On the Banks of Plum Creek Read online

  On the Banks of Plum Creek

  Laura Ingalls Wilder

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  The Door in the Ground

  Chapter 2

  The House in the Ground

  Chapter 3

  Rushes and Flags

  Chapter 4

  Deep Water

  Chapter 5

  Strange Animal

  Chapter 6

  Wreath of Roses

  Chapter 7

  Ox on the Roof

  Chapter 8

  Straw-Stack

  Chapter 9

  Grasshopper Weather

  Chapter 10

  Cattle in the Hay

  Chapter 11

  Runaway

  Chapter 12

  The Christmas Horses

  Chapter 13

  A Merry Christmas

  Chapter 14

  Spring Freshet

  Chapter 15

  The Footbridge

  Chapter 16

  The Wonderful House

  Chapter 17

  Moving In

  Chapter 18

  The Old Crab and the Bloodsuckers

  Chapter 19

  The Fish-Trap

  Chapter 20

  School

  Chapter 21

  Nellie Oleson

  Chapter 22

  Town Party

  Chapter 23

  Country Party

  Chapter 24

  Going To Church

  Chapter 25

  The Glittering Cloud

  Chapter 26

  Grasshopper Eggs

  Chapter 27

  Rain

  Chapter 28

  The Letter

  Chapter 29

  The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn

  Chapter 30

  Going To Town

  Chapter 31

  Surprise

  Chapter 32

  Grasshoppers Walking

  Chapter 33

  Wheels of Fire

  Chapter 34

  Marks on the Slate

  Chapter 35

  Keeping House

  Chapter 36

  Prairie Winter

  Chapter 37

  The Long Blizzard

  Chapter 38

  The Day of Games

  Chapter 39

  The Third Day

  Chapter 40

  Christmas Eve

  On the Banks of Plum Creek

  Chapter 1

  The Door in the Ground

  The dim wagon track went no farther on the prairie, and Pa stopped the horses.

  When the wagon wheels stopped turning, Jack dropped down in the shade between them. His belly sank on the grass and his front legs stretched out. His nose fitted in the furry hollow. All of him rested, except his ears.

  All day long for many, many days, Jack had been trotting under the wagon. He had trotted all the way from the little log house in Indian Territory, across Kansas, across Missouri, across Iowa, and a long way into Minnesota. He had learned to take his rest whenever the wagon stopped.

  In the wagon Laura jumped up, and so did Mary. Their legs were tired of not moving. “This must be the place,” Pa said. “It’s half a mile up the creek from Nelson’s. We’ve come a good half-mile, and there’s the creek.”

  Laura could not see a creek. She saw a grassy bank, and beyond it a line of willow-tree tops, waving in the gentle wind. Everywhere else the prairie grasses were rippling far away to the sky’s straight edge.

  “Seems to be some kind of stable over there,” said Pa, looking around the edge of the canvas wagon-cover. “But where’s the house?”

  Laura jumped inside her skin. A man was standing beside the horses. No one had been in sight anywhere, but suddenly that man was there. His hair was pale yellow, his round face was as red as an Indian’s, and his eyes were so pale that they looked like a mistake. Jack growled.

  “Be still, Jack!” said Pa. He asked the man, “Are you Mr. Hanson?”

  “Yah,” the man said.

  Pa spoke slowly and loudly. “I heard you want to go west. You trade your place?”

  The man looked slowly at the wagon. He looked at the mustangs, Pet and Patty. After a while he said again, “Yah.”

  Pa got out of the wagon, and Ma said, “You can climb out and run around, girls, I know you are tired, sitting still.”

  Jack got up when Laura climbed down the wagon wheel, but he had to stay under the wagon until Pa said he might go. He looked out at Laura while she ran along a little path that was there.

  The path went across short sunny grass, to the edge of the bank. Down below it was the creek, rippling and glistening in the sunshine. The willow trees grew up beyond the creek.

  Over the edge of the bank, the path turned and went slanting down, close against the grassy bank that rose up like a wall.

  Laura went down it cautiously. The bank rose up beside her till she could not see the wagon. There was only the high sky above her, and down below her the water was talking to itself. Laura went a step farther, then one more step. The path stopped at a wider, flat place, where it turned and dropped down to the creek in stair-steps. Then Laura saw the door.

  The door stood straight up in the grassy bank, where the path turned. It was like a house door, but whatever was behind it was under the ground. The door was shut.

  In front of it lay two big dogs with ugly faces. They saw Laura and slowly rose up.

  Laura ran very fast, up the path to the safe wagon. Mary was standing there, and Laura whispered to her, “There’s a door in the ground, and two big dogs—” She looked behind her. The two dogs were coming.

  Jack’s deep growl rolled from under the wagon. He showed those dogs his fierce teeth.

  “Those your dogs?” Pa said to Mr. Hanson. Mr. Hanson turned and spoke words that Laura could not understand. But the dogs understood. One behind the other, they slunk over the edge of that bank, down out of sight.

