On The Banks Of Plum Creek (3 page)

It did not move and neither did Laura. She wondered what would happen if she poked it.

It might change to some other shape. She poked it gently with the short stick.

A frightful snarl came out of it. Its eyes sparkled mad, and fierce white teeth snapped almost on Laura's nose.

Laura ran with all her might. She could run fast. She did not stop running until she was in the dugout.

“Goodness, Laura!” Ma said. “You'll make yourself sick, tearing around so in this heat.”

All that time, Mary had been sitting like a little lady, spelling out words in the book that Ma was teaching her to read. Mary was a good little girl.

Laura had been bad and she knew it. She had broken her promise to Pa. But no one had seen her. No one knew that she had started to go to the swimming-hole. If she did not tell, no one would ever know. Only that strange animal knew, and it could not tell on her. But she felt worse and worse inside.

That night she lay awake beside Mary. Pa and Ma sat in the starlight outside the door and Pa was playing his fiddle.

“Go to sleep, Laura,” Ma said, softly, and softly the fiddle sang to her. Pa was a shadow against the sky and his bow danced among the great stars.

Everything was beautiful and good, except Laura. She had broken her promise to Pa.

Breaking a promise was as bad as telling a lie.

Laura wished she had not done it. But she had done it, and if Pa knew, he would punish her.

Pa went on playing softly in the starlight.

His fiddle sang to her sweetly and happily. He thought she was a good little girl. At last Laura could bear it no longer.

She slid out of bed and her bare feet stole across the cool earthen floor. In her nightgown and nightcap she stood beside Pa. He drew the last notes from the strings with his bow and she could feel him smiling down at her.

“What is it, little half-pint?” he asked her.

“You look like a little ghost, all white in the dark.”

“Pa,” Laura said, in a quivery small voice,

“I—I—started to go to the swimming-hole.”

“You did!” Pa exclaimed. Then he asked,

“Well, what stopped you?”

“I don't know,” Laura whispered. “It had gray fur and it—it flattened out flat. It snarled.”

“How big was it?” Pa asked.

Laura told him all about that strange animal.

Pa said, “It must have been a badger.”

Then for a long time he did not say anything and Laura waited. Laura could not see his face in the dark, but she leaned against his knee and she could feel how strong and kind he was.

“Well,” he said at last, “I hardly know what to do, Laura. You see, I trusted you. It is hard to know what to do with a person you can't trust. But do you know what people have to do to anyone they can't trust?”

“Wh—at?” Laura quavered.

“They have to watch him,” said Pa. "So I guess you must be watched. Your Ma will have to do it because I must work at Nelson's. So tomorrow you stay where Ma can watch you.

You are not to go out of her sight all day. If you are good all day, then we will let you try again to be a little girl we can trust.

“How about it, Caroline?” he asked Ma.

“Very well, Charles,” Ma said out of the dark. “I will watch her tomorrow. But I am sure she will be good. Now back to bed, Laura, and go to sleep.”

Thenext day was a dreadful day.

Ma was mending, and Laura had to stay in the dugout. She could not even fetch water from the spring, for that was going out of Ma's sight. Mary fetched the water, Mary took Carrie to walk on the prairie. Laura had to stay in.

Jack laid his nose on his paws and waggled, he jumped out on the path and looked back at her, smiling with his ears, begging her to come out. He could not understand why she did not.

Laura helped Ma. She washed the dishes and made both beds and swept the floor and set the table. At dinner she sat bowed on her bench and ate what Ma set before her. Then she wiped the dishes. After that she ripped a sheet that was worn in the middle. Ma turned the strips of muslin and pinned them together, and Laura whipped the new seam, over and over with tiny stitches.

She thought that seam and that day would never end.

But at last Ma rolled up her mending and it was time to get supper.

“You have been a good girl, Laura,” Ma said. "We will tell Pa so. And tomorrow morning you and I are going to look for that badger.

I am sure he saved you from drowning, for if you had gone to that deep water you would have gone into it. Once you begin being naughty, it is easier to go on and on, and sooner or later something dreadful happens."

“Yes, Ma,” Laura said. She knew that now.

