Laura was excited about the ponies. There were black ponies, bay ponies, gray and brown and spotted ponies. Their little feet went trippety-trip-trip, trippety-trip, pat-patter, pat-patter, trippety pat-patter, all along the Indian trail. Their nostrils widened at Jack and their bodies shied away from him, but they came on bravely, looking with their bright eyes at Laura.
“Oh, the pretty ponies! See the pretty ponies!” she cried, clapping her hands. “Lock at the spotted one.”
She thought she would never be tired of watching those ponies coming by, but after a while she began to look at the women and children on their backs. The women and children came riding behind the Indian men. Little naked brown Indians, no bigger than Mary and Laura, were riding the pretty ponies. The ponies did not have to wear bridles or saddles, and the little Indians did not have to wear clothes. All their skin was out in the fresh air and the sunshine. Their straight black hair blew in the wind and their black eyes sparkled with joy. They sat on their ponies stiff and still like grown-up Indians.
Laura looked and looked at the Indian children, and they looked at her. She had a naughty wish to be a little Indian girl. Of course she did not really mean it. She only wanted to be bare naked in the wind and the sunshine, and riding one of those gay little ponies.
The Indian children’s mothers were riding ponies, too. Leather fringe dangled about their legs and blankets were wrapped around their bodies, but the only thing on their heads was their black, smooth hair. Their faces were brown and placid. Some had narrow bundles tied on their backs, and tiny babies’ heads stuck out of the top of the bundles. And some babies and some small children rode in baskets hanging at the ponies’ sides, beside their mothers.
More and more and more ponies passed, and more children, and more babies on their mothers’ backs, and more babies in baskets on the ponies’ sides. Then came a mother riding, with a baby in a basket on each side of her pony.
Laura looked straight into the bright eyes of the little baby nearer her. Only its small head showed above the basket’s rim. Its hair was as black as a crow and its eyes were black as a night when no stars shine.
Those black eyes looked deep into Laura’s eyes and she looked deep down into the blackness of that little baby’s eyes, and she wanted that one little baby.
“Pa,” she said, “get me that little Indian baby!”
“Hush, Laura!” Pa told her sternly.
The little baby was going by. Its head turned and its eyes kept looking into Laura’s eyes.
“Oh, I want it! I want it!” Laura begged. The baby was going farther and farther away, but it did not stop looking back at Laura. “It wants to stay with me,” Laura begged. “Please, Pa, please!”
“Hush, Laura,” Pa said. “The Indian woman wants to keep her baby.”
“Oh, Pa!” Laura pleaded, and then she began to cry. It was shameful to cry, but she couldn’t help it. The little Indian baby was gone. She knew she would never see it any more.
Ma said she had never heard of such a thing. “For shame, Laura,” she said, but Laura could not stop crying. “Why on earth do you want an Indian baby, of all things!” Ma asked her.
“Its eyes are so black,” Laura sobbed. She could not say what she meant.
“Why, Laura,” Ma said, “you don’t want another baby. We have a baby, our own baby.”
“I want the other one, too!” Laura sobbed, loudly.
“Well, I declare!” Ma exclaimed.
“Look at the Indians, Laura,” said Pa. “Look west, and then look east, and see what you see.”
Laura could hardly see at first. Her eyes were full of tears and sobs kept jerking out of her throat. But she obeyed Pa as best she could, and in a moment she was still. As far as she could see to the west and as far as she could see to the east there were Indians. There was no end to that long, long line.
“That’s an awful lot of Indians,” Pa said.
More and more and more Indians came riding by. Baby Carrie grew tired of looking at Indians and played by herself on the floor. But Laura sat on the doorstep, Pa stood close beside her, and Ma and Mary stood in the doorway. They looked and looked and looked at Indians riding by.
It was dinner-time, and no one thought of dinner. Indian ponies were still going by, carrying bundles of skins and tent-poles and dangling baskets and cooking pots. There were a few more women and a few more naked Indian children. Then the very last pony went by. But Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary still stayed in the doorway, looking, till that long line of Indians slowly pulled itself over the western edge of the world. And nothing was left but silence and emptiness. All the world seemed very quiet and lonely.
