Ma came out in a shawl to do the milking. Laura helped her. They could not keep grasshoppers out of the milk. Ma had brought a cloth to cover the pail but they could not keep it covered while they milked into it. Ma skimmed out the grasshoppers with a tin cup.
Grasshoppers went into the house with them. Their clothes were full of grasshoppers. Some jumped onto the hot stove where Mary was starting supper. Ma covered the food till they had chased and smashed every grasshopper. She swept them up and shoveled them into the stove.
Pa came into the house long enough to eat supper while Sam and David were eating theirs. Ma did not ask him what was happening to the wheat. She only smiled and said: “Don’t worry, Charles. We’ve always got along.”
Pa’s throat rasped and Ma said: “Have another cup of tea, Charles. It will help get the smoke out of your throat.”
When Pa had drunk the tea, he went back to the wheat-field with another load of old hay and manure.
In bed, Laura and Mary could still hear the whirring and snipping and chewing. Laura felt claws crawling on her. There were no grasshoppers in bed, but she could not brush the feeling off her arms and cheeks. In the dark she saw grasshoppers’ bulging eyes and felt their claws crawling until she went to sleep.
Pa was not downstairs next morning. All night he had been working to keep the smoke over the wheat, and he did not come to breakfast. He was still working.
The whole prairie was changed. The grasses did not wave; they had fallen in ridges. The rising sun made all the prairie rough with shadows where the tall grasses had sunk against each other.
The willow trees were bare. In the plum thickets only a few plum-pits hung to the leafless branches. The nipping, clicking, gnawing sound of the grasshoppers’ eating was still going on.
At noon Pa came driving the wagon out of the smoke. He put Sam and David into the stable, and slowly came to the house. His face was black with smoke and his eyeballs were red. He hung his hat on the nail behind the door and sat down at the table.
“It’s no use, Caroline,” he said. “Smoke won’t stop them. They keep dropping down through it and hopping in from all sides. The wheat is falling now. They’re cutting it off like a scythe. And eating it, straw and all.”
He put his elbows on the table and hid his face with his hands. Laura and Mary sat still. Only Carrie on her high stool rattled her spoon and reached her little hand toward the bread. She was too young to understand.
“Never mind, Charles,” Ma said. “We’ve been through hard times before.”
Laura looked down at Pa’s patched boots under the table and her throat swelled and ached. Pa could not have new boots now.
Pa’s hands came down from his face and he picked up his knife and fork. His beard smiled, but his eyes would not twinkle. They were dull and dim.
“Don’t worry, Caroline,” he said. “We did all we could, and we’ll pull through somehow.”
Then Laura remembered that the new house was not paid for. Pa had said he would pay for it when he harvested the wheat.
It was a quiet meal, and when it was over Pa lay down on the floor and went to sleep. Ma slipped a pillow under his head and laid her finger on her lips to tell Laura and Mary to be still.
They took Carrie into the bedroom and kept her quiet with their paper dolls. The only sound was the sound of the grasshoppers’ eating.
Day after day the grasshoppers kept on eating. They ate all the wheat and the oats. They ate every green thing—all the garden and all the prairie grass.
“Oh, Pa, what will the rabbits do?” Laura asked. “And the poor birds?”
“Look around you, Laura,” Pa said.
The rabbits had all gone away. The little birds of the grass tops were gone. The birds that were left were eating grasshoppers. And prairie hens ran with outstretched necks, gobbling grasshoppers.
When Sunday came, Pa and Laura and Mary walked to Sunday school. The sun shone so bright and hot that Ma said she would stay at home with Carrie, and Pa left Sam and David in the shady stable.
There had been no rain for so long that Laura walked across Plum Creek on dry stones. The whole prairie was bare and brown. Millions of brown grasshoppers whirred low over it. Not a green thing was in sight anywhere.
All the way, Laura and Mary brushed off grasshoppers. When they came to the church, brown grasshoppers were thick on their petticoats. They lifted their skirts and brushed them off before they went in. But careful as they were, the grasshoppers had spit tobacco-juice on their best Sunday dresses.
