Farmer Boy

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

  Mother always flew. Her feet went pattering, her hands moved so fast you could hardly watch them. She never sat down in the daytime, except at her spinning-wheel or loom, and then her hands flew, her feet tapped, the spinning-wheel was a blur or the loom was clattering, thump! thud! clickety-clack! But on Sunday morning she made everybody else hurry, too.

  Father curried and brushed the sleek brown driving-horses till they shone. Almanzo dusted the sleigh and Royal wiped the silver-mounted harness. They hitched up the horses, and then they went to the house to put on their Sunday clothes.

  Mother was in the pantry, setting the top crust on the Sunday chicken pie. Three fat hens were in the pie, under the bubbling gravy. Mother spread the crust and crimped the edges, and the gravy showed through the two pine-trees she had cut in the dough. She put the pie in the heating-stove’s oven, with the beans and the rye ’n’ injun bread. Father filled the stove with hickory logs and closed the dampers, while Mother flew to lay out his clothes and dress herself.

  Poor people had to wear homespun on Sundays, and Royal and Almanzo wore fullcloth. But Father and Mother and the girls were very fine, in clothes that Mother had made of store-boughten cloth, woven by machines.

  She had made Father’s suit of fine black broadcloth. The coat had a velvet collar, and his shirt was made of French calico. His stock was black silk, and on Sundays he did not wear boots; he wore shoes of thin calfskin.

  Mother was dressed in brown Merino, with a white lace collar, and white lace frills at her wrists, under the big, bell-shaped sleeves. She had knitted the lace of finest thread, and it was like cobwebs. There were rows of brown velvet around her sleeves and down the front of her basque, and she had made her bonnet of the same brown velvet, with brown velvet strings tied under her chin.

  Almanzo was proud of Mother in her fine Sunday clothes. The girls were very fine, too, but he did not feel the same about them.

  Their hoopskirts were so big that Royal and Almanzo could hardly get into the sleigh. They had to scrooge down and let those hoops bulge over their knees. And if they even moved, Eliza Jane would cry out: “Be careful, clumsy!”

  And Alice would mourn:

  “Oh dear me, my ribbons are mussed.”

  But when they were all tucked under the buffalo-skin robes, with hot bricks at their feet, Father let the prancing horses go, and Almanzo forgot everything else.

  The sleigh went like the wind. The beautiful horses shone in the sun; their necks were arched and their heads were up and their slender legs spurned the snowy road. They seemed to be flying, their glossy long manes and tails blown back in the wind of their speed.

  Father sat straight and proud, holding the reins and letting the horses go as fast as they would. He never used the whip; his horses were gentle and perfectly trained. He had only to tighten or slacken the reins, and they obeyed him. His horses were the best horses in New York State, or maybe in the whole world. Malone was five miles away, but Father never started till thirty minutes before church-time. That team would trot the whole five miles, and he would stable them and blanket them and be on the church steps when the bell rang.

  When Almanzo thought that it would be years and years before he could hold reins and drive horses like that, he could hardly bear it.

  In no time at all, Father was driving into the church sheds in Malone. The sheds were one long, low building, all around the four sides of a square. You drove into the square through a gate. Every man who belonged to the church paid rent for a shed, according to his means, and Father had the best one. It was so large that he drove inside it to unhitch, and there was a manger with feedboxes, and space for hay and oats.

  Father let Almanzo help put blankets on the horses, while Mother and the girls shook out their skirts and smoothed their ribbons. Then they all walked sedately into the church. The first clang of the bell rang out when they were on the steps.

  After that there was nothing to do but sit still till the sermon was over. It was two hours long. Almanzo’s legs ached and his jaw wanted to yawn, but he dared not yawn or fidget. He must sit perfectly still and never take his eyes from the preacher’s solemn face and wagging beard. Almanzo couldn’t understand how Father knew that he wasn’t looking at the preacher, if Father was looking at the preacher himself. But Father always did know.

  At last it was over. In the sunshine outside the church, Almanzo felt better. Boys must not run or laugh or talk loudly on Sunday, but they could talk quietly, and Almanzo’s cousin Frank was there.

