On the Banks of Plum Creek Read online

“Well, but I—” said Mary. Then she came rolling down.

  It was great fun. It was more fun than sliding. They climbed and rolled and climbed and rolled, laughing harder all the time. More and more straw rolled down with them. They waded in it and rolled each other in it and climbed and rolled down again, till there was hardly anything left to climb.

  Then they brushed every bit of straw off their dresses, they picked every bit out of their hair, and they went quietly into the dugout.

  When Pa came from the hay-field that night, Mary was busily setting the table for supper. Laura was behind the door, busy with the box of paper dolls.

  “Laura,” Pa said, dreadfully, “come here.”

  Slowly Laura went out from behind the door.

  “Come here,” said Pa, “right over here by Mary.”

  He sat down and he stood them before him, side by side. But it was Laura he looked at.

  He said, sternly, “You girls have been sliding down the straw-stack again.”

  “No, Pa,” said Laura.

  “Mary!” said Pa. “Did you slide down the straw-stack?”

  “N-no, Pa,” Mary said.

  “Laura!” Pa’s voice was terrible. “Tell me again, DID Y OU SLIDE DOWN THE STRAWSTACK?”

  “No, Pa,” Laura answered again. She looked straight into Pa’s shocked eyes. She did not know why he looked like that.

  “Laura!” Pa said.

  “We did not slide, Pa,” Laura explained. “But we did roll down it.”

  Pa got up quickly and went to the door and stood looking out. His back quivered. Laura and Mary did not know what to think.

  When Pa turned around, his face was stern but his eyes were twinkling.

  “All right, Laura,” he said. “But now I want you girls to stay away from that straw-stack. Pete and Bright and Spot will have nothing but hay and straw to eat this winter. They need every bite of it. You don’t want them to be hungry, do you?”

  “Oh no, Pa!” they said.

  “Well, if that straw’s to be fit to feed them, it MUST—STAY—STACKED. Do you under stand?”

  “Yes, Pa,” said Laura and Mary.

  That was the end of their playing on the straw-stack.

  Chapter 9

  Grasshopper Weather

  Now plums were ripening in the wildplum thickets all along Plum Creek. Plum trees were low trees. They grew close together, with many little scraggly branches all strung with thin-skinned, juicy plums. Around them the air was sweet and sleepy, and wings hummed.

  Pa was plowing all the land across the creek, where he had cut the hay. Early before the sun came up, when Laura went to drive Spot to meet the cattle at the gray boulder, Pete and Bright were gone from the stable. Pa had yoked them to the plow and gone to work.

  When Laura and Mary had washed the breakfast dishes, they took tin pails and went to pick plums. From the top of their house, they could see Pa plowing. The oxen and the plow and Pa crawled slowly along a curve of the prairie. They looked very small, and a little smoke of dust blew away from the plow.

  Every day the velvety brown-dark patch of plowed land grew bigger. It ate up the silvery-gold stubble field beyond the haystacks. It spread over the prairie waves. It was going to be a very big wheat-field, and when some day Pa cut the wheat, he and Ma and Laura and Mary would have everything they could think of.

  They would have a house, and horses, and candy every day, when Pa made a wheat crop.

  Laura went wading through the tall grasses to the plum thickets by the creek. Her sunbonnet hung down her back and she swung her tin pail. The grasses were crisping yellow now, and dozens of little grasshoppers jumped crackling away from Laura’s swishing feet. Mary came walking behind in the path Laura made and she kept her sunbonnet on.

  When they came to a plum thicket they set down their big pails. They filled their little pails with plums and emptied them into the big pails till they were full. Then they carried the big pails back to the roof of the dugout. On the clean grass Ma spread clean cloths, and Laura and Mary laid the plums on the cloths, to dry in the sun. Next winter they would have dried plums to eat.

  The shade of the plum thickets was a thin shade. Sunshine flickered between the narrow leaves overhead. The little branches sagged with their weight of plums, and plums had fallen and rolled together between drifts of long grass underfoot.

  Some were smashed, some were smooth and perfect, and some had cracked open, showing the juicy yellow inside.

