So they did not follow the road that turned to cross the slough. They went straight on into the tall slough grass.
At first it was fun. It was rather like going into the jungle-picture in Pa’s big green book. Laura pushed ahead between the thick clumps of grass-stems that gave way rustling and closed again behind Carrie. The millions of coarse grass-stems and their slender long leaves were greeny-gold and golden-green in their own shade. The earth was crackled with dryness underfoot, but a faint smell of damp lay under the hot smell of the grass. Just above Laura’s head the grasstops swished in the wind, but down at their roots was a stillness, broken only where Laura and Carrie went wading through it.
“Where’s Pa?” Carrie asked suddenly.
Laura looked around at her. Carrie’s peaked little face was pale in the shade of the grass. Her eyes were almost frightened.
“Well, we can’t see him from here,” Laura said. They could see only the leaves of the thick grass waving, and the hot sky overhead. “He’s right ahead of us. We’ll come to him in a minute.”
She said it confidently but how could she know where Pa was? She could not even be sure where she was going, where she was taking Carrie. The smothering heat made sweat trickle down her throat and her backbone, but she felt cold inside. She remembered the children near Brookings, lost in the prairie grass. The slough was worse than the prairie. Ma had always been afraid that Grace would be lost in this slough.
She listened for the whirr of the mowing machine, but the sound of the grasses filled her ears. There was nothing in the flickering shadows of their thin leaves blowing and tossing higher than her eyes, to tell her where the sun was. The grasses’ bending and swaying did not even tell the direction of the wind. Those clumps of grass would hold up no weight at all. There was nothing, nothing anywhere that she could climb to lookout above them, to see beyond them and know where she was.
“Come along, Carrie,” she said cheerfully. She must not frighten Carrie.
Carrie followed trustfully but Laura did not know where she was going. She could not even be sure that she was walking straight. Always a clump of grass was in her way; s
he must go to right or left. Even if she went to the right of one clump of grass and to the left of the next clump, that did not mean that she was not going in a circle. Lost people go in circles and many of them never find their way home.
The slough went on for a mile or more of bending, swaying grasses, too tall to see beyond, too yielding to climb. It was wide. Unless Laura walked straight ahead they might never get out of it.
“We’ve gone so far, Laura,” Carrie panted. “Why don’t we come to Pa?”
“He ought to be right around here somewhere,” Laura answered. She could not follow their own trail back to the safe road. Their shoes left almost no tracks on the heat-baked mud, and the grasses, the endless swaying grasses with their low leaves hanging dried and broken, were all alike.
Carrie’s mouth opened a little. Her big eyes looked up at Laura and they said, “I know. We’re lost.” Her mouth shut without a word. If they were lost, they were lost. There was nothing to say about it.
“We’d better go on,” Laura said.
“I guess so. As long as we can,” Carrie agreed.
They went on. They must surely have passed the place where Pa was mowing. But Laura could not be sure of anything. Perhaps if they thought they turned back, they would really be going farther away. They could only go on. Now and then they stopped and wiped their sweating faces. They were terribly thirsty but there was no water. They were very tired from pushing through the grasses. Not one single push seemed hard, but going on was harder than trampling hay. Carrie’s thin little face was gray-white, she was so tired.
Then Laura thought that the grasses ahead were thinner. The shade seemed lighter there and the tops of the grasses against the sky seemed fewer. And suddenly she saw sunshine, yellow beyond the dark grass stems. Perhaps there was a pond there. Oh! perhaps, perhaps there was Pa’s stubble field and the mowing machine and Pa.
She saw the hay stubble in the sunshine, and she saw haycocks dotting it. But she heard a strange voice.
It was a man’s voice, loud and hearty. It said, “Get a move on, Manzo. Let’s get this load in. It’s coming night after a while.”
Another voice drawled lazily, “Aw-aw, Roy!”
Close together, Laura and Carrie looked out from the edge of the standing grass. The hayfield was not Pa’s hayfield. A strange wagon stood there and on its rack was an enormous load of hay. On the high top of that load, up against the blinding sky, a boy was lying. He lay on his stomach, his chin on his hands and his feet in the air.
The strange man lifted up a huge forkful of hay and pitched it onto the boy. It buried him and he scrambled up out of it, laughing and shaking hay off his head and his shoulders. He had black hair and blue eyes and his face and his arms were sunburned brown.
He stood up on the high load of hay against the sky and saw Laura. He said, “Hello there!” They both stood watching Laura and Carrie come out of the tall standing grass—like rabbits, Laura thought. She wanted to turn and run back into hiding.
“I thought Pa was here,” she said, while Carrie stood small and still behind her.
The man said, “We haven’t seen anybody around here. Who is your Pa?” The boy told him, “Mr. Ingalls. Isn’t he?” he asked Laura. He was still looking at her.
“Yes,” she said, and she looked at the horses hitched to the wagon. She had seen those beautiful brown horses before, their haunches gleaming in the sun and the black manes glossy on their glossy necks. They were the Wilder boys’ horses. The man and the boy must be the Wilder brothers.
“I can see him from here. He’s just over there,” the boy said. Laura looked up and saw him pointing. His blue eyes twinkled down at her as if he had known her a long time.
“Thank you,” Laura said primly and she and Carrie walked away, along the road that the Morgan team and the wagon had broken through the slough grass.
“Whoa!” Pa said when he saw them. “Whew!” he said, taking off his hat and wiping the sweat from his forehead.