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“Guess what, Caroline and girls!” he sang out. “I saw Boast in town today, and he sent word from Mrs. Boast. She’s setting a hen for us!”
“Oh, Charles!” Ma said.
“As soon as the chicks are big enough to scratch for themselves, he’s going to bring us the whole batch,” said Pa.
“Oh, Charles, this is good news. It’s just like Mrs. Boast to do it, too,” Ma said thankfully. “How is she, did he say?”
“Said they’re getting along fine. She’s so busy, she hasn’t been able to get to town this spring, but she’s certainly keeping you in mind.”
“A whole setting of chicks,” said Ma. “There’s not many that would do it.”
“They don’t forget how you took them in when they came out here, just married, and got lost in a snowstorm, and we were the only settlers in forty miles,” Pa reminded her. “Boast often speaks of it.”
“Pshaw,” said Ma. “That was nothing. But a whole setting of eggs— It saves us a year in starting a flock.”
If they could raise the chicks, if hawks or weasels or foxes did not get them, some would be pullets that summer. Next year the pullets would begin laying, then there would be eggs to set. Year after next, there would be cockerels to fry, and more pullets to increase the flock. Then there would be eggs to eat, and when the hens grew too o
ld to lay eggs, Ma could make them into chicken pie.
“And if next spring Pa can buy a young pig,” said Mary, “then in a couple of years we’ll have fried ham and eggs. And lard and sausages and spareribs and head-cheese!”
“And Grace can roast the pig’s tail!” Carrie chimed in.
“Why?” Grace wanted to know. “What is a pig’s tail?”
Carrie could remember butchering time, but Grace had never held a pig’s skinned tail in front of the cookstove grate and watched it sizzling brown. She had never seen Ma take from the oven the dripping pan full of brown, crackling, juicy spareribs. She had never seen the blue platter heaped with fragrant sausage-cakes, nor spooned their red-brown gravy onto pancakes. She remembered only Dakota Territory, and the meat she knew was the salt, white, fat pork that Pa bought sometimes.
But someday they would have all the good things to eat again, for better times were coming. With so much work to do now, and everything to look forward to, the days were flying by. They were all so busy that they hardly missed Pa during the day. Then every night there was his coming home, when he brought news of the town, and they always had so much to tell him.
All day they had been saving a most exciting thing to tell him. They could hardly expect him to believe it, for this was what had happened:
While Ma was making the beds and Laura and Carrie were washing the breakfast dishes, they all heard the kitten cry out piteously. Kitty’s eyes were open now and she could scamper across the floor, chasing a scrap of paper that Grace drew on a string.
“Grace, be careful!” Mary exclaimed. “Don’t hurt the kitty.”
“I’m not hurting the kitty,” Grace answered earnestly.
Before Mary could speak, the kitten squalled again.
“Don’t, Grace!” Ma said from the bedroom. “Did you step on it?”
“No, Ma,” Grace answered. The kitten cried desperately, and Laura turned around from the dishpan.
“Stop it, Grace! What are you doing to the kitty?”
“I’m not doing anything to the kitty!” Grace wailed. “I can’t find it!”
The kitten was nowhere to be seen. Carrie looked under the stove and behind the woodbox. Grace crawled under the tablecloth to see beneath the table. Ma looked under the whatnot’s bottom shelf and Laura hunted through both bedrooms.
Then the kitten squalled again, and Ma found it behind the opened door. There, between the door and the wall, the tiny kitten was holding fast to a mouse. The mouse was full grown and strong, nearly as big as the wobbling little kitten, and it was fighting. It squirmed and bit. The kitten cried when the mouse bit her, but she would not let go. She braced her little legs and kept her teeth set in a mouthful of the mouse’s loose skin. Her baby legs were so weak that she almost fell over. The mouse bit her again and again.
Ma quickly got the broom. “Pick up the kitten, Laura, I’ll deal with the mouse.”
Laura was obeying, of course, but she couldn’t help saying, “Oh, I hate to, Ma! She’s hanging on. It’s her fight.”
Right under Laura’s grasping hand the tiny kitten made one great effort. She leaped onto the mouse. She held it down under both her front legs and screamed again as its teeth bit into her. Then her own little teeth snapped hard, into the mouse’s neck. The mouse squeaked shrilly and went limp. All by herself, the kitten had killed it; her first mouse.
“I declare,” Ma said. “Whoever heard of a cat-and-mouse fight!”
