Little House On The Prairie (12 page)

“Yes, Ma,” Laura said. This time she got out of bed. But when she tried to stand up, the floor rocked and she fell down. Jack's tongue lapped and lapped at her face, and he quivered and whined. But he stood still and firm when she took hold of him and sat up against him.

She knew she must get water to stop Mary's crying, and she did. She crawled all the way across the floor to the water-bucket. There was only a little water in it. She shook so with cold that she could hardly get hold of the dipper. But she did get hold of it. She dipped up some water, and she set out to cross that enormous floor again. Jack stayed beside her all the way.

Mary's eyes didn't open. Her hands held on to the dipper and her mouth swallowed all the water out of it. Then she stopped crying. The 188 dipper fell on the floor, and Laura crawled under the covers. It was a long time before she began to get warm again.

Sometimes she heard Jack sobbing. Sometimes he howled and she thought he was a wolf, but she was not afraid. She lay burning up and hearing him howl. She heard voices jabbering again, and the slow voice drawling, and she opened her eyes and saw a big, black face close above her face.

It was coal-black and shiny. Its eyes were black and soft. Its teeth shone white in a thick, big mouth. This face smiled, and a deep voice said, softly, “Drink this, little girl.”

An arm lifted under her shoulders, and a black hand held a cup to her mouth. Laura swallowed a bitter swallow and tried to turn her head away, but the cup followed her mouth. The mellow, deep voice said again “Drink it. It will make you well.” So Laura swallowed the whole bitter dose.

When she woke up, a fat woman was stirring the fire. Laura looked at her carefully and she was not black. She was tanned, like Ma.

“I want a drink of water, please,” Laura said.

The fat woman brought it at once. The good, cold water made Laura feel better. She looked at Mary asleep beside her; she looked at Pa and Ma asleep in the big bed. Jack lay half asleep on the floor. Laura looked again at the fat woman and asked, “Who are you?”

“I'm Mrs. Scott,” the woman said, smiling.

“There now, you feel better, don't you?”

“Yes, thank you,” Laura said, politely. The fat woman brought her a cup of hot prairie-chicken broth.

“Drink it all up, like a good child,” she said.

Laura drank every drop of the good broth.

“Now go to sleep,” said Mrs. Scott. “I'm here to take care of everything till you're all well.”

Next morning Laura felt so much better that she wanted to get up, but Mrs. Scott said she must stay in bed until the doctor came. She lay and watched Mrs. Scott tidy the house and give medicine to Pa and Ma and Mary. Then it was Laura's turn. She opened her mouth, and Mrs. Scott poured a dreadful bitterness out of a small folded paper onto Laura's tongue.

Laura drank water and swallowed and swallowed and drank again. She could swallow the powder but she couldn't swallow the bitterness.

Then the doctor came. And he was the black man. Laura had never seen a black man before and she could not take her eyes off Dr. Tan.

He was so very black. She would have been afraid of him if she had not liked him so much. He smiled at her with all his white teeth. He talked with Pa and Ma, and laughed a rolling, jolly laugh. They all wanted him to stay longer, but he had to hurry away.

Mrs. Scott said that all the settlers, up and down the creek, had fever 'n' ague. There were not enough well people to take care of the sick, and she had been going from house to house, working night and day.

“It's a wonder you ever lived through,” she said. “All of you down at once.” What might have happened if Dr. Tan hadn't found them, she didn't know.

Dr. Tan was a doctor with the Indians. He was on his way north to Independence when he came to Pa's house. It was a strange thing that Jack, who hated strangers and never let one come near the house until Pa or Ma told him to, had gone to meet Dr. Tan and begged him to come in.

“And here you all were, more dead than alive,” Mrs. Scott said. Dr. Tan had stayed with them a day and a night before Mrs. Scott came. Now he was doctoring all the sick settlers.

Mrs. Scott said that all this sickness came from eating watermelons. She said, “I've said a hundred times, if I have once, that watermelons—”

“What's that?” Pa exclaimed. “Who's got watermelons?”

Mrs. Scott said that one of the settlers had planted watermelons in the creek bottoms.

And every soul who had eaten one of those 192 melons was down sick that very minute. She said she had warned them. “But, no,” she said.

“There was no arguing with them. They would eat those melons, and now they're paying for it.”

