“We’d have needed a cellar, if that storm had come our way. I never did run to a cyclone cellar, but if I ever meet a cloud like that, I will,” Almanzo admitted.
The wind abruptly changed. It blew from the southwest and brought a sudden cold with it.
“Hail,” Almanzo said.
“Yes.” said Laura. Somewhere, hail had fallen from that cloud.
Everyone at home was glad to see them. Laura had never seen Ma so pale, nor so thankful. Pa said that they had shown good judgment in turning back when they did. “That storm is doing bad damage,” he said.
“It’s a good idea, out here in this country, to have a cellar,” said Almanzo. He asked what Pa thought of their driving out across country, where the storm had passed, to see if anyone needed help. So Laura was left at home, while Pa and Almanzo drove away.
Though the storm was gone and the sky now clear, still they were nervous.
The afternoon passed, and Laura had changed into her weekday clothes and with Carrie’s help had done the chores, before Pa and Almanzo came back. Ma set a cold supper on the table, and while they ate they told what they had seen in the path of the storm.
One settler not far south of town had just finished threshing his wheat crop from a hundred acres. It had been a splendid crop, that would have paid all his debts and left money in the bank. He and the threshers had been working that day to finish the job, and he was on a strawstack when they saw the storm coming.
He had just sent his two young boys to return a wagon he had borrowed from a neighbor to help in the threshing. He got into his cyclone cellar just in time. The storm carried away his grain, strawstacks and machinery, wagons, stables and house; everything. Nothing was left but his bare claim.
The two boys on the mules had disappeared completely. But just before Pa and Almanzo reached the place, the older boy had come back, stark naked. He was nine years old. He said that he and his brother were riding the mules home, running, when the storm struck them. It lifted them all together and carried them around in a circle, in the air, still harnessed together side by side. They were whirled around, faster and faster and higher, until he began to get dizzy and he shouted to his little brother to hold on tight to his mule. Just then the air filled thickly with whirling straw and darkened so that he could see nothing. He felt a jerk of the harness breaking apart, and then he must have fainted. For the next thing he knew, he was alone in clear air.
He could see the ground beneath him. He was being carried around in a circle, all the time sinking a little, until finally he was not far above the earth. He tried to spring up, to get his feet under him, then struck the ground running, ran a little way, and fell. After lying there a few moments to rest, he got up and made his way home.
He had come to the ground a little more than a mile from his father’s claim. There was not a shred of clothing left on him; even his high, laced boots had disappeared, but he was not hurt at all. It was a mystery how his boots had been taken from his feet without so much as bruising them.
Neighbors were searching far and wide for the other boy and the mules, but not a trace could be found of them. There could be hardly a hope that they were alive.
“Still, if that door came through,” Almanzo said.
“What door?” Carrie wanted to know.
That was the strangest thing that Pa and Almanzo had seen that day. It happened at another settler’s claim, farther south. Everything had been stripped clean off his place, too. When this man and his family came up from their cyclone cellar, two bare spots were all that were left of stable and house. Oxen, wagon, tools, chickens, everything was gone. They had nothing but the clothes they wore, and one quilt that his wife had snatched to wrap around the baby in the cellar.
This man said to Pa, “I’m a lucky man; I didn’t have a crop to lose.” They had moved onto their claim only that spring, and he had been able to put in only a few sod potatoes.
That afternoon about sunset, as Pa and Almanzo were coming back from searching for the lost boy, they came by this place and stopped for a moment. The homesteader and his family had been gathering boards and bits of lumber that the storm had dropped, and he was figuring how much more he would have to get to build them some kind of shelter.
While they stood considering this, one of the children noticed a small dark object high in the clear sky overhead. It did not look like a bird, but it appeared to be growing larger. They all watched it. For some time it fell slowly toward them, and they saw that it was a door. It came gently down before them. It was the front door of this man’s vanished claim shanty.
