On The Banks Of Plum Creek (7 page)

She yelled and jumped out of bed. Mary came running, too, and Carrie woke up. In Laura's stocking, and in Mary's stocking, there were little paper packages, just alike. In the packages was candy.

Laura had six pieces, and Mary had six.

They had never seen such beautiful candy. It was too beautiful to eat. Some pieces were like ribbons, bent in waves. Some were short bits of round stick candy, and on their flat ends were colored flowers that went all the way through. Some were perfectly round and striped.

In one of Carrie's stockings were four pieces of that beautiful candy. In the other was the button-string. Carrie's eyes and her mouth were perfectly round when she saw it. Then she squealed, and grabbed it and squealed again. She sat on Pa's knee, looking at her candy and her button-string and wriggling and laughing with joy.

Then it was time for Pa to do the chores. He said, "Do you suppose there is anything for us in the stable?“ And Ma said, ”Dress as fast as you can, girls, and you can go to the stable and see what Pa finds."

It was winter, so they had to put on stockings and shoes. But Ma helped them button up the shoes and she pinned their shawls under their chins. They ran out into the cold.

Everything was gray, except a long red streak in the eastern sky. Its red light shone on the patches of gray-white snow. Snow was caught in the dead grass on the walls and roof of the stable and it was red. Pa stood waiting in the stable door. He laughed when he saw Laura and Mary, and he stepped outside to let them go in.

There, standing in Pete's and Bright's places, were two horses.

They were larger than Pet and Patty, and they were a soft, red-brown color, shining like silk. Their manes and tails were black. Their eyes were bright and gentle. They put their velvety noses down to Laura and nibbled softly at her hand and breathed warm on it.

“Well, flutterbudget!” said Pa. "And Mary.

How do you girls like your Christmas?"

“Very much, Pa, ” said Mary, but Laura could only say, “Oh, Pa ! ”

Pa's eyes shone deep and he asked, “Who wants to ride the Christmas horses to water?”

Laura could hardly wait while he lifted Mary up and showed her how to hold on to the mane, and told her not to be afraid. Then Pa's strong hands swung Laura up. She sat on the horse's big, gentle back and felt its aliveness carrying her.

All outdoors was glittering now with sunshine on snow and frost. Pa went ahead, leading the horses and carrying his ax to break the ice in the creek so they could drink. The horses lifted their heads and took deep breaths and whooshed the cold out of their noses. Their velvety ears pricked forward, then back and forward again.

Laura held to her horse's mane and clapped her shoes together and laughed. Pa and the horses and Mary and Laura were all happy in the gay, cold Christmas morning.

In the middle of the night Laura sat straight up in bed. She had never heard anything like the roaring at the door.

“Pa! Pa, what's that?” she screamed.

“Sounds like the creek,” he said, jumping out of bed. He opened the door, and the roaring came into the black darkness of the dugout. It scared Laura.

She heard Pa shouting, “Jiminy crickets! It's raining fish-hooks and hammer handles!”

Ma said something that Laura could not hear.

“Can't see a thing!” Pa shouted. "It's dark as a stack of black cats! Don't worry, the creek can't get this high! It will go over the low bank on the other side!"

He shut the door and the roaring was not so loud.

“Go to sleep, Laura,” he said. But Laura lay awake, listening to that roaring thundering by the door.

Then she opened her eyes. The window was gray. Pa was gone, Ma was getting breakfast, but the creek was still roaring.

In a flash Laura was out of bed and opening the door. Whoosh! Icy cold rain went all over her and took her breath away. She jumped out, into cold water pouring down her whole skin.

Right at her feet the creek was rushing and roaring.

The path ended where she was. Angry water was leaping and rolling over the steps that used to go down to the footbridge. The willow clumps were drowned and tree tops swirled in yellow foam. Thenoise crowded into Laura's ears. She could not hear the rain.

She felt it beating on her sopping-wet nightgown, she felt it striking her head as if she had no hair, but she heard only the creek's wild roaring.