  Frank’s father was Uncle Wesley; he owned the potato-starch mill and lived in town. He did not have a farm. So Frank was only a town boy and he played with town boys. But this Sunday morning he was wearing a store-boughten cap.

  It was made of plaid cloth, machine-woven, and it had ear-flaps that buttoned under the chin. Frank unbuttoned them, and showed Almanzo that they would turn up and button across the cap’s top. He said the cap came from New York City. His father had bought it in Mr. Case’s store.

  Almanzo had never seen a cap like that. He wanted one.

  Royal said it was a silly cap. He said to Frank:

  “What’s the sense of ear-flaps that button over the top? Nobody has ears on top of his head.” So Almanzo knew that Royal wanted a cap like that, too.

  “How much did it cost?” Almanzo asked.

  “Fifty cents,” Frank said, proudly.

  Almanzo knew he could not have one. The caps that Mother made were snug and warm, and it would be a foolish waste of money to buy a cap. Fifty cents was a lot of money.

  “You just ought to see our horses,” he said to Frank.

  “Huh! they’re not your horses!” Frank said. “They’re your father’s horses. You haven’t got a horse, nor even a colt.”

  “I’m going to have a colt,” said Almanzo.

  “When?” Frank asked.

  Just then Eliza Jane called over her shoulder:

  “Come, Almanzo! Father’s hitching up!”

  He hurried away after Eliza Jane, but Frank called after him, low:

  “You are not either going to have a colt!”

  Almanzo got soberly into the sleigh. He wondered if he would ever be big enough to have anything he wanted. When he was younger, Father sometimes let him hold the ends of the reins while Father drove, but he was not a baby now. He wanted to drive the horses, himself. Father allowed him to brush and currycomb and rub down the gentle old work-horses, and to drive them on the harrow. But he could not even go into the stalls with the spirited driving-horses or the colts. He hardly dared stroke their soft noses through the bars, and scratch a little on their foreheads under the forelocks. Father said:

  “You boys keep away from those colts. In five minutes you can teach them tricks it will take me months to gentle out of them.”

  He felt a little better when he sat down to the good Sunday dinner. Mother sliced the hot rye ’n’ injun bread on the bread-board by her plate. Father’s spoon cut deep into the chicken-pie; he scooped out big pieces of thick crust and turned up their fluffy yellow under-sides on the plate. He poured gravy over them; he dipped up big pieces of tender chicken, dark meat and white meat sliding from the bones. He added a mound of baked beans and topped it with a quivering slice of fat pork. At the edge of the plate he piled dark red beet pickles. And he handed the plate to Almanzo.

  Silently Almanzo ate it all. Then he ate a piece of pumpkin pie, and he felt very full inside. But he ate a piece of apple pie with cheese.

  After dinner Eliza Jane and Alice did the dishes, but Father and Mother and Royal and Almanzo did nothing at all. The whole afternoon they sat in the drowsy warm dining-room. Mother read the Bible and Eliza Jane read a book, and Father’s head nodded till he woke with a jerk, and then it began to nod again. Royal fingered the wooden chain that he could not whittle, and Alice looked for a long time out of the window. But Almanzo just sat. He had to. He was not allowed to do anything else, for Sunday was not a day for working or playing. It was a day for going t
o church and for sitting still.

  Almanzo was glad when it was time to do the chores.

  Chapter 9

  Breaking the Calves

  Almanzo had been so busy filling the icehouse that he had no time to give the calves another lesson. So on Monday morning he said:

  “Father, I can’t go to school today, can I? If I don’t work those calves, they will forget how to act.”

  Father tugged his beard and twinkled his eyes. “Seems as though a boy might forget his lesson, too,” he said.

  Almanzo had not thought of that. He thought a minute and said:

  “Well, I have had more lessons than the calves, and besides, they are younger than I be.”

  Father looked solemn, but his beard had a smile under it, and Mother exclaimed:

  “Oh, let the boy stay home if he wants! It won’t hurt him for once in a way, and he’s right, the calves do need breaking.”

  So Almanzo went to the barn and called the little calves out into the frosty air. He fitted the little yoke over their necks and he held up the bows and put the bow-pins in, and tied a rope around Star’s small nubs of horns. He did this all by himself.

