The Long Winter Read online

  “Nothing,” Pa said. “They’re just standing there.”

  “That’s nothing to upset a body,” said Ma.

  “No,” Pa said. He drank his tea. “Well, I might as well go drive them off.”

  He put on his coat and cap and mittens again and went out.

  After a moment Ma said, “You might as well go with him, Laura. He may need some help to drive them away from the hay.”

  Quickly Laura put Ma’s big shawl over her head and pinned it snugly under her chin with the shawl-pin. The woolen folds covered her from head to foot. Even her hands were under the shawl. Only her face was out.

  Outdoors the sun-glitter hurt her eyes. She breathed a deep breath of the tingling cold and squinted her eyes to look around her. The sky was hugely blue and all the land was blowing white. The straight, strong wind did not lift the snow, but drove it scudding across the prairie.

  The cold stung Laura’s cheeks. It burned in her nose and tingled in her chest and came out in steam on the air. She held a fold of the shawl across her mouth and her breath made frost on it.

  When she passed the corner of the stable, she saw Pa going ahead of her and she saw the cattle. She stood and stared.

  The cattle were standing in sunshine and shadow by the haystacks—red and brown and spotted cattle and one thin black one. They stood perfectly still, every head bowed down to the ground. The hairy red necks and brown necks all stretched down from bony-gaunt shoulders to monstrous, swollen white heads.

  “Pa!” Laura screamed. Pa motioned to her to stay where she was. He went on trudging, through the low-flying snow, toward those creatures.

  They did not seem like real cattle. They stood so terribly still. In the whole herd there was not the least movement. Only their breathing sucked their hairy sides in between the rib bones and pushed them out again. Their hip bones and their shoulder bones stood up sharply. Their legs were braced out, stiff and still. And where their heads should be, swollen white lumps seemed fast to the ground under the blowing snow.

  On Laura’s head the hair prickled up and a horror went down her backbone. Tears from the sun and the wind swelled out her staring eyes and ran cold on her cheeks. Pa went on slowly against the wind. He walked up to the herd. Not one of the cattle moved.

  For a moment Pa stood looking. Then he stooped and quickly did something. Laura heard a bellow and a red steer’s back humped and jumped. The red steer ran staggering and bawling. It had an ordinary head with eyes and nose and open mouth bawling out steam on the wind.

  Another one bellowed and ran a short, staggering run. Then another. Pa was doing the same thing to them all, one by one. Their bawling rose up to the cold sky.

  At last they all drifted away together. They went silently now in the knee-deep spray of blowing snow. Pa waved to Laura to go back to the shanty, while he inspected the haystacks.

  “Whatever kept you so long, Laura?” Ma asked. “Did the cattle get into the haystacks?”

  “No, Ma,” she answered. “Their heads were… I guess their heads were frozen to the ground.”

  “That can’t be!” Ma exclaimed.

  “It must be one of Laura’s queer notions,” Mary said, busily knitting in her chair by the stove.

  “How could cattle’s heads freeze to the ground, Laura? It’s really worrying, the way you talk sometimes.”

  “Well, ask Pa then!” Laura said shortly. She was not able to tell Ma and Mary what she felt. She felt that somehow, in the wild night and storm, the stillness that was underneath all sounds on the prairie had seized the cattle.

  When Pa came in Ma asked him, “What was wrong with the cattle, Charles?”

  “Their heads were frozen over with ice and snow,” Pa said. “Their breath froze over their eyes and their noses till they couldn’t see nor breathe.”

  Laura stopped sweeping. “Pa! Their own breath! Smothering them,” she said in horror.

  Pa understood how she felt. He said, “They’re all right now, Laura. I broke the ice off their heads. They’re breathing now and I guess they’ll make it to shelter somewhere.”

  Carrie and Mary were wide-eyed and even Ma looked horrified. She said briskly, “Get your sweeping done, Laura. And Charles, for pity’s sake, why don’t you take off your wraps and warm yourself?”

  “I got something to show you,” Pa said. He took his hand carefully out of his pocket. “Look here, girls, look at what I found hidden in a haystack.”

