“Rob will tend to it, I’ll speak to him,” said Mrs. Boast. “Mercy me, that’s not another wagon?”
Laura had to wash the dishes again and reset the table again. The house was so full of strange men, strange eyes, and strange voices and bulky coats and muddy boots, that she could hardly get through the crowd.
At last they were all fed, and for the last time the last dish was washed. Ma with Grace in her arms followed Laura and Carrie to the stairs, and carefully fastened the door behind them. Mary was sleeping in bed, and Laura could not keep her eyes open while she undressed. But as soon as she lay down, she was awakened by the noise downstairs.
There was loud talking and walking. Ma sat up to listen. The downstairs bedroom was still, so Mr. Boast must think that the noise was all right. Ma lay down again. The noise grew louder. Sometimes it almost stopped, then suddenly it burst out. A crash shook the house, and Laura sat straight up, crying out, “Ma! What’s that?”
Ma’s voice was so low that it seemed louder than all the shouting downstairs. “Be quiet, Laura,” she said. “Lie down.”
Laura thought she could not sleep. She was so tired that the noise tormented her. But another crash woke her out of a sound sleep. Ma said, “It’s all right, Laura. Mr. Boast is there.” Laura slept again.
In the morning Ma gently shook her awake, and whispered, “Come Laura, it’s time to get breakfast. Let the others sleep.”
They went downstairs together. Mr. Boast had taken up the beds. Tousled, sleepy and red-eyed, the men were getting into their boots and coats. Ma and Mrs. Boast hurried breakfast. The table was small, there were not dishes enough, so that Laura set the table and washed the dishes three times.
At last the men were gone, and Ma called Mary, while she and Mrs. Boast cooked more breakfast and Laura washed dishes and set the table once more.
“My, such a night!” Mrs. Boast exclaimed.
“What was the matter?” Mary wondered.
“I think they were drunk,” Ma said, tight-lipped.
“I should say they were!” Mr. Boast told her. “They brought bottles and a jug of whisky. I thought once I would have to interfere, but what could I do against a crowd of fifteen drunks? I decided to let them fight it out, unless they set the house afire.”
“I’m thankful they didn’t,” said Ma.
That day a young man drove up to the house with a load of lumber. He had hauled the boards from Brookings, to build a store on the townsite. Pleasantly he urged Ma to board him while he was building, and Ma could not refuse because there was no other place where he could eat.
Next came a man and his son from Sioux Falls. They had brought lumber to build a grocery store. They begged Ma to board them, and after she had agreed she said to Laura, “Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
“If Ingalls doesn’t hurry back, we’ll have a town here before he comes,” said Mr. Boast.
“I only hope he’s not too late to file on the homestead,” Ma replied anxiously.
Chapter 25
Pa’s Bet
That day did not seem real. Laura’s eyelids felt sandy and she yawned all the time, yet she did not feel sleepy. At noon young Mr. Hinz and the two Mr. Harthorns came to dinner. In the afternoon their hammers could be heard pounding on the framework of the new buildings. It seemed a long time since Pa had gone.
He did not come that night. All the next day he did not come. That night he did not come. And now Laura was sure that he was having a hard time to get the homestead. Perhaps he might not get it. If he did not get it, perhaps they would go west to Oregon.
Ma would not let any more strangers sleep in the house. Only Mr. Hinz and the two Harthorns bunked down on the floor by the stove. The weather was not so cold that men would freeze, sleeping in their wagons. Ma charged twenty-five cents just for supper, and far into the night she and Mrs. Boast cooked and Laura washed dishes. So many men came to eat that she did not try to count them.
Late in the afternoon of the fourth day Pa came home. He waved as he drove by to put the tired team in the stable, and he walked smiling into the house. “Well, Caroline! Girls!” he said. “We’ve got the claim.”
“You got it!” Ma exclaimed joyfully.
“I went after it, didn’t I?” Pa laughed. “Brrr! It’s chilly, riding. Let me get to the stove and warm myself.”
