By the Shores of Silver Lake (Little House 5)

“Nothing,” Pa said. “Nothing to worry you about. Well, the fact is, the boys have got word to look out for horse thieves tonight.”

“That’s Hi’s affair,” Ma said. “I hope you’ll let him tend to it.”

“Don’t worry, Caroline,” Pa said.

Laura and Carrie looked at each other and then at Ma. After a moment Ma said gently, “I wish you’d out with it, Charles.”

“Big Jerry’s been in camp,” Pa said. “He’s been here a week, and now he’s gone. The boys say he’s in with the gang of horse thieves. They say every time Big Jerry visits a camp the best horses are stolen after he leaves. They think he stays just long enough to pick out the best teams and find out what stalls they’re in, and then he comes back with his gang in the night and gets away with them in the dark.”

“I always heard you can’t trust a half-breed,” Ma said. Ma did not like Indians; she did not like even half-Indians.

“We’d all have been scalped down on the Verdigris River, if it hadn’t been for a full-blood,” said Pa.

“We wouldn’t have been in any danger of scalping if it hadn’t been for those howling savages,” said Ma, “with fresh skunk skins around their middles.” And she made a sound that came from remembering how those skunk skins smelled.

“I don’t think Jerry steals horses,” Pa said. But Laura thought he said it as if he hoped that saying it would make it so. “The real trouble is, he comes to camp after payday and wins all the boys’ money playing poker. That’s why some of them would be glad to shoot him.”

“I wonder Hi allows it,” said Ma. “If there’s anything as bad as drink, it’s gambling.”

“They don’t have to gamble if they don’t want to, Caroline,” Pa said. “If Jerry wins their money, it’s their own fault. There never was a kinder-hearted man than Big Jerry. He’d give the shirt off his back. Look how he takes care of Old Johnny.”

“That’s so,” Ma admitted.

Old Johnny was the water boss. He was a little, wizened, bent-backed old Irishman. He had worked on railroads all his life, and now he was too old to work. So the company had given him the job of carrying water to the men.

Every morning and again after dinner, little old Johnny came to the well to fill his two large, wooden water pails. When they were full he set his wooden yoke across his shoulders and stooping, he hooked into the pails the two hooks that hung from short chains at each end of the yoke. Then with a grunt and groan, he straightened up. The chains lifted the heavy pails from the ground and Johnny steadied them with his hands while he bore their weight on his shoulders. He trotted under the weight with short, stiff steps.

There was a tin dipper in each water pail. When he got to the men working on the grade, Johnny would trot along the line of work, so that any thirsty man could help himself to a drink of water without stopping work.

Johnny was so old that he was little, stooped and shrunken. His face was a mass of wrinkles, but his blue eyes twinkled cheerily and he always trotted as quickly as he could so that no thirsty man need wait for a drink.

One morning before breakfast, Big Jerry had come to the door and told Ma that Old Johnny had been sick all night.

“He’s so little and old, ma’am,” Big Jerry said. “The meals at the boarding shanty don’t agree with him. Would you give him a cup of hot tea and a bit of breakfast?”

Ma put several of her hot, light biscuits on a plate and beside them she put a fried mashed-potato cake and a slice of crisply fried salt pork. Then she filled a little tin pail with hot tea and gave it all to Big Jerry. After breakfast Pa went to the bunkhouse to see Old Johnny, and later he told Ma that Jerry had taken care of the poor old man all night. Johnny said that Jerry had even spread his own blanket over him to keep him warm and gone without any covering himself in the cold.

“He couldn’t take better care of his own father than he did of Old Johnny,” Pa said. “For that matter, Caroline, I don’t know but what we’re beholden to him ourselves.”

They all remembered how Big Jerry had come out of the prairie on his white horse when the strange man was following them and the sun was setting.

“Well,” Pa said, getting up slowly, “I’ve got to go sell the boys the ammunition for their guns. I hope Jerry doesn’t come back to camp tonight. If he just rode up to see how Old Johnny is, rode up to the stable to put his horse in, they’d shoot him.”

“Oh, no, Charles! Surely they wouldn’t do that!” Ma exclaimed.

Pa pulled on his hat. “The one that’s doing most of the talking’s already killed one man,” he said. “He got off easy on a plea of self-defense, but he’s served a term in State’s prison. And Big Jerry cleaned him out, last payday. He hasn’t got the nerve to face Big Jerry, but he’ll bushwhack him if he gets the chance.”

Pa went to the store, and Ma soberly began to clear the table. While Laura washed the dishes, she thought of Big Jerry and his white horse. She had seen them many times, galloping over the brown prairie. Big Jerry always wore a bright red shirt, he was always bareheaded, and his white horse never wore a strap.

The night was dark when Pa came from the store. He said that half a dozen men with loaded guns were lying in wait around the stable.

It was bedtime. There was not a light in the camp. The dark shanties, low against the land, could hardly be seen; only if you knew where to look, you could see them darker in the dark. There was a little starshine on Silver Lake, and all around it stretched the black prairie, flat under the velvet-dark sky sparkling with stars. The wind whispered cold in the dark, and the grass rustled as if it were afraid. Laura looked and listened, and hurried shivering into the shanty again.

Behind the curtain Grace was sleeping and Ma was helping Mary and Carrie to bed. Pa had hung up his hat and sat down on the bench, but he was not taking off his boots. He looked up when Laura came in, and then he got up and put on his coat. He buttoned it all the way up and turned up its collar so that his gray shirt did not show. Laura did not say a word. Pa put on his hat.

“Don’t sit up for me, Caroline,” he said cheerfully. Ma came from behind the curtain, but Pa was gone.

She went to the doorway and looked out. Pa had disappeared in the darkness. After a minute Ma turned around and said, “Bedtime, Laura.”