These Happy Golden Years (16 page)

On Saturday she walked to town and sewed all day for Miss Bell. Pa was breaking sod at home, to make a larger wheat field, so Laura stopped at the post office to see if 177

there were any mail, and there was a letter from Mary!

She could hardly wait to get home, to hear Ma read it, for it would tell when Mary was coming home.

No one had written Mary about the new sitting room and the organ that was waiting for her there. Never had anyone in the family had such a surprise as that organ would be for Mary.

“Oh, Ma! a letter from Mary!” she cried, bursting in.

“I'll finish the supper, Ma, you go read it,” said Carrie.

So Ma took a hairpin from her hair, and as she carefully slit the envelope she sat down to read the letter. She un-178

folded the sheet and began to read, and it was as if all the light went out of the house.

Carrie gave Laura a frightened look, and after a moment Laura asked quietly, “What is it, Ma?”

“Mary does not want to come home,” Ma said. Then, quickly, “I do not mean that. She asks if she may spend her vacation with Blanche, at Blanche's home. Stir the potatoes, Carrie; they'll be too brown.”

All through supper they talked about it. Ma read the letter aloud. Mary wrote that Blanche's home was not far from Vinton, and she very much wanted that Mary should visit it. Her mother was writing to Ma, to invite Mary. Mary would like to go, if Pa and Ma said she might.

“I think she should,” Ma said. “It will be a change for her, and do her good.”

Pa said, “Well,” and so it was settled. Mary was not coming home that year.

Later, Ma said to Laura that Mary would be at home to stay when she finished college, and it might be that she would never have another opportunity to travel. It was nice that she could have this pleasant time and make so many new friends while she was young. “She will have it to remember,” Ma said.

But that Saturday night, Laura felt that nothing would ever be right again. Next morning, though the sun was shining and the meadow larks singing, they did not mean anything, and as she rode to church in the wagon 179

she said to herself that she would ride in a wagon all the rest of her life. She was quite sure now that Almanzo would take Nellie Oleson driving that day.

Still, at home again she did not take off her brown poplin, but put her big apron on as she had done before.

Time went very slowly, but at last it was two o'clock, and looking from the window Laura saw the colts come dashing over the road from town. They trotted up and stopped at the door.

“Would you like to go for a buggy ride?” Almanzo asked as Laura stood in the doorway.

“Oh, yes!” Laura answered. “I'll be ready in a minute.”

Her face looked at her from the mirror, all rosy and smiling, as she tied the blue ribbon bow under her left ear.

In the buggy she asked, “Wouldn't Nellie go?”

“I don't know,” Almanzo replied. After a pause he said in disgust, “She is afraid of horses.” Laura said nothing, and in a moment he continued, "I wouldn't have brought her the first time, but I overtook her walking in the road.

She was walking all the way to town to see someone, but she said she'd rather go along with us. Sundays at her house are so long and lonely that I felt sorry for her, and she seemed to enjoy the drive so much. I didn't know you girls disliked each other."

Laura was amazed, that a man who knew so much about farming and horses could know so little about a girl 180

like Nellie. But she said only, “No, you wouldn't know, because you did not go to school with us. I will tell you what I'd like to do, I'd like to take Ida driving.”

“We will, sometime,” Almanzo agreed. “But today is pretty fine, just by ourselves.”

It was a beautiful afternoon. The sun was almost too warm, and Almanzo said that the colts were so well broken now that they could raise the buggy top. So together, each with a hand, they raised it and pressed the hinge of the braces straight to hold it up. Then they rode in its shade with the gentle wind blowing through the open sides.

After that day, nothing was ever said about the next Sunday, but always at two o'clock Almanzo drove around the corner of Pearson's livery barn, and Laura was ready when he stopped at the door. Pa would look up from his paper and nod good-by to her, then go on reading, and Ma would say, “Don't be out too late, Laura.”

June came and the wild prairie roses bloomed. Laura and Almanzo gathered them beside the road and filled the buggy with the fragrant blossoms.

Then one Sunday at two o'clock the corner of Pearson's barn remained empty. Laura could not imagine what might have happened, till suddenly the colts were at the door, and Ida was in the buggy, laughing merrily.

