The Long Winter

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

  “Yes, Pa’s at the stable,” Ma answered.

  The cookstove was warming the kitchen and the lamplight made it seem even warmer. Laura put on her petticoats and dress and shoes. Then she brought down her sisters’ clothes and warmed them and carried Grace downstairs wrapped in quilts. They were all dressed and washed when Pa came in with the milk half frozen in the pail.

  After he had got his breath and melted the frost and snow from his mustaches, he said, “Well, the hard winter’s begun.”

  “Why, Charles,” Ma said. “It isn’t like you to worry about winter weather.”

  “I’m not worrying,” Pa replied. “But it’s going to be a hard winter.”

  “Well, if it is,” said Ma, “here we are in town where we can get what we need from the stores even in a storm.”

  There would be no more school till the blizzard was over. So, after the housework was done, Laura and Carrie and Mary studied their lessons and then settled down to sew while Ma read to them.

  Once she looked up and listened and said, “It sounds like a regular three days’ blizzard.”

  “Then there won’t be any more school this week,” said Laura. She wondered what Mary and Minnie were doing. The front room was so warm that the frost on the windows had melted a little and turned to ice. When she breathed on it to clear a peephole she could see against the glass the blank white swirling snow. She could not even see Fuller’s Hardware store, across the street, where Pa had gone to sit by the stove and talk with the other men.

  Up the street, past Couse’s Hardware store and the Beardsley Hotel and Barker’s grocery, Royal Wilder’s feed store was dark and cold. No one would come to buy feed in that storm, so Royal did not keep up the fire in the heater. But the back room, where he and Almanzo were baching, was warm and cosy and Almanzo was frying pancakes.

  Royal had to agree that not even Mother could beat Almanzo at making pancakes. Back in New York state when they were boys and later on Father’s big farm in Minnesota they had never thought of cooking; that was woman’s work. But since they had come west to take up homestead claims they had to cook or starve; and Almanzo had to do the cooking because he was handy at almost anything and also because he was younger than Royal who still thought that he was the boss.

  When he came west, Almanzo was nineteen years old. But that was a secret because he had taken a homestead claim, and according to law a man must be twenty-one years old to do that. Almanzo did not consider that he was breaking the law and he knew he was not cheating the government. Still, anyone who knew that he was nineteen years old could take his claim away from him.

  Almanzo looked at it this way: the Government wanted this land settled; Uncle Sam would give a farm to any man who had the nerve and muscle to come out here and break the sod and stick to the job till it was done. But the politicians far away in Washington could not know the settlers so they must make rules to regulate them and one rule was that a homesteader must be twenty-one years old.

  None of the rules worked as they were intended to. Almanzo knew that men were making good wages by filing claims that fitted all the legal rules and then handing over the land to the rich men who paid their wages. Everywhere, men were stealing the land and doing it according to all the rules. But of all the homestead laws Almanzo thought that the most foolish was the law about a settler’s age.

  Anybody knew that no two men were alike. You could measure cloth with a yardstick, or distance by miles, but you could not lump men together and measure them by any rule. Brains and character did not depend on anything but the man himself. Some men did not have the sense at sixty that some had at sixteen. And Almanzo considered that he was as good, any day, as any man twenty-one years old.

  Almanzo’s father thought so too. A man had the right to keep his sons at work for him until they were twenty-one years old. But Almanzo’s father had put his boys to work early and trained them well. Almanzo had learned to save money before he was ten and he had been doing a man’s work on the farm since he was nine. When he was seventeen, his father had judged that he was a man and had given him his own free time. Almanzo had worked for fifty cents a day and saved money to buy seed and tools. He had raised wheat on shares in western Minnesota and made a good crop.

  He considered that he was as good a settler as the government could want and that his age had nothing to do with it. So he had said to the land agent, “You can put me down as twenty-one,” and the agent had winked at him and done it. Almanzo had his own homestead claim now and the seed wheat for next year that he had brought from Minnesota, and if he could stick it out on these prairies and raise crops for four years more he would have his own farm.

