“And balls of fire,” said Laura.
“Balls of fire?” Pa asked.
“That will keep, Laura,” said Ma. “Go on, Charles. What did you do?”
“I kept on walking,” Pa answered. “I walked till the white blur turned gray and then black, and I knew it was night. I figured I had been walking four hours, and these blizzards last three days and nights. But I kept on walking.”
Pa stopped, and Ma said, “I had the lamp burning in the window for you.”
“I didn’t see it,” said Pa. “I kept straining my eyes to see something, but all I saw was the dark. Then of a sudden, everything gave way under me and I went straight down, must have been ten feet. It seemed farther.
“I had no idea what had happened or where I was. But I was out of the wind. The blizzard was yelling and shrieking overhead, but the air was fairly still where I was. I felt around me. There was snow banked up as high as I could reach on three sides of me, and the other side was a kind of wall of bare ground, sloping back at the bottom.
“It didn’t take me long to figure that I’d walked off the bank of some gully, somewhere on the prairie. I crawled back under the bank, and there I was with solid ground at my back and overhead, snug as a bear in a den. I didn’t believe I would freeze there, out of the wind and with the buffalo coat to keep warmth in my body. So I curled up in it and went to sleep, being pretty tired.
“My, I was glad I had that coat, and a good warm cap with earlaps, and that extra pair of thick socks, Caroline.
“When I woke up I could hear the blizzard, but faintly. There was solid snow in front of me, coated over with ice where my breath had melted it. The blizzard had filled up the hole I had made when I fell. There must have been six feet of snow over me, but the air was good. I moved my arms and legs and fingers and toes, and felt my nose and ears to make sure I was not freezing. I could still hear the storm, so I went to sleep again.
“How long has it been, Caroline?”
“Three days and nights,” said Ma. “This is the fourth day.”
Then Pa asked Mary and Laura, “Do you know what day this is?”
“Is it Sunday?” Mary guessed.
“It’s the day before Christmas,” said Ma.
Laura and Mary had forgotten all about Christmas. Laura asked, “Did you sleep all that time, Pa?”
“No,” said Pa. “I kept on sleeping and waking up hungry, and sleeping some more, till I woke up just about starved. I was bringing home some oyster crackers for Christmas. They were in a pocket of the buffalo coat. I took a handful of those crackers out of the paper bag and ate them. I felt out in the snow and took a handful, and I ate that for a drink. Then all I could do was lie there and wait for the storm to stop.
“I tell you, Caroline, it was mighty hard to do that, thinking of you and the girls and knowing you would go out in the blizzard to do the chores. But I knew I could not get home till the blizzard stopped.
“So I waited a long time, till I was so hungry again that I ate all the rest of the oyster crackers. They were no bigger than the end of my thumb. One of them wasn’t half a mouthful, and the whole half-pound of them wasn’t very filling.
“Then I went on waiting, sleeping some. I guessed it was night again. Whenever I woke I listened closely, and I could hear the dim sound of the blizzard. I could tell by that sound that the snow was getting thicker over me, but the air was still good in my den. The heat of my blood was keeping me from freezing.
“I tried to sleep all I could, but I was so hungry that I kept waking up. Finally I was too hungry to sleep at all. Girls, I was bound and determined I would not do it, but after some time I did. I took the paper bag out of the inside pocket of my old overcoat, and I ate every bit of the Christmas candy. I’m sorry.”
Laura hugged him from one side and Mary hugged him from the other. They hugged him hard and Laura said, “Oh Pa, I am so glad you did!”
“So am I, Pa! So am I!” said Mary. They were truly glad.
“Well,” Pa said, “we’ll have a big wheat crop next year, and you girls won’t have to wait till next Christmas for candy.”
“Was it good, Pa?” Laura asked. “Did you feel better after you ate it?”
“It was very good, and I felt much better,” said Pa. “I went right to sleep and I must have slept most of yesterday and last night. Suddenly I sat up wide awake. I could not hear a sound.
“Now, was I buried so deep in snow that I couldn’t hear the blizzard, or had it stopped? I listened hard. It was so still that I could hear the silence.
“Girls, I began digging on that snow like a badger. I wasn’t slow in digging up out of that den. I came scrabbling through the top of that snow bank, and where do you suppose I was?
“I was on the bank of Plum Creek, just above the place where we set the fish-trap, Laura.”
“Why, I can see that place from the window,” said Laura.