Pa stood with his feet wide apart, his hands in his pockets, and watched the Indian riding farther and farther away across the prairie.
“That was a darned close call!” Pa said. “Well, it’s his path. An Indian trail, long before we came.”
He drove an iron ring into a log of the house wall, and he chained Jack to it. After that, Jack was always chained. He was chained to the house in the daytime, and at night he was chained to the stable door, because horse-thieves were in the country now. They had stolen Mr. Edwards’ horses.
Jack grew crosser and crosser because he was chained. But it could not be helped. He would not admit that the trail was the Indians’ trail, he thought it belonged to Pa. And Laura knew that something terrible would happen if Jack hurt an Indian.
Winter was coming now. The grasses were a dull color under a dull sky. The winds wailed as if they were looking for something they could not find. Wild animals were wearing their thick winter fur, and Pa set his traps in the creek bottoms. Every day he visited them, and every day he went hunting. Now that the nights were freezing cold, he shot deer for meat. He shot wolves and foxes for their fur, and his traps caught beaver and muskrat and mink.
He stretched the skins on the outside of the house and carefully tacked them there, to dry. In the evenings he worked the dried skins between his hands to make them soft, and he added them to the bundle in the corner. Every day the bundle of furs grew bigger.
Laura loved to stroke the thick fur of red foxes. She liked the brown, soft fur of beaver, too, and the shaggy wolfs fur. But best of all she loved the silky mink. Those were all furs that Pa saved to trade next spring in Independence. Laura and Mary had rabbit-skin caps, and Pa’s cap was muskrat.
One day when Pa was hunting, two Indians came. They came into the house, because Jack was chained.
Those Indians were dirty and scowling and mean. They acted as if the house belonged to them. One of them looked through Ma’s cupboard and took all the cornbread. The other took Pa’s tobacco-pouch. They looked at the pegs where Pa’s gun belonged. Then one of them picked up the bundle of furs.
Ma held Baby Carrie in her arms, and Mary and Laura stood close to her. They looked at that Indian taking Pa’s furs. They couldn’t do anything to stop him.
He carried them as far as the door. Then the other Indian said something to him. They made harsh sounds at each other in their throats, and he dropped the furs. They went away.
Ma sat down. She hugged Mary and Laura close to her and Laura felt Ma’s heart beating.
“Well,” Ma said, smiling, “I’m thankful they didn’t take the plow and seeds.”
Laura was surprised. She asked, “What plow?”
‘The plow and all our seeds for next year are in that bundle of furs,” said Ma.
When Pa came home they told him about those Indians, and he looked sober. But he said that all was well that ended well.
That evening when Mary and Laura were in bed, Pa played his fiddle. Ma was rocking in the rocking-chair, holding Baby Carrie against her breast, and she began to sing softly with the fiddle:
“Wild roved an Indian maid,
Bright Alfarata,…
Where flow the waters
Of the blue Juniata.
Strong and true my arrows are
In my painted quiver,
Swift goes my light canoe
Adown the rapid river.
“Bold is my warrior good,
The love of Alfarata,
Proud wave his sunny plumes
Along the Juniata.
Soft and low he speaks to me,