Little Author in the Big Woods (9 page)

The summer of 1889 was hot and dry. The wheat and oats withered, shriveled, and finally died. Laura and Manly had one good thing to look forward to: another baby was on the way. Sadly, he was born one stifling day and died 12 days later; Laura never even gave him a name.

For the remainder of the summer, Laura mourned her loss. She wanted only to rest. She began to rely on Rose, who was almost four, for simple chores, like feeding the stove with hay sticks. One day, the hay Rose carried caught fire. Terrified, she dropped it, and the fire immediately spread. Laura couldn't even rally to put out the fire. All she could do was escape with Rose. By the time Manly rushed in from the field and the neighbors came to help, it was too late. The little gray house had burned to the ground.

Manly built a shanty near the scorched, blackened place where the house had been. But it was only a temporary dwelling. There was another drought, and Manly still was not fully recovered. He and Laura decided they would go to Minnesota, to his father's thriving farm. Help was always needed there. The Wilders packed up what little they had left after the fire and traveled by covered wagon to Minnesota.

Manly's family welcomed them with open arms, and Laura quickly grew to love her in-laws. Laura and Manly stayed for about a year but were advised that a warmer climate might be good for Manly's crippled hands and feet. Laura's cousin Peter had moved to Florida. He wrote, urging them to come. They decided to give it a try. Once again, Laura and Manly were on their way. This time they went by train, well stocked with food given to them by the generous Wilders.

To Laura, Florida might as well have been the moon. With a mixture of fascination and revulsion, she described a place “where butterflies are enormous, where plants … eat insects … and alligators inhabit the slowly moving waters.” While she tried to adjust, Manly may have worked in the lumber camps near Westville, or he may simply have tried to recover his strength. But Laura could not get used to Florida.

The moist, dense air made her feel sick. Their new neighbors shunned the Northerners, whom they called Yankees. She took to carrying a revolver in her skirt pocket and did not let Rose out of her sight. Laura longed to go home.

So in 1892, after less than a year, the Wilders packed up again and took the train back to De Smet. They stayed with Ma and Pa before moving to a house just a block away. Manly did carpentry or painting, or he worked as a clerk in Royal's variety store. Laura worked at a dressmaker's shop, where she earned $1.00 a day. Little Rose stayed with her grandparents. Ma taught her to sew and knit. At the age of five, Rose started attending the De Smet school, and like her mother, Laura, she was immediately recognized as an unusually gifted student. Laura was proud of her.

At night, after work, Laura and Manly tried to come up with another plan. Large-scale farming was out of the question now. If they were going to farm, it would have to be on a much smaller scale. And they needed a place that was not too cold. They started to hear about land in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. One of their neighbors had visited the Ozarks. When he came back, he brought a shiny red apple. Laura had never seen an apple so big or so red. Surely that must be a sign of something good. She and Manly agreed. Missouri was the place to be.

 

 

SIX

A Budding Writer, and Rose Leaves Home

1894−1903

Rocky Ridge, Missouri

On a morning in July of 1894, Laura, Manly, and Rose were ready for their trip to the Ozarks. There had been a big farewell dinner at Ma and Pa's the night before. The family had all gathered together; even Mary was home from school. After they ate, Pa sang and played the fiddle.

Laura was nervous about the long ride in the black painted wagon. But she was somewhat comforted by the knowledge that she had a $100 bill stashed safely away among her things. This was money she had earned working for the dressmaker, and she was counting on using it to buy a piece of the inexpensive land available in Mansfield, Missouri. One other comforting thing she had with her was a small diary, purchased for 5 cents. She thought it would be interesting to keep a record of her travels.

The Wilders were joined on the trip by the Cooleys, a family they had met in De Smet. Starting from De Smet, the two families went south to Yankton, South Dakota, which was on the Missouri River. They had to cross the slow, muddy river on a ferry. They continued south, and then east, through Nebraska and Kansas. The prairie was hot and dry, as it always was in the summer. In her diary, Laura wrote that the temperature often reached 100 degrees or more.

On August 22, they left Kansas and crossed the Missouri state line. Here was a big change. Missouri was rolling and green. The hot, dry wind became a cool, gentle breeze. There were trees, not just dry plains. Laura wrote letters back to her family in De Smet, describing everything. In her signature bright, lilting style, she also wrote to Carrie Sherwood, editor of the
De Smet News and Leader.
The letter ran in the paper, and Ma clipped it and sent it to Laura, who was so proud of her very first publication.

After weeks on the road, the Wilders and the Cooleys reached Mansfield. The Cooleys went off to a hotel. They were going to be innkeepers. The Wilders camped out, looking for a farm. Almost immediately, Laura fell in love with an abandoned little farm about a mile outside of town. Manly thought it looked neglected. Laura saw the potential in the land and the apple orchard. Using the $100 bill as a down payment on the $400 farm, she persuaded Manly to see things her way. They paid the bank, and the place was theirs. Because of all the rocks on the property, Laura called it Rocky Ridge Farm.

They moved in right away. There was a log cabin already built. It had no windows, so light came in from the chimney, or through chinks in the mud that held the walls together. Laura and Rose worked to make the cabin comfortable and pretty, while Manly chopped down trees, both to clear the land and to build up a store of wood for the winter.

The Wilders planned to grow fruit and raise chickens and cattle. They saw farming as a joint effort, one in which a man and a woman worked side by side, together. The same woman who did not want to promise to obey was one who saw herself as an equal. Manly's hands and feet had improved, and he could do more work now. Together, he and Laura cleared the brush and timber from their land. They used some of the fallen trees to make fence rails and to build a henhouse and a barn. Manly sold some of the wood for 75 cents a load. That money, along with the money Laura earned from selling eggs, kept them going that first year.