Almanzo had gone by the Reverend Brown's, and per-suaded Ida to come. Then for a surprise, he had crossed the Big Slough west of the town road; this brought them 181

to Pa's land a little south of the house, and while Laura watched toward the north, they had come up from the opposite direction.

They drove that day to Lake Henry, and it was the merriest of drives. The colts behaved beautifully. They stood quietly while Ida and Laura filled their arms with the wild roses and climbed back into the buggy. They nibbled at the bushes by the road while Almanzo and the girls watched the little waves ripple along the shores of the lakes on either hand.

The road was so narrow and so low that Laura said, “I should think the water might be over the road sometimes.”

“Not since I have known it,” Almanzo answered, “but perhaps, many years or ages ago, the two lakes were one.”

Then for a while, they sat in silence and Laura thought how wild and beautiful it must have been when the twin lakes were one, when buffalo and antelope roamed the prairie around the great lake and came there to drink, when wolves and coyotes and foxes lived on the banks and wild geese, swans, herons, cranes, ducks, and gulls nested and fished and flew there in countless numbers.

“Why did you sigh?” Almanzo asked.

“Did I?” said Laura. “I was thinking that wild things leave when people come. I wish they wouldn't.”

“Most people kill them,” he said.

“I know,” Laura said. “I can't understand why.”

“It is beautiful here,” said Ida, "but we are a long way 182

from home and I promised Elmer I'd go to church with him tonight."

Almanzo tightened the reins and spoke to the colts while Laura asked, “Who's Elmer?”

“He is a young man who has a claim near Father Brown's and he boards at our place,” Ida told her. “He wanted me to go walking with him this afternoon, but I thought I'd rather go with you, this once. You've never seen Elmer...McConnell,” she remembered to add.

“There are so many new people, and I can't keep track even of the ones I know,” Laura said.

“Mary Power is going with the new clerk in Ruth's bank,” Ida told her.

“But Cap!” Laura exclaimed. “What about Cap Garland?”

“Cap's smitten with a new girl who lives west of town,” Almanzo told them.

“Oh, I think it's a pity we don't all go in a crowd any more,” Laura lamented. “What fun the sleighing parties were, and now everyone's paired off.”

“Oh, well,” Ida said. “'In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.'”

“Yes, or it's this,” and Laura sang,

“Oh whistle and I'll come to you, my lad, Oh whistle and I'll come to you, my lad, Though father and mither and a' should gae mad, Oh whistle and I'll come to you, my lad.”

“Would you?” Almanzo asked.

“Of course not!” Laura answered. “That's only a song.”

“Better whistle for Nellie, she'd come,” Ida teased, and then she said soberly, “But she is afraid of these horses. She says they aren't safe.”

Laura laughed delightedly. “They were a little wild, the time she was with us,” she said.

“But I can't understand it. They are perfectly gentle,”

Ida insisted.

Laura only smiled and tucked the dust robe in more securely. Then she saw Almanzo looking sidewise at her behind Ida's head, and she let her eyes twinkle at him.

She didn't care if he did know that she had frightened the colts to scare Nellie, on purpose.

All the miles home they rode talking and singing, until they came to Laura's home, and as she left them she asked, “Won't you come with us next Sunday, Ida?”

Blushing, Ida answered, “I would like to, but I...I think I'm going walking with Elmer.”

J une was gone, and Laura's school was out. The organ was paid for. Laura learned to play a few chords with Pa's fiddle, but she would rather listen to the fiddle alone, and after all, the organ was for Mary's enjoyment when Mary came home.

One evening Pa said, “Tomorrow's Fourth of July. Do you girls want to go to the celebration in town?”

“Oh no, let's have it as it was last year,” Carrie said. “I don't want to be in a crowd where they shoot off firecrackers. I'd rather have our own firecrackers at home.”

“I want lots of candy at home,” Grace put in her vote.

“I suppose Wilder will be around with that team and buggy, Laura?” Pa asked.

“He didn't say anything about it,” Laura answered.

“But I don't want to go to the celebration, anyway.”

“Is this unanimous, Caroline?” Pa wanted to know.

“Why, yes, if you agree with the girls,” Ma smiled at them all. “I will plan a celebration dinner, and the girls will help me cook it.”

