The Long Winter (20 page)

“You're right, Caroline, you always are,” Pa assured her. “We'll make out with what we have.” Then he glanced at the corner where the wheat sack had been.

But he said nothing about it until he had done the chores and twisted some hay. He laid down the armful of hay sticks by the stove and spread his hands to warm.

“Out of wheat, Caroline?” he asked.

“Yes, Charles,” Ma said. “There's bread for breakfast.”

“Running out of potatoes?”

“It seems as though everything is giving out at once,” Ma answered. “But I have six potatoes for tomorrow.”

“Where is the milk pail?” Pa asked.

“The milk pail?” Ma repeated.

“I ' m going up the street a few minutes and I want the milk pail,” Pa said.

Laura brought him the milk pail. She could not help asking, “Is there a milk cow in town, Pa?”

“N o , Laura,” he said. He went through the front room and they heard the front door shut.

Almanzo and Royal were eating supper. Almanzo had stacked the pancakes with brown sugar and he had made plenty of them. Royal had eaten halfway down his stack, Almanzo was nearing the bottom of his, and one tall stack of two dozen pancakes, dripping melted brown sugar, was standing untouched when Pa knocked at the door. Royal opened it.

“Come in, Mr. Ingalls! Sit up and have some pancakes with us!” Royal invited him.

“Thank you just the same. Could you be persuaded to sell me some wheat?” Pa asked, stepping in.

“Sorry,” Royal said. “We have no more to sell.”

“Clean sold out, uh?” said Pa.

“Clean sold out!” said Royal.

“I'd be willing to pay pretty high for some wheat,”

Pa said.

“I wish I'd brought out another carload,” Royal replied. “Sit up and have some supper with us anyway. Manzo brags on his pancakes.”

Pa did not answer. He walked to the end wall and lifted one of the saddles from its peg. Almanzo exclaimed, “Hey, what are you doing?”

Pa held the milk pail's rim firmly against the wall.

He pulled the plug out of the knothole. A round stream of wheat, as large as the hole, poured rattling into the pail.

“I ' m buying some wheat from you boys,” Pa answered Almanzo.

“Say, that's my seed wheat; and I'm not selling it!”

Almanzo declared.

“We're out of wheat at my house and I am buying some,” Pa repeated. The wheat kept on pouring into the pail, sliding down the climbing pile and tinkling a little against the tin. Almanzo stood watching him, but after a minute Royal sat down. He tipped his chair back against the wall, put his hands in his pockets, and grinned at Almanzo.

When the pail was full, Pa thrust the plug into the hole. He tapped it firm with his fist and then tapped lightly up the wall and across it.

“You've got plenty of wheat there,” he said. “Now we'll talk price. What do you figure this pailful's worth?”

“How did you know it was there?” Almanzo wanted to know.

“The inside of this room doesn't fit the outside,”

said Pa. “It's a good foot short, allowing for two-by-four studding besides. Gives you a sixteen-inch space there. Any man with an eye can see it.”

“I'll be darned,” said Almanzo.

“I noticed that plug in the knothole, the day you had the saddles off on that antelope hunt,” Pa added.

“S o I figured you had grain there. It's the only thing likely to run out of a knothole.”

“Anybody else in town know it?” Almanzo asked.

“Not that I know of,” Pa said.

“S e e here,” Royal put in, "we didn't know you were out of wheat. That's Almanzo's wheat, it's not mine, but he wouldn't hang on to it and see anybody starve."

“It's my seed wheat,” Almanzo explained. “Extra good seed, too. And no telling either if seed will be shipped in here in time for spring planting. Of course I won't see anybody starve, but somebody can go after that wheat that was raised south of town.”

“Southeast, I heard,” Pa said. “I did think of going myself, but...”

“You can't go,” Royal interrupted. "Who'd take care of your folks if you got caught in a storm and . . .

got delayed or anything?"

“This isn't settling what I'm to pay for this wheat,”

Pa reminded them.

Almanzo waved that away, "What's a little wheat between neighbors? You're welcome to it, Mr. Ingalls.

Draw up a chair and sample these pancakes before they get cold."

But Pa insisted on paying for the wheat. After some talk about it, Almanzo charged a quarter and Pa paid it. Then he did sit down, as they urged him, and lifting the blanket cake on the untouched pile, he slipped from under it a section of the stack of hot, syrupy pancakes. Royal forked a brown slice of ham from the frying pan onto Pa's plate and Almanzo filled his coffee cup.