  He was making pancakes, not because Royal could boss him any more but because Royal could not make good pancakes and Almanzo loved light, fluffy, buckwheat pancakes with plenty of molasses.

  “Whew! listen to that!” Royal said. They had never heard anything like that blizzard.

  “That old Indian knew what he was talking about,” said Almanzo. “If we’re in for seven months of this…” The three pancakes on the griddle were holding their bubbles in tiny holes near their crisping edges. He flipped them over neatly and watched their brown-patterned sides rise in the middle.

  The good smell of them mixed with the good smells of fried salt pork and boiling coffee. The room was warm and the lamp with its tin reflector, hung on a nail, lighted it strongly. Saddles and bits of harness hung on the rough board walls. The bed was in one corner, and the table was drawn up to the stove hearth so that Almanzo could put the pancakes on the white ironstone plates without moving one step.

  “This can’t last seven months. That’s ridiculous,” said Royal. “We’re bound to have some spells of good weather.”

  Almanzo replied airily, “Anything can happen and most usually does.” He slid his knife under the edges of the pancakes. They were done and he flipped them onto Royal’s plate and greased the griddle again with the pork rind.

  Royal poured molasses over the cakes. “One thing can’t happen,” he said. “We can’t stick it out here till spring unless they keep the trains running.”

  Almanzo poured three more rounds of batter from the batter pitcher onto the sizzling griddle. He lounged against the warm partition, by the stovepipe, waiting for the cakes to rise.

  “We figured on hauling in more hay,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of dry feed for the team.”

  “Oh, they’ll get the trains through,” Royal said, eating. “But if they didn’t we’d be up against it. How about coal and kerosene and flour and sugar? For that matter, how long would my stock of feed last, if the whole town came piling in here to buy it?”

  Almanzo straightened up. “Say!” he exclaimed. “Nobody’s going to get my seed wheat! No matter what happens.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” Royal said. “Whoever heard of storms lasting seven months? They’ll get the trains running again.”

  “They better,” said Almanzo, turning the pancakes. He thought of the old Indian, and he looked at his sacks of seed wheat. They were stacked along the end of the room and some were under the bed. The seed wheat did not belong to Royal; it belonged to him. He had raised it in Minnesota. He had plowed and harrowed the ground and sowed the grain. He had cut it and bound it, threshed and sacked it, and hauled it a hundred miles in his wagon.

  If storms like this storm delayed the trains so that no more seed came from the East until after sowing time, his crop for next year, his homestead would depend on his having that seed wheat to sow. He would not sell it for any money. It was seed that made crops. You could not sow silver dollars.

  “I’m not going to sell so much as a peck of my seed wheat,” he said.

  “All right, all right, nobody’s bothering your wheat,” Royal answered. “How about some pancakes?”

  “This makes twenty-one,” Almanzo said, putting them on Royal’s plate.

  “How many did you eat while I was doing the chores?” Royal asked him.
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  “I didn’t count ’em,” Almanzo grinned. “But gosh, I’m working up an appetite, feeding you.”

  “So long as we keep on eating, we don’t have to wash the dishes,” said Royal.

  Chapter 11

  Pa Goes To Volga

  At noon on Tuesday the blizzard ended. Then the wind died down and in the clear sky the sun shone brightly.

  “Well, that’s over,” Pa said cheerfully. “Now maybe we’ll have a spell of good weather.”

  Ma sighed comfortably. “It’s good to see the sun again.”

  “And to hear the stillness,” Mary added.

  They could hear again the small sounds of the town. Now and then a store door slammed. Ben and Arthur went by, talking, and Cap Garland came whistling down Second Street. The only usual sound that they did not hear was the train’s whistle.

  At supper Pa said that the train was stopped by the snow-filled big cut near Tracy. “But they’ll shovel through it in a couple of days,” he said. “In weather like this, who cares about trains?”

  Early next morning he went across the street to Fuller’s store, hurrying back. He told Ma that some of the men were going to take the handcar from the depot and go meet the train at Volga, clearing the track as they went. Mr. Foster had agreed to do Pa’s chores if Pa went along.

