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May I go with you, my pretty maid?
Oh, yes, if you please, kind sir, she said.
“What is your fortune, my pretty maid?
My face is my fortune, sir, she said.
Then I can’t marry you, my pretty maid.
Nobody asked you, sir, she said.”
“Well, I guess we won
’t be seeing each other again for a long time,” Lena said one evening. The grading job at Silver Lake was nearly finished. Next morning early, Lena and Jean and Aunt Docia were leaving. They were going away before sun-up because they were getting away with three big wagonloads of goods from the company’s stores. They would not tell anybody where they were going, for fear the company would catch them.
“I wish we’d had time to ride the black ponies again,” Laura said.
“Gosh!” Lena spoke that wicked word boldly. “I’m glad this summer’s over! I hate houses.” She swung the milk pail and chanted. “No more cooking, no more dishes, no more washing, no more scrubbing! Whoop-ee!” Then she said, “Well, good-by. I guess you’re going to stay right here as long as you live.”
“I guess so,” Laura said miserably. She was sure that Lena was going out west. Maybe even to Oregon. “Well, good-by.”
Next morning Laura milked the lone cow by her lonely self. Aunt Docia had driven away with a load of oats from the feed room. Lena had driven a wagonload of goods from the store, and Jean still another big load of scrapers and plows. Uncle Hi would follow them as soon as he settled with the company.
“I guess Hi’s debt is big enough this time with all those goods charged to him,” Pa said.
“Shouldn’t you have stopped it, Charles?” Ma worried.
“It’s not my look-out,” said Pa. “My orders were to let the contractor take anything he wanted, and charge it to him. Oh, come, Caroline! It wasn’t stealing. Hi hasn’t got away with any more than’s due him for his work here and at the camp on the Sioux. The company cheated him there, and he’s got even here. That’s all there is to it.”
“Well,” Ma sighed, “I’ll be glad when these camps are gone and we’re settled again.”
Every day the camp was noisy with men drawing their last pay and leaving. Wagon after wagon went away to the east. Every night the camp was emptier. One day Uncle Henry, Louisa, and Charley started the long drive back to Wisconsin, to sell the farm. The boarding shanty and the bunkhouse were deserted, the store was empty, and Pa was only waiting till the company man came to check his bookkeeping.
“We’ll have to go east somewhere to spend the winter,” he said to Ma. “This shanty’s too thin for zero weather, even if the company’d let us stay in it, and even if we had any coal.”
“Oh, Charles,” Ma said, “you haven’t even found the homestead yet, and if we have to spend the money you’ve earned, just living till spring—”
“I know. But what can we do?” said Pa. “I can find the homestead all right before we leave, and file on it next spring. Maybe next summer I can get a job to live on and pay for the lumber to build us a shanty. I could make a sod shanty, but even so it will take all we’ve got to live till spring, with the prices of supplies out here, and coal. No, we’d better go east for the winter.”
It was so hard to get ahead. Laura tried to cheer up, but she couldn’t. She did not want to go back east again. She hated to leave Silver Lake to go east. They had got as far as Silver Lake and she wanted to hang on there, not to be pushed back. But if they must be, they must; next spring they could start again. It would do no good to complain.
“Don’t you feel well, Laura?” Ma asked her.
“Oh, yes, Ma!” she answered. But she felt so heavy and dark that trying to be cheerful only made her more miserable.
The company man had come to check Pa’s bookkeeping, and the last wagons from the west were going by. Even the lake was almost empty of birds and the sky was bare, except for one hurrying streak of flyers. Ma and Laura mended the wagon-cover and baked bread for the long drive.
That evening Pa came whistling from the store, and blew into the shanty like a breeze.
“How’d you like to stay here all winter, Caroline?” he sang out. “In the surveyors’ house!”
“Oh, Pa! Can we?” Laura cried.
“You bet we can!” said Pa. “If your Ma wants to. It’s a good, sound, weather-tight house, Caroline. The head surveyor was at the store just now, and he says they thought they had to stay and they laid in coal and provisions enough to last them through, but if I’ll take charge and be responsible for the company tools till spring, they’ll go out for the winter. The company man’s agreed.
“There’s flour and beans and salt meat and potatoes, and even some canned stuff, he told me. And coal. We can have the whole of it for nothing, just for staying out here this winter. We can use the stable for the cow and team. I told him I’d let him know early tomorrow morning. What do you say, Caroline?”
They all looked at Ma and waited. Laura could hardly keep still in her excitement. To stay at Silver Lake! Not to have to go back east, after all! Ma was disappointed; she had been wanting to go back to settled country. But she said, “It does seem Providential, Charles. There’s coal, you say?”
