Mr. Edwards said he would go home now, but Pa and Ma said he must stay to supper. Ma had cooked an especially good supper because they had company.
There was stewed jack rabbit with white-flour dumplings and plenty of gravy. There was a steaming-hot, thick cornbread flavored with bacon fat. There was molasses to eat on the cornbread, but because this was a company supper they did not sweeten their coffee with molasses. Ma brought out the little paper sack of pale-brown store sugar.
Mr. Edwards said he surely did appreciate that supper.
Then Pa brought out his fiddle.
Mr. Edwards stretched out on the ground, to listen. But first Pa played for Laura and Mary. He played their very favorite song, and he sang it. Laura liked it best of all because Pa’s voice went down deep, deep, deeper in that song.
“Oh, I am a Gypsy King!
I come and go as I please!
I pull my old nightcap down
And take the world at my ease.”
Then his voice went deep, deep down, deeper than the very oldest bullfrog’s.
“Oh,
I am
a
Gyp
sy
KING!”
They all laughed. Laura could hardly stop laughing.
“Oh, sing it again, Pa! Sing it again!” she cried, before she remembered that children must be seen and not heard. Then she was quiet.
Pa went on playing, and everything began to dance. Mr. Edwards rose up on one elbow, then he sat up, then he jumped up and he danced. He danced like a jumping-jack in the moonlight, while Pa’s fiddle kept on rollicking and his foot kept tapping the ground, and Laura’s hands and Mary’s hands were clapping together and their feet were patting, too.
“You’re the fiddlin’est fool that ever I see!” Mr. Edwards shouted admiringly to Pa. He didn’t stop dancing, Pa didn’t stop playing. He played “Money Musk” and “Arkansas Traveler,” “Irish Washerwoman” and the “Devil’s Hornpipe.”
Baby Carrie couldn’t sleep in all that music. She sat up in Ma’s lap, looking at Mr. Edwards with round eyes, and clapping her little hands and laughing.
Even the firelight danced, and all around its edge the shadows were dancing. Only the new house stood still and quiet in the dark, till the big moon rose and shone on its gray walls and the yellow chips around it.
Mr. Edwards said he must go. It was a long way back to his camp on the other side of the woods and the creek. He took his gun, and said good night to Laura and Mary and Ma. He said a bachelor got mighty lonesome, and he surely had enjoyed this evening of home life.
“Play, Ingalls!” he said. “Play me down the road!” So while he went down the creek road and out of sight, Pa played, and Pa and Mr. Edwards and Laura sang with all their might,
“Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man;
He washed his face in the frying-pan,
He combed his hair with a wagon wheel,
And died of the toothache in his heel.
“Git out of the way for old Dan Tucker!
He’s too late to get his supper!
Supper’s over and the dishes washed,
Nothing left but a piece of squash!
“Old Dan Tucker went to town,
Riding a mule, leading a houn’…”
Far over the prairie rang Pa’s big voice and Laura’s little one, and faintly from the creek bottoms came a last whoop from Mr. Edwards.
“Git out of the way for old Dan Tucker!
He’s too late to get his supper!”
When Pa’s fiddle stopped, they could not hear Mr. Edwards any more. Only the wind rustled in the prairie grasses. The big, yellow moon was sailing high overhead. The sky was so full of light that not one star twinkled in it, and all the prairie was a shadowy mellowness.
Then from the woods by the creek a nightingale began to sing.
Everything was silent, listening to the nightingale’s song. The bird sang on and on. The cool wind moved over the prairie and the song was round and clear above the grasses’ whispering. The sky was like a bowl of light overturned on the flat black land.
The song ended. No one moved or spoke. Laura and Mary were quiet, Pa and Ma sat motionless. Only the wind stirred and the grasses sighed. Then Pa lifted the fiddle to his shoulder and softly touched the bow to the strings. A few notes fell like clear drops of water into the stillness. A pause, and Pa began to play the nightingale’s song. The nightingale answered him. The nightingale began to sing again. It was singing with Pa’s fiddle.
