, Flutterbudget!” Pa stopped her cheerfully. “Big Jerry’s all right. He won’t be coming into camp tonight. I wouldn’t be surprised though, if he rode in this morning on his white horse. Now go to bed. Let’s get what sleep we can before sunrise.”
Then Pa’s great laugh rang out like bells. “There’ll be a sleepy bunch of men working on the grade today!”
While Laura was undressing behind the curtain and Pa was taking off his boots on the other side
of it, she heard him say in a low voice to Ma, “The best of it is, Caroline, there’ll never be a horse stolen from Silver Lake camp.”
Sure enough, early that morning Laura saw Big Jerry riding by the shanty on his white horse. He hailed Pa at the store and Pa waved to him; then Big Jerry and the white horse galloped on and away toward where the men were working.
There never was a horse stolen from Silver Lake camp.
Chapter 10
The Wonderful Afternoon
Early every morning while Laura washed the breakfast dishes, she could look through the open door and see the men leaving the boarding shanty and going to the thatched stable for their horses. Then there was a rattling of harness and a confusion of talking and shouts, and the men and teams went out to the job leaving quietness behind them.
All the days went by, one like another. On Mondays Laura helped Ma do the washing and bring in the clean-scented clothes that dried quickly in the wind and sunshine. On Tuesdays she sprinkled them and helped Ma iron them. On Wednesdays she did her task of mending and sewing though she did not like to. Mary was learning to sew without seeing; her sensitive fingers could hem nicely, and she could sew quilt-patches if the colors were matched for her.
At noon the camp was noisy again with all the teams and the men coming in to dinner. Then Pa came from the store, and they all ate in the little shanty with the wind blowing against it and the wide prairie outside the door. Softly colored in all shades from dark brown to russet and tan, the prairie rolled in gentle swells to the far edge of the sky. The winds were blowing colder at night, more and more wild birds were flying southward, and Pa said that winter would not be long in coming. But Laura did not think about winter.
She wanted to know where the men were working and how they made a railroad grade. Every morning they went out, and at noon and at night they came back, but all that she saw of working was a smudge of dust that came up from the tawny prairie in the west. She wanted to see the men building the railroad.
Aunt Docia moved into the camp one day, and she brought two cows. She said, “I brought our milk on the hoof, Charles. It’s the only way to get any, out here where there aren’t any farmers.”
One of the cows was for Pa. She was a pretty, bright-red cow named Ellen. Pa untied her from the back of Aunt Docia’s wagon, and handed the halter rope to Laura. “Here, Laura,” he said. “You’re old enough to take care of her. Take her out where the grass is good, and be sure to drive down the picket pin good and firm.”
