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When she went out she saw that Mary and Cap were sitting in the back seat of Cap’s two-seated buggy. Almanzo helped her up to the front seat and took the reins from Cap as he sat down beside her. Then Prince and Lady trotted away up the street and out on the prairie road toward the east.
No one else was out driving, so this was not a party, but Laura and Mary and Cap were laughing and merry. The road was slushy. Water and bits of snow spattered the horses and buggy and the linen lap robes across their knees. But the spring wind was soft on their faces and the sun was warmly shining.
Almanzo did not join in the merry talk. He drove steadily, without a smile or a word, until Laura asked him what was the matter.
“Nothing,” he said, then he asked quickly, “Who is that young man?”
No one was in sight anywhere. Laura exclaimed, “What young man?”
“That you were talking with, when I came,” he said.
Laura was astonished. Mary burst out laughing. “Now don’t be jealous of Laura’s uncle!” she said.
“Oh, did you mean him? That was Uncle Tom, Ma’s brother,” Laura explained. Mary Power was still laughing so hard that Laura turned, just in time to see Cap snatch a hairpin from Mary’s knot of hair.
“Suppose you pay some attention to me,” Cap said to Mary.
“Oh, stop it, Cap! Let me have it,” Mary cried, trying to seize the hairpin that Cap held out of her reach, while he snatched another one.
“Don’t, Cap! Don’t!” Mary begged, putting both hands over the knot of hair at the back of her neck. “Laura, help me!”
Laura saw how desperate the situation was, for she alone knew that Mary wore a switch. Cap must be stopped, for if Mary lost any more hairpins, her beautiful large knot of hair would come off.
Just at that instant, a bit of snow flung from Prince’s foot fell into Laura’s lap. Cap’s shoulder was turned to her as he struggled with Mary. Laura nipped up the bit of snow and neatly dropped it inside his collar at the back of his neck.
“Ow!” he yelled. “Looks like you’d help a fellow, Wilder. Two girls against me is too many.”
“I’m busy driving,” Almanzo answered, and they all shouted with laughter. It was so easy to laugh in the springtime.
Chapter 14
Holding Down a Claim
Uncle Tom went east on the train next morning. When Laura came home from school at noon, he was gone.
“No sooner had he gone,” said Ma, “than Mrs. McKee came. She is in distress, Laura, and asked me if you would help her out.”
“Why, of course I will, if I can,” Laura said. “What is it?”
Ma said that, hard as Mrs. McKee had worked at dressmaking all that winter, the McKees could not afford to move to their claim yet. Mr. McKee must keep his job at the lumberyard until they saved money enough to buy tools and seed and stock. He wanted Mrs. McKee to take their little girl, Mattie, and live on the claim that summer, to hold it. Mrs. McKee said she would not live out there on the prairie, all alone, with no one but Mattie; she said they could lose the claim, first.
“I don’t know why she is so nervous about it,” said Ma. “But it seems she is. It seems that being all alone, miles from anybody, scares her. So, as she told me, Mr. McKee said he would let the claim go. After he went to work, she was thinking it over, and she came to tell me that if you would go with her, she would go hold down the claim. She said she would give you a dollar a week, just to stay with her as one of the family.”
“Where is the claim?” Pa inquired.
“It is some little distance north of Manchester,” said Ma. Manchester was a new little town, west of De Smet. “Well, do you want to go, Laura?” Pa asked her.
“I guess so,” Laura said. “I’ll have to miss the rest of school, but I can make that up, and I’d like to go on earning something.”
“The McKees are nice folks, and it would be a real accommodation to them, so you may go if you want to,” Pa decided.
“It would be a pity, though, for you to miss Mary’s visit home,” Ma worried.
“Maybe if I just get Mrs. McKee settled on the claim and used to it, I could come home long enough to see Mary,” Laura pondered.
“Well, if you want to go, best go,” Ma said. “We needn’t cross a bridge till we come to it. Likely it will work out all right, somehow.”
So the next morning Laura rode with Mrs. McKee and Mattie on the train to Manchester. She had been on the cars once before, when she came west from Plum Creek, so she felt like a seasoned traveler as she followed the brakeman with her satchel, down the aisle to a seat. It was not as though she knew nothing about trains.