Ma said she didn’t feel like doing anything, she was so let down. Pa told her not to do anything but rest.
“You must eat something, Charles,” Ma said.
“No,” said Pa. “I don’t feel hungry.” He went soberly to hitch up Pet and Patty, and he began again to break the tough sod with the plow.
Laura could not eat anything, either. She sat a long time on the doorstep, looking into the empty west where the Indians had gone. She seemed still to see waving feathers and black eyes and to hear the sound of ponies’ feet.
Chapter 25
Soldiers
After the Indians had gone, a great peace settled on the prairie. And one morning the whole land was green.
“When did that grass grow?” Ma asked, in amazement. “I thought the whole country was black, and now there’s nothing but green grass as far as the eye can see.”
The whole sky was filled with lines of wild ducks and wild geese flying north. Crows cawed above the trees along the creek. The winds whispered in the new grass, bringing scents of earth and of growing things.
In the mornings the meadow larks rose singing into the sky. All day the curlews and killdeers and sandpipers chirped and sang in the creek bottoms. Often in the early evening the mockingbirds were singing.
One night Pa and Mary and Laura sat still on the doorstep, watching little rabbits playing in the grass in the starlight. Three rabbit mothers hopped about with lopping ears and watched their little rabbits playing, too.
In the daytime everyone was busy. Pa hurried with his plowing, and Mary and Laura helped Ma plant the early garden seeds. With the hoe Ma dug small holes in the matted grass roots that the plow had turned up, and Laura and Mary carefully dropped the seeds. Then Ma covered them snugly with earth. They planted onions and carrots and peas and beans and turnips. And they were all so happy because spring had come, and pretty soon they would have vegetables to eat. They were growing very tired of just bread and meat.
One evening Pa came from the field before sunset and he helped Ma set out the cabbage plants and the sweet-potato plants. Ma had sowed the cabbage seed in a flat box and kept it in the house. She watered it carefully, and carried it every day from the morning sunshine to the afternoon sunshine that came through the windows. And she had saved one of the Christmas sweet potatoes, and planted it in another box. The cabbage seeds were now little gray-green plants, and the sweet potato had sent up a stem and green leaves from every one of its eyes.
Pa and Ma took each tiny plant very carefully and settled its roots comfortably in holes made for them. They watered the roots and pressed earth upon them firmly. It was dark before the last plant was in its place, and Pa and Ma were tired. But they were glad, too, because this year they’d have cabbages and sweet potatoes.
Every day they all looked at that garden. It was rough and grassy because it was made in the prairie sod, but all the tiny plants were growing. Little crumpled leaves of peas came up, and tiny spears of onions. The beans themselves popped out of the ground. But it was a little yellow bean-stem, coiled like a spring, that pushed them up. Then the bean was cracked open and dropped by two baby bean-leaves, and the leaves unfolded flat to the sunshine.
Pretty soon they would all begin to live like kings.
Every morning Pa went cheerfully whistling to the field. He had p
lanted some early sod potatoes, and some potatoes were saved to plant later. Now he carried a sack of corn fastened to his belt, and as he plowed he threw grains of corn into the furrow beside the plow’s point. The plow turned over a strip of sod on top of the seed corn. But the corn would fight its way up through the matted roots, and there would be a corn-field.
There would be green corn for dinner some day. And next winter there would be ripe corn for Pet and Patty to eat.
One morning Mary and Laura were washing the dishes and Ma was making the beds. She was humming softly to herself and Laura and Mary were talking about the garden. Laura liked peas best, and Mary liked beans. Suddenly they heard Pa’s voice, loud and angry.
Ma went quietly to the door, and Laura and Mary peeped out on either side of her.
Pa was driving Pet and Patty from the field, dragging the plow behind them. Mr. Scott and Mr. Edwards were with Pa, and Mr. Scott was talking earnestly.
