Mr. Scott had breathed a kind of gas that stays deep in the ground. It stays at the bottom of wells because it is heavier than the air. It cannot be seen or smelled, but no one can breathe it very long and live. Pa had gone down into that gas to tie Mr. Scott to the rope, so that he could be pulled up out of the gas.
When Mr. Scott was able, he went home. Before he went he said to Pa: “You were right about that candle business, Ingalls. I thought it was all foolishness and I would not bother with it, but I’ve found out my mistake.”
“Well,” said Pa, “where a light can’t live, I know I can’t. And I like to be safe when I can be. But all’s well that ends well.”
Pa rested awhile. He had breathed a little of the gas and he felt like resting. But that afternoon he raveled a thread from a tow sack, and he took a little powder from his powder-horn. He tied the powder in a piece of cloth with one end of the tow string in the powder.
“Come along, Laura,” he said, “and I’ll show you something.”
They went to the well. Pa lighted the end of the string and waited till the spark was crawling quickly along it. Then he dropped the little bundle into the well.
In a minute they heard a muffled bang! and a puff of smoke came out of the well. “That will bring the gas,” Pa said.
When the smoke was all gone, he let Laura light the candle and stand beside him while he let it down. All the way down in the dark hole the little candle kept on burning like a star.
So next day Pa and Mr. Scott went on digging the well. But they always sent the candle down every morning.
There began to be a little water in the well, but it was not enough. The buckets came up full of mud, and Pa and Mr. Scott worked every day in deeper mud. In the mornings when the candle went down, it lighted oozing-wet walls, and candlelight sparkled in rings over the water when the bucket struck bottom.
Pa stood knee deep in water and bailed out bucketfuls before he could begin digging in the mud.
One day when he was digging, a loud shout came echoing up. Ma ran out of the house and Laura ran to the well. “Pull, Scott! Pull!” Pa yelled. A swishing, gurgling sound echoed down there. Mr. Scott turned the windlass as fast as he could, and Pa came up climbing hand over hand up the rope.
“I’m blamed if that’s not quicksand!” Pa gasped, as he stepped onto the ground, muddy and dripping. “I was pushing down hard on the spade, when all of a sudden it went down, the whole length of the handle. And water came pouring up all around me.”
“A good six feet of this rope’s wet,” Mr. Scott said, winding it up. The bucket was full of water. “You showed sense in getting out of that hand over hand, Ingalls. That water came up faster than I could pull you out.” Then Mr. Scott slapped his thigh and shouted, “I’m blasted if you didn’t bring up the spade!”
Sure enough, Pa had saved his spade.
In a little while the well was almost full of water. A circle of blue sky lay not far down in the ground, and when Laura looked at it, a little girl’s head looked up at her. When she waved her hand, a hand on the water’s surface waved, too.
The water was clear and cold and good. Laura thought she had never tasted anything so good as those long, cold drinks of water. Pa hauled no more stale, warm water from the creek. He built a solid platform over the well, and a heavy cover for the hole that let the water-bucket through. Laura must never touch that cover. But whenever she or Mary was thirsty, Ma lifted the cover and drew a dripping bucket of cold, fresh water from that wel
l.
Chapter 13
Texas Longhorns
One evening Laura and Pa were sitting on the doorstep. The moon shone over the dark prairie, the winds were still, and softly Pa played his fiddle.
He let a last note quiver far, far away, until it dissolved in the moonlight. Everything was so beautiful that Laura wanted it to stay so forever. But Pa said it was time for little girls to go to bed.
Then Laura heard a strange, low, distant sound. “What’s that!” she said.
Pa listened. “Cattle, by George!” he said. “Must be the cattle herds going north to Fort Dodge.”
After she was undressed, Laura stood in her nightgown at the window. The air was very still, not a grass blade rustled, and far away and faint she could hear that sound. It was almost a rumble and almost a song.
“Is that singing Pa?” she asked.
“Yes,” Pa said. “The cowboys are singing the cattle to sleep. Now hop into bed, you little scalawag!”
Laura thought of cattle lying on the dark ground in the moonlight, and of cowboys softly singing lullabies.
Next morning when she ran out of the house two strange men were sitting on horses by the stable. They were talking to Pa. They were as red-brown as Indians, but their eyes were narrow slits between squinting eyelids. They wore flaps of leather over their legs, and spurs, and wide-brimmed hats. Handkerchiefs were knotted around their necks, and pistols were on their hips.
They said, “So long,” to Pa, and “Hi! Yip!” to their horses, and they galloped away.