All the next morning they were very busy. They baked fresh bread, a pieplant pie, and a two-egg cake. Laura went to the garden, and with her fingers dug carefully into the hills of potatoes to find new potatoes. She gathered enough potatoes for dinner, without injuring one plant by disturbing its roots. Then she picked the first of the green peas, carefully choosing only the plump pods.

Ma finished frying a spring chicken while the new potatoes and the peas were cooked and given a cream dressing. The Fourth of July dinner was just ready, all but steeping the tea, when Pa came home from town.

He brought lemons for afternoon lemonade, firecrackers for the evening, and candy for all the time after dinner.

As he gave the packages to Ma, he said to Laura, “I saw Almanzo Wilder in town. He and Cap Garland were hitching up a new team he's got. That young fellow missed his vocation; he ought to be a lion tamer. Those horses are wilder than hawks. It was all he and Cap could do to handle them. He said to tell you if you want to go for a buggy ride this afternoon, be ready to climb in when he drives up, for he won't be able to get out to help you. Said to tell you, there's another team to break.”

“I do believe he wants to break your neck!” said Ma.

“And I hope he breaks his own, first.”

This was so unlike Ma's gentle self that they all stared at her.

“Wilder will manage the horses, Caroline. Don't worry,” Pa said confidently. “If ever I saw a born horse-man, he's one.”

“Do you really not want me to go, Ma?” Laura asked.

“You must use your own judgment, Laura,” Ma replied. “Your Pa says it is safe, so it must be.”

After they had slowly enjoyed that delicious dinner, Ma told Laura to leave the dishes and go put on her poplin if she intended to go driving. “I'll do up the work,” Ma said.

“But you have worked all morning,” Laura objected.

“I can do it and still have time to dress.”

“Neither of you need bother about the dishes,” Carrie spoke up. “I'll wash, and Grace will wipe. Come on, Grace. You and I are older than Mary and Laura were when they did the work.”

So Laura was ready and waiting at the door when Almanzo came. She had never seen the horses before.

One was a tall bay, with black mane and tail. The other was a large brown horse, spotted with white. On one side of his brown neck a white spot resembled a rooster.

A streak of white in the brown mane looked like the rooster's tail.

Almanzo stopped this strange team and Laura went toward the buggy, but the brown horse reared straight 187

up on his hind legs, with front feet pawing the air, while the bay horse jumped ahead. Almanzo loosened the reins and as the horses sprang away he called, “I'll be back.”

Laura waited while he drove around the house. When he stopped the horses again, she went quickly to the buggy, but stepped back as again the spotted horse reared and the bay jumped.

Pa and Ma were beside Laura; Carrie stood in the doorway clutching a dish towel, and Grace looked out beside her. They all waited while Almanzo drove around the house again.

Ma said, “You'd better not to try to go, Laura,” but Pa told her, “Caroline, she will be all right. Wilder will handle them.”

This time as Almanzo stopped the horses he turned them a little, cramping the buggy to give Laura a better chance to get between the wheels. “Quick,” he said.

Hoops and all, Laura moved quickly. Her right hand grasped the folded-down braces of the buggy top, her right foot touched the buggy step, and as the spotted horse reared and the bay horse leaped, her left foot stepped into the buggy and she dropped into the seat.

“Drat these hoops!” she muttered, while she settled them inside the speeding buggy, and covered her brown poplin with the dust robe.

“Don't touch the buggy top!” Almanzo said, and then they were silent. He was fully occupied in keeping control of the horses, and Laura made herself small on her 188

side of the seat to keep out of the way of his straining arms as he tried to pull the horses down out of their run.

They went north because they were headed that way.

As they streaked through town Laura caught a glimpse of a thickly scrambling crowd getting out of the way, and Cap Garland's grin as he waved his hand to her.

Later she thought with satisfaction that she had sewed the ribbon ties to her poke bonnet herself; she was sure the stitches would not give way.

The horses settled to a fast trot, and Almanzo remarked. “They said you wouldn't go, and Cap said you would.”

“Did he bet I would?” Laura asked.

“I didn't, if that's what you want to know,” Almanzo answered. “I wouldn't bet about a lady. Anyway, I wasn't sure how you'd like this circus I'm driving.”