"I haven't tasted a good slice of watermelon since Hector was a pup," said Pa.

Next day he was out of bed. The next day, Laura was up. Then Ma got up, and then Mary. They were all thin and shaky, but they could take care of themselves. So Mrs. Scott went home.

Ma said she didn't know how they could ever thank her, and Mrs. Scott said, "Pshaw!

What are neighbors for but to help each other out?"

Pa's cheeks were hollows and he walked slowly. Ma often sat down to rest. Laura and Mary didn't feel like playing. Every morning they all took those bitter powders. But Ma still smiled her lovely smile, and Pa whistled cheerfully.

“It's an ill wind that doesn't blow some good,” he said. He wasn't able to work, so he could make a rocking-chair for Ma.

He brought some slender willows from the creek bottoms, and he made the chair in the house. He could stop any time to put wood on the fire or lift a kettle for Ma.

First he made four stout legs and braced them firmly with crosspieces. Then he cut 194 thin strips of the tough willow-skin, just under the bark. He wove these strips back and forth, under and over, till they made a seat for the chair.

He split a long, straight sapling down the middle. He pegged one end of half of it to the side of the seat, and curved it up and over and down, and pegged the other end to the other side of the seat. That made a high, curved back to the chair. He braced it firmly, and then he wove the thin willow-strips across and up and down, under and over each other, till they filled in the chairback.

With the other half of the split sapling Pa made arms for the chair. He curved them from the front of the seat to the chair-back, and he filled them in with woven strips.

Last of all, he split a larger willow which had grown in a curve. He turned the chair upside down, and he pegged the curved pieces to its legs, to make the rockers. And the chair was done.

Then they made a celebration. Ma took off her apron and smoothed her smooth brown hair. She pinned her gold pin in the front of her collar. Mary tied the string of beads around Carrie's neck. Pa and Laura put Mary's pillow on the chair-seat, and set Laura's pillow against its back. Over the pillows Pa spread the quilt from the little bed. Then he took Ma's hand and led her to the chair, and he put Baby Carrie in her arms.

Ma leaned back into the softness. Her thin cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled with tears, but her smile was beautiful. The chair rocked her gently and she said, “Oh, Charles, I haven't been so comfortable since I don't know when.”

Then Pa took his fiddle, and he played and sang to Ma in the firelight. Ma rocked and 196 Baby Carrie went to sleep, and Mary and Laura sat on their bench and were happy.

The very next day, without saying where he was going, Pa rode away on Patty. Ma wondered and wondered where he had gone. And when Pa came back he was balancing a watermelon in front of him on the saddle.

He could hardly carry it into the house. He let it fall on the floor, and dropped down beside it.

“I thought I'd never get it here,” he said. “It must weigh forty pounds, and I'm as weak as water. Hand me the butcher knife.”

“But, Charles!” Ma said. "You mustn't. Mrs.

Scott said—"

Pa laughed his big, pealing laugh again. “But that's not reasonable,” he said. "This is a good melon. Why should it have fever 'n' ague?

Everybody knows that fever 'n' ague comes from breathing the night air."

“This watermelon grew in the night air,”

said Ma.

“Nonsense!” Pa said. “Give me the butcher knife. I'd eat this melon if I knew it would give me chills and fever.”

“I do believe you would,” said Ma, handing him the knife.

It went into the melon with a luscious sound.

The green rind split open, and there was the bright red inside, flecked with black seeds.

The red heart actually looked frosty. Nothing had ever been so tempting as that watermelon, on that hot day.

Ma would not taste it. She would not let Laura and Mary eat one bite. But Pa ate slice after slice after slice, until at last he sighed and said the cow could have the rest of it.

Next day he had a little chill and a little fever. Ma blamed the watermelon. But next day she had a chill and a little fever. So, they did not know what could have caused their fever 'n' ague.

No one knew, in those days, that fever V ague was malaria, and that some mosquitoes give it to people when they bite them.

The prairie had changed. Now it was a dark yellow, almost brown, and red streaks of sumac lay across it. The wind wailed in the tan grass, and it whispered sadly across the curly, short buffalo grass. At night the wind sounded like someone crying.

Pa said again that this was a great country. In the Big Woods he had had to cut hay and cure it and stack it and put it in the barn for winter.

