On The Banks Of Plum Creek (4 page)

Laura was never afraid of gentle, white Spot, but Pete and Bright were so big that they would scare anybody.

One evening all the cattle were angry. They came bellowing and pawing, and when they reached the big rock they did not go by.

They ran around it, bawling and fighting.

Their eyes rolled, their horns tossed and slashed at each other. Their hoofs raised a smudge of dust and their clashing horns were frightful.

Mary was so scared that she could not move.

Laura was so scared that she jumped right off the rock. She knew she had to drive Spot and Pete and Bright into the stable.

The cattle towered up in the dust. Their feet trampled and their horns slashed and they bawled. But Johnny helped to head Pete and Bright and Spot toward the stable. Jack helped, too. Jack growled at their heels and Laura ran yelling behind them. And with his big stick Johnny drove the herd away.

Spot went into the stable. Then Bright went in. Pete was going in, and Laura was not scared now, when suddenly big Pete wheeled around. His horns hooked and his tail stood up, and he galloped after the herd.

Laura ran in front of him. She waved her arms and yelled. He bellowed, and went thundering toward the creek bank.

Laura ran with all her might, to get in front of him again. But her legs were short and Pete's were long. Jack came running as fast as he could. But he only made Pete jump longer jumps.

Pete jumped right on top of the dugout.

Laura saw his hind leg go down, down through the roof. She saw him sit on it. That big ox was going to fall on Ma and Carrie, and it was Laura's fault because she had not stopped him.

He heaved and pulled his leg up. Laura had not stopped running. She was in front of Pete now and Jack was in front of him, too.

They chased Pete into the stable and Laura put up the bars. She was shaking all over and her legs were weak. Her knees kept hitting together.

Ma had come running up the path, carrying Carrie. But no harm had been done. There was only a hole through the roof where Pete's leg had come down and gone up again. Ma said it had given her a turn to see it coming down through the ceiling.

“But there's no great damage done,” she said.

She stuffed the hole full of grass, and swept out the earth that had fallen into the dugout. Then she and Laura laughed because it was funny to live in a house where a steer could step through the roof. It was like being rabbits.

Next morning while Laura was doing the dishes, she saw some little dark things rolling down the whitewashed wall. They were crumbs of earth. She looked up to see where they came from, and she jumped away from there quicker than a rabbit. A big rock smashed down, and the whole ceiling poured down over it.

The sun shone down into the house and the air was full of dust. Ma and Mary and Laura choked and sneezed, looking up at the sky where a ceiling should have been. Carrie sat sneezing in Ma's arms. Jack rushed in, and when he saw the sky overhead he growled at it. Then he sneezed.

“Well, that settles it,” said Ma.

“What does, Ma ? ”

Laura asked. She

thought Ma meant something was settling the dust.

“This does,” Ma said. “Pa will have to mend that roof tomorrow.”

Then they carried out the rock and the earth and the bunches of hay that had fallen.

Ma swept and swept again with the willow-twig broom.

That night they slept in their house, under the starry sky. Such a thing had never happened before.

Next day Pa had to stay at home to build a new roof. Laura helped him carry fresh willow boughs and she handed them to him while he wedged them into place. They put clean fresh grass thick over the willows. They piled earth on the grass. Then over the top Pa laid strips of sod cut from the prairie.

He fitted them together and Laura helped him stamp them down.

“That grass will never know it's been moved,” Pa said. “In a few days you won't be able to tell this new roof from the prairie.”

He did not scold Laura for letting Pete get away. He only said, “It's no place for a big ox to be running, right over our roof!”

When Mr. Nelson's harvesting was done, Pa had paid for Spot. He could do his own harvesting now.

He sharpened the long, dangerous scythe that little girls must never touch, and he cut down the wheat in the small field beyond the stable.

He bound it in bundles and stacked them.

Then every morning he went to work on the level land across the creek. He cut the prairie grass and left it to dry in the sunshine.

He raked it into piles with a wooden rake. He yoked Pete and Bright to the wagon, and he hauled the hay and made six big stacks of it over there.

