Almanzo noticed that he did not swing it onto his shoulder as a man naturally would. “That’s quite a load to handle,” Almanzo said, and helped him lift and balance it. He would have carried it across the street for him, but a man does not like to admit that he cannot carry a hundred and twenty-five pounds.
“Bet you a cigar I can beat you at a game of checkers,” Almanzo then said to Cap, and they went up the street to the drugstore. Mr. Ingalls was going into his store building as they passed by in the blowing snow.
Laura heard the front door open and shut. They all sat still in the dark and, as if in a dream, they heard Pa’s steps coming heavily the length of the front room, and the kitchen door opening. Pa let a heavy weight come down on the floor with a thud that painfully shook it. Then he shut the door against the solid cold coming in with him.
“The boys got back!” he said, breathing hard. “Here’s some of the wheat they brought, Caroline!”
Chapter 30
It Can’t Beat Us
Winter had lasted so long that it seemed it would never end. It seemed that they would never really wake up.
In the morning Laura got out of bed into the cold. She dressed downstairs by the fire that Pa had kindled before he went to the stable. They ate their coarse brown bread. Then all day long she and Ma and Mary ground wheat and twisted hay as fast as they could. The fire must not go out; it was very cold. They ate some coarse brown bread. Then Laura crawled into the cold bed and shivered until she grew warm enough to sleep.
Next morning she got out of bed into the cold. She dressed in the chilly kitchen by the fire. She ate her coarse brown bread. She took her turns at grinding wheat and twisting hay. But she did not ever feel awake. She felt beaten by the cold and the storms.
She knew she was dull and stupid but she could not wake up.
There were no more lessons. There was nothing in the world but cold and dark and work and coarse brown bread and winds blowing. The storm was always there, outside the walls, waiting sometimes, then pouncing, shaking the house, roaring, snarling, and screaming in rage.
Out of bed in the morning to hurry down and dress by the fire. Then work all day to crawl into a cold bed at night and fall asleep as soon as she grew warm. The winter had lasted so long. It would never end.
Pa did not sing his trouble song in the mornings any more.
On clear days he hauled hay. Sometimes a blizzard lasted only two days. There might be three days of clear cold, or even four days, before the blizzard struck again. “We’re outwearing it,” Pa said. “It hasn’t got much more time. March is nearly gone. We can last longer than it can.”
“The wheat is holding out,” Ma said. “I’m thankful for that.”
The end of March came. April began. Still the storm was there, waiting a little longer now perhaps but striking even more furiously. There was the bitter cold still, and the dark storm days, the wheat to be ground, the hay to be twisted. Laura seemed to have forgotten summer; she could not believe it would ever come again. April was going by.
“Is the hay holding out, Charles?” Ma asked.
“Yes, thanks to Laura,” Pa said. “If you hadn’t helped me in the haying, little Half-Pint, I’d not have put up enough hay. We would have run short before this.”
Those hot days of haying were very far away and long ago. Laura’s gladness because Pa said that seemed far away too. Only the blizzard and the coffee mill’s grinding, the cold and the dusk darkening to night again, were real. Laura and Pa were holding their stiff, swollen red hands over the stove, Ma was cutting the coarse brown bread for supper. The blizzard was loud and furious.
“It can’t beat us!” Pa said.
“Can’t it, Pa?” Laura asked stupidly.
“No,” said Pa. “It’s got to quit sometime and we don’t. It can’t lick us. We won’t give up.”
Then Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.
They ate the coarse brown bread and went through the dark and cold upstairs to bed. Shivering in the cold bed Laura and Mary silently said their prayers and slowly grew warm enough to sleep.
Sometime in the night Laura heard the wind. It was still blowing furiously but there were no voices, no howls or shrieks in it. And with it there was another sound, a tiny, uncertain, liquid sound that she could not understand.