Here on the High Prairie, the sun had cured the wild grass where it stood, and all winter the mustangs and the cow could mow their own hay. He needed only a small stack, for stormy days.

Now the weather was cooler and he would go to town. He had not gone while the summer was hot, because the heat would be too hard on Pet and Patty. They must pull the wagon twenty miles a day, to get to town in two days. And he did not want to be away from home any longer than he had to.

He stacked the small stack of hay by the barn. He cut the winter's wood and corded it in a long cord against the house. Now he had only to get meat enough to last while he was gone, so he took his gun and went hunting.

Laura and Mary played in the wind outdoors. When they heard a shot echo in the woods along the creek, they knew that Pa had got some meat.

The wind was cooler now, and all along the creek bottoms flocks of wild ducks were rising, flying, settling again. Up from the creek came long lines of wild geese, forming in V's for their flight farther south. The leader in front called to those behind him. “Honk?” he called. All down the lines the wild geese answered, one after another. “Honk.” “Honk.”

“Honk.” Then he. cried, “Honk!” And, 200 “Honk-honk! Honk-honk!” the others answered him. Straight away south he flew on his strong wings, and the long; lines evenly followed him.

The tree-tops along the creek were colored now. Oaks were reds and yellows and browns and greens. Cottonwoods and sycamores and walnuts were sunshiny yellow. The sky was not so brightly blue, and the wind was rough.

That afternoon the wind blew fiercely and it was cold. Ma called Mary and Laura into the house. She built up the fire and drew her rocker near it, and she sat rocking Baby Carrie and singing softly to her "By lo, baby bunting.

Papa's gone a-hunting To get a rabbit skin To wrap the baby bunting in."

Laura heard a little crackling in the chimney.

Ma stopped singing. She bent forward and looked up the chimney. Then she got up quietly, put Carrie in Mary's arms, pushed Mary down into the rocking-chair, and hurried 201 outdoors. Laura ran after her.

The whole top of the chimney was on fire.

The sticks that made it were burning up. The fire was roaring in the wind and licking toward the helpless roof. Ma seized a long pole and struck and struck at the roaring fire, and burning sticks fell all around her.

Laura didn't know what to do. She grabbed a pole, too, but Ma told her to stay away. The roaring fire was terrible. It-could burn the whole house and Laura couldn't do anything.

She ran into the house. Burning sticks and coals were falling down the chimney and rolling out on the hearth. The house was full of smoke. One big, blazing stick rolled on the floor, under Mary's skirts. Mary couldn't move, she was so scared.

Laura was too scared to think. She grabbed the back of the heavy rocking-chair and pulled with all her might. The chair with Mary and Carrie in it came sliding back across the floor.

Laura grabbed up the burning stick and flung it into the fireplace just as Ma came in.

“That's a good girl, Laura, to remember I told you never to leave fire on the floor,” Ma said. She took the water-pail and quickly and quietly poured water on the fire in the fireplace. Clouds of steam came out.

Then Ma said, “Did you burn your hands?”

She looked at Laura's hands, but they were not burned, because she had thrown the burning stick so quickly.

Laura was not really crying. She was too big to cry. Only one tear ran out of each eye and her throat choked up, but that was not crying.

She hid her face against Ma and hung on to her tight. She was so glad the fire had not hurt Ma.

“Don't cry, Laura,” Ma said, stroking her hair. “Were you afraid?”

“Yes,” Laura said. “I was afraid Mary and Carrie would burn up. I was afraid the house would burn up and we wouldn't have any house. I'm—I'm scared now!”

Mary could talk now. She told Ma how Laura had pulled the chair away from the fire.

Laura was so little, and the chair was so big and so heavy with Mary and Carrie in it, that Ma was surprised. She said she didn't know how Laura had done it.

“You were a brave girl, Laura,” she said. But Laura had really been terribly scared.

“And no harm's done,” Ma said. “The house didn't burn up, and Mary's skirts didn't catch fire and burn her and Carrie. So everything is all right.”

When Pa came home he found the fire out.

The wind was roaring over the low stone top of the chimney and the house was cold. But Pa said he would build up the chimney with green sticks and fresh clay, and plaster it so well that it wouldn't catch fire again.