By the Shores of Silver Lake Read online

  “You must excuse the way I look,” she said. “My girl was married yesterday, and here come the threshers this morning, and this wash to do. I been hustling since before sun-up, and here the day’s work hardly started and my girl not here any more to help me.”

  “Do you mean Lizzie got married?” Lena asked.

  “Yes, Lizzie got married yesterday,” Lizzie’s mother said proudly. “Her Pa says thirteen’s pretty young, but she’s got her a good man and I say it’s better to settle down young. I was married young myself.”

  Laura looked at Lena, and Lena looked at her. On the way back to camp they did not say anything for some time. Then both spoke at once.

  “She was only a little older than I am,” said Laura, and Lena said, “I’m a year older than she was.”

  They looked at each other again, an almost scared look. Then Lena tossed her curly black head. “She’s a silly! Now she can’t ever have any more good times.”

  Laura said soberly, “No, she can’t play any more now.”

  Even the ponies trotted gravely. After a while Lena said she supposed that Lizzie did not have to work any harder than before. “Anyway, now she’s doing her own work in her own house, and she’ll have babies.”

  “Well,” Laura said, “I’d like my own house and I like babies, and I wouldn’t mind the work, but I don’t want to be so responsible. I’d rather let Ma be responsible for a long time yet.”

  “And besides, I don’t want to settle down,” Lena said. “I’m not ever going to get married, or if I do, I’m going to marry a railroader and keep on moving west as long as I live.”

  “May I drive now?” Laura asked. She wanted to forget about growing up.

  Lena gave her the lines. “All you have to do is hold the lines,” Lena said. “The ponies know the way back.” At that instant, the ponies touched noses and squealed.

  “Hold on to them, Laura! Hold on to them!” Lena screeched.

  Laura braced her feet and hung on to the lines with all her might. She could feel that the ponies didn’t mean any harm. They were running because they wanted to run in the windy weather; they were going to do what they wanted to do. Laura hung on to them and yelled, “Yi, yi, yi, yip-ee!”

  She had forgotten the basket of clothes, and so had Lena. All the way back to camp across the prairie they went whooping and singing, the ponies went running, trotting, and running again. When they stopped by the shanties to unhitch and picket the ponies, they found all the top layers of the clean washing on the buggy floor under the seats.

  Guiltily they piled and smoothed them and lugged the heavy basket into the shanty where Aunt Docia and Ma were dishing up the dinner.

  “You girls look as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouths,” said Aunt Docia. “What have you been up to?”

  “Why, we just drove out and brought back the washing,” said Lena.

  That afternoon was even more exciting than the morning. As soon as the dishes were washed, Lena and Laura ran out again to the ponies. Jean had gone on one of them. He was riding away across the prairie.

  “No fair!” Lena yelled. The other pony was galloping in a circle, held by its picket rope. Lena grabbed its mane, unsnapped the rope, and sailed right up from the ground onto the back of the running pony.

  Laura stood watching Lena and Jean race in circles, yelling like Indians. They rode crouching, their hair streaming back, their hands clutched in the flying black manes and their brown legs clasping the ponies’ sides. The ponies curved and swerved, chasing each other on the prairie like birds in the sky. Laura would never have tired of watching them.

  The ponies came galloping and stopped near her, and Lena and Jean slid off.

  “Come on, Laura,” Lena said generously. “You can ride Jean’s pony.”

  “Who says she can?” Jean demanded. “You let her ride your own pony.”

  “You better behave or I’ll tell how you tried to scare us last night,” said Lena.

  Laura took hold of the pony’s mane. But the pony was much larger than she was, its back was high, and the pony was strong. Laura said, “I don’t know if I can. I never did ride horseback.”

  “I’ll put you on,” said Lena. She held her pony by the forelock with one hand, and bending down she held her other hand for Laura to step onto.

  Jean’s pony seemed larger every minute. It was big and strong enough to kill Laura if it wanted to, and so high that to fall off it would break her bones. She was so scared to ride it that she had to try.

  She stepped onto Lena’s hand, she scrambled up the warm, slippery, moving mass of pony, while Lena boosted. Then she got one leg over the pony’s back and everything began moving rapidly. Dimly she heard Lena saying, “Hang on to his mane.”

  She was holding on to the pony’s mane. She was hanging on to deep handfuls of it with all her might, and her elbows and her knees were holding on to the pony, but she was jolting so that she couldn’t think. The ground was so far beneath that she didn’t dare look. Every instant she was falling, but before she really fell she was falling the other way, and the jolting rattled her teeth. Far off she heard Lena yell, “Hang on, Laura!”

