The Long Winter (13 page)

He ate dinner in a hurry and hurried out to hitch David to the sled alone. Now they knew what Pa was doing and they were not worried, but they were sorry for David, falling through the deceitful snowdrifts, and for Pa, unhitching and helping the horse out and hitching him to the sled again.

Still, the whole afternoon was sunny, without a cloud in the sky, and before dark Pa had hauled two small loads of hay.

“David follows me like a dog,” Pa told them all at supper. “When he breaks through the snow he stands still until I trample a solid path up. Then he follows me up out of the hole as carefully as if he understood all about it and I bet he does. Tomorrow I'm going to hitch him onto the sled by a long rope, so I won't have to unhitch him when he falls in. I'll only have to help him out and then, on the long rope, he can haul the sled around the hole.”

After supper Pa went to Fuller's Hardware to buy the rope. He came back soon with news. The work train with the snowplow had got halfway through the Tracy cut that day.

“It takes longer this time to get through,” he said,

“because every time they cleared the track they threw the snow up on both sides, making the cut that much deeper. But Woodworth at the depot says they'll likely get a train through by day after tomorrow.”

“That's good news,” said Ma. “I'll be thankful to have some meat again.”

“That's not all,” Pa went on. "We're going to get the mail, train or no train. They're sending it through by team, and Gilbert, the mail carrier, is leaving here for Preston in the morning. He's making a sled now.

So if you want to send a letter, you can."

“There is that letter I've been writing to the folks in Wisconsin,” said Ma. "I wasn't intending to finish it so soon, but perhaps I may as well."

So she brought the letter to the tablecloth under the lamp, and after she had thawed the ink bottle they all sat around the table thinking of last things to say while Ma wrote them down with her little red pen that had a mother-of-pearl handle shaped like a feather. When her neat, clear writing filled the paper she turned it and filled it again crosswise. On the other side of the paper she did the same thing so that every inch of paper held all the words that it possibly could.

Carrie had been only a baby in Wisconsin. She did not remember the aunts and uncles and the cousins Alice and Ella and Peter, and Grace had never seen them. But Laura and Mary remembered them perfectly.

“Tell them I still have my doll, Charlotte,” said Laura, “and I wish we had one of Black Susan's great-great-great-grand kittens.”

“'Descendants' takes less space,” said Ma. “I'm afraid this letter will be overweight.”

“Tell them there isn't a cat in this whole country,”

said Pa.

“I wish to goodness there was,” said Ma. “We need one for the mice.”

“Tell them we wish they could come spend Christmas with us this year like they did in the Big Woods,”

said Mary.

'“Ay they did,' Mary,” said Ma.

“My goodness!” Laura exclaimed. “When is Christmas? I'd forgotten all about it. It's almost here.”

Grace bounced on Mary's lap and cried, “When is Christmas coming? When is Santa Claus?”

Mary and Carrie had told her all about Santa Claus.

Now Mary did net know what to say to her and neither did Laura. But Carrie spoke up.

“Maybe Santa Claus can't get here this winter, Grace, on account of the storms and the snow,” Carrie said. “You see, even the train can't.”

“Santa Claus comes on a sled,” Grace said anxiously, looking at them with wide blue eyes. “He can come, can't he, Pa? Can't he, Ma?”

“Of course he can, Grace,” said Ma. Then Laura said stoutly, “Santa Claus can come anywhere.”

“Maybe he'll bring us the train,” said Pa.

In the morning he took the letter to the post office and there he saw Mr. Gilbert put the mailbag into the sled and drive away, well wrapped in buffalo robes.

He had twelve miles to go to Preston.

“He'll meet another team there with mail from the East and bring it back,” Pa explained to Ma. “He ought to get back tonight, if he doesn't have too much trouble crossing the sloughs.”

“He has good weather for the trip,” Ma said.

“I'd better be taking advantage of it myself,” said Pa.

He went out to harness David to the sled by the long rope. He hauled one load of hay that morning. At noon, while they sat at table, the light darkened and the wind began to howl.

“Here she comes!” Pa said. “I hope Gilbert made it safe to Preston.”