  “I have been in one place so long, I would like to travel a little,” Pa said.

  “Go along, Charles, you might as well,” Ma agreed.

  “But can you clear the track so far in one day?”

  “We think so,” said Pa. “The cuts are small from here to Volga and it’s only about fifty miles. The worst stretch is east of Volga and the train crews are working at that. If we clear the rest of the way for them, we ought to come back with the regular train day after tomorrow.”

  He was putting on an extra pair of woolen socks while he talked. He wound the wide muffler around his neck, crossed it on his chest, and buttoned his overcoat snugly over it. He fastened his ear muffs, put on his warmest mittens, and then with his shovel on his shoulder he went to the depot.

  It was almost schooltime but, instead of hurrying to school, Laura and Carrie stood in Second Street watching Pa set out on his trip.

  The handcar was standing on the track by the depot and men were climbing onto it as Pa came up.

  “All ready, Ingalls! All aboard!” they called. The north wind blowing over the dazzling snow brought every word to Laura and Carrie.

  Pa was on the car in a moment. “Let’s go, boys!” he gave the word as he gripped a handbar.

  Mr. Fuller and Mr. Mead and Mr. Hinz took their places in a row, facing Pa and Mr. Wilmarth and Royal Wilder. All their mittened hands were on the two long wooden handlebars that crossed the handcar, with the pump between them.

  “All ready, boys! Let ’er go gallagher!” Mr. Fuller sang out and he and Mr. Mead and Mr. Hinz bent low, pushing down their handlebar. Then as their heads and their handlebar came up, Pa and the other two bent down, pushing their handlebar. Down and up, down and up, the rows of men bent and straightened as if they were bowing low to each other in turn, and the handcar’s wheels began slowly to turn and then to roll rapidly along the track toward Volga. And as they pumped, Pa began to sing and all the others joined in.

  “We’ll ROLL the O-old CHARiot SLLONG,

  We’ll ROLL the O-old CHARiot zLONG,

  We’ll ROLL the O-old CHARiot aLONG.

  And we WON’T drag ON beHIND!”

  Up and down, up and down, all the backs moved evenly with the song and smoothly rolled the wheels, faster and faster.

  “If the sinner’s in the way,

  We will stop and take him in,

  And we WON’T drag ON beHIND!

  “We’ll ROLL the O-old CHARiot aLONG,

  We’ll ROLL the O-old CHAR—”

  Bump! and the handcar was stuck fast in a snowbank.

  “All off!” Mr. Fuller sang out. “Not this time, we don’t roll it over!”

  Picking up their shovels, all the men stepped down from the handcar. Bright snow dust flew in the wind from chunks of snow flung away by their busy shovels.

  “We ought to be getting to school,” Laura said to Carrie.

  “Oh please, let’s wait just a minute more and see…” Carrie said, gazing with squinting eyes across the glittering snow at Pa hard at work in front of the handcar.

  In a moment or two all the men stepped onto it again, laying down their shovels and bending to the handlebars.

  “If the Devil’s in the way,

  We will roll it over him,

  And we WON’T drag ON beHIND!”

  Smaller and smaller grew the dark handcar and the two rows of men bowing in turn to each other, and fainter and fainter the song came back over the glittering snow fields.

  “We’ll roll—the o-old—chariot along,

  We’ll roll—the o-old—chariot along,

  We’ll roll—the o-old—chariot along,

  And we won’t drag on behind…”

  Singing and pumping, rolling the car along, shoveling its way through snowbank and cuts, Pa went away to Volga.

  All the rest of the day and all the next day there was an emptiness in the house. Morning and evening Mr. Foster did the chores and, after he had left the stable, Ma sent Laura to make sure that he had done them properly. “Surely Pa will be home tomorrow,” Ma said on Thursday night.

  At noon the next day the long, clear train whistle sounded over the snow-covered prairie, and from the kitchen window Laura and Carrie saw the black smoke billowing on the sky and the roaring train coming beneath it. It was the work-train, crowded with singing, cheering men.

  “Help me get the dinner on, Laura,” Ma said. “Pa will be hungry.”

