The Long Winter (21 page)

“You tell 'em you had nothing to say about it, Roy,”

Almanzo answered. “I ' m free, white, and twenty-one... or as good as. Anyway, this is a free country and I'm free and independent. I do as I please.”

“Don't go off half-cocked, Manzo,” Royal urged him. “Think it over.”

“I been thinking it over,” said Almanzo.

Royal was silent. The y sat quietly eating in the steady warmth of the coal fire and the strong light shining from the lamp and its bright tin reflector. The walls trembled a little and the shadows on them slightly quivered under the blows of winds that squealed along the eaves, split shrieking at the corners, and always roared like a waterfall. Almanzo took another stack of pancakes.

Suddenly Royal laid down his knife and pushed back his plate.

“One thing's sure,” he said. “You're not going to tackle any such foolhardy trip alone. If you're bound and determined to do it, I'm going along with you.”

“See here!” Almanzo exclaimed. “We can't both of us go!”

Next morning was still. The sun shone bright and cold and only the round-and-round growl of the coffee grinder, the rush of a steady wind, and the crackling of the hay sounded in the lean-to where Laura and Mary worked. The y were very cold. Neither could twist more than two or three sticks of hay without going to thaw their hands over the stove.

The y could barely keep the fire alive; they could not pile up a store of sticks and get time to help with the washing. So Ma put the washing by till later. “Perhaps it will be warmer tomorrow,” she said, and she helped twist hay. She spelled Mary and Laura in turns so that they could spell Carrie at the coffee grinder.

Pa did not come home until late afternoon. The afternoon meal of bread and tea was waiting when he came at last.

“Gee whillikins, it's a cold day,” he said.

He had been able to haul only one load of hay that day. The haystacks were buried in snow. He had to dig the hay out of enormous drifts. Fresh snow had covered the sled's old tracks and changed the look of the slough. David had continually fallen deep into hidden pockets of slough grass.

“Did your nose freeze, Pa?” Grace asked him anxiously. Of course in this weather Pa's ears and his nose froze so that he had to rub them with snow to thaw them. He pretended to Grace that his nose grew longer every time it froze, and Grace pretended to believe that it did. This was their own special joke.

“Froze it five or six times today,” Pa answered her, tenderly feeling his red, swollen nose.

“If spring doesn't come soon, I'm going to have a nose as long as an elephant's. Ears like an elephant's, too.” That made Grace laugh.

After they had eaten the daily bread, Pa twisted hay enough to last till bedtime. He had done the chores when he put David in the stable. There was still a little daylight left, and he said, “I believe I'll go over to Bradley's drugstore and watch the checker game awhile.”

“D o , Charles,” Ma said. “Why don't you play some checkers yourself?”

“Well, you see, those bachelors spend all their time this winter at checkers and cards,” Pa answered.

“The y are good checker players, having nothing else to do. Too good for me. So I'll just look on but I don't know's there's anything more enjoyable than watching a good game of checkers.”

He was not gone long. The drugstore was so cold, he said, that there was no game of checkers that day.

But there was news.

“Almanzo Wilder and Cap Garland are going after that wheat south of town.”

Ma's face went still and her eyes opened as if she saw something frightening. “How far did you say it was?”

“No one knows exactly,” Pa said. “Nor exactly where it is. There's only a rumor that a settler around there somewhere raised wheat last year. Nobody around here sold wheat to anybody in town, so it must be there, if he is, and if he raised wheat. Foster says somebody told him the settler was wintering on his claim. The boys are going to try to find it. Loftus has put up the money for them to buy all that they can haul.”

Grace began to clamor at his knee, trying to climb up to measure his nose with her finger. He lifted her absently. Even Grace, little as she was, saw that this was no time for a joke. She looked anxiously up at him and then at Ma, and sat still on Pa's knee.

“When are they starting?” Ma asked.

"First thing tomorrow morning. The y built a sled for Cap Garland today. Both Wilders were going but they decided that one of them ought to stay in case the one who goes gets caught in a blizzard."

No one said anything for a moment.

“The y may make it all right,” Pa said. “So long as this clear weather holds, they'll be able to travel. It may hold for two or three days. You can't tell.”