It was in perfect condition, not injured at all, not even scratched. The wonder was, where it had been all those hours, and that it had come slowly down from a clear sky, directly over the place where the claim shanty had been.
“I never saw a man more chirked up than he was,” said Pa. “Now he doesn’t have to buy a door for his new shanty. It even came back with the hinges on it.”
They were all amazed. In all their lives, none of them had ever heard of a stranger thing than the return of that door. It was awesome to think how far or how high it must have gone in air during all those hours.
“It’s a queer country out here,” Pa said. “Strange things happen.”
“Yes,” said Ma. “I’m thankful that so far they don’t happen to us.”
That next week Pa heard in town that the bodies of the lost boy and the mules had been found the next day. Every bone in them was broken. The clothing had been stripped from the boy and the harness from the mules. No scrap of clothing or harness was ever found.
Chapter 30
Sunset on the Hill
One Sunday Laura did not go driving, for it was Mary’s last day at home. She was going back to college next day.
The weather was so very warm that at breakfast Ma said she believed she would not go to church. Carrie and Grace would stay at home with her, while Laura and Mary went with Pa in the wagon.
Pa was waiting for them when they came from the bedroom, ready to go.
Laura wore again her sprigged, pale pink lawn dress and her new hat with the ostrich tips now sewed on tightly.
Mary’s dress was a blue lawn with small white flowers scattered over it. Her hat was a white straw sailor with a blue ribbon band. Beneath its brim in back her hair was a great mass of twisted gold, and golden bangs curled richly on her forehead, above her eyes as blue as her ribbons.
Pa looked at them for a moment. His eyes shone and his voice was proud as he exclaimed in mock dismay, “Jerusalem Crickets, Caroline! I’m not spruce enough to beau two such fine-looking young ladies to church!”
He looked nice, too, in his black suit with the black velvet collar on the coat, his white shirt and dark blue tie.
The wagon was waiting. Before he dressed Pa had combed and brushed the two farm horses and spread a clean horse blanket on the wagon seat. The team drowsed while Pa carefully helped Mary up over the wheel, then gave his hand to Laura. Over their laps they spread the light dust robe and carefully Laura tucked its edge well around her full-gathered tucked lawn skirt. Then in the sunshine and the hot wind, slowly they rode to church.
It was so crowded that morning that they could not find three empty places together. So Pa went forward to sit with the graybeards in the amen corner, while Laura and Mary sat side by side near the middle of the church.
Reverend Brown was preaching earnestly and Laura was wishing that with so much sincerity he could say something interesting, when she saw a small plump kitten straying up the aisle. Idly she watched it pounce and play, until it wandered onto the platform and stood arching its back and rubbing against the side of the pulpit. As its round, kitten eyes looked at the congregation, Laura believed she could hear its purring.
Then, at her side in the aisle, a small dog passed, trotting briskly. It was a little black-and-tan, with slender legs and a perky short tail, and its quick, business-like trot was natural to it. It was not seeking anyone nor go
ing anywhere, but merely sight-seeing in the church, until it spied the kitten. For an instant the little dog stiffened, then with a firecracker explosion of shrill yaps, it leaped.
The kitten’s back rose in an arch, its tail swelled, and in a flash it vanished from Laura’s view.
The strange thing was that it seemed to vanish utterly. There was no chase, and the little dog was silent. Reverend Brown went on preaching. Laura barely had time to wonder, when she felt a slight swaying of her hoops, and looking down she saw the tip of the kitten’s tail slide out of sight beneath the pink lawn ruffle.
The kitten had taken refuge under her hoops, and now it began climbing up inside of them, clutching and clawing its way from wire to wire. Laura felt an impulse to laugh, but she controlled it and sat solemn as a judge. Then the little dog passed anxiously, peering and sniffing in search of the kitten, and a sudden vision of what would happen if he found it made Laura shake from head to foot with suppressed laughter.
