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The race started. Fast came the bays, leading all the others. The shining legs trotting and the wheels whirling hardly seemed to touch the ground. Every buggy rushing by was a light, one-seated buggy. Not a team drew even the weight of a two-seated buggy, except the beautiful brown horses who came last, pulling the high, heavy peddler’s cart.
“Best team in the country,” Laura heard a man say, “but not a chance.”
“Nope,” said another. “That wagon’s too heavy for them to pull. Sure as shooting, they’ll break their trot.”
But they were pulling it, and they were trotting. Evenly, without a break, the eight brown legs kept moving in a perfect trot. The dust-cloud rose up and hid them. Then bursting out of it, up the other side of the track the teams and buggies were speeding. One buggy— No, two buggies! were behind the peddler’s cart. Three buggies were behind it. Only the bays were ahead of it.
“Oh, come on! Come on! Win Win!” Laura was begging the brown horses. She so wanted them to trot faster that it seemed her wishing was pulling them.
They were almost around the track. They were coming now around the turn and on toward the line. The bays were ahead. The Morgans could not do it, they could not win, the weight was too much for them, but still Laura kept on wishing with all of her. “Faster, faster, only a little faster. Oh, come on, come on!”
Almanzo leaned forward from the high seat and seemed to speak to them. Still smoothly trotting, they came faster. Their heads reached Mr. Owen’s buggy and slowly, smoothly crept by it. All the legs were moving fast, fast, while so slowly the brown heads came up, even with the bays’. All four horses were coming now in a line, faster, faster.
“A tie. By gosh, it’s a tie,” a man said.
Then Mr. Owen’s buggy whip flashed out. It swished down, once, twice, as he shouted. The bays leaped ahead. Almanzo had no whip. He was leaning forward, lightly holding the reins firm. Once more he seemed to speak. Fast and smooth as swallows flying, the brown Morgans passed the bays and crossed the line. They’d won!
The whole crowd shouted. It surged to surround the brown horses and Almanzo high on the cart. Laura found that she had been holding her breath. Her knees were wobbly. She wanted to yell and to laugh and to cry and to sit down and rest.
“Oh, they won! they won! they won!” Carrie kept saying, clapping her hands. Laura did not say anything.
“He earned that five dollars,” said Mr. Boast.
“What five dollars?” Carrie asked.
“Some men in town put up five dollars for the best trotting team,” Pa explained. “Almanzo Wilder’s won it.”
Laura was glad she had not known. She could not have borne it if she had known that the brown horses were running for a five-dollar prize.
“He has it coming to him,” said Pa. “That young man knows how to handle horses.”
There were no more races. There was nothing more to do but stand around and listen to the talking. The lemonade was low in the barrel. Mr. Boast brought Laura and Carrie a dipperful and they divided it. It was sweeter than before, but not so cold. The teams and buggies were going away. Then Pa came from the dwindling crowd and said it was time to go home.
Mr. Boast walked with them along Main Street. Pa said to him that the Wilders had a sister who was a schoolteacher back east in Minnesota. “She’s taken a claim half a mile west of town here,” said Pa, “and she wants Almanzo to find out if she can get this school to teach next winter. I told him to tell her to send in her application to the school board. Other things being equal, I don’t know why she can’t as well have it.”
Laura and Carrie looked at each other. Pa was on the school board, and no doubt the others would feel as he did. Laura thought, “Maybe if I am a very good scholar and if she likes me, maybe she might take me driving behind those beautiful horses.”
Chapter 9
Blackbirds
In August, the days were so hot that Laura and Mary took their walks in the early mornings before the sun had risen far. The air still had some freshness then and it was not too hot to be pleasant. But every walk seemed like a little bit of the last walk they would have together, for soon Mary was going away.
She was really going to college, that fall. They had looked forward so long to her going, that now when she really was going, it did not seem possible. It was hard to imagine, too, because none of them knew what college would be like; they had never seen one. But Pa had earned nearly a hundred dollars that spring; the garden and the oats and the corn were growing marvelously; and Mary really could go to college.
Coming back from their walk one morning, Laura noticed several grasses sticking to Mary’s skirt. She tried to pull them off, but they would not come loose.
“Ma!” she called. “Come look at this funny grass.” Ma had never seen a grass like it. The grass heads were like barley beards, except that they were twisted, and they ended in a seed pod an inch long, with a point as fine and hard as a needle, and a shaft covered with stiff hairs pointing backward. Like real needles, the points had sewed themselves into Mary’s dress. The stiff hair followed the needle-point easily, but kept it from being pulled back, and the four-inch-long, screw-like beard followed, twisting and pushing the needle-point farther in.
“Ouch! something bit me!” Mary exclaimed. Just above her shoetop, one of the strange grasses had pierced her stocking and was screwing itself into her flesh.
“I declare this beats all,” said Ma. “What next will we encounter on this homestead?”
When Pa came in at noon, they showed him the strange grass. He said it was Spanish needle grass. When it got in the mouths of horses or cattle, it must be cut out of their lips and tongues. It worked through sheep’s wool and into the sheep’s bodies, often killing them.
“Where did you girls find it?” he asked, and he was glad that Laura could not tell him. “If you didn’t notice it, there can’t be much of it. It grows in patches, and spreads. Exactly where did you go walking?”
Laura could tell him that. He said he would attend to that grass. “Some say it can be killed by burning it over, green,” he told them. “I’ll burn it now, to kill as many seeds as I can, and next spring I’ll be on the lookout and burn it, green.”