“That's the trouble,” said Ma. “You can't tell.”

“If they do make it,” Pa pointed out, “we'll have wheat enough to last us till spring. If the wheat's there and they find it.”

In the night Laura felt the shock and heard the howls of the blizzard winds. There had been only one short day of rest. The blizzard would let nobody start out tomorrow to look for wheat.

In the third night of that storm a stillness woke Almanzo. The blizzard had stopped. He reached out through the cold to his vest hanging on a chair, got out his watch and a match, and saw that the time was nearly three o'clock.

In winter's dark, cold mornings he still missed his father's routing him out of bed. Now he had to rout himself out of warm blankets into the cold. He must light the lantern, stir up the fire, and break the ice in the water pail himself, and he could choose between getting his own breakfast and going hungry.

Three o'clock on winter mornings was the only time that he was not glad to be free and independent.

Once out of bed and into his clothes, though, he liked early morning better than any other part of the day. The air was fresher then than at any other time.

Low in the eastern sky hung the morning star. The temperature was ten below zero, the wind blew steadily. The day promised to be fair.

When he rode down Main Street on the hay-sled, the sun had not yet risen but the morning star had melted in an upward rush of light. The Ingalls building stood solid black against the endless eastern prairie covered with snow. Down Second Street, beyond it, the two stables with their haystacks looked small, and beyond them Garland's little house had a speck of light in its kitchen. Cap Garland came riding up on his sled, driving his buckskin gelding.

He waved to Almanzo and Almanzo lifted his own arms, stiff in the weight of woolen sleeves. Their faces were wrapped in mufflers and there was no need to say anything. Three days ago, before the last blizzard struck, they had made their plan. Almanzo drove on without stopping and Cap Garland swung the buckskin into Main Street behind him.

At the end of the short street Almanzo turned southeast to cross the neck of Big Slough at its nar-rowest place. The sun was rising. The sky was a thin, cold blue and the earth to its far horizon was covered with snowdrifts, flushed pink and faintly shadowed with blue. The horse's breath made a white cloud about his head.

The only sounds were the dumping of Prince's hoofs on the hard snow and the rasp of the sled's runners. There was not a track on the waves of snow, not a print of rabbit's paw or bird's claws. There was no trace of a road, no sign that any living thing had ever been on the frozen snow fields where every curve was changed and unknown. Only the wind had furrowed them in tiny wavelets, each holding its own faint line of blue shadow, and the wind was blowing a spray of snow from every smooth, hard crest.

There was something mocking in the glitter of that trackless sea where every shadow moved a little and the blown snow spray confused the eyes searching for lost landmarks. Almanzo judged directions and distance as well as he could, where everything was changed and uncertain, and he thought, “Well, we'll have to make it by guess and by golly!”

He guessed that he had struck the neck of the buried Big Slough somewhere near the place where he crossed to haul hay. If he was right, the snow underneath the sled would be packed hard and in five minutes or less he would be safe on upland again. He glanced back. Cap had slowed the buckskin and was following at a cautious distance. With no warning, Prince went down.

“Whoa-oa, steady!” Almanzo shouted through his muffler but he shouted calmly and soothingly.

Only the horse's snorting head stuck up from the grassy air-pocket in front of the sled. The sled ran on, sliding forward; there is no way to put brakes on a sled, but it stopped in time.

“Whoa, Prince. Steady now,” Almanzo said, drawing the reins firmly. “Steady, steady.” Buried deep in snow, Prince stood still.

Almanzo jumped off the sled. He unhitched the whiffletree from the chain fastened to the sled's runners. Cap Garland drove around him and stopped.

Almanzo went to Prince's head and wallowing down into the broken snow and tangling dead grass he took hold of the reins under the bits. “Steady, Prince old fellow, steady, steady,” he said, for his own flounder-ings were frightening Prince again.

Then he trampled down the snow until he could persuade Prince that it was firm enough to step on. Holding Prince by the bits again he urged him forward till with a mighty heave he burst up out of the hole and Almanzo led him rapidly climbing up out of the hole to the solid snow again. He led him on to Cap Garland's sled and handed over the reins to Cap.

Cap's light eyes showed that he was cheerfully grinning under the muffler. “So that's the way you do it!” he said.

