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“What for?” Lena said. “You only have to put on your clothes again in the morning. Besides, there aren’t any covers.”
So Laura lay down on the blanket and was sound asleep. Suddenly she jerked awake with a frightful start. From the huge blackness of the night came again a wild, shrill howl.
It was not an Indian. It was not a wolf. Laura did not know what it was. Her heart stopped beating, “Aw, you can’t scare us!” Lena called out. She said to Laura, “It’s Jean, trying to scare us.”
Jean yelled again, but Lena shouted, “Run away, little boy! I wasn’t brought up in the woods to be scared by an owl!”
“Yah!” Jean called back. Laura began to unstiffen and fell asleep.
Chapter 6
The Black Ponies
Sunshine, coming through the canvas onto Laura’s face, woke her. She opened her eyes just as Lena opened hers, and looking at each other they laughed.
“Hurry up! We’re going for the washing!” Lena sang out, jumping up.
They hadn’t undressed, so they did not need to dress. They folded the blanket and their bedroom work was done. They went skipping out into the large, breezy morning.
The shanties were small under the sunny sky. East and west ran the railroad grade and the road; northward the grasses were tossing tawny seed plumes. Men were tearing down one of the shanties with a pleasant racket of clattering boards. On picket lines in the blowing grasses, the two black ponies, with blowing black manes and tails, were grazing.
“We’ve got to eat breakfast first,” Lena said. “Come on, Laura! Hurry!”
Everyone except Aunt Docia was already at the table. Aunt Docia was frying pancakes.
“Get yourselves washed and combed, you lie-abeds! Breakfast’s on the table and no thanks to you, lazy miss!” Aunt Docia, laughing, gave Lena a spank as Lena went by. This morning she was as good-natured as Uncle Hi.
Breakfast was jolly. Pa’s great laugh rang out like bells. But afterward what stacks of dishes there were to wash!
Lena said the dishes were nothing to what she had been doing; dishes three times a day for forty-six men, and between times the cooking. She and Aunt Docia had been on their feet from before sunrise till late at night, and still they couldn’t keep up with all the work. That’s why Aunt Docia had hired the washing out. This was the first time that Laura had ever heard of hiring out the washing. A homesteader’s wife did Aunt Docia’s washing; she lived three miles away so they’d have a six-mile drive.
Laura helped Lena carry the harness to the buggy, and lead the willing ponies from their picket lines. She helped put the harness on them, the bits into their mouths, the hames on the collars clasping their warm black necks, and the tailpieces under their tails. Then Lena and Laura backed the ponies in beside the buggy pole, and fastened the stiff bather traces to the whiffletrees. They climbed into the buggy and Lena took the lines.
Pa had never let Laura drive his horses. He said she was not strong enough to hold them if they ran away.
As soon as Lena had the lines, the black ponies started gaily trotting. The buggy wheels turned swiftly, the fresh wind blew. Birds fluttered and sang and flew dipping over the tops of the blowing grasses. Faster and faster went the ponies, faster went the wheels. Laura and Lena laughed with joy.
The trotting ponies touched noses, gave a little squeal and ran.
Up sailed the buggy, almost jerking the seat from under Laura. Her bonnet flapped behind her tugging at its strings around her throat. She clutched onto the seat’s edge. The ponies were stretched out low, running with all their might.
“They’re running away!” Laura cried out.
“Let ’em run!” Lena shouted, slapping them with the lines. “They can’t run against anything but grass! Hi! Yi! Yi, yi, yee-ee!” she yelled at the ponies.
Their long black manes and tails streamed on the wind, their feet pounded, the buggy sailed. Everything went rushing by too fast to be seen. Lena began to sing:
“I know a young man fair to see,
Ta
ke care! Oh, take care!
And he can very obliging be.
Beware! Oh, beware!”
Laura had not heard the song before, but she was soon singing the refrain with all her voice.