  Slowly he opened his hand. In the hollow of his mitten sat a little bird. He put it gently in Mary’s hands.

  “Why, it’s standing straight up!” Mary exclaimed, touching it lightly with her finger-tips.

  They had never seen a bird like it. It was small, but it looked exactly like the picture of the great auk in Pa’s big green book, The Wonders of the Animal World.

  It had the same white breast and black back and wings, the same short legs placed far back, and the same large, webbed feet. It stood straight up on its short legs, like a tiny man with black coat and trousers and white shirt front, and its little black wings were like arms.

  “What is it, Pa? Oh, what is it?” Carrie cried in delight and she held Grace’s eager hands. “Mustn’t touch, Grace.”

  “I never saw anything like it,” said Pa. “It must have tired out in the storm winds and dropped down and struck against the haystack. It had crawled into the hay for shelter.”

  “It’s a great auk,” Laura declared. “Only it’s a little one.”

  “It’s full-grown, it isn’t a nestling,” said Ma. “Look at its feathers.”

  “Yes, it’s full-grown, whatever it is,” Pa agreed.

  The little bird stood up straight on Mary’s soft palm and looked at them all with its bright black eyes.

  “It’s never seen humans before,” said Pa.

  “How do you know, Pa?” Mary asked.

  “Because it isn’t afraid of us,” Pa said.

  “Oh, can we keep it, Pa? Can’t we, Ma?” Carrie begged.

  “Well, that depends,” Pa said.

  Mary’s finger-tips touched the little bird all over, while Laura told her how white its smooth breast was and how very black its back and tail and little wings. Then they let Grace carefully touch it. The little auk sat still and looked at them.

  They set it on the floor and it walked a little way. Then it pushed its webbed feet tiptoe against the boards and flapped its little wings.

  “It can’t get going,” said Pa. “It’s a water-bird. It must start from the water where it can use those webbed feet to get up speed.”

  Finally they put it in a box in the corner. It stood there looking up at them, with its round, bright black eyes and they wondered what it ate.

  “That was a queer storm all around,” said Pa. “I don’t like it.”

  “Why, Charles, it was only a blizzard,” Ma said. “We’ll likely have nice warm weather now. It’s beginning to warm up a little already.”

  Mary took up her knitting again and Laura went on sweeping. Pa stood by the window and after a while Carrie led Grace away from the little auk and they looked out too.

  “Oh, look! Jackrabbits!” Carrie exclaimed. All around the stable, dozens of jackrabbits were hopping.

  “The rascals have been living on our hay, all through the storm,” Pa said. “I ought to take my gun and get us a rabbit stew.”

  But he had been standing at the window looking at them without making a move toward his gun.

  “Please let them go, Pa, this one time,” Laura pleaded. “When they came because they had to, they had to find shelter.”

  Pa looked at Ma, and Ma smiled. “We aren’t hungry, Charles, and I’m thankful we all got through that storm.”

  “Well, I guess I can spare the jackrabbits a little hay!” said Pa. He took the water pail and went to the well.

  The air that came in when he opened the door was very cold, but the sun was already beginning to melt the snow on the south side of the shanty.

  Chapter
6

  Indian Summer

  There were only slivers of ice on the water pail next morning and the day was sunny and warm. Pa took his traps to set them for muskrats in Big Slough, and Carrie and Grace played outdoors.

  The little auk would not eat. It did not utter a sound, but Carrie and Laura thought that it looked up at them desperately. It would die without food, but it did not seem to know how to eat anything that they offered it.

  At dinnertime Pa said that the ice was melting on Silver Lake; he thought that the strange little bird could take care of itself on the open water. So after dinner Laura and Mary put on their coats and hoods and they went with Pa to set the little auk free.

  Silver Lake was ruffling pale blue and silver under the warm, pale sky. Ice was around its edges and flat gray cakes of ice floated on the ripples. Pa took the little auk from his pocket. In its smooth black coat and neat white shirt-front of tiny feathers, it stood up on his palm. It saw the land and the sky and the water, and eagerly it rose up on its toes and stretched out its little wings.

  But it could not go, it could not fly. Its wings were too small to lift it.