“No, Scott!” Pa answered him. “I’ll not stay here to be taken away by the soldiers like an outlaw! If some blasted politicians in Washington hadn’t sent out word it would be all right to settle here, I’d never have been three miles over the line into Indian Territory. But I’ll not wait for the soldiers to take us out. We’re going now!”
“What is the matter, Charles? Where are we going?” Ma asked.
“Durned if I know! But we’re going. We’re leaving here!” Pa said. “Scott and Edwards say the government is sending soldiers to take all us settlers out of Indian Territory.”
His face was very red and his eyes were like blue fire. Laura was frightened; she had never seen Pa look like that. She pressed close against Ma and was still, looking at Pa.
Mr. Scott started to speak, but Pa stopped him. “Save your breath, Scott. It’s no use to say another word. You can stay till the soldiers come if you want to. I’m going out now.”
Mr. Edwards said he was going, too. He would not stay to be driven across the line like an ornery yellow hound.
“Ride out to Independence with us, Edwards,” Pa said. But Mr. Edwards answered that he didn’t care to go north. He would make a boat and go on down the river to some settlement farther south.
“Better come out with us,” Pa urged him, “and go down on foot through Missouri. It’s a risky trip, one man alone in a boat, going down the Verdigris among the wild Indian tribes.”
But Mr. Edwards said he had already seen Missouri and he had plenty of powder and lead.
Then Pa told Mr. Scott to take the cow and calf. “We can’t take them with us,” Pa said. “You’ve been a good neighbor, Scott, and I’m sorry to leave you. But we’re going out in the morning.”
Laura had heard all this, but she had not believed it until she saw Mr. Scott leading away the cow. The gentle cow went meekly away with the rope around her long horns, and the calf frisked and jumped behind. There went all the milk and butter.
Mr. Edwards said he would be too busy to see them again. He shook hands with Pa, saying, “Good-by, Ingalls, and good luck.” He shook hands with Ma and said, “Good-by, ma’am. I won’t be seeing you all again, but I sure will never forget your kindness.”
Then he turned to Mary and Laura, and he shook their hands as if they were grown up. “Good-by,” he said.
Mary said, politely, “Good-by, Mr. Edwards.” But Laura forgot to be polite. She said: “Oh, Mr. Edwards, I wish you wouldn’t go away! Oh, Mr. Edwards, thank you, thank you for going all the way to Independence to find Santa Claus for us.”
Mr. Edwards’ eyes shone very bright, and he went away without saying another word.
Pa began to unhitch Pet and Patty in the middle of the morning, and Laura and Mary knew it was really true; they really were going away from there. Ma didn’t say anything. She went into the house and looked around, at the dishes not washed and the bed only partly made, and she lifted up both hands and sat down.
Mary and Laura went on doing the dishes. They were careful not to let them make a sound. They turned around quickly when Pa came in.
He looked like himself again, and he was carrying the potato-sack.
“Here you are, Caroline!” he said, and his voice sounded natural. “Cook a plenty for dinner! We’ve been going without potatoes, saving them for seed. Now we’ll eat ’em up!”
So that day for dinner they ate the seed potatoes. They were very good, and Laura knew that Pa was right when he said, “There’s no great loss without some small gain.”
After dinner he took the wagon bows from their pegs in the barn. He put them on the wagon, one end of each bow in its iron strap on one side of the wagon-box, and the other end in its iron strap on the other side. When all the bows were standing up in their places, Pa and Ma spread the wagon-cover over them and tied it down tightly. Then Pa pulled the rope in the end of the wagon-cover till it puckered together and left only a tiny round hole in the middle of the back.
There stood the covered wagon, all ready to load in the morning.
Everyone was quiet that night. Even Jack felt that something was wrong, and he lay down close to Laura when she went to bed. It was now too warm for a fire, but Pa and Ma sat looking at the ashes in the fireplace. Ma sighed gently and said, “A whole year gone, Charles.” But Pa answered, cheerfully: “What’s a year amount to? We have all the time there is.”
Chapter 26
Going Out
After breakfast next morning, Pa and Ma packed the wagon.