  Bees and hornets stood thick along the cracks, sucking up the juices with all their might. Their scaly tails wiggled with joy. They were too busy and too happy to sting. When Laura poked them with a blade of grass, they only moved a step and did not stop sucking up the good plum juice.

  Laura put all the good plums in her pail. But she flicked the hornets off the cracked plums with her finger nail and quickly popped the plum into her mouth. It was sweet and warm and juicy. The hornets buzzed around her in dismay; they did not know what had become of their plum. But in a minute they pushed into the crowds sucking at another one.

  “I declare, you eat more plums than you pick up,” Mary said.

  “I don’t either any such a thing,” Laura contradicted. “I pick up every plum I eat.”

  “You know very well what I mean,” Mary said, crossly. “You just play around while I work.”

  But Laura filled her big pail as quickly as Mary filled hers. Mary was cross because she would rather sew or read than pick plums. But Laura hated to sit still; she liked picking plums.

  She liked to shake the trees. You must know exactly how to shake a plum tree. If you shake it too hard, the green plums fall, and that wastes them. If you shake it too softly, you do not get all the ripe plums. In the night they will fall, and some will smash and be wasted.

  Laura learned exactly how to shake a plum tree. She held its scaling-rough bole and shook it, one quick, gentle shake. Every plum swung on its stem and all around her they fell pattering. Then one more jerk while the plums were swinging, and the last ripe ones fell plum-plump! plum-plump! plump! plump!

  There were many kinds of plums. When the red ones were all picked, the yellow ones were ripe. Then the blue ones. The largest of all were the very last. They were the frost plums, that would not ripen until after frost.

  One morning the whole world was delicately silvered. Every blade of grass was silvery and the path had a thin sheen. It was hot like fire under Laura’s bare feet, and they left dark footprints in it. The air was cold in her nose and her breath steamed. So did Spot’s. When the sun came up, the whole prairie sparkled. Millions of tiny, tiny sparks of color blazed on the grasses.

  That day the frost plums were ripe. They were large, purple plums and all over their purple was a silvery thin sheen like frost. The sun was not so hot now and the nights were chilly. The prairie was almost the tawny color of the hay-stacks. The smell of the air was different and the sky was not so sharply blue.

  Still the sunshine was warm at noon. There was no rain and no more frosts. It was almost Thanksgiving time, and there was no snow.

  “I don’t know what to make of it,” Pa said. “I never saw weather like this. Nelson says the old-timers call it grasshopper weather.”

  “Whatever do they mean by that?” Ma asked him.

  Pa shook his head. “You can’t prove it by me. ‘Grasshopper weather,’ was what Nelson said. I couldn’t make out what he meant by it.”

  “Likely it’s some old Norwegian saying,” Ma said.

  Laura liked the sound of the words and when she ran through the crackling prairie grasses and saw the grasshoppers jumping she sang to herself: “Grasshopper weather! Grasshopper weather!”

  Chapter 10

  Cattle in the Hay

  Summer was gone, winter was coming, and now it was time for Pa to make a trip to town. Here in Minnesota, town was so near that Pa would be gone only one day, and Ma was going with him.

  She took Carrie, because Carrie was too little to be left far from
Ma. But Mary and Laura were big girls. Mary was going on nine and Laura was going on eight, and they could stay at home and take care of everything while Pa and Ma were gone.

  For going-to-town, Ma made a new dress for Carrie, from the pink calico that Laura had worn when she was little. There was enough of it to make Carrie a little pink sunbonnet.

  Carrie’s hair had been in curl-papers all night. It hung in long, golden, round curls, and when Ma tied the pink sunbonnet strings under Carrie’s chin, Carrie looked like a rose.

  Ma wore her hoopskirts and her best dress, the beautiful challis with little strawberries on it, that she had worn to the sugaring-dance at Grandma’s, long ago in the Big Woods.

  “Now be good girls, Laura and Mary,” was the last thing she said. She was on the wagon seat, with Carrie beside her. Their lunch was in the wagon. Pa took up the ox goad.

  “We’ll be back before sundown,” he promised. “Hi-oop!” he said to Pete and Bright. The big ox and the little one leaned into their yoke and the wagon started.

  “Good-by, Pa! Good-by, Ma! Good-by, Carrie, good-by!” Laura and Mary called after it.