She could feel her ribs swelling against her corsets and her cheeks puffing out and her throat choking. Mary did not know what amused Laura, but felt that she was laughing and pushed her elbow against Laura’s side, whispering, “Behave yourself.”
Laura shook all the harder and felt her face growing purple. Her hoops kept swaying under her skirts as the kitten curiously crept down them again. Its little whiskered nose and eyes peeped from beneath the pink ruffle, then, seeing nothing of the dog, it popped out suddenly and scampered down the aisle toward the door. Laura listened, but she heard no yapping so she knew that the kitten had escaped.
On the way home Mary said, “Laura, I am surprised at you. Will you never learn to behave yourself properly in church?”
Laura laughed until she cried, while Mary still sat disapproving and Pa wanted to know what had happened.
“No, Mary, I never will,” Laura said at last, wiping her eyes. “You might as well give me up as a hopeless case.” Then she told them, and even Mary had to smile.
Sunday dinner and the afternoon passed quietly in family talk, and when the sun was sinking Mary and Laura took their last walk together to the top of the low hill to see the sunset.
“I never see things so well with anyone else,” Mary said. “And when I come again you will not be here.”
“No, but you will come to see me where I am,” Laura answered. “There will be two homes for you to visit.”
“But these sunsets…” Mary began, and Laura interrupted.
“The sun will set on Almanzo’s farm, too, I hope,” she teased. “There is no little hill there, but there are ten whole acres of little trees. We shall walk among them and you shall see them. There are cottonwoods, of course, but besides, there are box elders and maples and willows. If they live, they will be a beautiful grove. Not just a windbreak around the house, like Pa’s, but a real little woods.”
“It will be strange, to see these prairies wooded,” Mary said.
“Everything changes,” said Laura.
“Yes.” They were silent a little while, then Mary said, “I wish I could be at your wedding. Don’t you want to put it off till next June?”
Slowly Laura answered, “No, Mary. I’m eighteen now and I’ve taught three terms of school, that’s one more than Ma taught. I don’t want to teach any more. I want to be settled this winter in our own home.
“It will be just the ceremony, anyway,” she added. “Pa could not afford a wedding and I would not want the folks to go to any expense. When you come back next summer, my house will be all ready for you to visit me in.”
“Laura,” Mary said. “I’m sorry about the organ. If I’d known… but I did want to see Blanche’s home, too, and it was near, and saved Pa the cost of my railroad journey, and I didn’t realize that anything would ever change, here at home. I felt it was always here, to come back to.”
“It really is, Mary,” Laura told her. “And don’t feel bad at all about the organ. Just remember what a nice time you had at Blanche’s. I am glad you went, truly I am, and so is Ma. She said so at the time.”
“Did she?” Mary’s face lighted. Then Laura told her what Ma had said of being glad that she was having good times while she was young, to remember. The sun was sinking now, and she told how its glory of crimson and gold flamed upon the sky and faded to rose and gray. “Let’s go back to the house now,” Mary said. “I can feel the change in the air.”
They stood a moment longer with hands clasped, facing the west, then slowly they walked down the slope past the stable.
“Time passes so quickly now,” said Mary. “Do you remember when the winter was so long, it seemed that summer would never come. And then in summertime, winter was so long ago we almost forgot what it was like?”
“Yes, and what good times we had when we were little,” Laura answered. “But maybe the times that are coming will be even better. You never know.”
Chapter 31
Wedding Plans
As always, Mary’s going away made an emptiness in the house. The next morning Ma said briskly, “We will get at your sewing now, Laura, Busy hands are a great help to being cheerful.”
So Laura brought the muslins, Ma cut them out, and the airy sitting room filled with the sewing machine’s hum and the busy cheerfulness of Ma’s and Laura’s sewing together.
“I have an idea for making the sheets,” said Laura. “I’m not going to sew those long seams down the middle with over-and-over stitch by hand. If I lap the edges flat and sew with the machine down the center, I do believe they’ll be smooth enough and even more serviceable.”