  Laura was taking up the biscuits when the front door opened and Pa called, “Look, Caroline! See who’s come home with me?”

  Grace stopped her headlong rush toward Pa and backed, staring, her fingers in her mouth. Ma put her gently aside as she stepped to the doorway with the dish of mashed potatoes in her hand.

  “Why, Mr. Edwards!” Ma said.

  “I told you we’d see him again, after he saved our homestead for us,” said Pa.

  Ma set the potatoes on the table. “I have wanted so much to thank you for helping Mr. Ingalls file on his claim,” she said to Mr. Edwards.

  Laura would have known him anywhere. He was the same tall, lean, lounging wildcat from Tennessee. The laughing lines in his leather-brown face were deeper, a knife scar was on his cheek that had not been there before, but his eyes were as laughing and lazy and keen as she remembered them. “Oh, Mr. Edwards!” she cried out.

  “You brought our presents from Santa Claus,” Mary remembered.

  “You swam the creek,” Laura said. “And you went away down the Verdigris River…”

  Mr. Edwards scraped his foot on the floor and bowed low. “Mrs. Ingalls and girls, I surely am glad to see you all again.”

  He looked into Mary’s eyes that did not see him and his voice was gentle when he said, “Are these two handsome young ladies your small little girls that I dandled on my knee, Ingalls, down on the Verdigris?”

  Mary and Laura said that they were and that Carrie had been the baby then.

  “Grace is our baby now,” Ma said, but Grace would not go to meet Mr. Edwards. She would only stare at him and hang on to Ma’s skirts.

  “You’re just in time, Mr. Edwards,” Ma said hospitably. “I’ll have dinner on the table in one minute,” and Pa urged, “Sit right up, Edwards, and don’t be bashful! There’s plenty of it, such as it is!”

  Mr. Edwards admired the well-built, pleasant house and heartily enjoyed the good dinner. But he said he was going on west with the train when it pulled out. Pa could not persuade him to stay longer.

  “I’m aiming to go far west in the spring,” he said. “This here country, it’s too settled-up for me. The politicians are a-swarming in already, and ma’am if’n there’s any worst pest than grasshoppers it s
urely is politicians. Why, they’ll tax the lining out’n a man’s pockets to keep up these here county-seat towns! I don’t see nary use for a county, nohow. We all got along happy and content without ’em.

  “Feller come along and taxed me last summer. Told me I got to put in every last least thing I had. So I put in Tom and Jerry, my horses, at fifty dollars apiece, and my oxen yoke, Buck and Bright, I put in at fifty, and my cow at thirty-five.

  “‘Is that all you got?’ he says. Well, I told him I’d put in five children I reckoned was worth a dollar apiece.

  “‘Is that all?’ he says. ‘How about your wife?’ he says.

  “‘By Mighty!’ I says to him. ‘She says I don’t own her and I don’t aim to pay no taxes on her,’ I says. And I didn’t.”

  “Why, Mr. Edwards, it is news to us that you have a family,” said Ma. “Mr. Ingalls said nothing of it.”

  “I didn’t know it myself,” Pa explained. “Anyway, Edwards, you don’t have to pay taxes on your wife and children.”

  “He wanted a big tax list,” said Mr. Edwards. “Politicians, they take pleasure a-prying into a man’s affairs and I aimed to please ’em. It makes no matter. I don’t aim to pay taxes. I sold the relinquishment on my claim and in the spring when the collector comes around I’ll be gone from there. Got no children and no wife, nohow.”

  Before Pa or Ma could speak, the train whistle blew loud and long. “There’s the call,” said Mr. Edwards, and got up from the table.

  “Change your mind and stay awhile, Edwards,” Pa urged him. “You always brought us luck.”

  But Mr. Edwards shook hands all around and last with Mary who sat beside him.

  “Good-by all!” he said, and going quickly out of the door he ran toward the depot.

  Grace had looked and listened wide-eyed all the time without trying to say a word. Now that Mr. Edwards had vanished so suddenly, she took a deep breath and asked, “Mary, was that the man who saw Santa Claus?”