When the strings were silent, the nightingale went on singing. When it paused, the fiddle called to it and it sang again. The bird and the fiddle were talking to each other in the cool night under the moon.
Chapter 6
Moving In
The walls are up,” Pa was saying to Ma in the morning. “We’d better move in and get along as best we can without a floor or other fixings. I must build the stable as fast as I can, so Pet and Patty can be inside walls, too. Last night I could hear wolves howling from every direction, seemed like, and close, too.”
“Well, you have your gun, so I’ll not worry,” said Ma.
“Yes, and there’s Jack. But I’ll feel easier in my mind when you and the girls have good solid walls around you.”
“Why do you suppose we haven’t seen any Indians?” Ma asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Pa replied, carelessly. “I’ve seen their camping-places among the bluffs. They’re away on a hunting-trip now, I guess.”
Then Ma called: “Girls! The sun’s up!” and Laura and Mary scrambled out of bed and into their clothes.
“Eat your breakfasts quickly,” Ma said, putting the last of the rabbit stew on their tin plates. “We’re moving into the house today, and all the chips must be out.”
So they ate quickly, and hurried to carry all the chips out of the house. They ran back and forth as fast as they could, gathering their skirts full of chips and dumping them in a pile near the fire. But there were still chips on the ground inside the house when Ma began to sweep it with her willow-bough broom.
Ma limped, though her sprained ankle was beginning to get well. But she soon swept the earthen floor, and then Mary and Laura began to help her carry things into the house.
Pa was on top of the walls, stretching the canvas wagon-top over the skeleton roof of saplings. The canvas billowed in the wind, Pa’s beard blew wildly and his hair stood up from his head as if it were trying to pull itself out. He held on to the canvas and fought it. Once it jerked so hard that Laura thought he must let go or sail into the air like a bird. But he held tight to the wall with his legs, and tight to the canvas with his hands, and he tied it down.
“There!” he said to it. “Stay where you are, and be—”
“Charles!” Ma said. She stood with her arms full of quilts and looked up at him reprovingly.
“—and be good,” Pa said to the canvas. “Why, Caroline, what did you think I was going to say?”
“Oh, Charles!” Ma said. “You scalawag!” Pa came right down the corner of the house.
The ends of the logs stuck out, and he used them for a ladder. He ran his hand through his hair so that it stood up even more wildly, and Ma burst out laughing. Then he hugged her, quilts and all.
Then they looked at the house and Pa said, “How’s that for a snug house!”
“I’ll be thankful to get into it,” said Ma.
There was no door and there were no windows. There was no floor except the ground and no roof except the canvas. But that house had good stout walls, and it would stay where it was. It was not like the wagon, that every morning went on to some other place.
“We’re going to do well here, Caroline,” Pa said. “This is a great country. This is a country I’ll be contented to stay in the rest of my life.”
“Even when it’s settled up?” Ma asked.
“Even when it’s settled up. No matter how thick and close the neighbors get, this country’11 never feel crowded. Look at that sk
y!”
Laura knew what he meant. She liked this place, too. She liked the enormous sky and the winds, and the land that you couldn’t see to the end of. Everything was so free and big and splendid.
By dinner time the house was in order. The beds were neatly made on the floor. The wagon-seat and two ends of logs were brought in for chairs. Pa’s gun lay on its pegs above the doorway. Boxes and bundles were neat against the walls. It was a pleasant house. A soft light came through the canvas roof, wind and sunshine came through the window holes, and every crack in the four walls glowed a little because the sun was overhead.
Only the camp fire stayed where it had been. Pa said he would build a fireplace in the house as soon as he could. He would hew out slabs to make a solid roof, too, before winter came. He would lay a puncheon floor, and make beds and tables and chairs. But all that work must wait until he had helped Mr. Edwards and had built a stable for Pet and Patty.
