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!”
Chapter 8
Straw-Stack
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 strawstack 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.