The Long Winter (Little House 6)

Where no storms ever beat on that glittering strand

While the years of eternity roll.”

The wailing hymn blended with the wail of the winds while night settled down, deepening the dusk of whirling snow.

Chapter 23

The Wheat in the Wall

In the morning the snowdrift was gone. When Laura made a peephole on the upstairs window and looked through it she saw bare ground. Blown snow was driving over it in low clouds, but the street was hard, brown earth.

“Ma! Ma!” she cried. “I can see the ground!”

“I know,” Ma answered. “The winds blew all the snow away last night.”

“What time is it? I mean, what month is it?” Laura asked stupidly.

“It is the middle of February,” Ma answered.

Then spring was nearer than Laura had thought. February was a short month and March would be spring. The train would come again and they would have white bread and meat.

“I am so tired of brown bread with nothing on it,” Laura said.

“Don’t complain, Laura!” Ma told her quickly. “Never complain of what you have. Always remember you are fortunate to have it.”

Laura had not meant to complain but she did not know how to explain what she had meant. She answered meekly, “Yes, Ma.” Then, startled, she looked at the wheat sack in the corner. There was so little wheat left in it that it lay folded like an empty sack.

“Ma!” she exclaimed, “Did you mean…” Pa had always said that she must never be afraid. She must never be afraid of anything. She asked, “How much more wheat is there?”

“I think enough for today’s grinding,” Ma answered.

“Pa can’t buy any more, can he?” Laura said.

“No, Laura. There’s no more in town.” Ma laid the slices of brown bread carefully on the oven grate to toast for breakfast.

Then Laura braced herself, she steadied herself, and she said, “Ma. Will we starve?”

“We won’t starve, no,” Ma replied. “If Pa must, he will kill Ellen and the heifer calf.”

“Oh, no! No!” Laura cried.

“Be quiet, Laura,” Ma said. Carrie and Mary were coming downstairs to dress by the stove, and Ma went up to carry Grace down.

Pa hauled hay all day, and came into the house only to say that he was going to Fuller’s store for a minute before supper. When he came back he brought news.

“There’s a rumor in town that some settler, eighteen or twenty miles south or southeast of here, raised some wheat last summer,” he said. “They say he’s wintering in his claim shanty.”

“Who says so?” Ma asked.

“It’s a rumor,” Pa said again. “Nearly everybody says so. Nearest I can find out, Foster is the man that started it. He says he heard it from somebody working on the railroad. Some fellow that was passing through last fall, he says, was telling about the crop of wheat this settler raised, said he had a ten-acre patch that must run thirty or forty bushels to the acre. Say three hundred bushels of wheat, within about twenty miles of here.”

“I trust you aren’t thinking of starting out on such a wild-goose chase, Charles,” Ma said gently.

“A fellow might do it,” Pa remarked. “With a couple of days of clear weather and a snowfall to hold up the sled, he ought to be able to make it all ri…”

“No!” said Ma.

Pa looked at her, startled. They all stared at her. They had never seen Ma look like that. She was quiet but she was terrible.