Pa and Mr. Scott had made a stout windlass. It stood over the well, and two buckets hung from it on the ends of a rope. When the windlass was turned, one bucket went down into the well and the other bucket came up. In the morning Mr. Scott slid down the rope and dug. He filled the buckets with earth, almost as fast as Pa could haul them up and empty them. After dinner, Pa slid down the rope into the well, and Mr. Scott hauled up the buckets.
Every morning, before Pa would let Mr. Scott go down the rope, he set a candle in a bucket and lighted it and lowered it to the bottom. Once Laura peeped over the edge and she saw the candle brightly burning, far down in the dark hole in the ground.
Then Pa would say, “Seems to be all right,” and he would pull up the bucket and blow out the candle.
“That’s all foolishness, Ingalls,” Mr. Scott said. “The well was all right yesterday.”
“You can’t ever tell,” Pa replied. “Better be safe than sorry.”
Laura did not know what danger Pa was looking for by that candle-light. She did not ask, because Pa and Mr. Scott were busy. She meant to ask later, but she forgot.
One morning Mr. Scott came while Pa was eating breakfast. They heard him shout: “Hi, Ingalls! It’s sunup. Let’s go!” Pa drank his coffee and went out.
The windlass began to creak and Pa began to whistle. Laura and Mary were washing the dishes and Ma was making the big bed, when Pa’s whistling stopped. They heard him say, “Scott! “He shouted, “Scott! Scott!” Then he called: “Caroline! Come quick!”
Ma ran out of the house. Laura ran after her.
“Scott’s fainted, or something, down there,” Pa said. “I’ve got to go down after him.”
“Did you send down the candle?” Ma asked.
“No. I thought he had. I asked him if it was all right, and he said it was.” Pa cut the empty bucket off the rope and tied the rope firmly to the windlass.
“Charles, you can’t. You mustn’t,” Ma said.
“Caroline, I’ve got to.”
“You can’t. Oh, Charles, no!”
“I’ll make it all right. I won’t breathe till I get out. We can’t let him die down there.”
Ma said, fiercely: “Laura, keep back!” So Laura kept back. She stood against the house and shivered.
“No, no, Charles! I can’t let you,” Ma said. “Get on Patty and go for help.”
“There isn’t time.”
“Charles, if I can’t pull you up—if you keel over down there and I can’t pull you up—”
“Caroline, I’ve got to,” Pa said. He swung into the well. His head slid out of sight, down the rope.
Ma crouched and shaded her eyes, staring down into the well.
All over the prairie meadow larks were rising, singing, flying straight up into the sky. The wind was blowing warmer, but Laura was cold.
Suddenly Ma jumped up and seized the handle of the windlass. She tugged at it with all her might. The rope strained and the windlass creaked. Laura thought that Pa had keeled over, down in the dark bottom of the well, and Ma couldn’t pull him up. But the windlass turned a little, and then a little more.
Pa’s hand came up, holding to the rope. His other hand reached above it and took hold of the rope. Then Pa’s head came up. His arm held on to the windlass. Then somehow he got to the ground and sat there.
The windlass whirled around and there was a thud deep down in the well. Pa struggled to get up and Ma said: “Sit still, Charles! Laura, get some water. Quick!”
Laura ran. She came hurrying back, lugging the pail of water. Pa and Ma were both turning the windlass. The rope slowly wound itself up, and the bucket came up out of the well, and tied to the bucket and the rope was Mr. Scott. His arms and his legs and his head hung and wobbled, his mouth was partly open and his eyes half shut.
Pa tugged him onto the grass. Pa rolled him over and he flopped where he was rolled. Pa felt his wrist and listened at his chest and then Pa lay down beside him.
“He’s breathing,” Pa said. “He’ll be all right, in the air. I’m all right, Caroline. I’m plumb tuckered out, is all.”
“Well!” Ma scolded. “I should think you would be! Of all the senseless performances! My goodness gracious! scaring a body to death, all for the want of a little reasonable care! My goodness! I—” She covered her face with her apron and burst out crying.
That was a terrible day.