At night he was always too tired, now, to play the fiddle. But he was glad because when the hay was stacked he could plow that stubble land, and that would be the wheat-field.

One morning at daylight three strange men came with a threshing-machine. They threshed Pa's stack of wheat. Laura heard the harsh machinery noises while she drove Spot through the dewy grass, and when the sun rose chaff flew golden in the wind.

The threshing was done and the men went away with the machine before breakfast. Pa said he wished Hanson had sown more wheat.

“But there's enough to make us some flour,” he said. “And the straw, with what hay I've cut, will feed the stock through the winter. Next year,” he said, “we'll have a crop of wheat that will amount to something!”

When Laura and Mary went up on the prairie to play, that morning, the first thing they saw was a beautiful golden straw-stack.

It was tall and shining bright in the sunshine. It smelled sweeter than hay.

Laura's feet slid in the sliding, slippery straw, but she could climb faster than straw slid. In a minute she was high on top of that stack.

She looked across the willow-tops and away beyond the creek at the far land. She could see the whole, great, round prairie. She was high up in the sky, almost as high as birds.

Her arms waved and her feet bounced on the springy straw. She was almost flying, 'way high up in the windy sky.

“I'm flying! I'm flying!” she called down to Mary. Mary climbed up to her.

“Jump! Jump!” Laura said. They held hands and jumped, round and round, higher and higher. The wind blew and their skirts flapped and their sunbonnets swung at the ends of the sunbonnet strings around their necks.

“Higher! Higher!” Laura sang, jumping.

Suddenly the straw slid under her. Over the edge of the stack she went, sitting in straw, sliding faster and faster. Bump! She landed at the bottom. Plump! Mary landed on her.

They rolled and laughed in the crackling straw. Then they climbed the stack, and slid down it again. They had never had so much fun.

They climbed up and slid, climbed and slid, until there was hardly any stack left in the middle of loose heaps of straw.

Then they were sober. Pa had made that straw-stack and now it was not at all as he had left it. Laura looked at Mary and Mary looked at her, and they looked at what was left of that straw-stack. Then Mary said she was going into the dugout, and Laura went quietly with her. They were very good, helping Ma and playing nicely with Carrie, until Pa came to dinner.

When he came in he looked straight at Laura, and Laura looked at the floor.

“You girls mustn't slide down the straw-stack any more,” Pa said. “I had to stop and pitch up all that loose straw.”

“We won't, Pa, ” Laura said, earnestly, and Mary said, “No, Pa, we won't.”

After dinner Mary washed the dishes and Laura dried them. Then they put on their sunbonnets and went up the path to the prairie. The straw-stack was golden-bright in the sunshine.

“Laura! What are you doing!” said Mary.

“I'm not doing anything!” said Laura. “I'm not even hardly touching it!”

“You come right away from there, or I'll tell Ma!” said Mary.

“Pa didn't say I couldn't smell it,” said Laura.

She stood close to the golden stack and sniffed long, deep sniffs. The straw was warmed by the sun. It smelled better than wheat kernels taste when you chew them.

Laura burrowed her face in it, shutting her eyes and smelling deeper and deeper.

“Mmm!” she said.

Mary came and smelled it and said,

“Mmm!”

Laura looked up the glistening, prickly, golden stack. She had never seen the sky so blue as it was above that gold. She could not stay on the ground. She had to be high up in that blue sky.

“Laura!” Mary cried. “Pa said we mustn't!”

Laura was climbing. “He did not, either!”

she contradicted. "He did not say we must not climb up it. He said we must not slide down it.

I'm only climbing."

“You come right straight down from there,”

said Mary.

Laura was on top of the stack. She looked down at Mary and said, like a very good little girl, “I am not going to slide down. Pa said not to.”

Nothing but the blue sky was higher than she was. The wind was blowing. The green prairie was wide and far. Laura spread her arms and jumped, and the straw bounded her high.

“I'm flying! I'm flying!” she sang. Mary climbed up, and Mary began to fly, too.