Ma shook down the fire and set the kettle boiling for tea. “Did you have any trouble, Charles?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” said Pa. “I never saw such a jam. It looks like the whole country’s trying to file on land. I got to Brookings all right the first night, and next morning when I showed up at the Land Office I couldn’t get anywheres near the door. Every man had to stand in line and wait his turn. So many were ahead of me that my turn didn’t come that day.”
“You didn’t stand there all day, Pa?” Laura cried.
“Yep, Flutterbudget. All day.”
“Without anything to eat? Oh, no, Pa!” said Carrie.
“Pshaw, that didn’t worry me. What worried me was the crowds. I kept thinking maybe somebody ahead of me is getting my quarter section. Caroline, you never saw such crowds. But my worry then wasn’t a patch to what came later.”
“What, Pa?” Laura asked.
“Let a fellow get his breath, Flutterbudget! Well, when the Land Office closed I went along in the jam to get supper at the hotel, and I heard a couple of men talking. One had filed on a claim near Huron. The other said De Smet was going to be a better town than Huron, and then he mentioned the very piece I picked out last winter. He told the numbers. He was going to file on it first thing next morning. He said it was the only piece left vacant anywhere near this townsite. So he was going to have it, though he’d never seen it.
“Well, that was enough for me. I had to beat him to that claim. At first I thought I’d be up bright and early next morning, and then I figured I wouldn’t take any chances. So as soon as I got some supper, I made tracks for the Land Office.”
“I thought it was closed,” said Carrie.
“It was. I settled right down on the doorstep to spend the night.”
“Surely you didn’t need to do that, Charles?” said Ma, handing him a cup of tea.
“Need to do that?” Pa repeated. “I wasn’t the only man who had that idea, not by a blamed sight. Lucky I got there first. Must have been forty men waiting there all night, and right next to me were those two fellows that I’d heard talking.”
He blew on the tea to cool it, and Laura said, “But they didn’t know you wanted that piece, did they?”
“They didn’t know me from Adam,” said Pa, drinking the tea, “till a fellow came along and sang out, ‘Hello, Ingalls! So you weathered the winter on Silver Lake. Settling down at De Smet, uh?’”
“Oh, Pa!” Mary wailed.
“Yes, the fat was in the fire then,” said Pa. “I knew I wouldn’t have a chance if I budged from that door. So I didn’t. By sun-up the crowd was doubled, and a couple of hundred men must have been pushing and shoving against me before the Land Office opened. There wasn’t any standing in line that day, I tell you! It was each fellow for himself and devil take the hindmost.
“Well, girls, finally the door opened. How about some more tea, Caroline?”
“Oh, Pa, go on!” Laura cried. “Please.”
“Just as it opened,” said Pa, “the Huron man crowded me back. ‘Get in! I’ll hold him!’ he said to the other fellow. It meant a fight, and while I fought him, the other’d get my homestead. Right then, quick as a wink, somebody landed like a ton of bricks on the Huron man. ‘Go in, Ingalls!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll fix ’im! Yow-ee-ee!’”
Pa’s long, catamount screech curled against the walls, and Ma gasped, “Mercy! Charles!”
“And you’ll never guess who it was,” said Pa.
“Mr. Edwards!” Laura shouted.
Pa was astounded. “How did you guess it, Laura?”
“He yelled like that in Indian Te
rritory. He’s a wildcat from Tennessee,” Laura remembered. “Oh, Pa, where is he? Did you bring him?”
“I couldn’t get him to come home with me,” said Pa. “I tried every persuasion I could think of, but he’s filed on a claim south of here and must stay with it to keep off claim jumpers. He told me to remember him to you, Caroline, and to Mary and Laura. I’d never have got the claim if it hadn’t been for him. Golly, that was a fight he started!”
“Was he hurt?” Mary asked anxiously.
“Not a scratch. He just started that fight. He got out of it as quick as I ducked inside and started filing my claim. But it was some time before the crowd quieted down. They—”
“All’s well that ends well, Charles.” Ma interrupted.
