By the Shores of Silver Lake (Little House, #5)

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

At last the sun was overhead, and Pa stopped the horses by a little creek. It was good to feel still. The little creek talked to itself, the horses munched their oats in the feedbox at the back of the wagon, and on the warm grass Ma spread a cloth and opened the lunch box. There was bread and butter and good hardboiled eggs, with pepper and salt in a paper, to dip the bitten eggs into. Noon ended too soon. Pa led the horses to drink from the creek, while Ma and Laura picked up the eggshells and bits of paper, to leave the place tidy. Pa hitched the horses to the wagon again and sang out, “All aboard!”

The afternoon was longer than the morning. Once Laura said, “I thought we were going west.” “We are going west, Laura,” Pa said, surprised. “I thought it would be different,” Laura explained. “Just you wait till we get out beyond settled country!” said Pa. Once Carrie sighed, “I’m tired.” But she straightened up quickly and said, “Not so very tired.” Carrie did not mean to complain. One little jolt is nothing at all. They had hardly noticed two miles and a half of little jolts when they rode to town from Plum Creek. But all the little jolts from sunrise to noon, and then all the little jolts from noon to sunset, are tiring.

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.”

Beyond the Big Sioux there were no more fields, no houses, no people in sight. There really was no road, only a dim wagon trail, and no railroad grade. Here and there Laura glimpsed a little wooden stake, almost hidden in the grasses. Pa said they were surveyors’ stakes for the railroad grade that was not started yet. Laura said to Mary, “This prairie is like an enormous meadow, stretching far away in every direction, to the very edge of the world.” The endless waves of flowery grasses under the cloudless sky gave her a queer feeling. She could not say how she felt. All of them in the wagon, and the wagon and team, and even Pa, seemed small.

Pa talked about his new job. He would be the company storekeeper, and the timekeeper at Silver Lake camp. He would run the store and he would keep straight in his books the charge account of every man on the job, and know exactly how much money was due each man for his work, after his board bill and his account at the store had been subtracted. And when the paymaster brought the money each payday, Pa would pay every man. That was all he had to do, and for that he would be paid fifty dollars every month.

Laura saw old Indian trails and buffalo paths worn deep in the ground and now grassed over. She saw strange large depressions, straight-sided and flat-bottomed, that had been buffalo wallows, where now the grass was growing. Laura had never seen a buffalo, and Pa said it was not likely that she would ever see one. Only a little while before the vast herds of thousands of buffaloes had grazed over this country. They had been the Indians’ cattle, and white men had slaughtered them all.

On the way, Pa showed her the figures painted on the little grade-stakes that were driven into the ground in a straight line where the railroad grade would be. The surveyors had driven those stakes. The figures told the graders how high to build the grade on low ground, and how deep to make the cuts on high ground. The surveyors had measured it all and figured the grade exactly, before anyone else had come there. First, someone had thought of a railroad. Then the surveyors had come out to that empty country, and they had marked and measured a railroad that was not there at all; it was only a railroad that someone had thought of. Then the plowmen came to tear up the prairie grass, and the scraper-men to dig up the dirt, and the teamsters with their wagons to haul it. And all of them said they were working on the railroad, but still the railroad wasn’t there. Nothing was there yet but cuts through the prairie swells, pieces of the railroad grade that were really only narrow, short ridges of earth, all pointing westward across the enormous grassy land.

One day Pa came from hunting, bringing a great, snow-white bird. “I’m sorry, Caroline,” he said soberly. “I would not have done it if I’d known. I’ve shot a swan. It was too beautiful to kill. But I had no idea it was a swan. I never saw one flying before.” “It can’t be helped now, Charles,” Ma told him. They all stood looking sorrowfully at the beautiful, snowy bird that would never fly again. “Come,” said Ma. “I’ll pluck its feathers and you skin it. We’ll cure the skin with the swan’s-down on.” “It’s bigger than I am,” Carrie said. The swan was so large that Pa measured it. Its feathery white wings measured eight feet from tip to tip. Another day Pa brought a pelican to the shanty to show Ma what it was like. He opened the long bill and dead fish fell out of the pouch of skin underneath it. Ma snatched up her apron and pressed it to her face, and Carrie and Grace held their noses. “Take it away, Charles, quick!” said Ma through the apron. Some of those fish were fresh, and some were fish that had been dead a long, long time. Pelicans were not fit to eat. Even their feathers smelled so strongly of rotten fish that Ma could not save them for pillows.

Another thing, Laura,” said Pa. “You know Ma was a teacher, and her mother before her. Ma’s heart is set on one of you girls teaching school, and I guess it will have to be you. So you see you must have your schooling.” Laura’s heart jerked, and then she seemed to feel it falling, far, far down. She did not say anything. She knew that Pa and Ma, and Mary too, had thought that Mary would be a teacher. Now Mary couldn’t teach, and— “Oh, I won’t! I won’t!” Laura thought. “I don’t want to! I can’t.” Then she said to herself, “You must.” She could not disappoint Ma. She must do as Pa said. So she had to be a school teacher when she grew up. Besides, there was nothing else she could do to earn money.