The whole day was gone. Laura had not seen that sunrise, nor the shadows of clouds on the prairie. The morning-glories were withered and that day's blue flags were dead. All day Laura had not seen the water running in the creek, the little fishes in it, and the water-bugs skating over it. She was sure that being good could never be as hard as being watched.

Next day she went with Ma to look for the badger. In the path she showed Ma the place where he had flattened himself on the grass.

Ma found the hole where he lived. It was a round hole under a clump of grass on the prairie bank. Laura called to him and she poked a stick into the hole.

If the badger was at home, he would not come out. Laura never saw that old gray badger again.

Out on the prairie beyond the stable there was a long gray rock. It rose up above the waving grasses and nodding wild flowers. On top it was flat and almost smooth, so wide that Laura and Mary could run on it side by side, and so long that they could race each other. It was a wonderful place to play.

Gray-green lichens with ruffled edges grew flat on it. Wandering ants crossed it. Often a butterfly stopped to rest there. Then Laura watched the velvety wings slowly opening and closing, as if the butterfly breathed with them. She saw the tiny feet on the rock, and the feelers quivering, and even the round, lid-less eyes.

She never tried to catch a butterfly. She knew that its wings were covered with feathers too tiny to see. A touch would brush off those tiny feathers and hurt the butterfly.

The sun was always warm on the big gray rock. Sunshine was always on the waving prairie grasses, and birds and butterflies in the sunshine. Breezes always blew there, warm and perfumed from the sun-warmed grasses.

Far away, toward the place where the sky came down to the land, small dark things moved on the prairie. They were cattle, grazing.

Laura and Mary never went to play on the gray rock in the mornings, and they did not stay there when the sun was going down, because morning and evening the cattle went by.

They went by in a herd, with trampling hoofs and tossing horns. Johnny Johnson, the herd boy, walked behind them. He had a round red face, and round blue eyes, and pale, whitey-yellow hair. He grinned, and did not say anything. He couldn't. He did not know any words that Laura and Mary knew.

Late one afternoon Pa called them from the creek. He was going to the big rock to see Johnny Johnson bring the cattle home, and Laura and Mary could go with him.

Laura skipped with joy. She had never been so close to a herd of cattle, and she would not be afraid when Pa was there. Mary came slowly, staying close to Pa.

The cattle were already quite near. Their bawling was growing louder. Their horns tossed above the herd, and a thin, golden dust rose up around them.

“Here they come!” Pa said. “Scramble up!”

He boosted Mary and Laura onto the big rock.

Then they looked at the cattle.

Red backs and brown backs, black and white and spotted backs, surged by. Eyes rolled and tongues licked flat noses; heads tipped wickedly to gouge with fierce horns.

But Laura and Mary were safe on the high gray rock, and Pa stood against it, watching.

The last of the herd was going by, when both Laura and Mary caught sight of the pret-tiest cow they had ever seen.

She was a small white cow. She had red ears, and in the middle of her forehead there was a red spot. Her small white horns curved in-ward, pointing to that red spot. And on her white side, right in the middle, there was a perfect circle of red spots as big as roses.

Even Mary jumped up and down.

“Oh, look! Oh, look!” Laura shouted. “Pa, see the cow with the wreath of roses!”

Pa laughed. He was helping Johnny Johnson drive that cow away from the others. He called back: “Come along, girls! Help me drive her into the stable!”

Laura jumped off the rock and ran to help him, shouting, “Why, Pa, why? Oh, Pa, are we going to keep her?”

The little white cow went into the stable, and Pa answered, “She's our cow!”

Laura turned and ran as fast as she could.

She pounded down the path and rushed into the dugout, yelling: “Oh, Ma, Ma! Come see the cow! We've got a cow! Oh, Ma, the pretti-est cow!”

Ma took Carrie on her arm and came to see.

“Charles!” she said.

“She's ours, Caroline!” said Pa. “How do you like her?”

“But, Charles!” Ma said.

“I got her from Nelson,” Pa told her. "I'm paying him by day's work. Nelson's got to have help, haying and harvesting. Look at her.

