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There’s a tiny candle gleaming
From the cottage ’neath the hill
And I know that little beacon shines for me.”
Chapter 29
The Shanty on the Claim
“The first thing to do is to dig a well,” said Pa next morning. He shouldered his spade and shovel and went whistling toward the slough while Laura cleared the breakfast table and Ma rolled up her sleeves.
“Now, girls,” she said cheerfully, “all together with a will, and we’ll soon have things to right.”
But even Ma was puzzled that morning. The little claim shanty was as full as it would hold. Everything must be carefully fitted into the space. Laura and Carrie and Ma lifted and tugged the furniture this way and that, and stood and thought, and tried again.
Mary’s rocking chair and the table were still outdoors when Pa came back.
“Well, Caroline, your well’s all dug!” he sang out. “Six feet deep, and good, cold water in quicksand. Now I’ll hammer together a cover for it, so Grace can’t fall in, and that’ll be done.” He looked at the disorder and pushed back his hat to scratch his head. “Can’t you get it all in?”
“Yes, Charles,” said Ma. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
It was Laura who thought how to fit in the beds. The trouble was that they now had three bedsteads. When they stood side by side, there was not room for Mary’s rocking chair. Laura thought of setting the little bedsteads together, tight in the corner, and putting the foot of the big bedstead against them, with its headboard against the other wall.
“Then we’ll hang a curtain around our beds,” she said to Ma, “and another curtain across beside yours, and that leaves room for the rocking chair against your curtain.”
“That’s my smart girl!” said Ma.
Against the foot of Laura’s and Mary’s bed, the table fitted under the window that Pa was sawing in that wall. Ma’s rocking chair went in beside the table, and the whatnot fitted in that corner, behind the door. In the fourth corner stood the stove, with the dish cupboard made of a packing box behind it, and the trunk fitted between the stove and Mary’s rocking chair.
“There!” said Ma. “And the boxes will go under the beds. It couldn’t be better!”
At dinner Pa said, “Before night I’ll finish this half of a house.” And he did. He put in a window beside the stove, to the south. He hung in the doorway a door bought from the lumberyard in town. Then all over the outside of the shanty he put black tar paper, fastening it down with lath.
Laura helped him unroll the wide, black, tarry-smelling paper down over the slanting roof and the walls of fresh, clean, pine-scented boards, and she helped him cut it and she held it down in the wind while he nailed on the lath. Tar-paper was not pretty, but it stopped all the cracks and kept out the wind.
“Well, there’s one good day’s work done,” Pa said when they sat down to supper.
“Yes,” said Ma. “And tomorrow we’ll finish unpacking and be finally settled. I must do a baking too. It’s a blessing to have yeast once more. I feel as though I never want to see another sour-dough biscuit.”
“Your light bread is good and so are your sour-dough biscuits,” Pa told her. “But we won’t have either if I don’t rustle something to bake them with. Tomorrow I’ll haul a load of wood from Lake Henry.”
“May I go with you, Pa?” Laura asked.
“Me, too?” Carrie begged.
“No, girls,” said Pa. “I’ll be gone quite a while and Ma will need you.”
“I wanted to see trees,” Carrie explained.
“I don’t blame her,” said Ma. “I would like to see some trees again myself. They would rest my eyes from all this prairie with not a tree. Not even a bush to be seen in any direction.”
“This country’s going to be covered with trees,” Pa said. “Don’t forget that Uncle Sam’s tending to that. There’s a tree claim on every section, and settlers have got to plant ten acres of trees on every tree claim. In four or five years you’ll see trees every way you look.”
“I’ll be looking in all directions at once then,” Ma smiled. “There’s nothing more restful than shady groves in the summertime, and they’ll break the wind too.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Pa. “Trees spread, and you know what it was like back in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, grubbing out stumps and breaking our backs on the sprouting hoe to keep a little land clear for crops. It’s restful to have clear prairie land like this, if you’re going to farm. But Uncle Sam don’t seem to look at it that way, so don’t worry, Caroline; you’re going to see plenty of trees all over this country. Likely they’ll stop the wind and change the climate, too, just as you say.”
They were all too tired for music that night. Soon after supper they were all asleep, and bright and early next morning Pa drove away toward Lake Henry.