“You boys certainly live in the lap of luxury,” Pa remarked. The pancakes were no ordinary pancakes.

Almanzo followed his mother's pancake rule and the cakes were light as foam, soaked through with melted brown sugar. The ham was sugar-cured and hickory-smoked, from the Wilder farm in Minnesota. “I don't know when I've eaten a tastier meal,” said Pa.

The y talked about weather and hunting and politics, railroads and farming, and when Pa left both Royal and Almanzo urged him to drop in often. Neither of them played checkers, so they did not spend much time in the stores. Their own place was warmer.

“Now you've found the way, Mr. Ingalls, come back!” Royal said heartily. "Be glad to see you any time; Manzo and I get tired of each other's company.

Drop in any time, the latchstring is always out!"

“I'll be glad to!” Pa was answering; he broke off and listened. Almanzo stepped out with him into the freezing wind. Stars glittered overhead, but in the northwest sky they were going out rapidly as solid darkness swept up over them. “Here she comes!” said Pa. “I guess nobody'll do any visiting for a spell. I'll just about make it home if I hurry.”

The blizzard struck the house when he was at the door so no one heard him come in. But they had little time to worry, for almost at once he came into the kitchen where they were all sitting in the dark. They were close to the stove and warm enough, but Laura was shivering, hearing the blizzard again and thinking that Pa was out in it.

“Here's some wheat to go on with, Caroline,” Pa said, setting the pail down beside her. She reached down to it and felt the kernels.

“Oh, Charles. Oh, Charles,” she said, rocking, “I might have known you'd provide for us, but wherever did you get it? I thought there was no wheat left in town.”

“I wasn't sure there was or I'd have told you. But I didn't want to raise hopes to be disappointed,” Pa explained. “I agreed not to tell where I got it, but don't worry, Caroline. There's more where that came from.”

“Come, Carrie, I'm going to put you and Grace to bed now,” Ma said with new energy. When she came downstairs she lighted the button lamp and filled the coffee mill. The sound of the grinding began again, and it followed Laura and Mary up the cold stairs until it was lost in the blizzard's howling.

It's remarkable how the potatoes came out exactly even," said Pa.

Slowly they ate the last potatoes, skins and all.

The blizzard was beating and scouring at the house, the winds were roaring and shrieking. The window was pale in the twilight and the stove pressed out its feeble heat against the cold.

“I ' m not hungry, honest, Pa,” Laura said. “I wish you'd finish mine.”

“E a t it, Laura,” Pa told her, kindly but firmly.

Laura had to choke down mouthfuls of the potato that had grown cold on the cold plate. She broke a little piece from her slice of brown bread and left the rest.

Only the hot, sweet tea was good. She felt numb and half-asleep.

Pa put on his overcoat and cap again and went into the lean-to to twist hay. Ma roused herself. "Come, girls! Wash up the dishes and wipe the stove and sweep while I make the beds, and then settle down to your studies. When they're done I'll hear your recita-tions, and then I have a surprise for supper!"

No one really cared but Laura tried to answer Ma.

“Have you, Ma? That's nice,” she said. She washed the dishes and swept the floor, and getting into her patched coat she went into the lean-to to help Pa twist hay. Nothing seemed real but the blizzard that never stopped.

That afternoon she began:

"Old Tubal Cain was a mighty man, a mighty man was he, He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl And he called for his fiddlers three. . . .

“Oh, Ma, I don't know what's the matter with me! I can't think!” she almost wailed.

“It's this storm. I believe we are all half-asleep,”

Ma said. After some time she went on, “We must stop listening to it.”

Everything was very slow. Mary asked after a while,

“How can we stop listening to it?”

Ma slowly let the book close. At last she got up. “I will get the surprise,” she said.

She brought it from the front room. It was a part of a salt codfish, frozen solidly, that she had been keeping there. “We'll have codfish gravy on our bread, for dinner!” she told them.

“B y George, Caroline, nothing can beat the Scotch!” Pa exclaimed.

Ma put the codfish in the open oven to thaw, and took the coffee mill from him. “The girls and I will finish the grinding. I'm sorry, Charles, but I'll need more hay, and you must have time to warm before you do the chores.”

