“Curiosity killed a cat, Pa,” Laura said.
“You look pretty healthy,” said Pa. Tantalizing, he sat there whittling until he had made twenty-four small squares of wood. Half of them he laid on the hot stove, turning them until they were burned black all over.
Then he ranged all these pieces in the squares on the board, and set the board on his knees.
“Now, Laura!” he said.
“Now what?” said Laura.
“These are checkers, and this is a checker board. Pull up your chair, and I’ll show you how to play checkers.”
She learned so well that before that storm ended she had beaten Pa in one game. But after that, they did not play so immoderately. Ma did not care to play, nor Carrie, so after one game Pa always put the board away.
“Checkers is a selfish game,” he said, “for only two can play it. Bring me the fiddle, Flutterbudget.”
Chapter 17
Wolves on Silver Lake
There came a night when moonlight shone silver clear. The earth was endless white and the wind was still.
Beyond every window the white world stretched far away in frosty glitter, and the sky was a curve of light. Laura could not settle down to anything. She didn’t want to play games. She hardly heard even the music of Pa’s fiddle. She did not want to dance, but she felt that she must move swiftly. She must be going somewhere.
Suddenly she exclaimed, “Carrie! Let’s go slide on the ice!”
“In the night, Laura?” Ma was astonished.
“It’s light outdoors,” Laura replied. “Almost as light as day.”
“It will be all right, Caroline,” Pa said. “There’s nothing to hurt them, if they don’t stay too long and freeze.”
So Ma told them, “You may go for a quick run. Don’t stay until you get too cold.”
Laura and Carrie hurried into their coats and hoods and mittens. Their shoes were new and the soles thick. Ma had knit their stockings of woolen yarn, and their red flannel underclothes came down over their knees and buttoned in a snug band around each stocking. Their flannel petticoats were thick and warm, and their dresses and their coats were wool, and so were their hoods and mufflers.
Out of the warm house they burst
into the breathtaking air that tingled with cold. They ran a race on the snowy path down the low hill to the stables. Then they followed the path that the horses and the cow had made when Pa led them through the snow to water at the hole he had cut in the lake ice.
“We mustn’t go near the water hole,” Laura said, and she led Carrie along the lake shore until they were well away from it. Then they stopped and looked at the night.
It was so beautiful that they hardly breathed. The great round moon hung in the sky and its radiance poured over a silvery world. Far, far away in every direction stretched motionless flatness, softly shining as if it were made of soft light. In the midst lay the dark, smooth lake, and a glittering moonpath stretched across it. Tall grass stood up in black lines from the snow drifted in the sloughs.
The stable lay low and dark near the shore, and on the low hill stood the dark, small, surveyors’ house, with the yellow light in the window twinkling from its darkness.
“How still it is,” Carrie whispered. “Listen how still it is.”
Laura’s heart swelled. She felt herself a part of the wide land, of the far deep sky and the brilliant moonlight. She wanted to fly. But Carrie was little and almost afraid, so she took hold of Carrie’s hand and said, “Let’s slide. Come on, run!”
With hands clasped, they ran a little way. Then with right foot first they slid on the smooth ice much farther than they had run.
“On the moonpath, Carrie! Let’s follow the moonpath,” Laura cried.
And so they ran and slid, and ran and slid again, on the glittering moonpath into the light from the silver moon. Farther and farther from shore they went, straight toward the high bank on the other side.
They swooped and almost seemed to fly. If Carrie lost her balance, Laura held her up. If Laura was unsteady, Carrie’s hand steadied her.
Close to the farther shore, almost in the shadow of the high bank, they stopped. Something made Laura look up to the top of the bank.