“I don’t want a well,” Ma sobbed. “It isn’t worth it. I won’t have you running such risks!”
Mr. Scott had breathed a kind of gas that stays deep in the ground. It stays at the bottom of wells because it is heavier than the air. It cannot be seen or smelled, but no one can breathe it very long and live. Pa had gone down into that gas to tie Mr. Scott to the rope, so that he could be pulled up out of the gas.
When Mr. Scott was able, he went home. Before he went he said to Pa: “You were right about that candle business, Ingalls. I thought it was all foolishness and I would not bother with it, but I’ve found out my mistake.”
“Well,” said Pa, “where a light can’t live, I know I can’t. And I like to be safe when I can be. But all’s well that ends well.”
Pa rested awhile. He had breathed a little of the gas and he felt like resting. But that afternoon he raveled a thread from a tow sack, and he took a little powder from his powder-horn. He tied the powder in a piece of cloth with one end of the tow string in the powder.
“Come along, Laura,” he said, “and I’ll show you something.”
They went to the well. Pa lighted the end of the string and waited till the spark was crawling quickly along it. Then he dropped the little bundle into the well.
In a minute they heard a muffled bang! and a puff of smoke came out of the well. “That will bring the gas,” Pa said.
When the smoke was all gone, he let Laura light the candle and stand beside him while he let it down. All the way down in the dark hole the little candle kept on burning like a star.
So next day Pa and Mr. Scott went on digging the well. But they always sent the candle down every morning.
There began to be a little water in the well, but it was not enough. The buckets came up full of mud, and Pa and Mr. Scott worked every day in deeper mud. In the mornings when the candle went down, it lighted oozing-wet walls, and candlelight sparkled in rings over the water when the bucket struck bottom.
Pa stood knee deep in water and bailed out bucketfuls before he could begin digging in the mud.
One day when he was digging, a loud shout came echoing up. Ma ran out of the house and Laura ran to the well. “Pull, Scott! Pull!” Pa yelled. A swishing, gurgling sound echoed down there. Mr. Scott turned the windlass as fast as he could, and Pa came up climbing hand over hand up the rope.
“I’m blamed if that’s not quicksand!” Pa gasped, as he stepped onto the ground, muddy and dripping. “I was pushing down hard on the spade, when all of a sudden it went down, the whole length of the handle. And water came pouring up all around me.”
“A good six feet of this rope’s wet,” Mr. Scott said, winding it up. The bucket was full of water. “You showed sense in getting out of that hand over hand, Ingalls. That water came up faster than I could pull you out.” Then Mr. Scott slapped his thigh and shouted, “I’m blasted if you didn’t bring up the spade!”
Sure enough, Pa had saved his spade.
In a little while the well was almost full of water. A circle of blue sky lay not far down in the ground, and when Laura looked at it, a little girl’s head looked up at her. When she waved her hand, a hand on the water’s surface waved, too.
The water was clear and cold and good. Laura thought she had never tasted anything so good as those long, cold drinks of water. Pa hauled no more stale, warm water from the creek. He built a solid platform over the well, and a heavy cover for the hole that let the water-bucket through. Laura must never touch that cover. But whenever she or Mary was thirsty, Ma lifted the cover and drew a dripping bucket of cold, fresh water from that wel
l.
Chapter 13
Texas Longhorns
One evening Laura and Pa were sitting on the doorstep. The moon shone over the dark prairie, the winds were still, and softly Pa played his fiddle.
He let a last note quiver far, far away, until it dissolved in the moonlight. Everything was so beautiful that Laura wanted it to stay so forever. But Pa said it was time for little girls to go to bed.
Then Laura heard a strange, low, distant sound. “What’s that!” she said.
Pa listened. “Cattle, by George!” he said. “Must be the cattle herds going north to Fort Dodge.”
After she was undressed, Laura stood in her nightgown at the window. The air was very still, not a grass blade rustled, and far away and faint she could hear that sound. It was almost a rumble and almost a song.
“Is that singing Pa?” she asked.
“Yes,” Pa said. “The cowboys are singing the cattle to sleep. Now hop into bed, you little scalawag!”