  Slowly the wagon went away. Pa walked beside the oxen. Ma and Carrie, the wagon, and Pa all grew smaller, till they were gone into the prairie.

  The prairie seemed big and empty then, but there was nothing to be afraid of. There were no wolves and no Indians. Besides, Jack stayed close to Laura. Jack was a responsible dog. He knew that he must take care of everything when Pa was away.

  That morning Mary and Laura played by the creek, among the rushes. They did not go near the swimming-hole. They did not touch the straw-stack. At noon they ate the corn dodgers and molasses and drank the milk that Ma had left for them. They washed their tin cups and put them away.

  Then Laura wanted to play on the big rock, but Mary wanted to stay in the dugout. She said that Laura must stay there, too.

  “Ma can make me,” Laura said, “but you can’t.”

  “I can so,” said Mary. “When Ma’s not here, you have to do what I say because I’m older.”

  “You have to let me have my way because I’m littler,” said Laura.

  “That’s Carrie, it isn’t you,” Mary told her. “If you don’t do what I say, I’ll tell Ma.”

  “I guess I can play where I want to!” said Laura.

  Mary grabbed at her, but Laura was too quick. She darted out, and she would have run up the path, but Jack was in the way. He stood stiff, looking across the creek. Laura looked too, and she screeched, “Mary!”

  The cattle were all around Pa’s hay-stacks. They were eating the hay. They were tearing into the stacks with their horns, gouging out hay, eating it and trampling over it.

  There would be nothing left to feed Pete and Bright and Spot in the winter-time.

  Jack knew what to do. He ran growling down the steps to the footbridge. Pa was not there to save the hay-stacks; they must drive those cattle away.

  “Oh, we can’t! We can’t!” Mary said, scared. But Laura ran behind Jack and Mary came after her. They went over the creek and past the spring. They came up on the prairie and now they saw the fierce, big cattle quite near. The long horns were gouging, the thick legs trampling and jostling, the wide mouths bawling.

  Mary was too scared to move. Laura was too scared to stand still. She jerked Mary along. She saw a stick, and grabbed it up and ran yelling at the cattle. Jack ran at them, growling. A big red cow swiped at him with her horns, but he jumped behind her. She snorted and galloped. All the other cattle ran humping and jostling after her, and Jack and Laura and Mary ran after them.

  But they could not chase those cattle away from the hay-stacks. The cattle ran around and around and in between the stacks, jostling and bawling, tearing off hay and trampling it. More and more hay slid off the stacks. Laura ran panting and yelling, waving her stick. The faster she ran, the faster the cattle went, black and brown and red, brindle and spotted cattle, big and with awful horns, and they would not stop wasting the hay. Some tried to climb over the toppling stacks.

  Laura was hot and dizzy. Her hair unbraided and blew in her eyes. Her throat was rough from yelling, but she kept on yelling, running, and waving her stick. She was too scared to hit one of those big, horned cows. More and more hay kept coming down and faster and faster they trampled over it.

  Suddenly Laura turned around and ran the other way. She faced the big red cow coming around a hay-stack.

  The huge legs and shoulders and terrible horns were coming fast. Laura could not scream now. But she jumped at that cow and waved her stick. The cow tried to stop, but all the other cattle were coming behind her and she couldn’t. She swerved and ran away across the plowed ground, all the others galloping after her.

  Jack and Laura and Mary chased them, farther and farther from the hay. Far into the high prairie grasses they chased those cattle. Johnny Johnson rose out of the prairie, rubbing his eyes. He had been lying asleep in a warm hollow of grass.

  “Johnny! Johnny!” Laura screeched. “Wake up and watch the cattle!”

  “You’d better!” Mary told him.

  Johnny Johnson looked at the cattle grazing in the deep grass, and he looked at Laura and Mary and Jack. He did not know what had happened and they could not tell him because the only words he knew were Norwegian.

  They went back through the high grass that dragged at their trembling legs. They were glad to drink at the spring. They were glad to be in the quiet dugout and sit down to rest.

  Chapter 11

  Runaway

  All that long, quiet afternoon they stayed in the dugout. The cattle did not come back to the hay-stacks. Slowly the sun went down the western sky. Soon it would be time to meet the cattle at the big gray rock, and Laura and Mary wished that Pa and Ma would come home.