Next morning Laura milked the lone cow by her lonely self. Aunt Docia had driven away with a load of oats from the feed room. Lena had driven a wagon-load of goods from the store, and Jean still another big load of scrapers and plows. Uncle Hi would follow them as soon as he settled with the company. “I guess Hi’s debt is big enough this time with all those goods charged to him,” Pa said. “Shouldn’t you have stopped it, Charles?” Ma worried. “It’s not my look-out,” said Pa. “My orders were to let the contractor take anything he wanted, and charge it to him. Oh, come, Caroline! It wasn’t stealing. Hi hasn’t got away with any more than’s due him for his work here and at the camp on the Sioux. The company cheated him there, and he’s got even here. That’s all there is to it.”

She opened the third door. A squeal of excitement came out of her mouth and startled the listening house. There before her eyes was a little store. All up the walls of that small room were shelves, and on the shelves were dishes, and pans and pots, and boxes, and cans. All around under the shelves stood barrels and boxes. The first barrel was nearly full of flour. The second held corn meal. The third had a tight lid, and it was full of pieces of fat, white pork held down in brown brine. Laura had never seen so much salt pork at one time. There was a wooden box full of square soda crackers, and a box full of big slabs of salted fish. There was a large box of dried apples, and two sacks full of potatoes, and another big sack nearly full of beans.

“Did you get the wolf, Pa?” Carrie wanted to know. Laura did not say anything. Pa smiled at Carrie and said, “Now, now, don’t ask questions. I’ll tell you all about it. I went across the lake, followed the marks you girls made last night. And what do you suppose I found in that high bank where you saw the wolf?” “You found the wolf,” Carrie said confidently. Laura still said nothing. Her food was choking her; she could hardly swallow the smallest mouthful. “I found the wolves’ den,” said Pa. “And the biggest wolves’ tracks I ever saw. Girls, there were two big buffalo wolves at that den last night.” Mary and Carrie gasped. Ma said, “Charles!” “It’s too late to be scared now,” Pa told them. “But that’s what you girls did. You went right up to the wolves’ den and there were the wolves. “Their tracks were fresh, and all the signs show plain as day what they were doing. It’s an old den, and from their size they’re no young wolves. I’d say they’d been living there for some years. But they haven’t been living there this winter. “They came down from the northwest sometime yesterday evening and went pretty straight to that den. They stayed around it, in and out of it, maybe till this morning. I followed their tracks from there, down along Big Slough and out on the prairie, southwest. “From the time they left the old den, those wolves never stopped. They trotted along, side by side, as if they had started on a long journey and knew where they were going. I followed them far enough ...

Ma poured the strong brown coffee and the fragrant tea, while Pa heaped each plate with roast rabbit, stuffing, and potatoes and gravy. “This is the first time we ever had jack rabbit for Christmas dinner,” Pa said. “The other time we lived where jack rabbits grow, they were too common, we had them every day. For Christmas we had wild turkey.” “Yes, Charles, and that was the most we did have,” said Ma. “There was no surveyors’ pantry to get pickles and peaches out of, in Indian Territory.” “Seems to me this is the best rabbit I ever tasted,” said Mr. Boast. “The gravy is extra good too.” “Hunger is the best sauce,” Ma replied modestly. But Mrs. Boast said, “I know why the rabbit’s so good. Mrs. Ingalls lays thin slices of salt pork over it when she roasts it.” “Why, yes, I do,” Ma agreed. “I think it does improve the flavor.”

What is the name of the town that’s going to be here?” Carrie asked. “It doesn’t have a name yet, does it, Pa?” said Laura. “Yes,” Pa answered. “It’s De Smet. It’s named for a French priest who came pioneering out here in the early days.” They went into the warm house. “That poor boy’ll ruin his health, most likely,” said Ma. “Baching all by himself and trying to live on his own cooking.” She meant Reverend Stuart. “He’s Scotch,” said Pa, as if that meant that he would be all right. “What did I tell you, Ingalls, about the spring rush?” said Mr. Boast. “Two homesteaders in here already, and March hardly begun.” “That struck me too,” said Pa. “I’m making tracks for Brookings tomorrow morning, rain or shine.”

Well, that was enough for me. I had to beat him to that claim. At first I thought I’d be up bright and early next morning, and then I figured I wouldn’t take any chances. So as soon as I got some supper, I made tracks for the Land Office.” “I thought it was closed,” said Carrie. “It was. I settled right down on the doorstep to spend the night.” “Surely you didn’t need to do that, Charles?” said Ma, handing him a cup of tea. “Need to do that?” Pa repeated. “I wasn’t the only man who had that idea, not by a blamed sight. Lucky I got there first. Must have been forty men waiting there all night, and right next to me were those two fellows that I’d heard talking.”