She listened as hard as she could. She uncovered her ear to listen and the cold did not bite her cheek. The dark was warmer. She put out her hand and felt only a coolness. The little sound that she heard was a trickling of water-drops. The eaves were dripping. Then she knew.
She sprang up in bed and called aloud, “Pa! Pa! The Chinook is blowing!”
“I hear it, Laura,” Pa answered from the other room. “Spring has come. Go back to sleep.”
The Chinook was blowing. Spring had come. The blizzard had given up; it was driven back to the north. Blissfully Laura stretched out in bed; she put both arms on top of the quilts and they were not very cold. She listened to the blowing wind and dripping eaves and she knew that in the other room Pa was lying awake, too, listening and glad. The Chinook, the wind of spring, was blowing. Winter was ended.
In the morning the snow was nearly gone. The frost was melted from the windows, and outdoors the air was soft and warm.
Pa was whistling as he came from doing the chores.
“Well, girls,” he said gaily. “We beat old Winter at last! Here it is spring, and none of us lost or starved or frozen! Anyway, not much frozen,” and he felt tenderly of his nose. “I do believe it is longer,” he said anxiously to Grace, and his eyes twinkled. He looked in the glass. “It is longer, and red, too.”
“Stop worrying about your looks, Charles,” Ma told him. “‘Beauty is only skin deep.’ Come eat your breakfast.”
She was smiling and Pa chucked her under the chin as he went to the table. Grace scampered to her chair and climbed into it laughing.
Mary pushed her chair back from the stove. “It is really too warm, so close to the fire,” she said.
How marvelous it was that anyone could be too warm.
Carrie would hardly leave the window. “I like to see the water run,” she explained.
Laura said nothing; she was too happy. She could hardly believe that the winter was gone, that spring had come. When Pa asked her why she was so silent, she answered soberly, “I said it all in the night.”
“I should say you did! Waking us all from a sound sleep to tell us the wind was blowing!” Pa teased her. “As if the wind hadn’t blown for months!”
“I said the Chinook,” Laura reminded him. “That makes all the difference.”
Chapter 31
Waiting for the Train
“We’ve got to wait for the train,” Pa said. “We can’t move to the claim till it comes.”
Tightly as he had nailed and battened the tar-paper to the shanty, blizzard winds had torn it loose and whipped it to shreds, letting in the snow at sides and roof. And now the spring rains were beating in through the cracks. The shanty must be repaired before anyone could live in it and Pa could not repair it until the train came, for there was no tar-paper at the lumberyard.
The snow had all disappeared from the prairie. In its place was the soft green of new grass. All the sloughs brimmed with water that had run into them when the deep snow melted. Big Slough had spread until it was a part of Silver Lake and Pa must drive miles around it to reach the homestead from the south.
One day Mr. Boast came walking into town. He explained that he could not drive in, because much of the road was under water. He had walked the railroad track on the long fill that crossed the slough.
Mrs. Boast was well, he told them. She had not come with him because of the slough-lakes spreading everywhere. He had not known whether he could reach town by the railroad track. He promised that Mrs. Boast would walk in with him some day
soon.
One afternoon Mary Power came, and she and Laura took Mary walking on the high prairie west of town. It was so long since Laura had seen Mary Power that they felt like strangers again, beginning to get acquainted.
All over the softly green prairie the sloughs were a broken network of water, reflecting the warm, blue sky. Wild geese and ducks were flying high overhead, their clamoring calls coming faintly down. None of them stopped at Silver Lake. They were hurrying, late, to their nesting grounds in the north.
Soft spring rains fell all day long from harmless gray skies and swelled still wider the brimming sloughs. Days of sunshine came and then again rain. The feed store was locked and vacant. The Wilder brothers had hauled the seed wheat around the slough north of town to their claims. Pa said that they were sowing the wheat on their big fields.
And still the train did not come. Still, day after day, Laura and Mary and Carrie took turns at the endless grind of the coffee mill, and morning and evening they ate the coarse brown bread. The wheat was low in the sack. And the train did not come.
