The Long Winter (Little House 6)

The lean-to was not ceiled inside. The wind was blowing snow through all the cracks of the board walls. Snow traveled in little drifts across the floor and sifted over the hay.

Pa picked up a double handful of hay and shook the snow from it.

“Shake off all the snow,” he told Laura. “If you leave it on, it will melt when you take the sticks in and make them too wet to burn.”

Laura picked up all the hay her hands could hold and shook the snow from it. Then, watching Pa, she followed his motions in twisting the hay. First he twisted the long strand as far as his two hands could do it. Then he put the right-hand end of it under his left elbow and held it there, tight against his side, so that it could not untwist. Then his right hand took the other end from his left hand. His left hand slid down as near as it could get to the end under his left elbow and took hold of it. Pa twisted the strand again. This time he put its other end under his left elbow. He repeated these motions, again and again and again, till the whole strand of hay was twisted tight and kinking in the middle. Each time he twisted and tucked the end under his left arm, the tight twist coiled around itself.

When the whole length of the twist had wound itself tight, Pa bent the ends of hay together and tucked them into the last kink. He dropped the hard stick of hay on the floor and looked at Laura.

She was trying to tuck in the ends as Pa had done. The hay was twisted so tightly that she couldn’t push them in.

“Bend your twist a little to loosen it,” said Pa. “Then slip the ends in between the kinks and let it twist itself back tight. That’s the way!”

Laura’s stick of hay was uneven and raggedy, not smooth and hard like Pa’s. But Pa told her that it was well done for the first one; she would do better next time.

She made six sticks of hay, each better than the one before till the sixth one was as it should be. But now she was so cold that her hands could not feel the hay.

“That’s enough!” Pa told her. “Gather them up, and we’ll go warm ourselves.”

They carried the sticks of hay into the kitchen. Laura’s feet were numb from cold; they felt like wooden feet. Her hands were red and when she held them in the warm air above the stove they tingled and stung and smarted where the sharp blades of the grass had cut them. But she had helped Pa. The sticks of hay that she had made gave him time enough to get thoroughly warm before they must go into the cold to twist more hay.

All that day and all the next day, Laura helped Pa twist hay while Ma kept the fire going and Carrie helped her take care of Grace and of the housework. For dinner they had baked potatoes and mashed turnips with pepper and salt, and for supper Ma chopped the potatoes and heated them in the oven because there was no fat to fry them in. But the food was hot and good, and there was plenty of tea and still some sugar.

“This is the last loaf of bread,” Ma said, the second night at supper. “We really must have some flour, Charles.”

“I’ll buy some as soon as this storm lets up,” Pa said. “No matter what it costs.”

“Use my college money, Pa,” Mary said. “Thirty-five dollars and twenty-five cents will buy all the flour we could want.”

“That’s our good girl, Mary,” said Ma. “But I hope we won’t have to spend your college money. I suppose prices depend on when they can get the train through?” she said to Pa.

“Yes,” Pa said. “That’s what they depend on.”

Ma got up and put another stick of hay on the fire. When she lifted the stove lid, a reddish-yellow smoky light flared up and drove back the dark for a moment. Then the dark came back again. The wild screaming of the storm seemed louder and nearer in the dark.

“If only I had some grease I could fix some kind of a light,” Ma considered. “We didn’t lack for light when I was a girl, before this newfangled kerosene was ever heard of.”

“That’s so,” said Pa. “These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves—they’re good things to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on ’em.”

In the morning the winds were still howling and outside the thick-frosted windows the snow was still whirling. But by midmorning a straight, strong wind was blowing from the south and the sun was shining. It was very cold, so cold that the snow squeaked under Laura’s feet in the lean-to.

Pa went across the street to get the flour. He was gone some time, and when he came back he was carrying a grain sack on his shoulder. He let it slide to the floor with a thump.

“Here’s your flour, Caroline, or what will have to take the place of it,” he said. “It is wheat, the last that’s left of the Wilder boys’ stock. There is no flour in the stores. Banker Ruth bought the last sack this morning. He paid fifty dollars for it, a dollar a pound.”

“My goodness, Charles,” Ma gasped.

“Yes. We couldn’t buy much flour at that price, so I guess it’s just as well Ruth got it. We may as well learn now how to cook wheat. How will it be, boiled?”

“I don’t know, Charles. It isn’t as if we had anything to eat on it,” said Ma.

“It’s a pity there isn’t a grist mill in town,” Pa said.

“We have a mill,” Ma replied. She reached to the top of the cupboard and took down the coffee mill.

“So we have,” said Pa. “Let’s see how it works.”

Ma set the little brown wooden box on the table. She turned the handle for a moment, to loosen every last grain of cof