These Happy Golden Years (Little House 8)

“Where is Pa?” Laura asked.

Ma blew out the lamp. “He is outdoors, watching the cloud. He can get here quickly, now that we are all down out of his way.”

“Why did you blow out the lamp, Ma?” Grace almost whimpered.

“Get into your clothes as well as you can, girls,” Ma said. “We don’t want the lamp, Grace; we don’t want any risk of fire.”

They could hear the roaring of wind, and a strange wild note was in it. Flashes of lightning glared into the darkness. The kitchen overhead was brighter than fire for an instant, then the dark was blacker and seemed to press on the eyeballs.

Ma dressed Grace, while Laura and Carrie somehow got into their clothes. Then they all sat on the earth floor, with their backs against the earth wall, and waited.

Laura knew they were safer in the cellar, but she could hardly bear the closed-in, underground feeling of it. She wanted to be out in the wind with Pa, watching the storm. The wind roared. The lightning slapped her open eyes with glare and darkness. Overhead in the kitchen the clock, pathetically ignorant of the storm, struck one.

It seemed a long time before Pa’s voice came down through the darkness. “You may come up now, Caroline. The storm passed west of us, between here and the Wessington Hills.”

“Oh, Pa, it wasn’t near enough to get the Reverend Brown’s, was it?” Laura asked.

“No. I doubt if this house would have stood if it had come that near,” Pa answered.

Cramped and chilled from sitting so long uncomfortably in the cold cellar, they all crawled wearily into their beds.

All through August the weather was hot, and there were many thunderstorms. Several times Ma roused Laura and Carrie in the night, to go down cellar with her and Grace while Pa watched the storm clouds. The wind blew with terrific force, but it was always a straight wind; and the worst of it passed to the west.

Frightened as she was in these terrifying nights, Laura felt a strange delight in the wild strength of the wind, the terrible beauty of the lightning and the crashes of thunder.

But in the morning they were all tired and heavy-eyed. Pa said, “It seems we have to have about so many electric storms. If we don’t get them in blizzards in the wintertime, we get them in cyclones and thunderstorms in the summer.”

“We can’t do anything about it, so we must take them as they come,” said Ma.

Pa rose from the table, and stretched as he yawned. “Well I can make up my sleep when the cyclone season is over. Right now I have to cut the oats,” and he went out to his work.

He was cutting the oats and wheat again with the old cradle. A harvester cost more money than he had, and he would not go in debt for one.

“This giving a mortgage on everything he owns, to buy a two-hundred-dollar machine, and paying ten per cent interest on the debt, will ruin a man,” he said. “Let these brash young fellows go in debt for machinery and break up all their land. I’m going to let the grass keep on growing, and raise cattle.”

Since he had sold Ellen’s big calf to send Mary to college, he had bought another cow. Ellen’s little calf had grown up, other calves had grown up, until now he had six cows and heifers, besides this year’s calves, so he needed a great deal of grass and hay.

On the last Sunday in August, Almanzo came driving Barnum single. Barnum reared, but Laura was quick, and when his feet touched the ground again she was safely in the buggy seat.

When Barnum had almost reached town and had settled to a trot, Almanzo explained. “I want to break him to drive single. He is so large and strong and such a good-looker that he will be worth more as a single driver than in a team. He must get over this way of starting, though.”

“He is a beauty,” Laura agreed, “and I believe he is really gentle. Let me drive him; I would like to see if I could.”

Almanzo seemed doubtful, but he gave her the lines. “Keep a tight rein on him,” he said. “Don’t let him get the start of you.”

Laura had not realized before how very small her hands were. They looked and felt tiny, holding those leather lines, but she was strong. She drove around the corner by the livery barn and all the way up Main Street, Barnum trotting as fast as he could.

“Did you see them turn and stare?” said Almanzo. “They never expected to see a woman driving that horse.”

Laura saw nothing but Barnum. Across the railroad tracks and on through Poverty Flat, the new part of town, she drove. But her arms were growing tired, and a little way out of town she gave the lines back to Almanzo.

“When my arms are rested, I want to drive again,” she told him.

“You may,” he promised. “You may drive all you want to. It gives my arms a rest, too.”

The next time she took the lines they felt alive. Through them she got the feel of Barnum’s mouth. A kind of thrill came up the lines to her hands. “I do believe Barnum knows I’m driving,” she said in surprise.

“Of course he does. He doesn’t pull so hard, either. Watch him!” Almanzo took the lines. At once they grew tauter and seemed almost to stretch.