Nothing would take out the horrid stains. They would have to wear their best dresses with the brown spots on them.
Many people in town were going back east. Christy and Cassie had to go. Laura said goodby to Christy and Mary said good-by to Cassie, their best friends.
They did not go to school any more. They must save their shoes for winter and they could not bear to walk barefooted on grasshoppers. School would be ended soon anyway, and Ma said she would teach them through the winter so they would not be behind their classes when school opened again next spring.
Pa worked for Mr. Nelson and earned the use of Mr. Nelson’s plow. He began to plow the bare wheat-field, to make it ready for next year’s wheat crop.
Chapter 26
Grasshopper Eggs
One day Laura and Jack wandered down to the creek. Mary liked to sit and read and work sums on the slate, but Laura grew tired of that. Outdoors was so miserable that she did not much like to play, either.
Plum Creek was almost dry. Only a little water seeped through the pebbly sand. The bare willow did not shade the footbridge now. Under the leafless plum thicket the water was scummy. The old crab had gone away.
The dry earth was hot, the sunshine was scorching, and the sky was a brassy color. The whirring of grasshoppers sounded like heat. There were no good smells any more.
Then Laura saw a queer thing. All over the knoll grasshoppers were sitting still with their tails down in the ground. They did not stir, even when Laura poked them.
She poked one away from the hole in which it was sitting, and with a stick she dug out of the hole a gray thing. It was shaped like a fat worm, but it was not alive. She did not know what it was. Jack snuffed at it, and wondered, too.
Laura started toward the wheat-field to ask Pa about it. But Pa was not plowing. Sam and David were standing still with the plow, and Pa was walking on the unplowed ground, looking at it. Then Laura saw him go to the plow and lift it out of the furrow. He went, driving Sam and David toward the stable with the idle plow.
Laura knew that only something dreadful would make Pa stop work in the middle of the morning. She went as fast as she could to the stable. Sam and David were in their stalls and Pa was hanging up their sweaty harness. He came out, and did not smile at Laura. She tagged slowly after him into the house.
Ma looked up at him and said, “Charles! What is the matter now?”
“The grasshoppers are laying their eggs,” said Pa. “The ground’s honeycombed with them. Look at the dooryard, and you’ll see the pits where the eggs are buried a couple of inches deep. All over the wheat-field. Everywhere. You can’t put your finger down between them. Look here.”
He took one of those gray things from his pocket and held it out on his hand.
“That’s one of ’em, a pod of grasshopper eggs. I’ve been cutting them open. There’s thirty-five or forty eggs in every pod. There’s a pod in every hole. There’s eight or ten holes to the square foot. All over this whole country.”
Ma dropped down in a chair and let her hands fall helpless at her sides.
“We’ve got no more chance of making a crop next year than we have of flying,” said Pa. “When those eggs hatch, there won’t be a green thing left in this part of the world.”
“Oh, Charles!” Ma said. “What will we do?”
Pa slumped down on a bench and said, “I don’t know.”
Mary’s braids swung over the edge of the ladder hole and her face
looked down between them. She looked anxiously at Laura and Laura looked up at her. Then Mary backed down the ladder without a sound. She stood close beside Laura, backed against the wall.
Pa straightened up. His dim eyes brightened with a fierce light, not like the twinkle Laura had always seen in them.
“But I do know this, Caroline,” he said. “No pesky mess of grasshoppers can beat us! We’ll do something! You’ll see! We’ll get along somehow.”
“Yes, Charles,” said Ma.
“Why not?” said Pa. “We’re healthy, we’ve got a roof over our heads; we’re better off than lots of folks. You get an early dinner, Caroline. I’m going to town. I’ll find something to do. Don’t you worry!”
While he was gone to town, Ma and Mary and Laura planned a fine supper for him. Ma scalded a pan of sour milk and made pretty white balls of cottage cheese. Mary and Laura sliced cold boiled potatoes and Ma made a sauce for them. There were bread and butter and milk besides.