That week the house filled with steady boarders, men who were building houses on the townsite or on their homestead claims. From dawn until far into the night, Ma and Laura hardly had time to catch their breaths. All day long there was a racket of wagons passing. Teamsters were hauling lumber from Brookings as fast as they could, and yellow skeletons of buildings rose every day. Already you could see Main Street growing up from the muddy ground along the railroad grade. Every night beds covered the floor of the big room and the lean-to. Pa slept on the floor with the boarders so that Mary and Laura and Carrie could move into the bedroom with Ma and Grace, and more boarders’ beds covered the whole floor of the attic. The supplies were all gone, and now Ma had to buy flour and salt and beans and meat and corn meal, so she did not make so much money. Supplies cost three and four times as much as they cost in Minnesota, she said, because the railroad and the teamsters charged so much for the hauling. The roads were so muddy that the teamsters could not haul large loads. Anyway, she made a few cents’ profit on every meal, and any little bit they could earn was better than nothing.

One day Laura heard a man say, through the clattering at the dinner table, that he was putting up a hotel. He had got in the night before with a load of lumber hauled from Brookings. His wife was coming out on the next load. “We’ll be doing business within a week,” he said. “Glad to hear it, sir,” Pa said. “What this town needs is a hotel. You’ll be doing a land-office business, as quick as you can get started.” As suddenly as the hurry had begun, it ended. One evening Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary and Carrie and Grace sat down to supper. No one else was there. Around them was their own house again; no one else was in it. A beautiful quiet was there, peaceful and cool, like the silence when a blizzard stops, or the restfulness of rain after a long fever of drought. “I declare! I didn’t know I was so tired,” Ma sighed peacefully. “I’m glad you and the girls are through working for strangers,” said Pa.

Only an edging of ice remained around the shores of Silver Lake and among the dead slough grass. The lake water was blue as the sky, and far away in the shimmering sky an arrow of tiny black dots came up from the south. Faintly from far away came the wild, lonely sound of the wild geese calling. Pa came hurrying to the house. “First spring flock of geese’s in sight!” he said. “How about roast goose for dinner?” He hurried away with his gun. “Mm, it will be good,” Mary said. “Roast goose with sage stuffing! Won’t you like that, Laura!” “No, and you know I don’t,” Laura answered. “You know I don’t like sage. We’ll have onion in the stuffing.” “But I don’t like onion!” Mary said crossly. “I want sage!” Laura sat back on her heels where she was scrubbing the floor. “I don’t care if you do. We won’t have it! I guess I can have what I want sometimes!” “Why, girls!” Ma said astonished. “Are you quarreling?” “I want sage!” Mary insisted. “And I want onion!” Laura cried. “Girls, girls,” Ma said in distress. “I can’t think what’s got into you. And I never heard of anything so silly! You both know we have no sage, nor onion either.” The door opened, and Pa came in. Soberly he put his gun in its place. “Not a goose within gunshot,” he said. “The whole flock rose when it came to Silver Lake and kept on going north. They must have seen the new buildings and heard the noise. Looks like hunting’s going to be slim around here from now on.”

While she was looking, suddenly into the sunny green and blue came two brown horses with flowing black manes and tails, trotting side by side in harness. Their brown flanks and shoulders gleamed in the sunshine, their slender legs stepped daintily, their necks were arched and their ears pricked up, and they tossed their heads proudly as they went by. “Oh, what beautiful horses!” Laura cried. “Look, Pa! Look!” She turned her head to watch them as long as she could. They drew a light wagon. A young man stood up in the wagon, driving, and a taller man stood behind him with a hand on his shoulder. In a moment the backs of the men and the wagon loomed up so that Laura could no longer see the horses. Pa had turned around in the seat to watch them too. “Those are the Wilder boys,” he said. “Almanzo’s driving, and that’s his brother Royal with him. They’ve taken up claims north of town, and they’ve got the finest horses in this whole country. By George, you seldom see a team like that.” With all her heart Laura wished for such horses. She supposed she never could have them.

Laura and Carrie went into the hardware store. Two men were sitting on nail kegs and one on a plow. They stopped talking and looked at Laura and Carrie. The wall behind the counter glittered with tin pans and pails and lamps. Laura said, “Pa wants a mowing-machine section, please.” The man on the plow said, “He’s broke one, has he?” and Laura said, “Yes, sir.” She watched him wrap in paper the sharp and shining three-cornered tooth. He must be Mr. Fuller. She gave him the five cents and, taking the package in her hand, she said, “Thank you,” and walked out with Carrie. That was over. But they did not speak until they had walked out of town. Then Carrie said, “You did that beautifully, Laura.” “Oh, it was just buying something,” Laura replied. “I know, but I feel funny when people look at me. I feel . . . not scared, exactly . . .” Carrie said. “There’s nothing to be scared of,” Laura said. “We mustn’t ever be scared.” Suddenly she told Carrie, “I feel the same way.”