To paddle my own canoe.
“My wants are few. I care not at all
If my debts are paid when due.
I drive away strife in the ocean of life
While I paddle my own canoe.
“Then love your neighbor as yourself
As the world you go traveling through
And never sit down with a tear or a frown
But paddle your own canoe!”
“That’s what we’ll be doing this winter,” said Pa. “And we’ve done it a good many times before. Haven’t we, Caroline?”
“Yes, Charles,” Ma agreed. “And we haven’t always been so comfortable and so well provided for.”
“Everything snug as bugs in a rug,” said Pa, tuning the fiddle. “I piled bags of oats across one end of the stable to make a small place for the cow and the team. They’ll have all they can eat, too, and they’ll be warm and cosy. Yes, we’ve got everything to be thankful for.”
Then he played the fiddle again. He played on and on, jigs and reels and hornpipes and marches. Ma laid Grace in her little trundle bed and shut the door. Then she sat idly rocking, listening to the music. Ma and Mary and Laura and Carrie listened until they were full, full of music. No one spoke of bedtime, because this was their first evening in the new house, all by themselves on the prairie.
At last Pa laid the fiddle and the bow in the fiddle box. As he shut down the lid, a long, mournful, lonely howl came from the night outside the window. Very near, it was.
Laura sprang to her feet. Ma rushed to comfort Grace’s screaming in the bedroom. Carrie sat frozen white, with big, round eyes.
“It’s—it’s only a wolf, Carrie,” Laura said.
“There, there!” said Pa. “A fellow’d think you’d never heard a wolf before. Yes, Caroline, the stable door is well fastened.”
Chapter 15
The Last Man Out
Next morning the sun shone but the wind was colder and there was a feeling of storm in the air. Pa had come from doing the chores and was warming his hands by the stove, while Ma and Laura put breakfast on the table, when they heard a wagon rattling.
It stopped by the front door. The driver shouted and Pa went out to him. Through the window Laura saw them talking in the cold wind.
In a moment Pa came back and hurriedly put on his overcoat and his mittens while he said, “We’ve got a neighbor I didn’t know about last night. An old man, sick and all alone. I’m going out there now, I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”
He drove away with the stranger and it was some time before he came walking home.
“Brrrr! It’s getting colder,” he said, dropping his coat and mittens on a chair and bending over the stove to warm himself before he unwound his muffler. “Well, it’s a good job done.
“That teamster’s the last one out. He came all the way from the Jim River and didn’t find a soul. Everyone along the line is going. Last night, when dark caught him, he saw a light about two miles north of the grade and drove to it on the chance of finding a place to stay all night.
“Well, Caroline, he found a claim shanty and an old man all by himself. His name is Woodworth. He has consumption, and came out here to take the prairie-climate cure. He’s been living on his claim all summer and was going to stay all winter.
“Well, he’s so feeble, the teamster tried to get him to go out. Told him it’s his last chance, but Woodworth wouldn’t go. So when the teamster saw our smoke this morning, he stopped to see if he couldn’t get somebody to help him persuade the old man.
“Caroline, he was skin and bones. But bound and determined to stick to the prairie cure. Said it was the one cure the doctors recommended as pretty near a surefire thing.”
“Folks come from all over the world to take it,” said Ma.
“Yes, I know, Caroline. It’s true enough, I guess, these prairies are about the only thing that cures consumption. But if you’d seen him, Caroline. No, he wasn’t in any shape to stay alone in a claim shanty, fifteen miles from a neighbor. The place for him is with his own folks.
“Anyhow, the teamster and I packed him up and loaded him and his things into the wagon. Lifted him in, as easy as if he was Carrie, here. In the end he was glad to be going. He’ll be a sight more comfortable with his folks in the east.”
“He’ll nearly freeze to death, riding in a wagon this cold day,” Ma said, putting more coal on the fire.
“He’s dressed warmly, wearing a good overcoat. We wrapped him in blankets besides and heated a bag of oats for his feet. He’ll make it all right. That teamster is one fine fellow.”
Thinking of that old man going out with the last teamster, Laura really knew how deserted the country was. It would take them two long days to get to the Big Sioux River. All the way between the Big Sioux and the Jim, there was nobody at all except them, there in the surveyors’ house.
“Pa, did you see wolf tracks this morning?” Laura asked.
“Yes, plenty of them, all around the stable,” said Pa. “Big tracks too. Must be buffalo wolves. But they couldn’t get in. All the birds have gone south, and the antelope were scared away by the men working on the grade, so the wolves will have to move on too. They won’t stay where they can’t kill anything to eat.”
After breakfast he went to the stable, and as soon as the housework was done Laura put on her shawl and went too. She wanted to see the wolf tracks.
She had never seen such huge ones, and deep. Those wolves must be very big and heavy. “Buffalo wolves are the largest wolves on the prairie and very fierce,” Pa told her. “I’d hate to meet one without a gun.”
He was looking the stable over carefully, to see that every board was nailed fast. He drove in more nails, to make the walls solid, and he put an extra bolt on the door. “If one gets broken, the other might hold,” he said.