“It may well be,” said Ma. “Our grandmothers would turn in their graves, but after all, these are modern times.”
All the white sewing was quickly done on the machine. Laura brought out the dozens of yards of white thread lace that she had knitted and crocheted, and like magic the machine’s flashing needle stitched the lace edgings to the open ends of the pillow cases, the throats and wrists of the high-necked, long-sleeved nightgowns, the necks and armholes of the chemises, and the leg-bands of the drawers.
Busily working with the white goods, Ma and Laura discussed Laura’s dresses.
“My brown poplin openwork dress is good as new,” Laura said. “And my pink sprigged lawn is new. What more do I need?”
“You need a black dress,” Ma answered decisively. “I think every woman should have one nice black dress. We’d better go to town Saturday and get the goods. A cashmere, I think. Cashmere wears well, and it is always dressy for all but the very hottest days of summer. Then when that dress is out of the way, you must get something pretty for your wedding.”
“There will be plenty of time,” Laura said. In the rush of summer work, Almanzo had little time to work on the house. He had taken Ma and Laura one Sunday to see its skeleton of studding standing by the piles of lumber, back from the road behind the grove of little sapling trees.
There were to be three rooms, the large room, a bedroom, and a pantry, with a lean-to over the back door besides. But after Laura had seen how these were planned, Almanzo did not take her to look at the house again. “Leave it to me,” he said. “I’ll get a roof over it before snow flies.”
So they made their long Sunday drives to the twin lakes or to Spirit Lake and beyond.
On Monday morning Ma unfolded the soft lengths of sooty black cashmere and carefully fitting the newspaper pattern pieces to the goods so that none would be wasted, she cut confidently with her large shears. She cut out and pinned together all the skirt gores, the bodice pieces, and the sleeves. After dinner the sewing machine was threaded with black, and started.
It was humming steadily, late that afternoon, and Laura was basting the pieces of cambric lining to the cashmere pieces, when she looked up from her work and saw Almanzo driving up to the house. Something had happened, she was sure, or he would not come on Tuesday. She hurried to the door, and he said, “Come for a little drive. I want to talk to you.”
Putting on her sunbonnet, Laura
went with him.
“What is it?” she asked as Barnum and Skip trotted away.
“It is just this,” Almanzo said earnestly. “Do you want a big wedding?”
She looked at him in amazement, that he should have come to ask her that, when they would see each other next Sunday. “Why do you ask?” she inquired.
“If you don’t, would you be willing and could you be ready to be married the last of this week, or the first of next?” he asked even more anxiously. “Don’t answer till I tell you why. When I was back in Minnesota last winter, my sister Eliza started planning a big church wedding for us. I told her we didn’t want it, and to give up the idea. This morning I got a letter; she has not changed her mind. She is coming out here with my mother, to take charge of our wedding.”
“Oh, no!” Laura said.
“You know Eliza,” said Almanzo. “She’s headstrong, and she always was bossy, but I could handle this, if it was only Eliza. My mother’s different, she’s more like your mother; you’ll like her. But Eliza’s got Mother’s heart set on our having a big church wedding, and if they are here before we’re married, I don’t see how I can tell Mother, ‘No.’ I don’t want that kind of a wedding, and I can’t afford what it would cost me. What do you think about it?”
There was a little silence while Laura thought. Then she said quietly, “Pa can’t afford to give me that kind of a wedding, either. I would like a little longer to get my things made. If we are married so soon I won’t have a wedding dress.”
“Wear the one you have on. It is pretty,” Almanzo urged.
Laura could not help laughing. “This is a calico work dress. I couldn’t possibly!” Then she sobered. “But Ma and I are making one that I could wear.”
“Then will you, say the last of this week?”
Laura was silent again. Then she summoned all her courage and said, “Almanzo, I must ask you something. Do you want me to promise to obey you?”
These Happy Golden Years Page 18
