By The Shores Of Silver Lake (19 page)

In the morning she was surprised. There was hardly time to talk; so many men were there for breakfast, she could hardly wash the dishes fast enough, and when at last she could empty the dishpan and hang it up there was hardly time to sweep and scrub the muddy floor before she must begin peeling potatoes for dinner. She had only a glimpse of the sunny, cold, blue-and-white-and-brown March day outdoors, while she emptied the dishpan. And she saw Pa driving a load of lumber toward the townsite.

“What on earth is Pa doing?” she asked Ma.

“He's putting up a building on the townsite,” said Ma.

“Who for?” Laura asked, beginning to sweep. Her fingers were shrunken in ridges, from being so long in the dishwater.

'“For whom,' Laura,” Ma corrected her. “For himself,” and she tugged through the doorway an armful of bedding that she was taking outdoors to air.

“I thought we were going to move to the claim,”

Laura said when Ma came in.

“We have six months before we must build on the homestead,” said Ma. “Lots in town are going so fast your Pa thinks he can make money by building on one. He's using the lumber from the railroad shanties and putting up a store building to sell.”

“Oh, Ma, isn't it wonderful, all the money we're making!” Laura said, sweeping vigorously while Ma gathered another armful of bedding.

“Draw the broom, Laura; don't flip it, that raises the dust,” said Ma. “Yes, but we mustn't count chickens before they're hatched.”

That week the house filled with steady boarders, men who were building houses on the townsite or on their homestead claims. From dawn until far into the night, Ma and Laura hardly had time to catch their breaths. All day long there was a racket of wagons passing. Teamsters were hauling lumber from Brookings as fast as they could, and yellow skeletons of buildings rose every day. Already you could see Main Street growing up from the muddy ground along the railroad grade.

Every night beds covered the floor of the big room and the lean-to. Pa slept on the floor with the boarders so that Mary and Laura and Carrie could move into the bedroom with Ma and Grace, and more boarders' beds covered the whole floor of the attic.

The supplies were all gone, and now Ma had to buy flour and salt and beans and meat and corn meal, so she did not make so much money. Supplies cost three and four times as much as they cost in Minnesota, she said, because the railroad and the teamsters charged so much for the hauling. The roads were so muddy that the teamsters could not haul large loads. Anyway, she made a few cents' profit on every meal, and any little bit they could earn was better than nothing.

Laura did wish she could get time to see the building that Pa was putting up. She wished she could talk to him about the building, but he ate with the boarders and hurried away with them. There was no time for talking now.

Suddenly, there on the brown prairie where nothing had been before, was the town. In two weeks, all along Main Street the unpainted new buildings pushed up their thin false fronts, two stories high and square on top. Behind the false fronts the buildings squatted under their partly shingled, sloping roofs.

Strangers were already living there; smoke blew gray from the stovepipes, and glass windows glinted in the sunshine.

One day Laura heard a man say, through the clattering at the dinner table, that he was putting up a hotel.

He had got in the night before with a load of lumber hauled from Brookings. His wife was coming out on the next load. “We'll be doing business within a week,” he said.

“Glad to hear it, sir,” Pa said. “What this town needs is a hotel. You'll be doing a land-office business, as quick as you can get started.”

As suddenly as the hurry had begun, it ended. One evening Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary and Carrie and Grace sat down to supper. No one else was there.

Around them was their own house again; no one else was in it. A beautiful quiet was there, peaceful and cool, like the silence when a blizzard stops, or the restfulness of rain after a long fever of drought.

“I declare! I didn't know I was so tired,” Ma sighed peacefully.

“I'm glad you and the girls are through working for strangers,” said Pa.

They did not talk much. It was so pleasant to eat supper again alone.

“Laura and I counted up,” said Ma. “We made over forty dollars.”

“Forty-two dollars and fifty cents,” said Laura.

“We'll put it aside and hang on to it if we can,” said Pa. If they could save it, Laura thought, it would be that much toward sending Mary to college.

“I expect the surveyors to show up any day now,”

Pa went on. “Better be ready to move so I can turn over this house to them. We can live in town till I can sell the building.”

“Very well, Charles. We'll wash the bedding tomorrow and start getting ready to pack,” said Ma.