Snow began to fall while Laura handed him nails and he hammered them in. The wind blew strong and keen, but it was a straight wind, not a blizzard wind. Still it was so cold that they could not talk.
At supper in the warm house Pa said, “I don’t believe the winters are going to be so bad out here. Seems like the blizzards sort of draw down through western Minnesota. We are farther west out here, and they say that three degrees west is as good as one degree south.”
After supper they all gathered in the warmth of the stove. Ma rocked Grace slowly to and fro, and Laura brought Pa the fiddle box. Now the happy winter evenings were begun.
“Hail Columbia, happy land!
(Pa sang with the fiddle)
Hail, ye heroes, Heaven-born band! Firm, united let us be,
Rallying ’round our liberty,
As a band of brothers joined
Peace and safety we shall find.”
He looked at Mary sitting quietly with beautiful empty eyes and folded hands in her rocking chair by the oven. “What shall I play for you, Mary?”
“I would like to hear ‘Highland Mary,’ Pa.” Softly Pa played a verse. “Now, Mary! Help sing!” he said, and they sang together.
“How sweetly bloomed the gay, green birk,
How rich the hawthorn’s blossom,
As underneath their fragrant shade
I clasped her to my bosom.
“The golden hours on angel wings
Flew o’er me and my dearie
For dear to me as light and life
Was my sweet Highland Mary!”
“It’s sweet,” Mary said when the last note died away.
“It’s sweet but it’s sad,” said Laura. “I like ‘Coming Through the Rye.’”
“I’ll play it,” Pa said, “but I won’t sing it alone. It isn’t fair for me to do all the entertaining.”
So gaily all together they sang the lively song. And Laura got up and pretended to be wading across a creek, holding her skirts above her ankles and laughing back over her shoulder, singing:
“Ilka lassie has her laddie,
Nane, they say, ha’e I,
Yet all t
he lads they smile at me
When coming through the Rye.”
Then Pa’s fiddle twinkled short, gay little notes, and he sang:
“I’m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines!
I feed my horse on corn and beans.
And I often go beyond my means
To court the girls all in their teens,
For I’m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,
I’m Captain in the Army!”
Pa nodded at Laura, and she went on singing with the fiddle:
“I am Mrs. Jinks of Madison Square,
I wear fine clothes and I curl my hair,
The Captain went on a regular tear
And they kicked him out of the Army!”
“Laura!” Ma said. “Charles, do you think that is a nice song for a girl to sing?”
“She sang it well,” said Pa. “Now, Carrie, you must do your share. Get out here with Laura and see what you can do.”
He showed them how to hold hands and step to the tune of a polka. Then he played it and they danced while he sang:
“First! the heel and then the toe,
That’s the way the steps do go,
First the heel and then the toe,
That’s the way the steps do go,
First-the-heel-and-then-the-toe—”
Faster and faster he played, and faster they danced, with higher and higher steps, back and forth and whirling back again till they were breathless and hot with dancing and laughing.
“Now then,” said Pa, “try a bit of a waltz,” and the music flowed smoothly in gliding long waves. “Just float on the music,” Pa sang to them softly. “Just float on the music, glide smoothly and turn.”
Laura and Carrie waltzed across the room and back, and around and around the room, while Grace sat up in Ma’s lap and watched them with round eyes and Mary listened quietly to the music and the dancing feet.
“That’s fine, girls,” said Pa. “We must have more of it this winter. You’re growing up now and you must know how to dance. You’re going to be fine dancers, both of you.”
“Oh, Pa, you aren’t stopping!” Laura cried.
“It’s long past bedtime,” said Pa. “And there’ll be plenty more long, cosy evenings before spring.”
Bitter cold came down the stairway when Laura opened the door. She hurried up the steps, carrying the lighted lantern, and behind her Mary and Carrie hurried. There was a little warmth around the stovepipe that came up from the room below, and close to it they undressed and with shivering fingers pulled their nightgowns over their underflannels. Chattering, they crawled into their cold beds and Laura blew out the lantern.
In the dark she and Mary cuddled together, and slowly the blankets lost their chill. All around the house the black cold of the night was as high as the sky and as wide as the world, and there was nothing in it but the lonely wind.
“Mary,” Laura whispered. “I guess the wolves have gone. I didn’t hear them howl, did you?”
“I hope they have,” Mary answered drowsily.
Chapter 16
Winter Days
The weather grew colder. Silver Lake was frozen. Snow fell, but always the wind blew the ice clean, drifting the snow into the tall grass of the sloughs and driving it into waves on the low shores.
On the whole white prairie nothing moved but blowing snow, and the only sound in the vast silence was the sound of the wind.
In the snug house Laura and Carrie helped Ma with the housework, and Grace played, running about the big room with toddling short steps. Whenever she was tired of play she climbed into Mary’s lap, for that was the warmest place and Mary would always tell her a story. Listening to stories, Grace would fall asleep. Then Ma laid her in her trundle bed by the stove, and they all settled down for a cosy afternoon of knitting and sewing and crocheting.
