Then he took his fiddle out of its box. He played for a long time in the twilight, while Laura and Mary sat close to him and Ma rocked Carrie near by.
He played “Dixie Land,” and “We’ll Rally Round the Flag, Boys!” He played “All the Blue Bonnets Are Over the Border,” and
“Oh, Susanna, don’t you cry for me!
I’m going to California
With my washpan on my knee!”
He played “The Campbells Are Coming, Hurrah! Hurrah!” Then he played “Life Let Us Cherish.” And he put away the fiddle. He must go to bed early, to get an early start in the morning.
“Take good care of the old fiddle, Caroline,” he said. “It puts heart into a man.”
After breakfast, at dawn, Pa kissed them all and went away. His extra shirt and pair of socks were rolled in his jumper and slung on his shoulder. Just before he crossed Plum Creek he looked back and waved. Then he went on, all the way out of sight, without turning again. Jack stood pressed close against Laura.
They all stood still for a moment after Pa was gone. Then Ma said, cheerfully, “We have to take care of everything now, girls. Mary and Laura, you hurry with the cow to meet the herd.”
She went briskly into the house with Carrie, while Laura and Mary ran to let Spot out of the stable and drive her toward the creek. No prairie grass was left, and the hungry cattle could only wander along the creek banks, eating willow sprouts and plum brush and a little dead, dry grass left from last summer.
Chapter 27
Rain
Everything was flat and dull when Pa was gone. Laura and Mary could not even count the days till he would come back. They could only think of him walking farther and farther away in his patched boots.
Jack was a sober dog now and his nose was turning gray. Often he looked at the empty road where Pa had gone, and sighed, and lay down to watch it. But he did not really hope that Pa would come.
The dead, eaten prairie was flat under the hot sky. Dust devils rose up and whirled across it. The far-away edge of it seemed to crawl like a snake. Ma said that was caused by the heat waves of the air.
The only shade was in the house. There were no leaves on willows or plum thickets. Plum Creek dried up. There was only a little water in its pools. The well was dry, and the old spring by the dugout was only a drip. Ma set a pail under it, to fill during the night. In the morning she brought it to the house and left another pail to fill during the day.
When the morning work was done, Ma and Mary and Laura and Carrie sat in the house. The scorching winds whizzed by and the hungry cattle never stopped lowing.
Spot was thin. Her hip joints stuck up sharp, all her ribs showed, and there were hollows around her eyes. All day she went mooing with the other cattle, looking for something to eat. They had eaten all the little bushes along the creek and gnawed the willow branches as high as they could reach. Spot’s milk was bitter, and every day she gave less of it.
Sam and David stood in the stable. They could not have all the hay they wanted, because the hay-stacks must last till next spring. When Laura led them down the dry creekbed to the old swimming-hole, they curled their noses at the warm, scummy water. But they had to drink it. Cows and horses had to bear things, too.
Saturday evening, Laura went to the Nelsons’ to see if a letter had come from Pa. She went along the little path beyond the footbridge. It did not go wandering forever through pleasant places. It went to Mr. Nelson’s.
Mr. Nelson’s house was long and low and its board walls were whitewashed. His long, low sod stable had a thick roof made of hay. They did not look like Pa’s house and Pa’s stable. They cuddled to the ground, under a slope of the prairie, and they looked as if they spoke Norwegian.
The house was shining clean inside. The big bed was plumped high with feathers and the pillows were high and fat. On the wall hung a beautiful picture of a lady dressed in blue. Its frame was thick gold, and bright pink mosquito-netting covered the lady and the frame, to keep the flies off.
There was no letter from Pa. Mrs. Nelson said that Mr. Nelson would ask again at the post-office, next Saturday.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Laura said, and she hurried fast along the path. Then she walked slowly across the footbridge, and more and more slowly up the knoll.
Ma said, “Never mind, girls. There will be a letter next Saturday.”
But next Saturday there was no letter.
They did not go to Sunday school any more. Carrie could not walk so far and she was too heavy for Ma to carry. Laura and Mary must save their shoes. They could not go to Sunday school barefooted, and if they wore out their shoes they would have no shoes next winter.
So on Sundays they put on their best dresses, but not their shoes or ribbons. Mary and Laura said their Bible verses to Ma, and she read to them from the Bible.
One Sunday she read to them about the plague of locusts, long ago in Bible times. Locusts were grasshoppers. Ma read:
“And the locusts went up over the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt; very grievous were they.