Then they washed and combed their hair. They put on their best dresses and their hair ribbons. They put Carrie’s white dress on her, and brushed her hair and tied the string of Indian beads around her neck. They were all waiting when Pa came up the grasshoppery knoll.
That was a merry supper. When they had eaten every bit of it, Pa pushed back his plate and said, “Well, Caroline.”
“Yes, Charles?” Ma said.
“Here’s the way out,” said Pa. “I’m going east tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, Charles! No!” Ma cried out.
“It’s all right, Laura,” Pa said. He meant, “Don’t cry,” and Laura did not cry.
“It’s harvest time back there,” Pa told them. “The grasshoppers went only about a hundred miles east of here. Beyond that there’s crops. It’s the only chance to get a job, and all the men in the west are heading for those jobs. I’ve got to get there quick.”
“If you think it’s for the best,” Ma said, “the girls and I can get along. But, oh, Charles, it will be such a long walk for you!”
“Shucks! What’s a couple of hundred miles?” said Pa. But he glanced at his old patched boots. Laura knew he was wondering if they would last to walk so far. “A couple of hundred miles don’t amount to anything!” he said.
Then he took his fiddle out of its box. He played for a long time in the twilight, while Laura and Mary sat close to him and Ma rocked Carrie near by.
He played “Dixie Land,” and “We’ll Rally Round the Flag, Boys!” He played “All the Blue Bonnets Are Over the Border,” and
“Oh, Susanna, don’t you cry for me!
I’m going to California
With my washpan on my knee!”
He played “The Campbells Are Coming, Hurrah! Hurrah!” Then he played “Life Let Us Cherish.” And he put away the fiddle. He must go to bed early, to get an early start in the morning.
“Take good care of the old fiddle, Caroline,” he said. “It puts heart into a man.”
After breakfast, at dawn, Pa kissed them all and went away. His extra shirt and pair of socks were rolled in his jumper and slung on his shoulder. Just before he crossed Plum Creek he looked back and waved. Then he went on, all the way out of sight, without turning again. Jack stood pressed close against Laura.
They all stood still for a moment after Pa was gone. Then Ma said, cheerfully, “We have to take care of everything now, girls. Mary and Laura, you hurry with the cow to meet the herd.”
She went briskly into the house with Carrie, while Laura and Mary ran to let Spot out of the stable and drive her toward the creek. No prairie grass was left, and the hungry cattle could only wander along the creek banks, eating willow sprouts and plum brush and a little dead, dry grass left from last summer.
Chapter 27
Rain
Everything was flat and dull when Pa was gone. Laura and Mary could not even count the days till he would come back. They could only think of him walking farther and farther away in his patched boots.
Jack was a sober dog now and his nose was turning gray. Often he looked at the empty road where Pa had gone, and sighed, and lay down to watch it. But he did not really hope that Pa would come.
The dead, eaten prairie was flat under the hot sky. Dust devils rose up and whirled across it. The far-away edge of it seemed to crawl like a snake. Ma said that was caused by the heat waves of the air.
The only shade was in the house. There were no leaves on willows or plum thickets. Plum Creek dried up. There was only a little water in its pools. The well was dry, and the old spring by the dugout was only a drip. Ma set a pail under it, to fill during the night. In the morning she brought it to the house and left another pail to fill during the day.
When the morning work was done, Ma and Mary and Laura and Carrie sat in the house. The scorching winds whizzed by and the hungry cattle never stopped lowing.
Spot was thin. Her hip joints stuck up sharp, all her ribs showed, and there were hollows around her eyes. All day she went mooing with the other cattle, looking for something to eat. They had eaten all the little bushes along the creek and gnawed the willow branches as high as they could reach. Spot’s milk was bitter, and every day she gave less of it.
Sam and David stood in the stable. They could not have all the hay they wanted, because the hay-stacks must last till next spring. When Laura led them down the dry creekbed to the old swimming-hole, they curled their noses at the warm, scummy water. But they had to drink it. Cows and horses had to bear things, too.