  All that morning he backed, little by little, around the barnyard, shouting, “Giddap!” and then, “Whoa!” Star and Bright came eagerly when he yelled, “Giddap!” and they stopped when he said, “Whoa!” and licked up the pieces of carrot from his woolly mittens.

  Now and then he ate a piece of raw carrot, himself. The outside part is best. It comes off in a thick, solid ring, and it is sweet. The inside part is juicier, and clear like yellow ice, but it has a thin, sharp taste.

  At noon, Father said the calves had been worked enough for one day, and that afternoon he would show Almanzo how to make a whip.

  They went into the woods, and Father cut some moosewood boughs. Almanzo carried them up to Father’s workroom over the woodshed, and Father showed him how to peel off the bark in strips, and then how to braid a whiplash. First he tied the ends of five strips together, and then he braided them in a round, solid braid.

  All that afternoon he sat beside Father’s bench. Father shaved shingles and Almanzo carefully braided his whip, just as Father braided the big blacksnake whips of leather. While he turned and twisted the strips, the thin outer bark fell off in flakes, leaving the soft, white, inside bark. The whip would have been white, except that Almanzo’s hands left a few smudges.

  He could not finish it before chore-time, and the next day he had to go to school. But he braided his whip every evening by the heater, till the lash was five feet long. Then Father lent him his jack-knife, and Almanzo whittled a wooden handle, and bound the lash to it with strips of moosewood bark. The whip was done.

  It would be a perfectly good whip until it dried brittle in the hot summer. Almanzo could crack it almost as loudly as Father cracked a blacksnake whip. And he did not finish it a minute too soon, for already he needed it to give the calves their next lesson.

  Now he had to teach them to turn to the left when he shouted, “Haw!” and to turn to the right when he shouted “Gee!”

  As soon as the whip was ready, he began. Every Saturday morning he spent in the barnyard, teaching Star and Bright. He never whipped them; he only cracked the whip.

  He knew you could never teach an animal anything if you struck it, or even shouted at it angrily. He must always be gentle, and quiet, and patient, even when they made mistakes. Star and Bright must like him and trust him and know he would never hurt them, for if they were once afraid of him they would never be good, willing, hard working oxen.

  Now they always obeyed him when he shouted, “Giddap!” and “Whoa!” So he did not stand in front of them any longer. He stood at Star’s left side. Star was next to him, so Star was the nigh ox. Bright was on the other side of Star, so Bright was the off ox.

  Almanzo shouted, “Gee!” and cracked the whip with all his might, close beside Star’s head. Star dodged to get away from it, and that turned both calves to the right. Then Almanzo said, “Giddap!” and let them walk a little way, quietly.

  Then he made the whip-lash curl in the air and crack loudly, on the other side of Bright, and with the crack he yelled, “Haw!”

  Bright swerved away from the whip, and that turned both calves to the left.

  Sometimes they jumped and started to run. Then Almanzo said, “Whoa!” in a deep, solemn voice like Father’s. And if they didn’t stop, he ran after them and headed them off. When that happened, he had to make them practice “Giddap!” and “Whoa!” again, for a long time. He had to be very patient.

  One very cold Saturday morning, when the calves were feeling frisky, they ran away the first time he cracked the whip. They kicked up their heels and ran bawling around the barnyard, and when he tried to stop them they ran right over him, tumbling him into the snow. They kept right on running because they liked to run. He could hardly do anything with them that morning. And he was so mad that he shook all over, and tears ran down his cheeks.

  He wanted to yell at those mean calves, and kick them, and hit them over the head with the butt of his whip. But he didn’t. He put up the whip, and he tied the rope again to Star’s horns, and he made them go twice around the barnyard, starting when he said “Giddap!” and stopping when he said, “Whoa!”

  Afterward he told Father about it, because he thought anyone who was as patient as that, with calves, was patient enough to be allowed at least to currycomb the colts. But Father didn’t seem to think of that. All he said was:

  “That’s right, son. Slow and patient does it. Keep on that way, and you’ll have a good yoke of oxen, yet.”

