By the Shores of Silver Lake (Little House 5)

Ma warmed her shawl by the fire, wrapped it snugly around Grace, and brought her to Mary, in the rocking chair pulled close to the oven. The hot stove made the air fairly warm all around it. Ma set the table almost against the stove, and breakfast was ready when Pa came back.

“This building’s a pretty good sieve!” Pa said. “Snow blew through every crack and in under the eaves. That was a genuine blizzard while it lasted.”

“To think we went all winter without a blizzard, and now we get one in April,” Ma marveled.

“Lucky it struck in the night when folks were under cover,” said Pa. “If it had hit in the daytime, somebody would have been lost and frozen for sure. Nobody looks for a blizzard at this time of year.”

“Well, the cold can’t last long,” Ma encouraged herself. “‘April showers bring May flowers.’ What will an April blizzard bring?”

“For one thing, a partition,” said Pa. “I’ll have a partition up to keep in the heat around this stove before I’m a day older.”

And he did. All day by the stove he sawed and hammered. Laura and Carrie helped hold the boards, and in Mary’s lap Grace played with the shavings. The new partition made a little room, with the stove and the table and the beds in it, and its window looking out at all the green prairie covered with snow.

Then Pa brought in more snowy lumber and he began ceiling the walls. “I’ll stop some of the cracks anyway,” he said.

All over the town there was sawing and hammering inside the other buildings. Ma said, “I’m sorry for Mrs. Beardsley, keeping a hotel while it’s being built over her head.”

“That’s what it takes to build up a country,” said Pa. “Building over your head and under your feet, but building. We’d never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.”

In a few days the snow was gone and spring came back again. The wind from the prairie brought a smell of damp ground and young grass, the sun rose earlier every day, and faintly all day the blue sky clanged with the wild birds’ calls. High in the sky Laura could see them flying, flock after flock dark and small in the shimmering air.

They did not gather thickly any more on Silver Lake. Only a few very tired flocks settled late after sunset in the sloughs and rose to the sky again before the sun rose. Wild birds did not like the town full of people, and neither did Laura.

She thought, “I would rather be out on the prairie with the grass and the birds and Pa’s fiddle. Yes, even with wolves! I would rather be anywhere than in this muddy, cluttered, noisy town, crowded by strange people.” And she said, “Pa, when are we going to move to the h

omestead?”

“Soon as I sell this building,” said Pa.

More and more wagons came in every day. Teams and wagons pulled along the muddy street, past the windows. All day there was the noise of hammers and of boots and voices. The shovel gangs were leveling the railroad grade, the teamsters were unloading ties and steel rails. In the evenings they were loudly drinking in the saloons.

Carrie liked the town. She wanted to go out into it and see everything, and for hours she stood looking out of the windows. Sometimes Ma let her cross the street to visit two little girls who lived there, but oftener the little girls came to see her, for Ma did not like to let Carrie out of her sight.

“I declare, Laura, you are so restless you give me the fidgets,” Ma said one day. “You are going to teach school, so why not begin now? Don’t you think it would be nice if you taught Carrie and Louizy and Annie every day? It would keep Carrie at home and be good for you all.”

Laura did not think it would be nice. She did not want to do it at all. But she said obediently, “Yes, Ma.” She thought she might as well try. So next morning when Louizy and Annie came to play with Carrie, Laura told them that they would have a school. She seated them all in a row and set them a lesson to study in Ma’s old primer.

“You study that for fifteen minutes,” she told them, “and then I will hear you recite.”

They looked at her with wide eyes, but they did not say anything. They put their heads together and studied, while Laura sat in front of them. There never was such a long fifteen minutes. At last Laura heard their spelling lesson, and then she set them a lesson in arithmetic. Whenever they fidgeted she told them they must sit still, and she made them raise their hands for permission to speak.

“You all did very nicely, I’m sure,” Ma smiled in approval, when at last it was time to get dinner. “You may come every morning, and Laura will teach you. Tell your mother I shall step across the street this afternoon and tell her about our little school.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Louizy and Annie answered weakly. “Good-by, ma’am.”

“With diligence and perseverance, Laura, I think you will be a very good teacher,” Ma praised Laura, and Laura answered, “Thank you, Ma.” She thought, “I’ve got to be a teacher, so I might as well try hard to be a good one.”

Every morning little brown-haired Annie and redheaded Louizy came more reluctantly; every day it was harder to teach them. They fidgeted so that Laura despaired of ever making them sit still, and she could not make them study. One day they did not come.

“Perhaps they are too young to appreciate schooling, but I wonder at their mother,” said Ma. “Don’t be discouraged, Laura,” Mary said. “Anyway, you have taught the first school in De Smet.”

“I’m not discouraged,” Laura said cheerfully. She was so glad to be free from teaching that she began to sing while she swept the floor.

From the window Carrie cried out. “Look, Laura! Something’s happening! Maybe that’s why they don’t come.”

In front of the hotel a crowd was gathering. More and more men came from all directions, and the sound of their voices was loud and excited. Laura remembered the payday crowd that had threatened Pa. In a minute she saw Pa breaking through the crowd and coming home.

He came in looking sober. “What do you say to moving out to the claim right away, Caroline?” he asked.