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“I am,” Laura whispered back, and she was. She was glad that her dress and her bonnet were so nice. Carefully Almanzo spread the linen lap robe, and she tucked it well under her flounce to cover the brown poplin from dust. Then they were driving away in the afternoon sunshine, southward toward the distant lakes, Henry and Thompson.
“How do you like the new buggy?” Almanzo asked.
It was a beautiful buggy, so black and shining, with glossy red spokes in the wheels. The seat was wide; at either end of it gleaming black supports slanted backward to the folded-down top behind, and the seat had a lazy-back, cushioned. Laura had never before been in a buggy so luxurious.
“It is nice,” Laura said as she leaned comfortably back against the leather cushion. “I never rode in a lazy-back buggy before. The back isn’t quite as high as the plain wooden ones, is it?”
“Maybe this will make it better,” Almanzo said, laying his arm along the top of the back. He was not exactly hugging Laura, but his arm was against her shoulders. She shrugged, but his arm did not move away. So she leaned forward, and shook the buggy whip where it stood in the whipsocket on the dashboard. The colts jumped forward and broke into a run.
“You little devil!” Almanzo exclaimed, as he closed his hands on the lines and braced his feet. He needed both hands to control those colts.
After a time the colts were calmer and quieter, trotting again.
“Suppose they had run away?” Almanzo then asked her indignantly.
“They could run a long way before they came to the end of the prairie,” Laura laughed. “And there’s nothing to run against between here and there.”
“Just the same!” Almanzo began, and then he said, “You’re independent, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Laura.
They drove a long way that afternoon, all the way to Lake Henry and around it. Only a narrow tongue of land separated it from Lake Thompson. Between the sheets of blue water there was width enough only for a wagon track. Young cottonwoods and choke-cherry trees stood slim on either side, above a tangle of wild grapevines. It was cool there. The wind blew across the water, and between the trees they could see the little waves breaking against the shore on either side.
Almanzo drove slowly, as he told Laura of the eighty-acre field of wheat he had sown, and the thirty acres of oats.
“You know I have my homestead and my tree claim both to work on,” he said. “Besides that, Cap and I have been hauling lumber for a long ways, out around town to build houses and schoolhouses all over the country. I had to team, to earn money for this new buggy.”
“Why not drive the one you had?” Laura sensibly wanted to know.
“I traded that on these colts last fall,” he explained. “I knew I could break them on the cutter in the winter, but when spring came, I needed a buggy. If I’d had one, I’d have been around to see you before this.”
As they talked, he drove out from between the lakes and around the end of Lake Henry, then away across the prairie to the north. Now and then they saw a little new claim shanty. Some had a stable, and a field of broken sod nearby.
“This country is settling up fast,” Almanzo said as they turned west along the shore of Silver Lake and so toward Pa’s claim. “We have driven only forty miles and we must have seen as many as six houses.”
The sun was low in the west when he helped her out of the buggy at her door.
“If you like buggy rides as well as sleigh rides, I will be back next Sunday,” he said.
“I like buggy rides,” Laura answered. Then suddenly, she felt shy, and hurried into the house.
Chapter 20
Nellie Oleson
“I declare,” Ma said. “It never rains but it pours.” For strangely enough, Tuesday evening a young man who lived on a neighboring claim came by, and asked Laura to go buggy riding with him next Sunday. On Thursday evening, another young neighbor asked her to go buggy riding with him next Sunday. And as she was walking home Saturday evening, a third young man overtook her and brought her home in his lumber wagon, and he asked her to go riding with him next day.
That Sunday Almanzo and Laura drove north past Almanzo’s two claims, to Spirit Lake. There was a small claim shanty on Almanzo’s homestead. On his tree claim there were no buildings at all, but the young trees were growing well. He had set them out carefully, and must cultivate and care for them for five years; then he could prove up on the claim and own the land. The trees were thriving much better than he had expected at first, for he said that if trees would grow on those prairies, he thought they would have grown there naturally before now.
“These government experts have got it all planned,” he explained to Laura. “They are going to cover these prairies with trees, all the way from Canada to Indian Territory. It’s all mapped out in the land offices, where the trees ought to be, and you can’t get that land except on tree claims. They’re certainly right about one thing; if half these trees live, they’ll seed the whole land and turn it into forest land, like the woods back east.”
“Do you think so?” Laura asked him in amazement. Somehow she could not imagine those prairies turned into woods, like Wisconsin.
“Well, time will show,” he answered. “Anyway, I’m doing my part. I’ll keep those trees alive if it can be done.”
Spirit Lake was beautiful and wild. There Almanzo drove along a rocky shore, where the water was deep and the waves ran foaming before the wind and dashed high on the rocks. There was an Indian mound by Spirit Lake, too. It was said to be a burial place, though no one knew what was in it. Tall cottonwoods grew there, and chokecherries smothered in wild grapevines.
On the way back, they came into town past the Olesons’ claim. It was on the section line a mile east of Almanzo’s homestead. Laura had not seen Nellie Oleson’s home before, and she felt a little sorry for her; the shanty was so small, standing among the wild grass in the wind. Mr. Oleson had no horses, only a yoke of oxen, and the place was not improved as Pa’s was. But Laura barely glanced at it, for she did not want to spoil the beautiful day by even thinking of Nellie Oleson.