First all the bedding was made into two beds, laid on top of each other across the back of the wagon, and carefully covered with a pretty plaid blanket. Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie would ride there in the daytime. At night the top bed would be put in the front of the wagon, for Pa and Ma to sleep in. And Mary and Laura would sleep in the bottom bed, where it was.
Next Pa took the small cupboard from the wall, and in it Ma packed the food and the dishes. Pa put the cupboard under the wagon-seat, and in front of it he laid a sack of corn for the horses.
“It will make a good rest for our feet, Caroline,” he said to Ma.
Ma packed all the clothing in two carpetbags, and Pa hung them to the wagon bows inside the wagon. Opposite them he hung his rifle in its straps, and his bullet-pouch and powder-horn hung beneath it. His fiddle in its box he laid on one end of the bed, where it would ride softly.
Ma wrapped the black iron spider, the bake-oven, and the coffee-pot in sacks, and put them in the wagon, while Pa tied the rocking-chair and the tub outside, and hung the water-bucket and the horse-bucket underneath. And he put the tin lantern carefully in the front corner of the wagon-box, where the sack of corn held it still.
Now the wagon was loaded. The only thing they could not take was the plow. Well, that could not be helped. There was no room for it. When they came to wherever they were going, Pa could get more furs to trade for another plow.
Laura and Mary climbed into the wagon and sat on the bed in the back. Ma put Baby Carrie between them. They were all freshly washed and combed. Pa said they were clean as a hound’s tooth, and Ma told them they were bright as new pins.
Then Pa hitched Pet and Patty to the wagon. Ma climbed to her place on the seat and held the lines. And suddenly Laura wanted to see the house again. She asked Pa please to let her look out. So he loosened the rope in the back of the wagon-cover, and that made a large round hole. Laura and Mary could look out of it, but still the rope held up enough canvas to keep Carrie from tumbling into the feed-box.
The snug log house looked just as it always had. It did not seem to know they were going away. Pa stood a moment in the doorway and looked all around inside; he looked at the bedstead and the fireplace and the glass windows. Then he closed the door carefully, leaving the latch-string out.
“Someone might need shelter,” he said.
He climbed to his place beside Ma, gathered the reins into his own hands, and chirruped to Pet and Patty.
Jack went under the wagon. Pet whinnied to Bunny, who came to walk beside her. And they were off. br />
Just before the creek road went down into the bottoms, Pa stopped the mustangs, and they all looked back.
As far as they could see, to the east and to the south and to the west, nothing was moving on all the vastness of the High Prairie. Only the green grass was rippling in the wind, and white clouds drifted in the high, clear sky.
“It’s a great country, Caroline,” Pa said. “But there will be wild Indians and wolves here for many a long day.”
The little log house and the little stable sat lonely in the stillness.
Then Pet and Patty briskly started onward. The wagon went down from the bluffs into the wooded creek bottoms, and high in a treetop a mockingbird began to sing.
“I never heard a mockingbird sing so early,” said Ma, and Pa answered, softly, “He is telling us good-by.”
They rode down through the low hills to the creek. The ford was low, an easy crossing. On they went, across the bottoms where antlered deer stood up to watch them passing, and mother deer with their fawns bounded into the shadows of the woods. And up between the steep red-earth cliffs the wagon climbed to prairie again.
Pet and Patty were eager to go. Their hoofs had made a muffled sound in the bottoms, but now they rang on the hard prairie. And the wind sang shrill against the foremost wagon bows.
Pa and Ma were still and silent on the wagon-seat, and Mary and Laura were quiet, too. But Laura felt all excited inside. You never know what will happen next, nor where you’ll be tomorrow, when you are traveling in a covered wagon.
At noon Pa stopped beside a little spring to let the mustangs eat and drink and rest. The spring would soon be dry in the summer’s heat, but there was plenty of water now.
Ma took cold cornbread and meat from the food-box, and they all ate, sitting on the clean grass in the shade of the wagon. They drank from the spring, and Laura and Mary ran around in the grass, picking wild flowers, while Ma tidied the food-box and Pa hitched up Pet and Patty again.