T he cold and the dark had come again. Thenails in the roof were white with frost, the windowpanes were gray. Scraping a peephole only showed the blank, whirling whiteness against the other side of the glass. The stout house quivered and shook; the wind roared and howled. Ma kept the rag rugs tightly against the bottom of the doors, and the cold came crawling in.

It was hard to be cheerful. Morning and afternoon, holding the clothesline, Pa went to the stable to feed the horses, the cow, and the heifer. He had to be sparing of the hay. He came in so cold that he could hardly get warm. Sitting before the oven, he took Grace on his knee and hugged Carrie close to him, and he told them the stories of bears and panthers that he used to tell Mary and Laura. Then in the evening he took his fiddle and played the merry tunes.

When it was bedtime, and the cold upstairs must be faced, Pa played them up to bed.

“Ready now, all together!” he said. “Right, left, right, left—March!”

Laura went first, carrying the wrapped hot flatiron, Mary came behind with her hand on Laura's shoulder.

Last marched Carrie with the other flatiron and the music went with them up the stairs.

"March! March! Eskdale and Liddesdale!

All the blue bonnets are over the border!

Many a banner spread flutters about your head, Many a crest that is famous in story.

Mount, and make ready, then,

Sons of the mountain glen,

Fight! for your homes and the old Scottish glory!"

It helped some. Laura hoped that she seemed cheerful enough to encourage the others. But all the time she knew that this storm had blocked the train again. She knew that almost all the coal was gone from the pile in the lean-to. There was no more coal in town. The kerosene was low in the lamp though Ma lighted it only while they ate supper. There would be no meat until the train came. There was no butter and only a little fatmeat dripping was left to spread on bread. There were still potatoes, but no more than flour enough for one more bread baking.

When Laura had thought all this, she thought that surely a train must come before the last bread was gone. Then she began to think again about the coal, the kerosene, the little bit of dripping left, and the flour in the bottom of the flour sack. But surely, surely, the train must come.

All day and all night, the house trembled, the winds roared and screamed, the snow scoured against the walls and over the roof where the frosty nails came through. In the other houses there were people, there must be lights, but they were too far away to seem real.

In the back room behind the feed store, Almanzo was busy. He had taken saddles, harness, and clothes from the end wall and piled them on the bed. He had pushed the table against the cupboard and in the cleared space he had set a chair for a sawhorse.

He had set a frame of two-by-fours a foot from the end wall. Now he was sawingboards one by one and nailing them on the frame. The rasping of the saw and the hammering were hardly louder than the blizzard's noise.

When he had built the inner wall up halfway, he took out his jackknife and ripped open a sack of his seed wheat. He lifted up the hundred-and-twenty-five-pound sack and carefully let the wheat pour into the space between the new wall and the old one.

“I figure she'll hold it all,” he said to Royal who sat whittling by the stove. "When I build all the way up so the bin won't show."

“It's your funeral,” said Royal. “It's your wheat.”

“You bet your life it's my wheat!” Almanzo replied.

“And it's going into my ground, come spring.”

“What makes you think I'd sell your wheat?” Royal demanded.

“You're pretty near sold out of grain already,”

Almanzo answered. "This blizzard'll let up some time, or. it'll be the first one that didn't, and soon as it does the whole town'll come piling in here to buy wheat.

Harthorn and Loftus have got just three sacks of flour left between 'em, and this storm'll hold up the train till after Christmas at best."

“All that don't mean I'd sell your wheat,” Royal insisted.

"Maybe not, but I know you, Roy. You're not a farmer, you're a storekeeper. A fellow comes in here and looks around and says, 'What's the price of your wheat?' You say, 'I'm sold out of wheat.' He says,

'What's that in those sacks?' You tell him, ' That's not my wheat, it's Manzo's.' So the fellow says, 'What'll you boys sell it for?' And don't try to tell me you'll say,

'We won't sell it.' No siree, Roy, you're a storekeeper.

You'll say to him, 'What'll you give?'"

“Well, maybe I would,” Royal admitted. “What's the harm in that?”

"The harm is that they'll bid u p prices sky-high before a train gets through. I'll be out hauling hay or somewhere and you'll figure that I wouldn't refuse such a price, or you'll think you know better than I do what's for my best interests. You never would believe I mean what I say when I say it, Royal Wilder."