“When that’s all done,” said Ma, “I want a clothes-line.”
Pa laughed. “Yes, and I want a well.”
After dinner he hitched Pet and Patty to the wagon and he hauled a tubful of water from the creek so that Ma could do the washing. “You could wash clothes in the creek,” he told her. “Indian women do.”
“If we wanted to live like Indians, you could make a hole in the roof to let the smoke out, and we’d have the fire on the floor inside the house,” said Ma. “Indians do.”
That afternoon she washed the clothes in the tub and spread them on the grass to dry.
After supper they sat for a while by the camp fire. That night they would sleep in the house; they would never sleep beside a camp fire again. Pa and Ma talked about the folks in Wisconsin, and Ma wished she could send them a letter. But Independence was forty miles away, and no letter could go until Pa made the long trip to the post-office there.
Back in the Big Woods so far away, Grandpa and Grandma and the aunts and uncles and cousins did not know where Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary and Baby Carrie were. And sitting there by the camp fire, no one knew what might have happened in the Big Woods. There was no way to find out.
“Well, it’s bedtime,” Ma said. Baby Carrie was already asleep. Ma carried her into the house and undressed her, while Mary unbuttoned Laura’s dress and petticoat waist down the back, and Pa hung a quilt over the door hole. The quilt would be better than no door. Then Pa went out to bring Pet and Patty close to the house.
He called back, softly, “Come out here, Caroline, and look at the moon.”
Mary and Laura lay in their little bed on the ground inside the new house, and watched the sky through the window hole to the east. The edge of the big, bright moon glittered at the bottom of the window space, and Laura sat up. She looked at the great moon, sailing silently higher in the clear sky.
Its light made silvery lines in all the cracks on that side of the house. The light poured through the window hole and made a square of soft radiance on the floor. It was so bright that Laura saw Ma plainly when she lifted the quilt at the door and came in.
Then Laura very quickly lay down, before Ma saw her naughtily sitting up in bed.
She heard Pet and Patty whinnying softly to Pa. Then the faint thuds of their feet came into her ear from the floor. Pet and Patty and Pa were coming toward the house, and Laura heard Pa singing:
“Sail on, silver moon!
Shed your radiance o’er the sky—”
His voice was like a part of the night and the moonlight and the stillness of the prairie. He came to the doorway, singing:
“By the pale, silver light of the moon—”
Softly Ma said, “Hush, Charles. You’ll wake the children.”
So Pa came in without a sound. Jack followed at his heels and lay down across the doorway. Now they were all inside the stout walls of their new home, and they were snug and safe. Drowsily Laura heard a long wolf-howl rising from far away on the prairie, but only a little shiver went up her backbone and she fell asleep.
Chapter 7
The Wolf-Pack
All in one day Pa and Mr. Edwards built the stable for Pet and Patty. They even put the roof on, working so late that Ma had to keep supper waiting for them.
There was no stable door, but in the moon light Pa drove two stout posts well into the ground, one on either side of the doorway. He put Pet and Patty inside the stable, and then he laid small split logs one above another, across the door space. The posts held them, and they made a solid wall.
“Now!” said Pa. “Let those wolves howl! I’ll sleep, tonight.”
In the morning, when he lifted the split logs from behind the posts, Laura was amazed. Beside Pet stood a long-legged, long-eared, wobbly little colt.
When Laura ran toward it, gentle Pet laid back her ears and snapped her teeth at Laura.
“Keep back, Laura!” Pa said, sharply. He said to Pet, “Now, Pet, you know we won’t hurt your little colt.” Pet answered him with a soft whinny. She would let Pa stroke her colt, but she would not let Laura or Mary come near it. When they even peeked at it through the cracks in the stable wall, Pet rolled the whites of her eyes at them and showed them her teeth. They had never seen a colt with ears so long. Pa said it was a little mule, but Laura said it looked like a jack rabbit. So they named the little colt Bunny.
