The Long Winter (Little House 6)

“By George! that dinner looks good!” said Pa. “I could eat a raw bear without salt!”

Laura poured hot water from the teakettle into the washbasin for him. Ma said gently, “Whatever kept you so long, Charles?”

“Grass,” said Pa. He buried his face in his hands full of soapy water and Laura and Ma looked at each other amazed. What did Pa mean? In a minute he reached for the roller towel and went on, “That confounded grass under the snow.

“You can’t follow the road,” Pa went on, wiping his hands. “There’s nothing to go by, no fences or trees. As soon as you get out of town there’s nothing but snowdrifts in all directions. Even the lake’s covered up. The drifts are packed hard by the wind, and frozen, so the sled slides right along over them and you’d think you could make a beeline to wherever you wanted to go.

“Well, first thing I knew, the team went down to their chins in that hard snow. I’d hit the slough, and the snow looks as hard there as anywhere, but underneath it there’s grass. The slough grass holds up that crust of snow on nothing but grass stems and air. As soon as the horses get onto it, down they go.

“I’ve spent this whole morning rassling with that dumb horse, Sam… “

“Charles,” Ma said.

“Caroline,” Pa answered, “it’s enough to make a saint swear. David was all right, he’s got horse sense, but Sam went plumb crazy. There those two horses are, down to their backs in snow, and every try they make to get out only makes the hole bigger. If they drag the sled down into it, I never will get it out. So I unhitch the sled. Then I try to get the team up onto hard going again, and there’s Sam gone crazywild, plunging and snorting and jumping and wallowing all the time deeper into that confounded snow.”

“It must have been a job,” Ma agreed.

“He was threshing around so, I was afraid he’d hurt David,” said Pa. “So I got down into it and unhitched them from each other. I held on to Sam and I tramped the snow down as well as I could, trying to make a hard enough path for him to walk on, up onto the top of the drifts. But he’d rear and plunge and break it down till I tell you it’d wear out any man’s patience.”

“Whatever did you do, Charles?” Ma asked.

“Oh, I got him out finally,” Pa said. “David followed me as gentle as a lamb, stepping carefully and coming right on up. So I hitched him onto the sled and he dragged it around the hole. But I had to hang on to Sam all the time. There was nothing to tie him to. Then I hitched them both up together again and started on. We went about a hundred feet and down they went again.”

“Mercy!” Ma exclaimed.

“So that’s the way it was,” said Pa. “The whole morning. Took me the whole half a day to go a couple of miles and get back with one load of hay, and I’m tireder than if I’d done a hard day’s work. I’m going to drive David single this afternoon. He can’t haul so big a load but it’ll be easier on both of us.”

He ate dinner in a hurry and hurried out to hitch David to the sled alone. Now they knew what Pa was doing and they were not worried, but they were sorry for David, falling through the deceitful snowdrifts, and for Pa, unhitching and helping the horse out and hitching him to the sled again.

Still, the whole afternoon was sunny, without a cloud in the sky, and before dark Pa had hauled two small loads of hay.

“David follows me like a dog,” Pa told them all at supper. “When he breaks through the snow he stands still until I trample a solid path up. Then he follows me up out of the hole as carefully as if he understood all about it and I bet he does. Tomorrow I’m going to hitch him onto the sled by a long rope, so I won’t have to unhitch him when he falls in. I’ll only have to help him out and then, on the long rope, he can haul the sled around the hole.”

After supper Pa went to Fuller’s Hardware to buy the rope. He came back soon with news. The work train with the snowplow had got halfway through the Tracy cut that day.

“It takes longer this time to get through,” he said, “because every time they cleared the track they threw the snow up on both sides, making the cut that much deeper. But Woodworth at the depot says they’ll likely get a train through by day after tomorrow.”

“That’s good news,” said Ma. “I’ll be thankful to have some meat again.”

“That’s not all,” Pa went on. “We’re going to get the mail, train or no train. They’re sending it through by team, and Gilbert, the mail carrier, is leaving here for Preston in the morning. He’s making a sled now. So if you want to send a letter, you can.”

“There is that letter I’ve been writing to the folks in Wisconsin,” said Ma. “I wasn’t intending to finish it so soon, but perhaps I may as well.”

So she brought the letter to the tablecloth under the lamp, and after she had thawed the ink bottle they all sat around the table thinking of last things to say while Ma wrote them down with her little red pen that had a mother-of-pearl handle shaped like a feather. When her neat, clear writing filled the paper she turned it and filled it again crosswise. On the other side of the paper she did the same thing so that every inch of paper held all the words that it possibly could.

Carrie had been only a baby in Wisconsin. She did not remember the aunts and uncles and the cousins Alice and Ella and Peter, and Grace had never seen them. But Laura and Mary remembered them perfectly.

“Tell them I still have my doll, Charlotte,” said Laura, “and I wish we had one of Black Susan’s great-great-great-grand kittens.”

“‘Descendants’ takes less space,” said Ma. “I’m afraid this letter will be overweight.”

“Tell them there isn’t a cat in this whole country,” said Pa.

“I wish to goodness there was,” said Ma. “We need one for the mice.”

“Tell them we wish they could come spend Christmas with us this year like they did in the Big Woods,” said Mary.

“‘Ay they did,’ Mary,” said Ma.