  Pa and Mr. Hanson walked slowly away toward the stable. The stable was small and it was not made of logs. Grass grew on its walls and its roof was covered with growing grasses, blowing in the wind.

  Laura and Mary stayed near the wagon, where Jack was. They looked at the prairie grasses swaying and bending, and yellow flowers nodding. Birds rose and flew and sank into the grasses. The sky curved very high and its rim came neatly down to the faraway edge of the round earth.

  When Pa and Mr. Hanson came back, they heard Pa say: “All right, Hanson. We’ll go to town tomorrow and fix up the papers. Tonight we’ll camp here.”

  “Yah, yah!” Mr. Hanson agreed.

  Pa boosted Mary and Laura into the wagon and drove out on the prairie. He told Ma that he had traded Pet and Patty for Mr. Hanson’s land. He had traded Bunny, the mule-colt, and the wagon-cover for Mr. Hanson’s crops and his oxen.

  He unhitched Pet and Patty and led them to the creek to drink. He put them on their picket-lines and helped Ma make camp for the night. Laura was quiet. She did not want to play and she was not hungry when they all sat eating supper by the camp fire.

  “The last night out,” said Pa. “Tomorrow we’ll be settled again. The house is in the creek bank, Caroline.”

  “Oh, Charles!” said Ma. “A dugout. We’ve never had to live in a dugout yet.”

  “I think you’ll find it very clean,” Pa told her. “Norwegians are clean people. It will be snug for winter, and that’s not far away.”

  “Yes, it will be nice to be settled before snow flies,” Ma agreed.

  “It’s only till I harvest the first wheat crop,” said Pa. “Then you’ll have a fine house and I’ll have horses and maybe even a buggy. This is great wheat country,
Caroline! Rich, level land, with not a tree or a rock to contend with. I can’t make out why Hanson sowed such a small field. It must have been a dry season, or Hanson’s no farmer, his wheat is so thin and light.”

  Beyond the fire-light, Pet and Patty and Bunny were eating grass. They bit it off with sharp, pulling crunches, and then stood chewing it and looking through the dark at the low stars shining. They switched their tails peacefully. They did not know they had been traded.

  Laura was a big girl, seven years old. She was too big to cry. But she could not help asking, “Pa, did you have to give him Pet and Patty? Did you, Pa?”

  Pa’s arm drew her close to him in a cuddly hug.

  “Why, little half-pint,” Pa said. “Pet and Patty like to travel. They are little Indian ponies, Laura, and plowing is too hard work for them. They will be much happier, traveling out west. You wouldn’t want to keep them here, breaking their hearts on a plow. Pet and Patty will go on traveling, and with those big oxen I can break up a great big field and have it ready for wheat next spring.

  “A good crop of wheat will bring us more money than we’ve ever had, Laura. Then we’ll have horses, and new dresses, and everything you can want.”

  Laura did not say anything. She felt better with Pa’s arm around her, but she did not want anything except to keep Pet and Patty and Bunny, the long-eared colt.

  Chapter 2

  The House in the Ground

  Early in the morning Pa helped Mr. Hanson move the wagon bows and cover onto Mr. Hanson’s wagon. Then they brought everything out of the dugout house, up the bank, and they packed it in the covered wagon.

  Mr. Hanson offered to help move the things from Pa’s wagon into the dugout, but Ma said, “No, Charles. We will move in when you come back.”

  So Pa hitched Pet and Patty to Mr. Hanson’s wagon. He tied Bunny behind it, and he rode away to town with Mr. Hanson.

  Laura watched Pet and Patty and Bunny going away. Her eyes smarted and her throat ached. Pet and Patty arched their necks, and their manes and tails rippled in the wind. They went away gaily, not knowing that they were never coming back.

  The creek was singing to itself down among the willows, and the soft wind bent the grasses over the top of the bank. The sun was shining and all around the wagon was clean, wide space to be explored.

  The first thing was to untie Jack from the wagon wheel. Mr. Hanson’s two dogs had gone away, and Jack could run about as he pleased. He was so glad that he jumped up against Laura to lick her face and made her sit down hard. Then he ran down the path and Laura ran after him.

  Ma picked up Carrie and said: “Come, Mary. Let’s go look at the dugout.”

  Jack got to the door first. It was open. He looked in, and then he waited for Laura.

  All around that door green vines were growing out of the grassy bank, and they were full of flowers. Red and blue and purple and rosy-pink and white and striped flowers all had their throats wide open as if they were singing glory to the morning. They were morning-glory flowers.

  Laura went under those singing flowers into the dugout. It was one room, all white. The earth walls had been smoothed and whitewashed. The earth floor was smooth and hard.

  When Ma and Mary stood in the doorway the light went dim. There was a small greased-paper window beside the door. But the wall was so thick that the light from the window stayed near the window.