She's a good little milch cow. Caroline, we're going to have milk and butter."

“Oh, Charles!” said Ma.

Laura did not wait to hear any more. She turned around and ran again, as fast as she could go, along the path and down into the dugout. She grabbed her tin cup from the supper table and she rushed back again.

Pa tied the pretty white cow in her own little stall, beside Pete and Bright. She stood quietly chewing her cud. Laura squatted down beside her, and holding the tin cup carefully in one hand, she took hold of that cow with her other hand and squeezed just as she had seen Pa do when he milked. And sure enough a streak of warm white milk went straight into the tin cup.

“My goodness! What is that child doing!”

Ma exclaimed.

“I'm milking, Ma,” said Laura.

“Not on that side,” Ma told her, quickly.

“She'll kick you.”

But the gentle cow only turned her head and looked at Laura with gentle eyes. She looked surprised, but she did not kick.

“Always milk a cow from the right side, Laura,” said Ma. But Pa said: “Look at the little half-pint! Who taught you to milk?”

Nobody had taught Laura. She knew how to milk a cow; she had watched Pa do it. Now they all watched her. Streak after streak of milk zinged into the tin cup; then streak after streak purred and foamed, till the white foam rose up almost to the cup's brim.

Then Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura each took a big swallow of that warm, delicious milk, and what was left Carrie drank up. They felt good inside and they all stood looking at that beautiful cow.

“What is her name?” Ma asked.

Pa's big laugh rang out and he said, “Her name is Reet.”

“Reet?” Ma repeated. “What outlandish name is that?”

“The Nelsons called her some Norwegian name,” said Pa. “When I asked what it meant, Mrs. Nelson said it was a reet.”

“What on earth is a reet?” Ma asked him.

“That's what I asked Mrs. Nelson,” said Pa.

"She kept on saying, 'a reet,' and I guess I looked as foolish as I felt, for finally she said,

'a reet of roses.'"

“A wreath!” Laura shouted. “A wreath of roses!”

Then they all laughed till they could not laugh any more, and Pa said: "It does beat all.

In Wisconsin we lived among Swedes and Germans. In Indian Territory we lived among the Indians. Now here in Minnesota all the neighbors are Norwegians. They're good neighbors, too. But I guess our kind of folks is pretty scarce."

“Well,” said Ma, “we're not going to call this cow Reet, nor yet Wreath of Roses. Her name is Spot.”

Now Laura and Mary had chores to do.

Every morning before the sun was up they had to drive Spot to the big gray rock to meet the herd, so that Johnny could take her with the other cattle to eat grass all day. And every afternoon they had to remember to meet the herd and put Spot in the stable.

In the mornings they ran through the dewy chill grass that wet their feet and dabbled the hems of their dresses. They liked to splash their bare feet through the grass all strung with dewdrops. They liked to watch the sun rise over the edge of the world.

First everything was gray and still. The sky was gray, the grass was gray with dew, the light was gray, and the wind held its breath.

Then sharp streaks of green came into the eastern sky. If there was a little cloud, it turned pink. Laura and Mary sat on the damp, cold rock, hugging their chilly legs. They rested their chins on their knees and watched, and in the grass below them Jack sat, watching, too. But they never could see when the sky first began to be pink.

The sky was very faintly pink, then it was pinker. The color went higher up the sky. It grew brighter and deeper. It blazed like fire, and suddenly the little cloud was glittering gold. In the center of the blazing color, on the flat edge of the earth, a tiny sliver of sun ap-peared. It was a short streak of white fire.

Suddenly the whole sun bounded up, round and huge, far bigger than the ordinary sun and throbbing with so much light that its round-ness almost burst.

Laura couldn't help blinking. While she blinked just once, the sky turned blue, the golden cloud vanished. The everyday sun shone over the prairie grasses where thousands of birds were flying and twittering.

In the evenings when the cattle came home, Laura and Mary always ran fast to get up on the big rock before all those heads and horns and trampling legs reached them.

Pa was working for Mr. Nelson now, and Pete and Bright had no work to do. They went with Spot and the other cattle to eat grass.