They bounced until they could bounce no higher. Then they flopped flat on the sweet warm straw. Bulges of straw rose up on both sides of Laura. She rolled onto a bulge and it sank, but another rose up. She rolled onto that bulge, and then she was rolling faster and faster; she could not stop.

“Laura!” Mary screamed. “Pa said—” But Laura was rolling. Over, over, over, right down that straw-stack she rolled and thumped in straw on the ground.

She jumped up and climbed that straw-stack again as fast as she could. She flopped and began to roll again. “Come on, Mary!” she shouted. “Pa didn't say we can't roll!”

Mary stayed on top of the stack and argued.

“I know Pa didn't say we can't roll, but—”

“Well, then!” Laura rolled down again.

“Come on!” she called up. “It's lots of fun!”

“Well, but I—” said Mary. Then she came rolling down.

It was great fun. It was more fun than sliding. They climbed and rolled and climbed and rolled, laughing harder all the time. More and more straw rolled down with them. They waded in it and rolled each other in it and climbed and rolled down again, till there was hardly anything left to climb.

Then they brushed every bit of straw off their dresses, they picked every bit out of their hair, and they went quietly into the dugout.

When Pa came from the hay-field that night, Mary was busily setting the table for supper. Laura was behind the door, busy with the box of paper dolls.

“Laura,” Pa said, dreadfully, “come here.”

Slowly Laura went out from behind the door.

“Come here,” said Pa, “right over here by Mary.”

He sat down and

he

stood

them before him,

side by side. But it was Laura he looked at.

He said, sternly, “You girls have been sliding down the straw-stack again.”

“No, Pa, ” said Laura.

“Mary!” said Pa. “Did you slide down the straw-stack?”

“N-no, Pa, ” Mary said.

“Laura!” Pa's voice was terrible. "Tell me again, DID YOU SLIDE DOWN THE STRAWSTACK?"

“No, Pa, ” Laura answered again. She looked straight into Pa's shocked eyes. She did not know why he looked like that.

“Laura!” Pa said.

“We did not slide, Pa, ” Laura explained.

“But we did roll down it.”

Pa got up quickly and went to the door and stood looking out. His back quivered. Laura and Mary did not know what to think.

When Pa turned around, his face was stern but his eyes were twinkling.

“All right, Laura,” he said. "But now I want you girls to stay away from that straw-stack.

Pete and Bright and Spot will have nothing but hay and straw to eat this winter. They need every bite of it. You don't want them to be hungry, do you?"

“Oh no,Pa ! ” they said.

“Well, if that straw's to be fit to feed them, it MUST—STAY—STACKED. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Pa, ” said Laura and Mary.

That was the end of their playing on the straw-stack.

Now plums were ripening in the wild-plum thickets all along Plum Creek.

Plum trees were low trees. They grew close together, with many little scraggly branches all strung with thin-skinned, juicy plums. Around them the air was sweet and sleepy, and wings hummed.

Pa was plowing all the land across the creek, where he had cut the hay. Early before the sun came up, when Laura went to drive Spot to meet the cattle at the gray boulder, Pete and Bright were gone from the stable. Pa had yoked them to the plow and gone to work.

When Laura and Mary had washed the breakfast dishes, they took tin pails and went to pick plums. From the top of their house, they could see Pa plowing. The oxen and the plow and Pa crawled slowly along a curve of the prairie. They looked very small, and a little smoke of dust blew away from the plow.

Every day the velvety brown-dark patch of plowed land grew bigger. It ate up the silvery-gold stubble field beyond the hay-stacks. It spread over the prairie waves. It was going to be a very big wheat-field, and when some day Pa cut the wheat, he and Ma and Laura and Mary would have everything they could think of.

They would have a house, and horses, and candy every day, when Pa made a wheat crop.

Laura went wading through the tall grasses to the plum thickets by the creek. Her sunbonnet hung down her back and she swung her tin pail. The grasses were crisping yellow now, and dozens of little grasshoppers jumped crackling away from Laura's swishing feet.

Mary came walking behind in the path Laura made and she kept her sunbonnet on.