“I guess so, Caroline,” Pa said. “Yes, I guess that’s right. Well, girls, I’ve bet Uncle Sam fourteen dollars against a hundred and sixty acres of land, that we can make out to live on the claim for five years. Going to help me win the bet?”
“Oh, yes, Pa!” Carrie said eagerly, and Mary said, “Yes, Pa!” gladly, and Laura promised soberly, “Yes, Pa.”
“I don’t like to think of it as gambling,” Ma said in her gentle way.
“Everything’s more or less a gamble, Caroline,” said Pa. “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
Chapter 26
The Building Boom
There was no time for a good, long talk with Pa. Already the sunshine from the western window slanted far across the floor, and Ma said, “We must be getting supper. The men will be here soon.”
“What men?” Pa asked.
“Oh, wait, Ma, please, I want to show him,” Laura begged. “It’s a surprise, Pa!” She hurried into the pantry, and from the almost empty sack of beans where it was hidden, she pulled out the little sack full of money. “Look, Pa, look!”
Pa felt the little sack in amazement. He looked at their faces, all shining with smiles. “Caroline! What have you girls been up to?”
“Look inside, Pa!” Laura cried. She could not wait while he untied the little sack. “Fifteen dollars and twenty-five cents!”
“I’ll be jiggered!” Pa said.
Then while Laura and Ma started to get supper, they told him all that had happened while he was away. Before they had finished talking, another wagon pulled up at the door. There were seven strangers at supper that night; another dollar and seventy-five cents. And now that Pa was at home, the strangers could sleep on the floor around the stove. Laura did not care how many dishes she washed, nor how sleepy and tired she was. Pa and Ma were getting rich, and she was helping.
In the morning she was surprised. There was hardly time to talk; so many men were there for breakfast, she could hardly wash the dishes fast enough, and when at last she could empty the dishpan and hang it up there was hardly time to sweep and scrub the muddy floor before she must begin peeling potatoes for dinner. She had only a glimpse of the sunny, cold, blue-and-white-and-brown March day outdoors, while she emptied the dishpan. And she saw Pa driving a load of lumber toward the townsite.
“What on earth is Pa doing?” she asked Ma. “He’s putting up a building on the townsite,” said Ma.
“Who for?” Laura asked, beginning to sweep. Her fingers were shrunken in ridges, from being so long in the dishwater.
“‘For whom,’ Laura,” Ma corrected her. “For himself,” and she tugged through the doorway an armful of bedding that she was taking outdoors to air.
“I thought we were going to move to the claim,” Laura said when Ma came in.
“We have six months before we must build on the homestead,” said Ma. “Lots in town are going so fast your Pa thinks he can make money by building on one. He’s using the lumber from the railroad shanties and putting up a store building to sell.”
“Oh, Ma, isn’t it wonderful, all the money we’re making!” Laura said, sweeping vigorously while Ma gathered another armful of bedding.
“Draw the broom, Laura; don’t flip it, that raises the dust,” said Ma. “Yes, but we mustn’t count chickens before they’re hatched.”
That week the house filled with steady boarders, men who were building houses on the townsite or on their homestead claims. From dawn until far into the night, Ma and Laura hardly had time to catch their breaths. All day long there was a racket of wagons passing. Teamsters were hauling lumber from Brookings as fast as they could, and yellow skeletons of buildings rose every day. Already you could see Main Street growing up from the muddy ground along the railroad grade.
Every night beds covered the floor of the big room and the lean-to. Pa slept on the floor with the boarders so that Mary and Laura and Carrie could move into the bedroom with Ma and Grace, and more boarders’ beds covered the whole floor of the attic.
The supplies were all gone, and now Ma had to buy flour and salt and beans and meat and corn meal, so she did not make so much money. Supplies cost three and four times as much as they cost in Minnesota, she said, because the railroad and the teamsters charged so much for the hauling. The roads were so muddy that the teamsters could not haul large loads. Anyway, she made a few cents’ profit on every meal, and any little bit they could earn was better than nothing.
Laura did wish she could get time to see the building that Pa was putting up. She wished she could talk to him about the building, but he ate with the boarders and hurried away with them. There was no time for talking now.