Next day Laura helped to wash all the quilts and blankets. She was glad to lug the loaded basket out to the clothesline in the sweet, chilly March weather.

Teamsters' wagons were slowly pulling along the muddy road toward the west. Only an edging of ice remained around the shores of Silver Lake and among the dead slough grass. The lake water was blue as the sky, and far away in the shimmering sky an arrow of tiny black dots came up from the south. Faintly from far away came the wild, lonely sound of the wild geese calling.

Pa came hurrying to the house. “First spring flock of geese's in sight!” he said. “How about roast goose for dinner?” He hurried away with his gun.

“Mm, it will be good,” Mary said. “Roast goose with sage stuffing! Won't you like that, Laura!”

“No, and you know I don't,” Laura answered. “You know I don't like sage. We'll have onion in the stuffing.”

“But I don't like onion!” Mary said crossly. “I want sage!”

Laura sat back on her heels where she was scrubbing the floor. “I don't care if you do. We won't have it! I guess I can have what I want sometimes!”

“Why, girls!” Ma said astonished. “Are you quarreling?”

“I want sage!” Mary insisted.

“And I want onion!” Laura cried.

“Girls, girls,” Ma said in distress. “I can't think what's got into you. And I never heard of anything so silly! You both know we have no sage, nor onion either.”

The door opened, and Pa came in. Soberly he put his gun in its place.

“Not a goose within gunshot,” he said. “ The whole flock rose when it came to Silver Lake and kept on going north. They must have seen the new buildings and heard the noise. Looks like hunting's going to be slim around here from now on.”

All around the unfinished, little town the endless prairie lay greening in the sunshine for new grass was starting everywhere. Silver Lake was blue, and the large white clouds in the sky were mirrored in the clear water.

Slowly Laura and Carrie walked on either side of Mary toward the town. Behind them came the loaded wagon, Pa and Ma and Grace riding in it, and the cow Ellen tied behind. They were all moving to Pa's building in town.

The surveyors had come back. Mr. and Mrs. Boast were gone to their claim. There was nowhere to live except in Pa's unfinished building, and in all the hus-tle, bustle and busyness of the town there was no one that Laura knew. She did not feel all alone and happy on the prairie now; she felt lonely and scared. The town's being there made the difference.

Men were busily working on the new buildings all up and down Main Street. Shavings and sawdust and ends of boards were scattered on the muddy and trampled young grass in the street, and wheels had cut deep ruts through it. Through the frames of buildings that did not have the siding on yet, and down alleys between the buildings, and beyond both ends of the street, the clean, green prairie rippled far away and quiet under the clear sky, but the town was troubled and noisy with rasping saws and pounding hammers and the thud of boxes and sharp crash of boards unloaded from wagons, and men loudly talking.

Timidly Laura and Carrie waited to let Pa's wagon come up, and they led Mary along beside it until they came to the corner where Pa's building was.

The tall false fronts loomed up, cutting off half the sky. Pa's building had a front door, with a glass window at each side. The door opened into one long room. Far at its other end was a back door, and near it a side window. The floor was wide boards, and the walls were boards with daylight coming through the cracks and knotholes. That was all.

“This place isn't very warm nor tight, Caroline,” Pa said. "I haven't had time to put on the siding nor to ceil the inside, and there's no cornice under the eaves to cover that big crack. But we'll be warm enough, now that spring has come, and I'll soon get the building finished."

“You must build a stair, so we can get into the loft,”

said Ma. “Now I shall just stretch a curtain across to make two rooms so we will have a place to sleep until you can put up a partition. Warm as this weather is, we don't need siding and ceiling.”

Pa put Ellen and the horses in a small stable at the back of the lot. Then he set up the stove and stretched a rope for Ma's curtain. Ma hung sheets on it while Laura helped Pa set up the bedstead. Then Carrie helped her make the beds while Mary amused Grace and Ma got supper.

