By the Shores of Silver Lake (Little House 5)

Grace walked so slowly that for a little while Laura carried her. Then she let her walk, for Grace was nearly three years old, and heavy. Then she lifted her again. So, carrying Grace and helping her walk, Laura brought her to the shanty and gave her to Mary.

Then she ran toward the Big Slough, calling as she ran. “Pa! Ma! She’s here!” She kept on calling until Pa heard her and shouted to Ma, far in the tall grass. Slowly, together, they fought their way out of Big Slough and slowly came up to the shanty, draggled and muddy and very tired and thankful.

“Where did you find her, Laura?” Ma asked, taking Grace in her arms and sinking into her chair.

“In a—” Laura hesitated, and said, “Pa, could it really be a fairy ring? It is perfectly round. The bottom is perfectly flat. The bank around it is the same height all the way. You can’t see a sign of that place till you stand on the bank. It is very large, and the whole bottom of it is covered solidly thick with violets. A place like that couldn’t just happen, Pa. Something made it.”

“You are too old to be believing in fairies, Laura,” Ma said gently. “Charles, you must not encourage such fancies.”

“But it isn’t—it isn’t like a real place, truly,” Laura protested. “And smell how sweet the violets are. They aren’t like ordinary violets.”

“They do make the whole house sweet,” Ma admitted. “But they are real violets, and there are no fairies.”

“You are right, Laura; human hands didn’t make that place,” Pa said. “But your fairies were big, ugly brutes, with horns on their heads and humps on their backs. That place is an old buffalo wallow. You know buffaloes are wild cattle. They paw up the ground and wallow in the dust, just as cattle do.

“For ages the buffalo herds had these wallowing places. They pawed up the ground and the wind blew the dust away. Then another herd came along and pawed up more dust in the same place. They went always to the same places, and—”

“Why did they, Pa?” Laura asked.

“I don’t know,” Pa said. “Maybe because the ground was mellowed there. Now the buffalo are gone, and grass grows over their wallows. Grass and violets.”

“Well,” Ma said. “All’s well that ends well, and here it is long past dinnertime. I hope you and Carrie didn’t let the biscuits burn, Mary.”

“No, Ma,” Mary said, and Carrie showed her the biscuits wrapped in a clean cloth to keep warm, and the potatoes drained and mealy-dry in their pot. And Laura said, “Sit still, Ma, and rest. I’ll fry the salt pork and make the gravy.”

No one but Grace was hungry. They ate slowly, and then Pa finished planting the windbreak. Ma helped Grace hold her own little tree while Pa set it firmly. When all the trees were planted, Carrie and Laura gave them each a full pail of water from the well. Before they finished, it was time to help get supper.

“Well,” Pa said at the table. “We’re settled at last on our homestead claim.”

“Yes,” said Ma. “All but one thing. Mercy, what a day this has been. I didn’t get time to drive the nail for the bracket.”

“I’ll tend to it, Caroline, as soon as I drink my tea,” Pa said.

He took the hammer from his toolbox under the bed, and drove a nail into the wall between the table and the whatnot. “Now bring on your bracket and the china shepherdess!” he said.

Ma brought them to him. He hung the bracket on the nail and stood the china shepherdess on its shelf. Her little china shoes, her tight china bodice and her golden hair were as bright as they had been so long ago in the Big Woods. Her china skirts were as wide and white; her cheeks as pink and her blue eyes as sweet as ever. And the bracket that Pa had carved for Ma’s Christmas present so long ago was still without a scratch, and even more glossily polished than when it was new.

Over the door Pa hung his rifle and his shotgun, and then he hung on a nail above them a bright, new horseshoe.

“Well,” he said, looking around at the snugly crowded shanty. “A short horse is soon curried. This is our tightest squeeze yet, Caroline, but it’s only a beginning.” Ma’s eyes smiled into his eyes, and he said to Laura, “I could sing you a song about that horseshoe.”

She brought him the fiddle box, and he sat down in the doorway and tuned the fiddle. Ma settled in her chair to rock Grace to sleep. Softly Laura washed the dishes and Carrie wiped them while Pa played the fiddle and sang.

“We journey along quite contented in life

And try to live peaceful with all.

We keep ourselves free from all trouble and strife

And we’re glad when our friends on us call.

Our home it is happy and cheerful and bright,

We’re content and we ask nothing more.

And the reason we prosper, I’ll tell to you now,

There’s a horseshoe hung over the door.