“Nothing much to it,” Almanzo replied.

“Fine day for a trip,” Cap remarked.

“Yep, it's a fine, large morning!” Almanzo agreed.

Almanzo went to pull his empty sled sidewise behind the large hole that Prince and he had made in the snow. He liked Cap Garland. Cap was lighthearted and merry but he would fight his weight in wildcats.

When Cap Garland had reason to lose his temper his eyes narrowed and glittered with a look that no man cared to stand up to. Almanzo had seen him make the toughest railroader back down.

Taking a coiled rope from his sled Almanzo tied one end to the sled's chain. The other end he tied to Prince's whiffletree, and with Prince helping him pull he guided the sled around the hole. Then he hitched Prince to the sled, coiled the long rope again, and drove on.

Cap Garland fell in behind him once more. He was really only a month younger than Almanzo. The y were both nineteen. But because Almanzo had a homestead claim, Cap supposed that he was older than twenty-one. Partly for that reason, Cap treated Almanzo with respect. Almanzo made no objection to that.

Leading the way, he drove toward the sun until he was sure he had crossed Big Slough. Then he headed southward toward the twin lakes, Henry and Thomp-son.

The only color now on the endless snow fields was a pale reflection of the blue sky. Everywhere tiny glints sparkled sharply. The glitter stabbed Almanzo's eyes, screwed almost shut in the slot between his cap and muffler. The icy wool blew out and sucked back against his nose and mouth with every breath.

His hands grew too cold to feel the reins, so he shifted the reins from hand to hand, beating the free arm against his chest to make the blood flow warm in it.

When his feet grew numb he stepped off the sled and ran beside it. His heart, pumping fast, forced warmth to his feet until they tingled and itched and burned, and he jumped onto the sled again.

“Nothing like exercise to warm you up!” he shouted back to Cap.

“L e t me in by the stove!” Cap shouted, and he jumped off his sled and ran beside it.

So they went on, running, riding, and thumping their chests, then running again, while the horses briskly trotted. “Say, how long do we keep this up?”

Cap shouted once, joking. “Till we find wheat, or hell freezes!” Almanzo answered.

“You can skate on it now!” Cap shouted back.

The y went on. The rising sun poured down sunshine that seemed colder than the wind. There was no cloud in the sky, but the cold steadily grew more in-tense.

Prince went down again in some unknown little slough. Cap drove up and stopped. Almanzo unhitched Prince, got him up on the firm snow, hauled the sled around the hole, hitched up again.

“S e e the Lone Cottonwood anywhere ahead?” he asked Cap.

“Nope. But I can't depend on my eyes,” Cap answered. The sun-glare made them see black spots everywhere.

The y rewound their mufflers, shifting the ice-patches away from their raw faces. To the far horizon all around them, there was nothing but glittering snow and the cruel wind blowing.

“Lucky so far,” Almanzo said. “Gone down only twice.”

He stepped onto his sled and started and heard Cap shout. Swinging in to follow, the buckskin had gone down.

Cap dug him out, hauled the sled around the hole, and hitched up again.

“Nothing like exercise to keep a fellow warm!” he reminded Almanzo.

From the top of the next low swell they saw the Lone Cottonwood, bare and gaunt. Snow covered the twin lakes and the low bushes that grew between them. Only the lonely tree's bare top rose up from the endless whiteness.

As soon as he saw it, Almanzo turned westward quickly to keep well away from the sloughs around the lakes. On the upland grass the snow was solid.

The Lone Tree was the last landmark. It was soon lost again in the trackless waves of snow. There was no road, no trace nor track of any kind to be seen anywhere. No one knew where the settler lived who had raised wheat. No one was even sure that he was still in that country. It might be that he had gone out for the winter. It might be that there had never been such a man. There was only a rumor that someone had told somebody that a man living somewhere in that region had raised wheat.

One wave of the endless frozen snow-sea was like another. Beneath the snow-spray blown from their crests, the low prairie swells seemed to come on forever, all the same. The sun slowly rose higher and the cold increased.

There was no sound but the horses' hoofs and the rasp of the sled runners that made no tracks on the ice-hard snow, and the rushing sound of the wind that faintly whistled against the sled.