  The very next Saturday, Star and Bright obeyed him perfectly. He did not need to crack the whip, because they obeyed his shout. But he cracked it anyway; he liked to.

  That Saturday the French boys, Pierre and Louis, came to see Almanzo. Pierre’s father was Lazy John, and Louis’ father was French Joe. They lived with many brothers and sisters in the little houses in the woods, and went fishing and hunting and berrying; they never had to go to school. But often they came to work or play with Almanzo.

  They watched while Almanzo showed off his calves in the barnyard. Star and Bright were behaving so well that Almanzo had a splendid idea. He brought out his beautiful birthday hand-sled, and with an auger he bored a hole through the cross-piece between the runners in front. Then he took one of Father’s chains, and a lynch-pin from Father’s big bobsled, and he hitched up the calves.

  There was a little iron ring underneath their yoke in the middle, just like the rings in big yokes. Almanzo stuck the handle of his sled through this ring, as far as the handle’s little crosspiece. The cross-piece kept it from going too far through the ring. Then he fastened one end of the chain to the ring, and the other end he wound around the lynch-pin in the hole in the cross-bar, and fastened it.

  When Star and Bright pulled, they would pull the sled by the chain. When they stopped, the sled’s stiff handle would stop the sled.

  “Now, Louis, you get on the sled,” Almanzo said.

  “No, I’m biggest!” Pierre said, pushing Louis back. “I get first ride.”

  “You better not,” said Almanzo. “When the calves feel the heft, they’re liable to run away. Let Louis go first because he’s lighter.”

  “No, I don’t want to,” Louis said.

  “I guess you better,” Almanzo told him.

  “No,” said Louis.

  “Be you scared?” Almanzo asked.

  “Yes, he’s scared,” Pierre said.

  “I am not scared,” Louis said. “I just don’t want to.”

  “He’s scared,” Pierre sneered.

  “Yes, he’s scared,” Almanzo said.

  Louis said he was not either scared.

  “You are, too, scared,” Almanzo and Pierre said.

  They said he was a fraidy-cat. They said he was a baby. Pierre told him to go back to his mamma. So finally Louis sat carefully on the sled.

  Almanzo cracked
his whip and shouted, “Giddap!”

  Star and Bright started, and stopped. They tried to turn around to see what was behind them. But Almanzo sternly said, “Giddap!” again, and this time they started and kept on going. Almanzo walked beside them, cracking his whip and shouting “Gee!” and he drove them clear around the barnyard. Pierre ran after the sled and got on, too, and still the calves behaved perfectly. So Almanzo opened the barnyard gate.

  Pierre and Louis quickly got off the sled and Pierre said:

  “They’ll run away!”

  Almanzo said, “I guess I know how to handle my own calves.”

  He went back to his place beside Star. He cracked his whip and shouted, “Giddap!” and he drove Star and Bright straight out of the safe barnyard into the big, wide, glittering world outside. He shouted, “Haw!” and he shouted, “Gee!” and he drove them past the house. He drove them out to the road. They stopped when he shouted “Whoa!”

  Pierre and Louis were excited now. They piled onto the sled, but Almanzo made them slide back. He was going to ride, too. He sat in front; Pierre held on to him, and Louis held onto Pierre. Their legs stuck out, and they held them stiffly up above the snow. Almanzo proudly cracked his whip and shouted, “Giddap!”

  Up went Star’s tail, up went Bright’s tail, up went their heels. The sled bounced into the air, and then everything happened all at once.

  “Baw-aw-aw!” said Star. “Baw-aw-aw-aw!” said Bright. Right in Almanzo’s face were flying hoofs and swishing tails, and close overhead were galumphing hindquarters. “Whoa!” yelled Almanzo. “Whoa!”

  “Baw-aw!” said Bright. “Baw-aw-aw!” said Star. It was far swifter than sliding downhill. Trees and snow and calves’ hind legs were all mixed up. Every time the sled came down Almanzo’s teeth crashed together.

  Bright was running faster than Star. They were going off the road. The sled was turning over. Almanzo yelled, “Haw! Haw!” He went headlong into deep snow, yelling, “Haw!”

  His open mouth was full of snow. He spit it out, and wallowed, scrambled up.