Pa did the chores and walked the trap line he had set along the edge of Big Slough. In the lean-to he skinned foxes and coyotes and muskrats, and stretched the furs on boards to dry.
The prairie was so desolate and the wind so cold that Mary did not go out at all. She loved to sit sewing in the pleasant, warm house, taking tiny, even stitches with the needle that Laura threaded for her.
At twilight Mary did not put away her sewing. She told Laura, “I can sew when you can’t see to, because I see with my fingers.”
“You sew more beautifully than I can, anytime,” Laura told her. “You always could.”
Even Laura liked the cosy afternoons of rocking and stitching and talking a little, though she never would truly enjoy sewing as Mary did. Often she was restless in the house. Then she would walk from window to window, looking into a whirl of snowflakes and listening to the wind, till Ma said gently, “I declare I don’t know what gets into you, Laura.”
When the sun shone, no matter how cold it was, Laura must go out. When Ma would let them go, she and Carrie, well wrapped up in coats and hoods, with shoes and mittens and mufflers on, went sliding on Silver Lake. Holding hands, they ran a little way and then slid on the dark, smooth ice. First on one foot, then on the other, with little runs between slides, they went back and forth, breathless and warm and laughing.
Those were glorious days when they were out in the glitter of the sharp cold. Then it was good to come into the warm, close house, and good to eat supper, and through the evening of music and singing and dancing, Laura was the merriest of all.
One stormy day Pa brought a wide, square board in by the stove, and with his pencil he marked it off in small squares inside a plain border.
“Whatever are you making, Pa?” Laura asked, and he answered, “Wait and see.”
He heated the tip of the poker red-hot in the stove, and carefully he burned black every alternate little square.
“Curiosity killed a cat, Pa,” Laura said.
“You look pretty healthy,” said Pa. Tantalizing, he sat there whittling until he had made twenty-four small squares of wood. Half of them he laid on the hot stove, turning them until they were burned black all over.
Then he ranged all these pieces in the squares on the board, and set the board on his knees.
“Now, Laura!” he said.
“Now what?” said Laura.
“These are checkers, and this is a checker board. Pull up your chair, and I’ll show you how to play checkers.”
She learned so well that before that storm ended she had beaten Pa in one game. But after that, they did not play so immoderately. Ma did not care to play, nor Carrie, so after one game Pa always put the board away.
“Checkers is a selfish game,” he said, “for only two can play it. Bring me the fiddle, Flutterbudget.”
Chapter 17
Wolves on Silver Lake
There came a night when moonlight shone silver clear. The earth was endless white and the wind was still.
Beyond every window the white world stretched far away in frosty glitter, and the sky was a curve of light. Laura could not settle down to anything. She didn’t want to play games. She hardly heard even the music of Pa’s fiddle. She did not want to dance, but she felt that she must move swiftly. She must be going somewhere.
Suddenly she exclaimed, “Carrie! Let’s go slide on the ice!”
“In the night, Laura?” Ma was astonished.
“It’s light outdoors,” Laura replied. “Almost as light as day.”
“It will be all right, Caroline,” Pa said. “There’s nothing to hurt them, if they don’t stay too long and freeze.”
So Ma told them, “You may go for a quick run. Don’t stay until you get too cold.”
Laura and Carrie hurried into their coats and hoods and mittens. Their shoes were new and the soles thick. Ma had knit their stockings of woolen yarn, and their red flannel underclothes came down over their knees and buttoned in a snug band around each stocking. Their flannel petticoats were thick and warm, and their dresses and their coats were wool, and so were their hoods and mufflers.
Out of the warm house they burst
into the breathtaking air that tingled with cold. They ran a race on the snowy path down the low hill to the stables. Then they followed the path that the horses and the cow had made when Pa led them through the snow to water at the hole he had cut in the lake ice.
“We mustn’t go near the water hole,” Laura said, and she led Carrie along the lake shore until they were well away from it. Then they stopped and looked at the night.
It was so beautiful that they hardly breathed. The great round moon hung in the sky and its radiance poured over a silvery world. Far, far away in every direction stretched motionless flatness, softly shining as if it were made of soft light. In the midst lay the dark, smooth lake, and a glittering moonpath stretched across it. Tall grass stood up in black lines from the snow drifted in the sloughs.
The stable lay low and dark near the shore, and on the low hill stood the dark, small, surveyors’ house, with the yellow light in the window twinkling from its darkness.
“How still it is,” Carrie whispered. “Listen how still it is.”
Laura’s heart swelled. She felt herself a part of the wide land, of the far deep sky and the brilliant moonlight. She wanted to fly. But Carrie was little and almost afraid, so she took hold of Carrie’s hand and said, “Let’s slide. Come on, run!”
With hands clasped, they ran a little way. Then with right foot first they slid on the smooth ice much farther than they had run.
“On the moonpath, Carrie! Let’s follow the moonpath,” Laura cried.
And so they ran and slid, and ran and slid again, on the glittering moonpath into the light from the silver moon. Farther and farther from shore they went, straight toward the high bank on the other side.