  Then everything smoothed into the smoothest rippling motion. This motion went through the pony and through Laura and kept them sailing over waves in rushing air. Laura’s screwed-up eyes opened, and below her she saw the grasses flowing back. She saw the pony’s black mane blowing, and her hands clenched tight in it. She and the pony were going too fast but they were going like music and nothing could happen to her until the music stopped.

  Lena’s pony came pounding along beside her. Laura wanted to ask how to stop safely but she could not speak. She saw the shanties far ahead, and knew that somehow the ponies had turned back toward the camp. Then the jolting began again. Then it stopped, and there she sat on the pony’s back.

  “Didn’t I tell you it’s fun?” Lena asked.

  “What makes it jolt so?” Laura asked.

  “That’s trotting. You don’t want to trot, you want to make your pony gallop. Just yell at it, like I did. Come on, let’s go a long ways this time, you want to?”

  “Yes,” said Laura.

  “All right, hang on. Now, yell!”

  That was a wonderful afternoon. Twice Laura fell off; once the pony’s head hit her nose and made it bleed, but she never let go of the mane. Her hair came unbraided and her throat grew hoarse from laughing and screeching, and her legs were scratched from running through the sharp grass and trying to leap onto her pony while it was running. She almost could, but not quite, and this made the pony mad. Lena and Jean always started the ponies to running and then swung up. They raced each other from the ground, trying which could sooner mount and reach a certain mark.

  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.”

  Chapter 7

  The West Begins

  Early next morning they were all in the wagon again. It had not been unloaded so everything was ready to go.

  Nothing was left of the camp but Aunt Docia’s shanty. Over the worn-out grass and the dead spots where shanties had been, surveyors were measuring and driving stakes for a new town that would be built.

  “We’ll be along as soon as Hi gets his business settled,” Aunt Docia said.

  “I’ll see you at Silver Lake!” Lena called to Laura, while Pa chirruped to the horses and the wheels began to turn.

  The sun shone brightly on the uncovered wagon, but the wind was cool and riding was pleasant. Here and there, men were working in their fields, and now and then a team and wagon passed.

  Soon the road curved downward through rolling land and Pa said
, “The Big Sioux River’s ahead.”

  Laura began to see out loud for Mary. “The road’s going down a low bank to the river, but there aren’t any trees. There’s just the big sky and grassy land, and the little, low creek. It’s a big river sometimes, but now it’s dried up till it’s no bigger than Plum Creek. It trickles along from pool to pool, by dry gravel stretches and cracked dry mud flats. Now the horses are stopping to drink.”

  “Drink hearty,” Pa said to the horses. “There’s no more water for thirty miles.”

  Beyond the low river the grassy land was low curve behind curve and the road looked like a short hook.

  “The road pushes against the grassy land and breaks off short. And that’s the end of it,” said Laura.

  “It can’t be,” Mary objected. “The road goes all the way to Silver Lake.”

  “I know it does,” Laura answered.

  “Well, then I don’t think you ought to say things like that,” Mary told her gently. “We should always be careful to say exactly what we mean.”

  “I was saying what I meant,” Laura protested. But she could not explain. There were so many ways of seeing things and so many ways of saying them.

  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.

  All morning Pa drove steadily along the dim wagon track, and nothing changed. The farther they went into the west, the smaller they seemed, and the less they seemed to be going anywhere. The wind blew the grass always with the same endless rippling, the horses’ feet and the wheels going over the grass made always the same sound. The jiggling of the board seat was always the same jiggling. Laura thought they might go on forever, yet always be in this same changeless place, that would not even know they were there.

  Only the sun moved. Without ever seeming to, the sun moved steadily upward in the sky. When it was overhead, they stopped to feed the horses and to eat a picnic lunch on the clean grass.

  It was good to rest on the ground after riding all the morning. Laura thought of the many times they had eaten under the sky, while they were traveling all the way from Wisconsin to Indian Territory and back again to Minnesota. Now they were in Dakota Territory going farther west. But this was different from all the other times, not only because there was no cover on the wagon and no beds in it, but some other reason. Laura couldn’t say how, but this prairie was different.

  “Pa,” she asked, “when you find the homestead, will it be like the one we had in Indian Territory?”

  Pa thought before he answered. “No,” he said finally. “This is different country. I can’t tell you how, exactly, but this prairie is different. It feels different.”

  “That’s likely enough,” Ma said sensibly. “We’re west of Minnesota, and north of Indian Territory, so naturally the flowers and grasses are not the same.”

  But that was not what Pa and Laura meant. There was really almost no difference in the flowers and grasses. But there was something else here that was not anywhere else. It was an enormous stillness that made you feel still. And when you were still, you could feel great stillness coming closer.