“Well, well, keep your shirt on, Manzo,” said Royal.

“I am considerable older than you be and maybe I do know best.”

“Maybe you do and maybe you don't. Be that as it may be, I'm going to run my own business my own way. I'm nailing up my seed wheat so nobody'll see it and nobody'll bring up any question about it and it'll b e right here when seed time comes.”

“All right, all right,” Royal said. He went on carefully whittling a linked chain out of a stick of pine andAlmanzo, bracing his legs, lifted the sacks one by one to his shoulder and let the wheat pour into its hiding place. Now and then a heavier blow of the winds shook the walls and now and then the red-hot stove puffed out smoke. A louder roar of the storm made them both listen and Almanzo said, “Golly, this one's a daisy!”

“Roy,” he said after a while, “whittle me a plug to fit this knothole, will you? I want to get this job done before chore time.”

Royal came to look at the knothole. He rounded it with his knife and chose a piece of wood that would make a plug to fit.

"If prices go up like you say, you're a fool not to sell your wheat,“he remarked. ”They'll have the train running before spring. You can buy your seed back and make a profit like I'm figuring on doing."

“You said that before,” Almanzo reminded him.

“I'd rather be sure than sorry. You don't know when the train'll be running and you don't know they'll ship in seed wheat before April.”

“Nothing's sure but death and taxes,” said Royal.

“Seedtime's pretty sure to come around,” Almanzo said. “And good seed makes a good crop.”

“You talk like Father,” Royal mentioned. He tried the plug against the knothole and set to whittling it again. "If the train don't get through in a couple of weeks or so, I wonder how this town'll hold out.

There's not much left in the grocery stores."

“Folks manage to get along when they've got to,”

said Almanzo. “Pretty near everybody brought out supplies last summer like we did. And we can make ours stretch till warm weather if we must.”

The blizzard stopped at last. After three days of its ceaseless noise, the stillness rang in Laura's ears.

Pa hurried away to get a load of hay and when he came back he put David in the stable. The sun was still glittering on the snow, there was no cloud in the northwest, and Laura wondered why he stopped hauling hay.

“What's wrong, Charles?” Ma asked quietly when Pa came in.

Pa answered, "Gilbert made it to Preston and back.

He's brought the mail!"

It was as if Christmas had happened unexpectedly.

Ma hoped for the church paper. Laura and Mary and Carrie hoped that Reverend Alden had sent them something to read; sometimes he did. Grace was excited because they were excited. It was hard to wait for Pa to come back from the post office.

He was gone a long time. As Ma said, it did no good to be impatient. Every man in town was at the post office and Pa must wait his turn.

When at last he came, his hands were full. Ma reached eagerly for the church papers and Laura and Carrie both tried to take the bundle of Youths Companions. There were newspapers too.

“Here! Here!” Pa laughed. "Don't mob a fellow!

And that's not the whole of it. Guess what I got!"

“A letter? Oh Pa, did you get a letter?” Laura cried.

“Who is it from?” Ma asked.

“You've got the Advances, Caroline,” Pa replied.

"And Laura and Carrie've got the Youths Companions.

I've got the Inter-Ocean and the Pioneer Press. Mary gets the letter."

Mary's face shone. She felt the letter's size and thickness. “A big, fat letter! Please read it,Ma.”

So Ma opened the letter and read it aloud.

The letter was from Reverend Alden. He was sorry that he had not been able to come back and help orga-nize a church last spring, but he had been sent farther north. He hoped to be with them when spring came again. The children of the Sunday School in Minnesota were sending a bundle of Youths Companions to the girls, and would send another bundle next year.

His church had shipped them a Christmas barrel and he hoped the clothing would fit. As his own Christmas gift and some slight return for their hospitality to him and to Reverend Stuart last winter at Silver Lake, he had put in a Christmas turkey. He wished them all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

There was a little silence when Ma had finished reading. Then she said, “We have this good letter, anyway.”

“Gilbert brought word that they're putting on a double work crew and two snowplows at the Tracy cut,” Pa told them. “We may get the barrel by Christmas.”