The blizzard winds had blown earth from the fields where the sod was broken, and had mixed it with snow packed in so tightly in the railroad cuts that snowplows could not move it. The icy snow could not melt because of the earth mixed with it, and men with picks were digging it out inch by inch. It was slow work because in many big cuts they must dig down twenty feet to the steel rails.
April went slowly by. There was no food in the town except the little wheat left from the sixty bushels that young Mr. Wilder and Cap had brought in the last week of February. Every day Ma made a smaller loaf and still the train did not come.
“Could something be hauled in, Charles?” Ma asked.
“We’ve talked that over, Caroline. None of us see how,” Pa answered. He was tired from working all day with a pick. The men from town were digging away at the cut to the west, for the stranded work train must go on to Huron before a freight train could come on the single track.
“There’s no way to get a team and wagon out to the east,” Pa said. “All the roads are under water, the sloughs are lakes in every direction, and even on the uplands a wagon would mire down in the mud. If worst comes to worst, a man can walk out on the railroad ties, but it’s more than a hundred miles to Brookings and back. He couldn’t carry much and he’d have to eat some of that while he was getting here.”
“I’ve thought of greens,” Ma said. “But I can’t find any weeds in the yard that are big enough to pick yet.”
“Could we eat grass?” Carrie asked.
“No, Nebuchadnezzar,” Pa laughed. “You don’t have to eat grass! The work crews at Tracy are more than half way through the big cut already. They ought to get the train here inside of a week.”
“We can make the wheat last that long,” said Ma. “But I wish you wouldn’t work so hard, Charles.”
Pa’s hands were shaking. He was very tired from working all day with pick and shovel. But he said that a good night’s sleep was all he needed. “The main thing is to get the cut clear,” he said.
On the last day of April the work train went through to Huron. It seemed to wake the whole town up to hear the train whistle again and see the smoke on the sky. Puffing and steaming and clanging its bell, it stopped at the depot, then pulled out, whistling loud and clear again. It was only a passing train that brought nothing, but a freight train was coming tomorrow.
In the morning Laura woke thinking, “The train is coming!” The sun was shining brightly; she had overslept, and Ma had not called her. She jumped out of bed and hurried to dress.
“Wait for me, Laura!” Mary begged. “Don’t be in such a hurry, I can’t find my stockings.”
Laura looked for them. “Here they are. I’m sorry, I pushed them out of the way when I jumped out of bed. Now hurry! Come on, Grace!”
“When will it get here?” Carrie asked breathless.
“Any minute. Nobody knows when,” Laura answered, and she ran downstairs singing:
“If you’re waking call me early,
Call me early, mother dear.”
Pa was at the table. He looked up and laughed at her. “Well, Flutterbudget! you’re to be Queen of the May, are you? And late to breakfast!”
“Ma didn’t call me,” Laura made excuse. “I didn’t need help to cook this little bit of breakfast,” Ma said. “Only one biscuit apiece, and small ones at that. It took the last bit of the wheat to make them.”
“I don’t want even one,” Laura said. “The rest of you can divide mine. I won’t be hungry till the train comes in.”
“You will eat your share,” Pa told her. “Then we’ll all wait till the train brings more.”
They were all merry over the biscuits. Ma said that Pa must have the biggest one. When Pa agreed to that, he insisted that Ma take the next size. Mary’s of course came next. Then there was some doubt about Laura and Carrie; they had to have the two most nearly alike. And the smallest one was for Grace.
“I thought I made them all the same size,” Ma protested.
“Trust a Scotchwoman to manage,” Pa teased her. “You not only make the wheat come out even with the very last meal before the train comes, but you make the biscuits in sizes to fit the six of us.”
“It is a wonder, how evenly it comes out,” Ma admitted.
“You are the wonder, Caroline,” Pa smiled at her. He got up and put on his hat. “I feel good!” he declared. “We really got winter licked now! with the last of the blizzards thrown out of the cuts and the train coming in!”