  That front wall was built of sod. Mr. Hanson had dug out his house, and then he had cut long strips of prairie sod and laid them on top of one another, to make the front wall. It was a good, thick wall with not one crack in it. No cold could get through that wall.

  Ma was pleased. She said, “It’s small, but it’s clean and pleasant.” Then she looked up at the ceiling and said, “Look, girls!”

  The ceiling was made of hay. Willow boughs had been laid across and their branches woven together, but here and there the hay that had been spread on them showed through.

  “Well!” Ma said.

  They all went up the path and stood on the roof of that house. No one could have guessed it was a roof. Grass grew on it and waved in the wind just like all the grasses along the creek bank.

  “Goodness,” said Ma. “Anybody could walk over this house and never know it’s here.”

  But Laura spied something. She bent over and parted the grasses with her hands, and then she cried: “I’ve found the stovepipe hole! Look, Mary! Look!”

  Ma and Mary stopped to look, and Carrie leaned out from Ma’s arm and looked, and Jack came pushing to look. They could look right down into the whitewashed room under the grass.

  They looked at it till Ma said, “We’ll brush out the place before Pa comes back. Mary and Laura, you bring the water-pails.”

  Mary carried the large pail and Laura the small one, and they went down the path again. Jack ran ahead and took his place by the door.

  Ma found a willow-twig broom in a corner, and she brushed the walls carefully. Mary watched Carrie to keep her from falling down into the creek, and Laura took the little pail and went for water.

  She hoppity-skipped down the stair-steps to the end of a little bridge across the creek. The bridge was one wide plank. Its other end was under a willow tree.

  The tall willows fluttered slender leaves up against the sky, and little willows grew around them in clumps. They shaded all the ground, and it was cool and bare. The path went across it to a little spring, where cold, clear water fell into a tiny pool and then ran trickling to the creek.

  Laura filled the little pail and went back across the sunny footbridge and up the steps. She went back and forth, fetching water in the little pail and pouring it into the big pail set on a bench inside the doorway.

  Then she helped Ma bring down from the wagon everything they could carry. They had moved nearly everything into the dugout when Pa came rattling down the path. He was carrying a little tin stove and two pieces of stovepipe.

  “Whew!” he said, setting them down. “I’m glad I had to carry them only three miles. Think of it, Caroline! Town’s only three miles away! Just a nice walk. Well, Hanson’s on his way west and the place is ours. How do you like it, Caroline?”

  “I like it,” said Ma. “But I don’t know what to do about the beds. I don’t want to put them on the floor.”

  “What’s the matter with that?” Pa asked her. “We’ve been sleeping on the ground.”

  “That’s different,” Ma said. “I don’t like to sleep on the floor in a house.”

  “Well, that’s soon fixed,” said Pa. “I’ll cut some willow boughs to spread the beds on, for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll find some straight willow poles, and make a couple of bedsteads.”

  He took his ax and went whistling up the path, over the top of the house and down the slope beyond it to the creek. There lay a tiny valley where willows grew thick all along beside the water.

  Laura ran at his heels. “Let me help, Pa!” she panted. “I can carry some.”

  “Why, so you can,” said Pa, looking down at her with his eyes twinkling. “There’s nothing like help when a man has a big job to do.”

  Pa often said he did not know how he could manage without Laura. She had helped him make the door for the log house in Indian Territory. Now she helped him carry the leafy willow boughs and spread them in the dugout. Then she went with him to the stable.

  All four walls of the stable were built of sods, and the roof was willow-boughs and hay, with sods laid over it. The roof was so low that Pa’s head touched it when he stood up straight. There was a manger of willow poles, and two oxen were tied there. One was a huge gray ox with short horns and gentle eyes. The other was smaller, with fierce, long horns and wild eyes. He was bright red-brown all over.

  “Hello, Bright,” Pa said to him.

  “And how are you, Pete, old fellow?” he asked the big ox, slapping him gently.

  “Stand back out of the way, Laura,” he said, “till we see how these cattle act. We’ve got to take them to water.”

>   He put ropes around their horns and led them out of the stable. They followed him slowly down the slope to a level path that went through green rushes to the flat edge of the creek. Laura slowly tagged after them. Their legs were clumsy and their big feet split in the middle. Their noses were broad and slimy.

  Laura stayed outside the stable while Pa tied them to the manger. She walked with him toward the dugout.

  “Pa,” she asked, in a little voice, “did Pet and Patty truly want to go out west?”

  “Yes, Laura,” Pa told her.

  “Oh, Pa,” she said, and there was a tremble in her voice. “I don’t think I like cattle—much.”

  Pa took her hand and comforted it in his big one. He said, “We must do the best we can, Laura, and not grumble. What must be done is best done cheerfully. And some day we will have horses again.”

  “When, Pa?” she asked him, and he said, “When we raise our first crop of wheat.”

  Then they went into the dugout. Ma was cheerful, Mary and Carrie were already washed and combed, and everything was neat. The beds were made on the willow boughs and supper was ready.