  All the little sounds of the blowing grasses and of the horses munching and whooshing in their feedbox at the back of the wagon, and even the sounds of eating and talking could not touch the enormous silence of this prairie.

  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.

  “And best of all, Caroline, we’re among the very first out here!” said Pa. “We’ve got the pick of the land for our homestead. By George, our luck’s turned at last! First chance at new land, and fifty dollars a month for a whole summer to boot!”

  “It is wonderful, Charles,” said Ma.

  But all their talking did not mean anything to the enormous silence of that prairie.

  All that afternoon they went on, mile after mile, never seeing a house or any sign of people, never seeing anything but grass and sky. The trail they followed was marked only by bent and broken grasses.

  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 every side now the prairie stretched away empty to far, clear skyline. The wind never stopped blowing, waving the tall prairie grasses that had turned brown in the sun. And all the afternoon, while Pa kept driving onward, he was merrily whistling or singing. The song he sang oftenest was:

  “Oh, come to this country,

  And don’t you feel alarm,

  For Uncle Sam is rich enough

  To give us all a farm!”

  Even baby Grace joined in the chorus, though she did not bother to follow the tune.

  “Oh, come away! Come away!

  Come away, I say!

  Oh, come away! Come away!

  Come right away!

  Oh, come to this country

  And have no fear of harm

  Our Uncle Sam is rich enough

  To give us all a farm!”

  The sun was lowering in the west when a rider appeared on the prairie behind the wagon. He came following behind not very fast, but coming a little nearer mile after mile while the sun was slowly sinking.

  “How much farther is it to Silver Lake, Charles?” Ma asked.

  “About ten miles,” said Pa.

  “There isn’t anybody living nearer, is there?”

  “No,” said Pa.

  Ma did not say anything more. Neither did anyone else. They kept glancing back at that rider behind them, and each time they looked, he was a little nearer. He was surely following them and not meaning to overtake them until the sun sank. The sun was so low that every hollow between the low prairie swells was filled with shadow.

  Each time that Pa glanced back, his hand made a little motion, slapping the horses with the lines to hurry them. But no team could pull a loaded wagon as fast as a man could ride.

  The man was so near now that Laura could see two pistols in leather holsters on his hips. His hat was pulled low over his eyes, and a red bandana was tied loosely around his neck.

  Pa had brought his gun west, but it was not in the wagon now. Laura wondered where it was, but she did not ask Pa.

  She looked back again and saw another rider coming on a white horse. He wore a red shirt. He and the white horse were far behind and small, but they came fast, galloping. They overtook the first rider, and the two came on together.

  Ma said in a low voice, “There’s two of them now, Charles.”

  Mary asked frightened, “What is it? Laura, what’s the matter?”

  Pa looked back quickly, and then he was comfortable. “Everything’s all right now,” he said. “That’s Big Jerry.”

  “Who’s Big Jerry?” Ma asked.

  �
�He’s a half-breed, French and Indian,” Pa answered carelessly. “A gambler, and some say a horse thief, but a darned good fellow. Big Jerry won’t let anybody waylay us.”

  Ma looked at him astonished. Her mouth opened and then it shut; she did not say anything.

  The riders came up beside the wagon. Pa lifted his hand and said, “Hullo, Jerry!”

  “Hullo, Ingalls!” Big Jerry answered. The other man gave them all a snarling look and went galloping on ahead, but Big Jerry rode along by the wagon.

  He looked like an Indian. He was tall and big but not one bit fat, and his thin face was brown. His shirt was flaming red. His straight black hair swung against his flat, high-boned cheek as he rode, for he wore no hat. And his snow-white horse wore no saddle nor bridle. The horse was free, he could go where he wanted to go, and he wanted to go with Big Jerry wherever Big Jerry wanted to ride. The horse and the man moved together as if they were one animal.

  They were beside the wagon only a moment. Then away they went in the smoothest, prettiest run, down into a little hollow and up and away, straight into the blazing round sun on the far edge of the west. The flaming red shirt and the white horse vanished in the blazing golden light.

  Laura let out her breath. “Oh, Mary! The snow-white horse and the tall, brown man, with such a black head and a bright red shirt! The brown prairie all around—and they rode right into the sun as it was going down. They’ll go on in the sun around the world.”

  Mary thought a moment. Then she said, “Laura, you know he couldn’t ride into the sun. He’s just riding along on the ground like anybody.”

  But Laura did not feel that she had told a lie. What she had said was true too. Somehow that moment when the beautiful, free pony and the wild man rode into the sun would last forever.