The lamplight shone on the white curtain while they ate, but the end of the long room was shadowy and the chilly air coming through all the cracks made the lamp flicker and the curtain move. There was too much empty space in that building but all the time Laura felt that strangers were close outside it. Lamplight shone out of strangers' windows, footsteps passed with a lantern, and voices were talking though she could not hear the words. Even when the night was still, she felt crowded by so many other people so near. She lay in bed with Mary in the dark and airy room, and stared at the vague white curtain and listened to the stillness and felt trapped in town.

Sometime in the night she dreamed of wolves'

howling, but she was in bed and the howling was only the wind. She was cold. She was too cold to wake up.

The covers seemed very thin. She snuggled closer to Mary and burrowed her cold head under the thin covers. In her sleep she was tight and shivering, till finally she grew cosily warm. Thenext she knew, she heard Pa singing.

"Oh, I am as happy as a big sunflower That nods and bends in the breezes!

And my heart is as light as the wind that blows The leaves from off the treeses!"

Laura opened one eye and peeked from under the covers. Snow fell softly onto her face, a great lot of snow.

“Ow!” she said.

“Lie still, Laura!” said Pa. “All you girls lie still. I'll shovel you out in a minute. Soon as I get this fire started and the snow off Ma.”

Laura heard the stove lids clatter. She heard the scratch of a match and the crackle of burning kindling. She did not stir. The covers were heavy over her and she was warm as toast.

Soon Pa came behind the curtain. “There's a good foot of snow on these beds!” he exclaimed. “But I'll have it off in three jerks of a lamb's tail. Lie still now, girls!”

Laura and Mary lay perfectly still while Pa shoveled the snow off their covers, and the cold came through them. They lay shivering and watching while with his shovel he took the snow off Carrie and Grace. Then he went to the stable to shovel out Ellen and the horses.

“Get up, girls!” Ma called. “Bring your clothes and dress by the fire.”

Laura jumped out of the warm bed and grabbed her clothes from the chair where she had laid them the night before. She shook the snow off them and ran barefoot over snow scattered on the cold floor, to the stove beyond the curtain. As she ran she said, “Wait, Mary. I'll come back in a minute and shake the snow off your clothes.”

She shook out her petticoats and her dress so quickly that the snow had no time to melt on them. Quickly she shook her stockings and emptied the snow from her shoes, and put them on. She hurried so fast that when she was dressed she was quite warm. Then she shook the snow from Mary's clothes and helped her quickly to the warmth that the oven gave out.

Carrie came running with little squeals and jumps.

“Oo, the snow burns my feet!” she said, laughing though her teeth chattered from cold. It was so exciting to wake up in a snowdrift that she wouldn't wait in bed until Laura could shake her clothes. Laura helped button her up, then they put on their coats, and with the stove shovel and the broom they scooped and swept back the snow into piles in the far corners of the long room.

Snow lay in piles and drifts all along the street.

Every lumber pile was a mountain of snow, and from the drifts the bare timbers of unfinished buildings stuck up thin and yellow. The sun was up, and all the slopes of snow were rosy and all the hollows blue.

Through every crack the air came in as cold as ice.

Ma warmed her shawl by the fire, wrapped it snugly around Grace, and brought her to Mary, in the rocking chair pulled close to the oven. The hot stove made the air fairly warm all around it. Ma set the table almost against the stove, and breakfast was ready when Pa came back.

“This building's a pretty good sieve!” Pa said.

“Snow blew through every crack and in under the eaves. That was a genuine blizzard while it lasted.”

“To think we went all winter without a blizzard, and now we get one in April,” Ma marveled.

“Lucky it struck in the night when folks were under cover,” said Pa. “If it had hit in the daytime, somebody would have been lost and frozen for sure. Nobody looks for a blizzard at this time of year.”

“Well, the cold can't last long,” Ma encouraged herself. '“April showers bring May flowers.' What will an April blizzard bring?”

“For one thing, a partition,” said Pa. “I'll have a partition up to keep in the heat around this stove before I'm a day older.”

And he did. All day by the stove he sawed and hammered. Laura and Carrie helped hold the boards, and in Mary's lap Grace played with the shavings. Thenew partition made a little room, with the stove and the table and the beds in it, and its window looking out at all the green prairie covered with snow.

Then Pa brought in more snowy lumber and he began ceiling the walls. “I'll stop some of the cracks anyway,” he said.