By the Shores of Silver Lake (Little House 5)

Lena gave her the lines. “All you have to do is hold the lines,” Lena said. “The ponies know the way back.” At that instant, the ponies touched noses and squealed.

“Hold on to them, Laura! Hold on to them!” Lena screeched.

Laura braced her feet and hung on to the lines with all her might. She could feel that the ponies didn’t mean any harm. They were running because they wanted to run in the windy weather; they were going to do what they wanted to do. Laura hung on to them and yelled, “Yi, yi, yi, yip-ee!”

She had forgotten the basket of clothes, and so had Lena. All the way back to camp across the prairie they went whooping and singing, the ponies went running, trotting, and running again. When they stopped by the shanties to unhitch and picket the ponies, they found all the top layers of the clean washing on the buggy floor under the seats.

Guiltily they piled and smoothed them and lugged the heavy basket into the shanty where Aunt Docia and Ma were dishing up the dinner.

“You girls look as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouths,” said Aunt Docia. “What have you been up to?”

“Why, we just drove out and brought back the washing,” said Lena.

That afternoon was even more exciting than the morning. As soon as the dishes were washed, Lena and Laura ran out again to the ponies. Jean had gone on one of them. He was riding away across the prairie.

“No fair!” Lena yelled. The other pony was galloping in a circle, held by its picket rope. Lena grabbed its mane, unsnapped the rope, and sailed right up from the ground onto the back of the running pony.

Laura stood watching Lena and Jean race in circles, yelling like Indians. They rode crouching, their hair streaming back, their hands clutched in the flying black manes and their brown legs clasping the ponies’ sides. The ponies curved and swerved, chasing each other on the prairie like birds in the sky. Laura would never have tired of watching them.

The ponies came galloping and stopped near her, and Lena and Jean slid off.

“Come on, Laura,” Lena said generously. “You can ride Jean’s pony.”

“Who says she can?” Jean demanded. “You let her ride your own pony.”

“You better behave or I’ll tell how you tried to scare us last night,” said Lena.

Laura took hold of the pony’s mane. But the pony was much larger than she was, its back was high, and the pony was strong. Laura said, “I don’t know if I can. I never did ride horseback.”

“I’ll put you on,” said Lena. She held her pony by the forelock with one hand, and bending down she held her other hand for Laura to step onto.

Jean’s pony seemed larger every minute. It was big and strong enough to kill Laura if it wanted to, and so high that to fall off it would break her bones. She was so scared to ride it that she had to try.

She stepped onto Lena’s hand, she scrambled up the warm, slippery, moving mass of pony, while Lena boosted. Then she got one leg over the pony’s back and everything began moving rapidly. Dimly she heard Lena saying, “Hang on to his mane.”

She was holding on to the pony’s mane. She was hanging on to deep handfuls of it with all her might, and her elbows and her knees were holding on to the pony, but she was jolting so that she couldn’t think. The ground was so far beneath that she didn’t dare look. Every instant she was falling, but before she really fell she was falling the other way, and the jolting rattled her teeth. Far off she heard Lena yell, “Hang on, Laura!”

Then everything smoothed into the smoothest rippling motion. This motion went through the pony and through Laura and kept them sailing over waves in rushing air. Laura’s screwed-up eyes opened, and below her she saw the grasses flowing back. She saw the pony’s black mane blowing, and her hands clenched tight in it. She and the pony were going too fast but they were going like music and nothing could happen to her until the music stopped.

Lena’s pony came pounding along beside her. Laura wanted to ask how to stop safely but she could not speak. She saw the shanties far ahead, and knew that somehow the ponies had turned back toward the camp. Then the jolting began again. Then it stopped, and there she sat on the pony’s back.

“Didn’t I tell you it’s fun?” Lena asked.

“What makes it jolt so?” Laura asked.

“That’s trotting. You don’t want to trot, you want to make your pony gallop. Just yell at it, like I did. Come on, let’s go a long ways this time, you want to?”

“Yes,” said Laura.

“All right, hang on. Now, yell!”

That was a wonderful afternoon. Twice Laura fell off; once the pony’s head hit her nose and made it bleed, but she never let go of the mane. Her hair came unbraided and her throat grew hoarse from laughing and screeching, and her legs were scratched from running through the sharp grass and trying to leap onto her pony while it was running. She almost could, but not quite, and this made the pony mad. Lena and Jean always started the ponies to running and then swung up. They raced each other from the ground, trying which could sooner mount and reach a certain mark.

They did not hear Aunt Docia calling them to supper. Pa came out and shouted “Supper!” When they went in, Ma looked at Laura in shocked amazement and said mildly, “Really, Docia, I don’t know when Laura’s looked so like a wild Indian.”

“She and Lena are a pair,” said Aunt Docia. “Well, Lena hasn’t had an afternoon to do as she liked since we came out here, and she won’t have another till the summer’s over.”

Chapter 7