Laura went to help him. When they brought in the armfuls of hay sticks, Carrie was wearily grinding at the coffee mill and Ma was flaking the codfish.

“Just the smell of it chirks a fellow up,” Pa said.

“Caroline, you are a wonder.”

“I think it will be tasty for a change,” Ma admitted.

“But the bread's what we have to be thankful for, Charles.” She saw him looking at the wheat in the milk pail and she told him, “There's enough to outlast this storm, if it's no longer than usual.”

Laura took the coffee mill from Carrie. It worried her to see how thin and white Carrie was, and so ex-hausted from grinding. But even worry was dull and farther away than the hateful ceaseless pounding of the storm. The coffee mill's handle ground round and round, it must not stop. It seemed to make her part of the whirling winds driving the snow round and round over the earth and in the air, whirling and beating at Pa on his way to the stable, whirling and shrieking at the lonely houses, whirling the snow between them and up to the sky and far away, whirling forever over the endless prairie.

All the days of that storm Almanzo was thinking. He did not crack jokes as usual, and when doing the chores he curried and brushed his horses mechanically. He even sat thoughtfully whittling and let Royal make the supper pancakes.

“You know what I think, Roy?” he asked at last.

“It ought to be something worth while, the time you've been spending on it,” Royal replied.

“I think there's folks in this town that are starving,”

Almanzo stated.

“Some are getting pretty hungry, maybe,” Royal admitted, turning the pancakes.

“I said starving,” Almanzo repeated. “Take Ingalls, there's six in his family. You notice his eyes and how thin he was? He said he was out of wheat. Well, take a peck, say a peck and a quarter, of wheat, how long will it last a family of six? Figure it out for yourself.”

“He must have other provisions,” said Royal.

“The y came out here summer before last and they didn't go west with the railroad jobs. He took a homestead. You know yourself how much a man can raise the first summer on sod. And there's been no work around here for wages.”

“What are you getting at?” Royal asked. “Going to sell your seed wheat?”

“Not on your tintype! Not if there's any way to save it,” Almanzo declared.

“Well, then what?” Royal demanded.

Almanzo paid no attention to the question. “I figure Ingalls isn't the only man in about the same fix,”

he continued. Slowly and methodically he reckoned up the supply of provisions in town when the train stopped running, and named the families that he had reason to believe were already running short. He esti-mated the time it would take to clear the railroad cuts of snow, after the blizzard stopped.

“Say they stop in March,” he concluded, “I've proved that folks will have to eat up my wheat or starve before provisions can be shipped in, haven't I ? ”

“I guess you have, for a fact,” Royal admitted soberly.

“On the other hand, suppose this weather keeps up till April. That old Indian predicted seven months of it, don't forget. If trains aren't running before April or if they don't bring in seed wheat before then, I've got to save my seed wheat, or lose a year's crop.”

“Looks that way,” Royal agreed.

“And to top that, if trains don't run early in April folks will starve anyway. Even if they have eaten up my wheat.”

“Well, come to the point,” said Royal.

“This is the point. Somebody's got to go get that wheat that was raised south of town.”

Royal slowly shook his head. “Nobody'll do it. It's as much as a man's life is worth.”

All at once, Almanzo was cheerful again. He pulled up to the table, lifted a stack of pancakes onto his plate. “Oh well, why not take a chance?” he asked gaily, pouring molasses over the steaming pile. "You can't sometimes 'most always tell!"

“Forty miles?” Royal said. "Go out on these prairies looking for a needle in a haystack—twenty miles and back? Man alive, you know yourself nobody can tell when a blizzard will hit you. We haven't had more than one clear day at a time since this thing started.

More often, half a day. It can't be done, Manzo. A fellow wouldn't have the chance of a snowball in hades."

“Somebody's got to do it,” Almanzo replied reasonably. “I proved that.”

“Yes, but, gee whillikins!” said Royal.

“' B e sure you're right, then go ahead,'” Almanzo quoted their father.

'“Better be safe than sorry,'” Royal retorted with their mother's saying.

“Oh well, you're a storekeeper, Roy,” Almanzo returned. “A farmer takes chances. He has to.”

“Almanzo,” Royal said solemnly, “if I let you lose your fool self out on these prairies, what'll I say to Father and Mother?”