The fast, strong water was fearful and fasci-nating. It snarled foaming through the willow tops and swirled far out on the prairie. It came dashing high and white around the bend upstream. It was always changing and always the same, strong and terrible.

Suddenly Ma jerked Laura into the dugout, asking her, “Didn't you hear me call you?”

“No, Ma,” Laura said.

“Well, no,” said Ma, “I suppose you didn't.”

Water was streaming down Laura and making a puddle around her bare feet. Ma pulled off her sticking-wet nightgown and rubbed her hard all over with a towel.

“Now dress quickly,” Ma said, “or you'll catch your death of cold.”

But Laura was glowing warm. She had never felt so fine and frisky. Mary said, “I'm surprised at you, Laura. I wouldn't go out in the rain and get all wet like that.”

“Oh, Mary, you just ought to see the creek!” Laura cried, and she asked, “Ma, may I go out and see it again after breakfast?”

“You may not,” said Ma. “Not while it is raining.”

But while they were eating breakfast the rain stopped. The sun was shining, and Pa said that Laura and Mary might go with him to look at the creek.

The air was fresh and clean and damp. It smelled like spring. The sky was blue, with large clouds sailing in it. All the snow was gone from the soaking-wet earth. Up on the high bank, Laura could still hear the creek roaring.

“This weather beats me,” said Pa. “I never saw anything like it.”

“Is it still grasshopper weather?” Laura asked him, but Pa did not know.

They went along the high bank, looking at the strange sights. The roaring, foaming creek changed everything. The plum thickets were only foamy brushwood in the water. The tableland was a round island. All around it the water flowed smoothly, coming out of a wide, humping river and running back into it. Where the swimming-pool had been, the tall willows were short willows standing in a lake.

Beyond them, the land that Pa had plowed lay black and wet. Pa looked at it and said, “It won't be long now till I can get the wheat planted.”

Next day Laura was sure that Ma would not let her go to play in the creek. It was still roaring, but more softly. In the dugout she could hear it calling her. So Laura quietly slipped outdoors without saying anything to Ma.

The water was not so high now. It had gone down from the steps and Laura could see it foaming against the footbridge. Part of the plank was above the water.

All winter the creek had been covered with ice; it had been motionless and still, never making a sound. Now it was running swiftly and making a joyful noise. Where it struck the edge of the plank it foamed up in white bubbles and laughed to itself.

Laura took off her shoes and stockings and put them safely on the bottom step. Then she walked out on the plank and stood watching the noisy water.

Drops splashed her bare feet and thin little waves ran around them. She dabbled one foot in the swirling foam. Then down she sat on the plank and plumped both legs into the water. The creek ran strong against them and she kicked against it. That was fun!

Now she was wet almost all over, but her whole skin wanted to be in the water. She lay on her stomach and thrust her arms down on each side of the plank, deep into the fast current. But that was not enough. She wanted to be really in the roaring, joyous creek. She clasped her hands together under the plank and rolled off it.

In that very instant, she knew the creek was not playing. It was strong and terrible. It seized her whole body and pulled it under the plank. Only her head was out, and one arm desperately across the narrow plank.

The water was pulling her and it was pushing, too. It was trying to drag her head under the plank. Her chin held on to the edge and her arm clutched, while the water pulled hard at all the rest of her. It was not laughing now.

No one knew where she was. No one could hear her if she screamed for help. The water roared loud and tugged at her, stronger and stronger. Laura kicked, but the water was stronger than her legs. She got both arms across the plank and pulled, but the water pulled harder. It pulled the back of her head down and it jerked as if it would jerk her in two. It was cold. The coldness soaked into her.

This was not like wolves or cattle. The creek was not alive. It was only strong and terrible and never stopping. It would pull her down and whirl her away, rolling and tossing her like a willow branch. It would not care.

Her legs were tired, and her arms hardly felt the plank any more.

“I must get out. I must!” she thought. The creek's roaring was in her head. She kicked hard with both her feet and pulled hard with her arms, and then she was lying on the plank again.

