Jack stayed under the wagon. He didn’t growl but he didn’t come out. He was a sensible dog, and knew what to do when he met strangers.
“Well, your horses are gone,” Pa told the man. “You’ll never see them again. Hanging’s too good for horse-thieves.”
“Yes,” the man said.
Pa looked at Ma, and Ma barely nodded. Then Pa said, “Come ride with us to Independence.”
“No,” said the man. “All we’ve got is in this wagon. We won’t leave it.”
“Why, man! What will you do?” Pa exclaimed. “There may be nobody along here for days, weeks. You can’t stay here.”
“I don’t know,” the man said.
“We’ll stay with our wagon,” the woman said. She was looking down at her hands clasped in her lap, and Laura couldn’t see her face; she could see only the side of the sunbonnet.
“Better come,” Pa told them. “You can come back for your wagon.”
“No,” the woman said.
They wouldn’t leave the wagon; everything they owned in the world was in it. So at last Pa drove on, leaving them sitting on the wagon tongue, all alone on the prairie.
Pa muttered to himself: “Tenderfeet! Everything they own, and no dog to watch it. Didn’t keep watch himself. And tied his horses with ropes!” Pa snorted. “Tenderfeet!” he said again. “Shouldn’t be allowed loose west of the Mississippi!”
“But, Charles! Whatever will become of them?” Ma asked him.
“There are soldiers at Independence,” said Pa. “I’ll tell the captain, and he’ll send out men to bring them in. They can hold out that long. But it’s durned lucky for them that we came by. If we hadn’t, there’s no telling when they would have been found.”
Laura watched that lonely wagon until it was only a small lump on the prairie. Then it was a speck. Then it was gone.
All the rest of that day Pa drove on and on. They didn’t see anybody else.
When the sun was setting, Pa stopped by a well. A house had once been there, but it was burned. The well held plenty of good water, and Laura and Mary gathered bits of half-burned wood to make the fire, while Pa unhitched and watered the horses and put them on picket-lines. Then Pa took the seat down from the wagon and lifted out the food-box. The fire burned beautifully, and Ma quickly got supper.
Everything was just as it used to be before they built the house. Pa and Ma and Carrie were on the wagon-seat, Laura and Mary sat on the wagon tongue. They ate the good supper, hot from the camp fire. Pet and Patty and Bunny munched the good grass, and Laura saved bits for Jack, who mustn’t beg but could eat his fill as soon as supper was over.
Then the sun went down, far away in the west, and it was time to make the camp ready for night.
Pa chained Pet and Patty to the feed-box at the end of the wagon. He chained Bunny to the side. And he fed them all their supper of corn. Then he sat by the fire and smoked his pipe, while Ma tucked Mary and Laura into bed and laid Baby Carrie beside them.
She sat down beside Pa at the fire, and Pa took his fiddle out of its box and began to play.
“Oh, Susanna, don’t you cry for me,” the fiddle wailed, and Pa began to sing.
“I went to California
With my wash-pan on my knee,
And every time I thought of home,
I wished it wasn’t me.”
“Do you know, Caroline,” Pa stopped singing to say, “I’ve been thinking what fun the rabbits will have, eating that garden we planted.”
“Don’t, Charles,” Ma said.
“Never mind, Caroline!” Pa told her. “We’ll make a better garden. Anyway, we’re taking more out of Indian Territory than we took in.”
“I don’t know what,” Ma said, and Pa answered, “Why, there’s the mule!” Then Ma laughed, and Pa and the fiddle sang again.