When Pet was on the picket-line, with Bunny frisking around her and wondering at the big world, Laura must watch Baby Carrie carefully. If anyone but Pa came near Bunny, Pet squealed with rage and dashed to bite that little girl.
Early that Sunday afternoon Pa rode Patty away across the prairie to see what he should see. There was plenty of meat in the house, so he did not take his gun.
He rode away through the tall grass, along the rim of the creek bluffs. Birds flew up before him and circled and sank into the grasses. Pa was looking down into the creek bottoms as he rode; perhaps he was watching deer browsing there. Then Patty broke into a gallop, and swiftly she and Pa grew smaller. Soon there was only waving grass where they had been.
Late that afternoon Pa had not come home. Ma stirred the coals of the fire and laid chips on them, and began to get supper. Mary was in the house, minding the baby, and Laura asked Ma, “What’s the matter with Jack?”
Jack was walking up and down, looking worried. He wrinkled his nose at the wind, and the hair rose up on his neck and lay down, and then rose up again. Pet’s hoofs suddenly thudded. She ran around the circle of her picket-rope and stood still, whickering a low whicker. Bunny came close to her.
“What’s the matter, Jack?” Ma asked. He looked up at her, but he couldn’t say anything. Ma gazed around the whole circle of earth and sky. She could not see anything unusual.
“Likely it isn’t anything, Laura,” she said. She raked coals around the coffee-pot and the spider and onto the top of the bake oven. The prairie hen sizzled in the spider and the corncakes began to smell good. But all the time Ma kept glancing at the prairie all around. Jack walked about restlessly, and Pet did not graze. She faced the northwest, where Pa had gone, and kept her colt close beside her.
All at once Patty came running across the prairie. She was stretched out, running with all her might, and Pa was leaning almost flat on her neck.
She ran right past the stable before Pa could stop her. He stopped her so hard that she almost sat down. She was trembling all over and her black coat was streaked with sweat and foam. Pa swung off her. He was breathing hard, too.
“What is the matter, Charles?” Ma asked him.
Pa was looking toward the creek, so Ma and Laura looked at it, too. But they could see only the space above the bottom lands, with a few tree-tops in it, and the distant tops of the earthen bluffs under the High Prairie’s grasses.
“What is it?” Ma asked again. “Why did you ride Patty like that?”
Pa breathed a long breath. “I was afraid the wolves would beat me here. But I see everything’s all right.”
“Wolves!” she cried. “What wolves?”
“E
verything’s all right, Caroline,” said Pa. “Let a fellow get his breath.”
When he had got some breath, he said, “I didn’t ride Patty like that. It was all I could do to hold her at all. Fifty wolves, Caroline, the biggest wolves I ever saw. I wouldn’t go through such a thing again, not for a mint of money.”
A shadow came over the prairie just then because the sun had gone down, and Pa said, “I’ll tell you about it later.”
“We’ll eat supper in the house,” said Ma.
“No need of that,” he told her. “Jack will give us warning in plenty of time.”
He brought Pet and her colt from the picket-line. He didn’t take them and Patty to drink from the creek, as he usually did. He gave them the water in Ma’s washtub, which was standing full, ready for the washing next morning. He rubbed down Patty’s sweaty sides and legs and put her in the barn with Pet and Bunny.
Supper was ready. The camp fire made a circle of light in the dark. Laura and Mary stayed close to the fire, and kept Baby Carrie with them. They could feel the dark all around them, and they kept looking behind them at the place where the dark mixed with the edge of the firelight. Shadows moved there, as if they were alive.
Jack sat on his haunches beside Laura. The edges of his ears were lifted, listening to the dark. Now and then he walked a little way into it. He walked all around the camp fire, and came back to sit beside Laura. The hair lay flat on his thick neck and he did not growl. His teeth showed a little, but that was because he was a bulldog.