  “It does not belong on land,” said Pa. “It’s a waterbird.”

  He squatted down by the thin white ice at the lake’s edge and reaching far out he tipped the little bird from his hand into the blue Water. For the briefest instant, there it was, and then it wasn’t there. Out among the ice cakes it went streaking, a black speck.

  “It gets up speed, with those webbed feet,” said Pa, “to lift it from the… There it goes!”

  Laura barely had time to see it, rising tiny in the great blue-sparkling sky. Then, in all that glittering of sunlight, it was gone. Her eyes were too dazzled to see it any more. But Pa stood looking, still seeing it going toward the south.

  They never knew what became of that strange little bird that came in the dark with the storm from the far north and went southward in the sunshine. They never saw nor heard of another bird like it. They never found out what kind of bird it was.

  Pa still stood looking far away across the land. All the prairie curves were softly colored, pale browns and tan and fawn-gray and very faint greens and purples, and far away they were gray-blue. The sunshine was warm and the air hazy. Only a little cold was around Laura’s feet, near the thin, dry ice at the lake’s edge.

  Everything was still. No wind stirred the gray-bleached grass and no birds were on the water or in the sky. The lake faintly lapped at the rim of that stillness.

  Laura looked at Pa and she knew he was listening too. The silence was as terrible as cold is. It was stronger than any sound. It could stop the water’s lapping and the thin, faint ringing in Laura’s ears. The silence was no sound, no movement, no thing; that was its terror. Laura’s heart jumped and jumped, trying to get away from it.

  “I don’t like it,” Pa said, slowly shaking his head. “I don’t like the feel of the weather. There’s something…” He could not say what he meant and he said again, “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

  Nobody could say, exactly, that anything was wrong with that weather. It was beautiful Indian summer. Frosts came every night and sometimes a light freeze, but all the days were sunny. Every afternoon Laura and Mary took long walks in the warm sunshine, while Carrie played with Grace near the house. “Get yourselves full of sunshine while you can,” Ma said. “It will soon be winter and you’ll have to stay indoors.”

  Out in the bright soft weather they were storing up sunshine and fresh air, in themselves, for the winter when they could not have any.

  But often, while they were walking, Laura quickly looked at the north. She did not know why. Nothing was there. Sometimes in the warm sunshine she stood still and listened and she was uneasy. There was no reason why.

  “It’s going to be a hard winter,” Pa said. “The hardest we ever saw.”

  “Why, Charles,” Ma protested. “We’re having fine weather now. That one early storm is no reason why the whole winter will be bad.”

  “I’ve trapped muskrats a good many years,” said Pa, “and I never saw them build their walls so thick.”

  “Muskrats!” said Ma.

  “The wild things know, somehow,” Pa said. “Every wild creature’s got ready for a hard winter.”

  “Maybe they just made ready for that bad storm,” Ma suggested.

  But Pa was not persuaded. “I don’t like the feel of things, myself,” he said. “This weather seems to be holding back something that it might let loose any minute. If I were a wild animal, I’d hunt my hole and dig it plenty deep. If I were a wild goose, I’d spread my wings and get out of here.”

  Ma laughed at him. “You are a goose, Charles! I don’t know when I’ve seen a more beautiful Indian summer.”

  Chapter 7

  Indian Warning

  One afternoon a little crowd of men gathered in Harthorn’s store in town. The trains, which had been stopped by the blizzard, were running again, and men had come in to town from their claims to buy some groceries and hear the news.

  Royal and Almanzo Wilder had come from their homesteads, Almanzo driving his own fine team of matched Morgans, the best team in all that country. Mr. Boast was there, standing in the middle of the little crowd and setting it laughing when he laughed. Pa had walked in with his gun on his arm, but he had not seen so much as a jackrabbit, and now he was waiting while Mr. Harthorn weighed the piece of salt pork that he had had to buy instead.

  No one heard a footstep, but Pa felt that someone was behind him and he turned to see who it was. Then suddenly Mr. Boast stopped talking. All the others looked to see what Mr. Boast saw, and they stood up quickly from the cracker boxes and the plow. Almanzo slid down from the counter. Nobody said anything.