  Again and again they went up the path to look for the wagon. At last they sat waiting with Jack on the grassy top of their house. The lower the sun went, the more attentive Jack’s ears were. Often he and Laura stood up to look at the edge of the sky where the wagon had gone, though they could see it just as well when they were sitting down.

  Finally Jack turned one ear that way, then the other. Then he looked up at Laura and a waggle went from his neck to his stubby tail. The wagon was coming!

  They all stood and watched till it came out of the prairie. When Laura saw the oxen, and Ma and Carrie on the wagon seat, she jumped up and down, swinging her sunbonnet and shouting, “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

  “They’re coming awful fast,” Mary said.

  Laura was still. She heard the wagon rattling loudly. Pete and Bright were coming very fast. They were running. They were running away.

  The wagon came bumpity-banging and bouncing. Laura saw Ma down in a corner of the wagon box, hanging on to it and hugging Carrie. Pa came bounding in long jumps beside Bright, shouting and hitting at Bright with the goad.

  He was trying to turn Bright back from the creek bank.

  He could not do it. The big oxen galloped nearer and nearer the steep edge. Bright was pushing Pa off it. They were all going over. The wagon, Ma, and Carrie, were going to fall down the bank, all the way down to the creek.

  Pa shouted a terrible shout. He struck Bright’s head with all his might, and Bright swerved. Laura ran screaming. Jack jumped at Bright’s nose. Then the wagon, Ma, and Carrie flashed by. Bright crashed against the stable and suddenly everything was still.

  Pa ran after the wagon and Laura ran behind him.

  “Whoa, Bright! Whoa, Pete,” Pa said. He held on to the wagon box and looked at Ma.

  “We’re all right, Charles,” Ma said. Her face was gray and she was shaking all over.

  Pete was trying to go on through the doorway into the stable, but he was yoked to Bright and Bright was headed against the stable wall. Pa lifted Ma and Carrie out of the wagon, and Ma said, “Don’t cry, Carrie. See, we’re all right.”

  Carrie’s pink dress was torn down the front. She snuffled against Ma’s neck and t
ried to stop crying as Ma told her.

  “Oh, Caroline! I thought you were going over the bank,” Pa said.

  “I thought so, too, for a minute,” Ma answered. “But I might have known you wouldn’t let that happen.”

  “Pshaw!” said Pa. “It was good old Pete. He wasn’t running away. Bright was, but Pete was only going along. He saw the stable and wanted his supper.”

  But Laura knew that Ma and Carrie would have fallen down into the creek with the wagon and oxen, if Pa had not run so fast and hit Bright so hard. She crowded against Ma’s hoopskirt and hugged her tight and said, “Oh, Ma! Oh, Ma!” So did Mary.

  “There, there,” said Ma. “All’s well that ends well. Now, girls, help bring in the packages while Pa puts up the oxen.”

  They carried all the little packages into the dugout. They met the cattle at the gray rock and put Spot into the stable, and Laura helped milk her while Mary helped Ma get supper.

  At supper, they told how the cattle had got into the hay-stacks and how they had driven them away. Pa said they had done exactly the right thing. He said, “We knew we could depend on you to take care of everything. Didn’t we, Caroline?”

  They had completely forgotten that Pa always brought them presents from town, until after supper he pushed back his bench and looked as if he expected something. Then Laura jumped on his knee, and Mary sat on the other, and Laura bounced and asked, “What did you bring us, Pa? What? What?”

  “Guess,” Pa said.

  They could not guess. But Laura felt something crackle in his jumper pocket and she pounced on it. She pulled out a paper bag, beautifully striped with tiny red and green stripes. And in the bag were two sticks of candy, one for Mary and one for Laura!

  They were maple-sugar-colored, and they were flat on one side.

  Mary licked hers. But Laura bit her stick, and the outside of it came off, crumbly. The inside was hard and clear and dark brown. And it had a rich, brown, tangy taste. Pa said it was horehound candy.

  After the dishes were done, Laura and Mary each took her stick of candy and they sat on Pa’s knees, outside the door in the cool dusk. Ma sat just inside the dugout, humming to Carrie in her arms.