Ma left the doors open that morning to let in the spring air, moist from the sloughs. The house was fresh and fragrant, the sun was shining, and the town astir with men going toward the depot. Clear and long across the prairie, the train whistle sounded and Laura and Carrie ran to the kitchen window. Ma and Grace came, too.
They saw the smoke from the smokestack rolling up black against the sky. Then puffing and chuffing the engine came hauling the line of freight cars toward the depot. A little crowd of men on the depot platform stood watching the engine go by. White steam puffed up through its smoke and its clear whistle came after every puff. Brakemen along the top of the train were jumping from car to car and setting the brakes.
The train stopped. It was really there, a train at last.
“Oh, I do hope that Harthorn and Wilmarth both get all the groceries they ordered last fall,” said Ma.
After a few moments the engine whistled, the brakemen ran along the tops of the cars loosening the brakes. Clanging its bell, the engine went ahead, then backed, then went ahead again and rushed on away to the west, trailing its smoke and its last long whistle. It left behind it three freight cars standing on the sidetrack.
Ma drew a deep breath. “It will be so good to have enough of everything to cook with again.”
“I hope I never see another bite of brown bread,” Laura declared.
“When is Pa coming? I want Pa to come!” Grace insisted. “I want Pa to come now!”
“Grace,” Ma reproved her, gently but firmly, and Mary took Grace into her lap while Ma added, “Come, girls, we must finish airing the bedding.”
It was almost an hour before Pa came. At last even Ma wondered aloud what could be keeping him. They were all impatiently waiting before he came. His arms were filled with a large package and two smaller ones. He laid them on the table before he spoke.
“We forgot the train that was snowed in all winter,” he said. “It came through, and what do you suppose it left for De Smet?” He answered his own question. “One carload of telegraph poles, one carload of farm machinery, and one emigrant car.”
“No groceries?” Ma almost wailed.
“No. Nothing,” Pa said.
“Then what is this?” Ma touched the large package.
“That is potatoes. The small one is flour and the smallest is fat salt pork. Woodworth broke into the emigrant car and shared out what eatables he could find,” said Pa.
“Charles! H
e ought not to do that,” Ma said in dismay.
“I’m past caring what he ought to do!” Pa said savagely. “Let the railroad stand some damages! This isn’t the only family in town that’s got nothing to eat. We told Woodworth to open up that car or we’d do it. He tried to argue that there’ll be another train tomorrow, but we didn’t feel like waiting. Now if you’ll boil some potatoes and fry some meat, we’ll have us a dinner.”
Ma began to untie the packages. “Put some hay in the stove, Carrie, to make the oven hot. I’ll mix up some white-flour biscuits, too,” she said.
Chapter 32
The Christmas Barrel
Next day the second train came. After its departing whistle had died away, Pa and Mr. Boast came down the street carrying a barrel between them. They upended it through the doorway and stood it in the middle of the front room.
“Here’s that Christmas barrel!” Pa called to Ma.
He brought his hammer and began pulling nails out of the barrel-head, while they all stood around it waiting to see what was in it. Pa took off the barrel-head. Then he lifted away some thick brown paper that covered everything beneath.
Clothes were on top. First Pa drew out a dress of beautifully fine, dark-blue flannel. The skirt was full pleated and the neat, whaleboned basque was buttoned down the front with cut-steel buttons.
“This is about your size, Caroline,” Pa beamed. “Here, take it!” and he reached again into the barrel.
He took out a fluffy, light-blue fascinator for Mary, and some warm flannel underthings. He took out a pair of black leather shoes that exactly fitted Laura. He took out five pairs of white woolen stockings, machine-knit. They were much finer and thinner than home-knit ones.
Then he took out a warm, brown coat, a little large for Carrie, but it would fit her next winter. And he took out a red hood and mittens to go with it.
The Long Winter Page 20