The plank was solid under her stomach and under her face. She lay on it and breathed and was glad it was solid.

When she moved, her head whirled. She crawled off the plank. She took her shoes and her stockings and she climbed slowly up the muddy steps. At the door of the dugout she stopped. She did not know what to say to Ma.

After a while she went in. Just inside the door she stood still and water dripped off her.

Ma was sewing.

“Where have you been, Laura?” Ma asked, looking up. Then she came quickly, saying:

“My goodness! Turn around, quick!” She began unbuttoning Laura down the back. “What happened? Did you fall in the creek?”

“No, ma'am,” Laura said. “I—I went in.”

Ma listened and went on undressing Laura and rubbing her hard all over with a towel. She did not say a word even when Laura had told her everything. Laura's teeth chattered, and Ma wrapped a quilt around her and sat her close to the stove.

At last Ma said: “Well, Laura, you have been very naughty and I think you knew it all the time. But I can't punish you. I can't even scold you. You came near being drowned.”

Laura did not say anything.

“You won't go near the creek again till Pa or I say you may, and that won't be till the water goes down,” said Ma.

“No'm,” Laura said.

The creek would go down. It would be a gentle, pleasant place to play in again. But nobody could make it do that. Nobody could make it do anything. Laura knew now that there were things stronger than anybody. But the creek had not got her. It had not made her scream and it could not make her cry.

The creek went down. All at once the days were warm, and early every morning Pa went to work the wheat-field with Sam and David, the Christmas horses.

“I declare, Ma said, ”you're working that ground to death and killing yourself."

But Pa said the ground was dry because there had not been enough snow. He must plow deep and harrow well, and get the wheat sowed quickly. Every day he was working before the sun came up and he worked till dark.

Laura waited in the dark till she heard Sam and David splashing into the ford. Then she ran into the dugout for the lantern and she hurried to the stable to hold it so that Pa could see to do the chores.

He was too tired to laugh or talk. He ate supper and went to bed.

At last the wheat was sowed. Then he sowed oats, and he made the potato patch and the garden. Ma and Mary and Laura helped plant the potatoes and sprinkle little seeds in the garden-rows, and they let Carrie think she was helping.

The whole world was green with grass now; the yellow-green willow leaves were uncurling. Violets and buttercups were thick in the prairie hollows, and the sorrel's clover-like leaves and lavender blossoms were sour and good to eat. Only the wheat-field was bare and brown.

One evening Pa showed Laura a faint green mist on that brown field. The wheat was up!

Each tiny sprout was so thin you could hardly see it, but so many of them all together made that misty green. Everyone was happy that night because the wheat was a good stand.

Thenext day Pa drove to town. Sam and David could go to town and come back in one afternoon. There was hardly time to miss Pa, and they were not even watching for him when he came home. Laura heard the wagon first, and she was the first one up the path.

Pa was sitting on the wagon seat. His face was one big shining of joy, and lumber was piled high in the wagon box behind him. He sang out, “Here's your new house, Caroline!”

“But Charles!” Ma gasped. Laura ran and climbed up over the wheel, up onto that pile of boards. She had never seen such smooth, straight, beautiful boards. They had been sawed by machinery.

“But the wheat's hardly up yet!” Ma said.

“That's all right,” Pa told her. “They let me have the lumber, and we'll pay for it when we sell the wheat.”

Laura asked him, “Are we going to have a house made of boards?”

“Yes, flutterbudget,” said Pa. "We're going to have a whole house built of sawed lumber.

And it's going to have glass windows!"

It was really true. Next morning Mr. Nelson came to help Pa, and they began digging the cellar for that house. They were going to have that wonderful house, just because the wheat was growing.

Laura and Mary could hardly stay in the dugout long enough to do their work. But Ma made them do it.

“And I won't have you giving your work a lick and a promise,” said Ma. So they washed every breakfast dish and put them all away.

They made their bed neatly. They brushed the floor with the willow-twig broom and set the broom in its place. Then they could go.