Laura thought of cattle lying on the dark ground in the moonlight, and of cowboys softly singing lullabies.
Next morning when she ran out of the house two strange men were sitting on horses by the stable. They were talking to Pa. They were as red-brown as Indians, but their eyes were narrow slits between squinting eyelids. They wore flaps of leather over their legs, and spurs, and wide-brimmed hats. Handkerchiefs were knotted around their necks, and pistols were on their hips.
They said, “So long,” to Pa, and “Hi! Yip!” to their horses, and they galloped away.
“Here’s a piece of luck!” Pa said to Ma. Those men were cowboys. They wanted Pa to help them keep the cattle out of the ravines among the bluffs of the creek bottoms. Pa would not charge them any money, but he told them he would take a piece of beef. “How would you like a good piece of beef?” Pa asked.
“Oh, Charles!” said Ma, and her eyes shone.
Pa tied his biggest handkerchief around his neck. He showed Laura how he could pull it up over his mouth and nose to keep the dust out. Then he rode Patty west along the Indian trail, till Laura and Mary couldn’t see him any more.
All day the hot sun blazed and the hot winds blew, and the sound of the cattle herds came nearer. It was a faint, mournful sound of cattle lowing. At noon dust was blowing along the horizon. Ma said that so many cattle trampled the grasses flat and stirred up dust from the prairie.
Pa came riding home at sunset, covered with dust. There was dust in his beard and in his hair and on the rims of his eyelids, and dust fell off his clothes. He did not bring any beef, because the cattle were not across the creek yet. The cattle went very slowly, eating grass as they went. They had to eat enough grass to be fat when they came to the cities where people ate them.
Pa did not talk much that night, and he didn’t play the fiddle. He went to bed soon after supper.
The herds were so near now that Laura could hear them plainly. The mournful lowing sounded over the prairie till the night was dark. Then the cattle were quieter and the cowboys began to sing. Their songs were not like lullabies. They were high, lonely, wailing songs, almost like the howling of wolves.
Laura lay awake, listening to the lonely songs wandering in the night. Farther away, real wolves howled. Sometimes the cattle lowed. But the cowboys’ songs went on, rising and falling and wailing away under the moon. When everyone else was asleep, Laura stole softly to the window, and she saw three fires gleaming like red eyes from the dark edge of the land. Overhead the sky was big and still and full of moonlight. The lonely songs seemed to be crying for the moon. They made Laura’s throat ache.
All next day Laura and Mary watched the west. They could hear the far-away bawling of the cattle, they could see dust blowing. Sometimes they thinly heard a shrill yell.
Suddenly a dozen long-horned cattle burst out of the prairie, not far from the stable. They had come up out of a draw going down to the creek bottoms. Their tails stood up and their fierce horns tossed and their feet pounded the ground. A cowboy on a spotted mustang galloped madly to get in front of them. He waved his big hat and yelled sharp, high yells. “Hi! Yi-yi-yi! Hi!” The cattle wheeled, clashing their long horns together. With lifted tails they galloped lumbering away, and behind them the mustang ran and whirled and ran, herding them together. They all went over a rise of ground and down out of sight.
Laura ran back and forth, waving her sunbonnet and yelling, “Hi! Yi-yi-yi!” till Ma told her to stop. It was not ladylike to yell like that. Laura wished she could be a cowboy.
Late that afternoon three riders came out of the west, driving one lone cow. One of the riders was Pa, on Patty. Slowly they came nearer, and Laura saw that with the cow was a little spotted calf.
The cow came lunging and plunging. Two cowboys rode well apart in front of her. Two ropes around her long horns were fastened to the cowboys’ saddles. When the cow lunged with her horns toward either cowboy the other cowboy’s pony braced its feet and held her. The cow bawled and the little calf bleated thinner bawls.
Ma watched from the window, while Mary and Laura stood against the house and stared.
The cowboys held the cow with their ropes while Pa tied her to the stable. Then they said good-by to him and rode away.
Ma could not believe that Pa had actually brought home a cow. But it really was their own cow. The calf was too small to travel, Pa said, and the cow would be too thin to sell, so the cowboys had given them to Pa. They had given him the beef, too; a big chunk was tied to his saddle-horn.
Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and even Baby Carrie laughed for joy. Pa always laughed out loud and his laugh was like great bells ringing. When Ma was pleased she smiled a gentle smile that made Laura feel warm all over. But now she was laughing because they had a cow.
“Give me a bucket, Caroline,” said Pa. He was going to milk the cow, right away.
He took the bucket, he pushed back his hat, and he squatted by the cow to milk her. And that cow hunched herself and kicked Pa flat on his back.
Pa jumped up. His face was blazing red and his eyes snapped blue sparks.
“Now, by the Great Horn Spoon, I’ll milk her!” he said.
He got his ax and he sharpened two stout slabs of oak. He pushed the cow against the stable, and he drove those slabs deep into the ground beside her. The cow bawled and the little calf squalled. Pa tied poles firmly to the posts and stuck their ends into the cracks of the stable, to make a fence.
Now the cow could not move forward or backward or sidewise. But the little calf could nudge its way between its mother and the stable. So the baby calf felt safe and stopped bawling. It stood on that side of the cow and drank its supper, and Pa put his hand through the fence and milked from the other side. He got a tin cup almost full of milk.
“We’ll try again in the morning,” he said. “The poor thing’s as wild as a deer. But we’ll gentle her, we’ll gentle her.”
The dark was coming on. Nighthawks were chasing insects in the dark air. Bullfrogs were croaking in the creek bottoms. A bird called, “Whip! Whip! Whip-poor-Will!” “Who? Whooo?” said an owl. Far away the wolves howled, and Jack was growling.
“The wolves are following the herds,” Pa said. “Tomorrow I’ll build a strong, high yard for the cow, that wolves can’t get into.”
So they all went into the house with the beef. Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura all agreed to give the milk to Baby Carrie. They watched her drink it. The tin cup hid her face, but Laura could see the gulps of milk going down her throat. Gulp by gulp, she swallowed all that good milk. Then she licked the foam from her lip with her red tongue, and laughed.
It seemed a long time before the cornbread and the sizzling beef steaks were done. But nothing had ever tasted so good as that tough, juicy beef. And everyone was happy because now there would be milk to drink, and perhaps even butter for the cornbread.
The lowing of the cattle herds was far away again, and the songs of the cowboys were almost too faint to be heard. All those cattle were on the other sid
e of the creek bottoms now, in Kansas. Tomorrow they would slowly go farther on their long way northward to Fort Dodge, where the soldiers were.
Chapter 14
Indian Camp
Day after day was hotter than the day before. The wind was hot. “As if it came out of an oven,” Ma said.
The grass was turning yellow. The whole world was rippling green and gold under the blazing sky.
At noon the wind died. No birds sang. Everything was so still that Laura could hear the squirrels chattering in the trees down by the creek. Suddenly black crows flew overhead, cawing their rough, sharp caws. Then everything was still again.
Ma said that this was midsummer.
Pa wondered where the Indians had gone. He said they had left their little camp on the prairie. And one day he asked Laura and Mary if they would like to see that camp.
Laura jumped up and down and clapped her hands, but Ma objected.
“It is so far, Charles,” she said. “And in this heat.”
Pa’s blue eyes twinkled. “This heat doesn’t hurt the Indians and it won’t hurt us,” he said. “Come on, girls!”
“Please, can’t Jack come, too?” Laura begged. Pa had taken his gun, but he looked at Laura and he looked at Jack, then he looked at Ma, and he put the gun up on its pegs again.
“All right, Laura,” he said. “I’ll take Jack, Caroline, and leave you the gun.”
Jack jumped around them, wagging his stump of a tail. As soon as he saw which way they were going, he set off, trotting ahead. Pa came next and behind him came Mary, and then Laura. Mary kept her sunbonnet on, but Laura let hers dangle down her back.
The ground was hot under their bare feet. The sunshine pierced through their faded dresses and tingled on their arms and backs. The air was really as hot as the air in an oven, and it smelled faintly like baking bread. Pa said the smell came from all the grass seeds parching in the heat.