“What’s the joke?” Carrie asked. She had been asleep and had only heard Mr. Boast laugh.
“What are you laughing at?” Mary asked her.
“Mr. Boast’s laugh tickles,” Carrie said.
In the morning Mr. Boast came to breakfast. The camp was gone and there was nowhere else to eat. The surveyors started east that morning in their buggy, and the last teamster passed. Mr. Boast was the last man to go; he had had to wait until his hand was better so that he could drive his team. His hand was worse that morning because it had been chilled in the night, but he started east anyway. He was going to Iowa to be married.
“If you folks are going to stay here all winter, I don’t know but I’ll bring Ellie back
and stay too,” he said, “if we can make it before winter sets in.”
“Be glad to have you, Boast,” said Pa. Ma said, “We would, indeed.”
Then they watched Mr. Boast’s wagon going, and heard its rattling die away on the wagon track to the east.
The whole prairie was empty now and not even one flock of birds was in the cold sky.
As soon as Mr. Boast’s wagon was out of sight, Pa brought his team and wagon to the door.
“Come, Caroline!” he called. “Nobody’s left in camp but us, and this is moving day!”
Chapter 14
The Surveyors’ House
There was no need to pack anything, for the surveyors’ house stood on the north shore of the lake not half a mile from the shanty. Laura could hardly wait to see it. When she had helped to put everything neatly into the wagon, and Mary and Carrie and Ma and Grace were in it, Laura said to Pa, “Please, can’t I run ahead?”
“‘May’ Laura,” Ma said. “Really, Charles, don’t you think—”
“Nothing can hurt her,” Pa said. “We’ll have her in sight all the way. Follow the lake shore, Flutterbudget, and don’t worry, Caroline; we’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
So Laura ran ahead. Straight against the steady wind she ran. Her shawl flapped in the wind behind her and the cold of the wind poured through her. She felt her blood thin and chill in the wind, and then she felt it warm and pulsing strong, and her breath throbbed hard in her chest.
She passed the spoiled spots where the camp had been. The earth was hard under her pounding feet, and rough with dead grass. No one else was anywhere near. Everybody had gone now. The prairie, the whole vast prairie, and the great sky and the wind were clear and free.
Even the wagon was left behind now. But it was coming. Laura looked back, and Pa waved to her. When she stopped running she could hear the sound of the wind in the grasses and the lippety-lapping of the lake water. She hoppity-skipped on the short dry grass along the shore. She could shout if she wanted to. No one else was there. She shouted, “It’s ours! All ours!”
The shout seemed loud in her throat, but in the air it was thin. The wind took it away perhaps. Or the stillness of the empty land and sky would not be disturbed.
The surveyors’ boots had worn a path through the grasses. It was smooth and soft to Laura’s feet. She bent her shawled head to the wind and padded along the path, hurrying. It would be fun to see the surveyors’ house all by herself.
It stood up in front of her suddenly. It was a big house, a real house with two stories, and glass windows. Its up-and-down boards were weathering from yellow to gray, and every crack was battened, as Pa had said. The door had a china knob. It opened into the lean-to over the back door.
Laura opened the door and peeped in. Then she pushed the door back, along the curved mark it had worn in the board floor, and she went in. This house had board floors; not as comfortable to bare feet as the earth floor of the shanty, but not so much work to keep clean.
The largeness of the empty house seemed to wait and listen. It seemed to know that Laura was there, but it had not made up its mind about her. It would wait and see. Against its walls the wind made a lonely sound, but that was outside the house. She tiptoed across the lean-to and opened a door on its farther side.
Laura looked at the large front room. Its board walls were still yellow inside, and sunshine from its west window slanted yellow on the floor. A cool light came in from the window to the east beside the front door. The surveyors had left their stove! It was a larger stove than the one that Ma had brought from Plum Creek; it had six lids on top and two oven doors, and it stood all set up with its stovepipe in place.
Spaced on the wall beyond it were three doors. All of them were shut.
Laura tiptoed across the wide floor, and softly opened one door. There was a small room, with a bedstead in it. This room had a window, too.
Softly Laura opened the middle door. She was surprised. Steeply up in front of her went a stair, just the width of the door. She looked up, and saw the underside of a slanting roof high overhead. She went up a few steps, and a big attic opened out on both sides of the stairs. It was twice as big as the large room downstairs. A window in each gable end lighted the whole empty place under the roof.
That made three rooms already, and still there was another door. Laura thought that there must have been a great many surveyors to need so much space. This would be by far the largest house she had ever lived in.
She opened the third door. A squeal of excitement came out of her mouth and startled the listening house. There before her eyes was a little store. All up the walls of that small room were shelves, and on the shelves were dishes, and pans and pots, and boxes, and cans. All around under the shelves stood barrels and boxes.