Suddenly, there on the brown prairie where nothing had been before, was the town. In two weeks, all along Main Street the unpainted new buildings pushed up their thin false fronts, two stories high and square on top. Behind the false fronts the buildings squatted under their partly shingled, sloping roofs. Strangers were already living there; smoke blew gray from the stovepipes, and glass windows glinted in the sunshine.
One day Laura heard a man say, through the clattering at the dinner table, that he was putting up a hotel. He had got in the night before with a load of lumber hauled from Brookings. His wife was coming out on the next load. “We’ll be doing business within a week,” he said.
“Glad to hear it, sir,” Pa said. “What this town needs is a hotel. You’ll be doing a land-office business, as quick as you can get started.”
As suddenly as the hurry had begun, it ended. One evening Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary and Carrie and Grace sat down to supper. No one else was there. Around them was their own house again; no one else was in it. A beautiful quiet was there, peaceful and cool, like the silence when a blizzard stops, or the restfulness of rain after a long fever of drought.
“I declare! I didn’t know I was so tired,” Ma sighed peacefully.
“I’m glad you and the girls are through working for strangers,” said Pa.
They did not talk much. It was so pleasant to eat supper again alone.
“Laura and I counted up,” said Ma. “We made over forty dollars.”
“Forty-two dollars and fifty cents,” said Laura.
“We’ll put it aside and hang on to it if we can,” said Pa.
If they could save it, Laura thought, it would be that much toward sending Mary to college.
“I expect the surveyors to show up any day now,” Pa went on. “Better be ready to move so I can turn over this house to them. We can live in town till I can sell the building.”
“Very well, Charles. We’ll wash the bedding tomorrow and start getting ready to pack,” said Ma. Next day Laura helped to wash all the quilts and blankets. She was glad to lug the loaded basket out to the clothesline in the sweet, chilly March weather.
Teamsters’ wagons were slowly pulling along the muddy road toward the west. Only an edging of ice remained around the shores of Silver Lake and among the dead slough grass. The lake water was blue as the sky, and far away in the shimmering sky an arrow of tiny black dots came up from the south. Faintly from far away came the wild, lonely sound of the wild geese calling.
Pa came hurrying to the house. “First spring flock of geese’s in sight!” he said. “How ab
out roast goose for dinner?” He hurried away with his gun.
“Mm, it will be good,” Mary said. “Roast goose with sage stuffing! Won’t you like that, Laura!”
“No, and you know I don’t,” Laura answered. “You know I don’t like sage. We’ll have onion in the stuffing.”
“But I don’t like onion!” Mary said crossly. “I want sage!”
Laura sat back on her heels where she was scrubbing the floor. “I don’t care if you do. We won’t have it! I guess I can have what I want sometimes!”
“Why, girls!” Ma said astonished. “Are you quarreling?”
“I want sage!” Mary insisted.
“And I want onion!” Laura cried.
“Girls, girls,” Ma said in distress. “I can’t think what’s got into you. And I never heard of anything so silly! You both know we have no sage, nor onion either.”
The door opened, and Pa came in. Soberly he put his gun in its place.
“Not a goose within gunshot,” he said. “The whole flock rose when it came to Silver Lake and kept on going north. They must have seen the new buildings and heard the noise. Looks like hunting’s going to be slim around here from now on.”
Chapter 27
Living in Town
All around the unfinished, little town the endless prairie lay greening in the sunshine for new grass was starting everywhere. Silver Lake was blue, and the large white clouds in the sky were mirrored in the clear water.
Slowly Laura and Carrie walked on either side of Mary toward the town. Behind them came the loaded wagon, Pa and Ma and Grace riding in it, and the cow Ellen tied behind. They were all moving to Pa’s building in town.
The surveyors had come back. Mr. and Mrs. Boast were gone to their claim. There was nowhere to live except in Pa’s unfinished building, and in all the hustle, bustle and busyness of the town there was no one that Laura knew. She did not feel all alone and happy on the prairie now; she felt lonely and scared. The town’s being there made the difference.