  It was only an Indian, but somehow the sight of him kept them all quiet. He stood there and looked at them, at Pa, at Mr. Boast, at Royal Wilder and each of the other men, and finally at Almanzo.

  He was a very old Indian. His brown face was carved in deep wrinkles and shriveled on the bones, but he stood tall and straight. His arms were folded under a gray blanket, holding it wrapped around him. His head was shaved to a scalp-lock and an eagle’s feather stood up from it. His eyes were bright and sharp. Behind him the sun was shining on the dusty street and an Indian pony stood there waiting.

  “Heap big snow come,” this Indian said.

  The blanket slid on his shoulder and one naked brown arm came out. It moved in a wide sweep, to north, to west, to east, and gathered them all together and swirled.

  “Heap big snow, big wind,” he said.

  “How long?” Pa asked him.

  “Many moons,” the Indian said. He held up four fingers, then three fingers. Seven fingers, seven months; blizzards for seven months.

  They all looked at him and did not say anything.

  “You white men,” he said. “I tell-um you.”

  He showed seven fingers again. “Big snow.” Again, seven fingers. “Big snow.” Again seven fingers.“Heap big snow, many moons.”

  Then he tapped his breast with his forefinger. “Old! Old! I have seen!” he said proudly.

  He walked out of the store to his waiting pony and rode away toward the west.

  “Well, I’ll be jiggered,” Mr. Boast said.

  “What was that about seven big snows?” Almanzo asked. Pa told him. The Indian meant that every seventh winter was a hard winter and that at the end of three times seven years came the hardest winter of all. He had come to tell the white men that this coming winter was a twenty-first winter, that there would be seven months of blizzards.

  “You suppose the old geezer knows what he’s talking about?” Royal wanted to know. No one could answer that.

  “Just on the chance,” Royal said, “I say we move in to town for the winter. My feed store beats a claim shanty all hollow for wintering in. We can stay back there till spring. How’d it suit you, Manzo?”

  “Suits me,” said Almanzo.

  “How
do you feel about moving in to town, Boast?” Pa asked.

  Mr. Boast slowly shook his head. “Don’t see how we could. We’ve got too much stock cattle and horses, and chickens. There’s no place in town to keep them even if I could afford to pay rent. We’re fixed pretty well for the winter on the claim. I guess Ellie and I better stay with it.”

  Everyone was sober. Pa paid for his groceries and set out, walking quickly toward home. Now and then he looked back at the northwest sky. It was clear and the sun was shining.

  Ma was taking bread from the oven when Pa came in. Carrie and Grace had run to meet him; then came in with him. Mary went on quietly sewing but Laura jumped up.

  “Is anything wrong, Charles?” Ma asked, tipping the good-smelling loaves from the pan onto a clean white cloth. “You’re home early.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Pa answered. “Here are your sugar and tea and a bit of salt pork. I didn’t get a rabbit. Not a thing’s wrong,” he repeated, “but we’re moving to town as quick as we can. I’ve got to haul in hay, first, for the stock. I can haul one load before dark if I hustle.”

  “Goodness, Charles!” Ma gasped, but Pa was on his way to the stable. Carrie and little Grace stared at Ma and at Laura and at Ma again. Laura looked at Ma and Ma looked helplessly at her.

  “Your Pa never did such a thing before,” Ma said.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Ma. Pa said so,” Laura answered. “I must run help him with the hay.”

  Ma came out to the stable, too, and Pa talked to her while he slapped the harness on the horses.

  “It’s going to be a hard winter,” Pa said. “If you must have the truth, I’m afraid of it. This house is nothing but a claim shanty. It doesn’t keep out the cold, and look what happened to the tar-paper in the first blizzard. Our store building in town is boarded and papered, sided on the outside and ceiled on the inside. It’s good and tight and warm, and the stable there is built warm too.”

  “But what’s the need to hurry so?” Ma asked.

  “I feel like hurrying,” Pa said. “I’m like the muskrat, something tells me to get you and the girls inside thick walls. I’ve been feeling this way for some time, and now that Indian…”