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She thought: Americans won’t obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn’t anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.
Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means, you have to be good. “Our father’s God, author of liberty—” The laws of Nature and of Nature’s God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God’s law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free.
Laura had no time then to think any further. Carrie was wondering why she stood so still, and Pa was saying, “This way, girls! There’s the free lemonade!”
The barrels stood in the grass by the flagpole. A few men were waiting for their turns to drink from the tin dipper. As each finished drinking, he handed the dipper on, and then strolled away toward the horses and buggies on the race track.
Laura and Carrie hung back a little, but the man who had the dipper saw them and handed the dipper to Pa. He filled it from the barrel and gave it to Carrie. The barrel was almost full, and slices of lemon floated thick on the lemonade.
“I see they put in plenty of lemons, so it ought to be good,” Pa said, while Carrie slowly drank. Her eyes grew round with delight; she had never tasted lemonade before.
“They’ve just mixed it,” one of the waiting men told Pa. “The water is fresh from the hotel well, so it’s cold.”
Another man who was waiting said, “It depends, some, on how much sugar they put in.”
Pa filled the dipper again and gave it to Laura. She had once tasted lemonade, at Nellie Oleson’s party, when she was a little girl in Minnesota. This lemonade was even more delicious. She drank the last drop from the dipper and thanked Pa. It would not be polite to ask for more. When Pa had drunk, they went across the trampled grass to the crowd by the race track. A great ring of sod had been broken, and the sod carried off. The breaking plow with its coulter had left the black earth smooth and level. In the middle of the ring and all around it the prairie grasses were waving, except where men and buggies had made trampled tracks.
“Why, hello, Boast!” Pa called, and Mr. Boast came through the crowd. He had just got to town in time for the races. Mrs. Boast, like Ma, had preferred to stay at home.
Four ponies came out on the track. There were two bay ponies, one gray, and one black. The boys who were riding them lined them up in a straight row. “Which’d you bet on, if you were betting?” Mr. Boast asked.
“Oh, the black one!” Laura cried. The black pony’s coat shone in the sunlight and its long mane and tail blew silky on the breeze. It tossed its slender head and picked up its feet daintily.
At the word, “Go!” all the ponies leaped into a run. The crowd yelled. Stretched out low and fast, the black pony went by, the others behind it. All their pounding feet raised a cloud of dust that hid them. Then around the far side of the track they went, running with all their might. The gray pony crept up beside the black. Neck and neck they were running, then the gray pulled a little ahead and the crowd yelled again. Laura still hoped for the black. It was doing its best. Little by little it gained on the gray. Its head passed the gray’s neck, its outstretched nose was almost even with the gray’s nose. Suddenly all four ponies were coming head-on down the track, quickly growing larger and larger in front of the oncoming dust. The bay pony with the white nose came skimming past the black and the gray, across the line ahead of them both while the crowd cheered.
“If you’d bet on the black, Laura, you’d’ve lost,” said Pa.
“It’s the prettiest, though,” Laura answered. She had never been so excited. Carrie’s eyes shone, her cheeks were pink with excitement; her braid was snared on a button and recklessly she yanked it loose.
“Are there any more, Pa? more races?” Carrie cried.
“Sure, here they come for the buggy race,” Pa answered. Mr. Boast joked, “Pick the winning team, Laura!”
Through the crowd and out onto the track came first a bay team hitched to a light buggy. The
bays were perfectly matched and they stepped as though the buggy weighed nothing at all. Then came other teams, other buggies, but Laura hardly saw them, for there was a team of brown horses that she knew. She knew their proud, gay heads and arching necks, the shine of light on their satiny shoulders, the black manes blowing and the forelocks tossing above their quick, bright, gentle eyes.
“Oh, look, Carrie, look! It’s the brown Morgans!” she cried.
“That’s Almanzo Wilder’s team, Boast,” said Pa. “What in creation has he got ’em hitched to?”
High up above the horses, Almanzo Wilder was sitting. His hat was pushed back on his head and he looked cheerful and confident.
He turned the team toward its place in line, and they saw that he was sitting on a high seat, on top of a long, high, heavy wagon, with a door in its side.
“It’s his brother Royal’s peddler’s wagon,” said a man standing near by.
“He don’t have a chance, with that weight, against all those light buggies,” said another. Everyone was looking at the Morgans and the wagon and talking about them.
“The off horse, Prince, is the one he drove last winter, that forty-mile trip that he and Cap Garland made, and brought in the wheat that kept us all from starving to death,” Pa told Mr. Boast. “The other one’s Lady, that ran off with the antelope herd that time. They’ve both got good action, and speed.”
“I see that,” Mr. Boast agreed. “But no team can haul that heavy cart and beat Sam Owen’s bays on his light buggy. Seems like the young fellow might have rousted out a buggy somewheres in this country.”
“He’s an independent kind of a young cuss,” someone said. “He’d rather lose with what he’s got than win with a borrowed buggy.”
“Too bad he don’t own a buggy,” Mr. Boast said. The brown horses were by far the most beautiful on the track, and so proud. They did not seem to mind the heavy wagon at all, but tossed their heads, pricked their ears, and lifted their feet as if the ground were not quite good enough for them to step on.
“Oh, what a shame, what a shame they haven’t a fair chance,” Laura was thinking. Her hands were clenched. She wished so much that those proud, fine horses might only have a fair chance. Hitched to that heavy wagon, they could not win. She cried out, “Oh, it isn’t fair!”