Saturday evening, Laura went to the Nelsons’ to see if a letter had come from Pa. She went along the little path beyond the footbridge. It did not go wandering forever through pleasant places. It went to Mr. Nelson’s.
Mr. Nelson’s house was long and low and its board walls were whitewashed. His long, low sod stable had a thick roof made of hay. They did not look like Pa’s house and Pa’s stable. They cuddled to the ground, under a slope of the prairie, and they looked as if they spoke Norwegian.
The house was shining clean inside. The big bed was plumped high with feathers and the pillows were high and fat. On the wall hung a beautiful picture of a lady dressed in blue. Its frame was thick gold, and bright pink mosquito-netting covered the lady and the frame, to keep the flies off.
There was no letter from Pa. Mrs. Nelson said that Mr. Nelson would ask again at the post-office, next Saturday.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Laura said, and she hurried fast along the path. Then she walked slowly across the footbridge, and more and more slowly up the knoll.
Ma said, “Never mind, girls. There will be a letter next Saturday.”
But next Saturday there was no letter.
They did not go to Sunday school any more. Carrie could not walk so far and she was too heavy for Ma to carry. Laura and Mary must save their shoes. They could not go to Sunday school barefooted, and if they wore out their shoes they would have no shoes next winter.
So on Sundays they put on their best dresses, but not their shoes or ribbons. Mary and Laura said their Bible verses to Ma, and she read to them from the Bible.
One Sunday she read to them about the plague of locusts, long ago in Bible times. Locusts were grasshoppers. Ma read:
“And the locusts went up over the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt; very grievous were they.
“For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruits of the trees which the hail had left; and there remained not any green thing on the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.”
Laura knew how true that was. When she repeated those verses she thought, “through all the land of Minnesota.”
Then Ma read the promise that God made to good people, “to bring them out of that land to a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.”
“Oh, where is that, Ma?” Mary asked, and Laura asked, “How could land flow with milk and honey?” She did not want t
o walk in milky, sticky honey.
Ma rested the big Bible on her knees and thought. Then she said, “Well, your Pa thinks it will be right here in Minnesota.”
“How could it be?” Laura asked.
“Maybe it will be, if we stick it out,” said Ma. “Well, Laura, if good milk cows were eating grass all over this land, they would give a great deal of milk, and then the land would be flowing with milk. Bees would get honey out of all the wild flowers that grow out of the land, and then the land would be flowing with honey.”
“Oh,” Laura said. “I’m glad we wouldn’t have to walk in it.”
Carrie beat the Bible with her little fists and cried: “I’m hot! I’m prickly!” Ma picked her up, but she pushed at Ma and whimpered, “You’re hot!”
Poor little Carrie’s skin was red with heat rash. Laura and Mary were sweltering inside their underwaists and drawers, and petticoatwaists and petticoats, and long-sleeved, high-necked dresses with tight waistbands around their middles. The backs of their necks were smothering under their braids.
Carrie wanted a drink, but she pushed the cup away and made a face and said, “Nasty!”
“You better drink it,” Mary told her. “I want a cold drink, too, but there isn’t any.”
“I wish I had a drink of well water,” said Laura.
“I wish I had an icicle,” said Mary.
Then Laura said, “I wish I was an Indian and didn’t have to wear clothes.”
“Laura!” said Ma. “And on Sunday!”
Laura thought, “Well, I do!” The wood smell of the house was a hot smell. On all the brown streaks in the boards the juice was dripping down sticky and drying in hard yellow beads. The hot wind never stopped whizzing by and the cattle never stopped mourning, “Moo-oo, moo-oo.” Jack turned on his side and groaned a long sigh.
Ma sighed, too, and said, “Seems to me I’d give almost anything for a breath of air.” At that very minute a breath of air came into the house. Carrie stopped whimpering. Jack lifted up his head. Ma said, “Girls, did you—” Then another cool breath came.