By the Shores of Silver Lake Read online

  “I don’t think Jerry steals horses,” Pa said. But Laura thought he said it as if he hoped that saying it would make it so. “The real trouble is, he comes to camp after payday and wins all the boys’ money playing poker. That’s why some of them would be glad to shoot him.”

  “I wonder Hi allows it,” said Ma. “If there’s anything as bad as drink, it’s gambling.”

  “They don’t have to gamble if they don’t want to, Caroline,” Pa said. “If Jerry wins their money, it’s their own fault. There never was a kinder-hearted man than Big Jerry. He’d give the shirt off his back. Look how he takes care of Old Johnny.”

  “That’s so,” Ma admitted.

  Old Johnny was the water boss. He was a little, wizened, bent-backed old Irishman. He had worked on railroads all his life, and now he was too old to work. So the company had given him the job of carrying water to the men.

  Every morning and again after dinner, little old Johnny came to the well to fill his two large, wooden water pails. When they were full he set his wooden yoke across his shoulders and stooping, he hooked into the pails the two hooks that hung from short chains at each end of the yoke. Then with a grunt and groan, he straightened up. The chains lifted the heavy pails from the ground and Johnny steadied them with his hands while he bore their weight on his shoulders. He trotted under the weight with short, stiff steps.

  There was a tin dipper in each water pail. When he got to the men working on the grade, Johnny would trot along the line of work, so that any thirsty man could help himself to a drink of water without stopping work.

  Johnny was so old that he was little, stooped and shrunken. His face was a mass of wrinkles, but his blue eyes twinkled cheerily and he always trotted as quickly as he could so that no thirsty man need wait for a drink.

  One morning before breakfast, Big Jerry had come to the door and told Ma that Old Johnny had been sick all night.

  “He’s so little and old, ma’am,” Big Jerry said. “The meals at the boarding shanty don’t agree with him. Would you give him a cup of hot tea and a bit of breakfast?”

  Ma put several of her hot, light biscuits on a plate and beside them she put a fried mashed-potato cake and a slice of crisply fried salt pork. Then she filled a little tin pail with hot tea and gave it all to Big Jerry. After breakfast Pa went to the bunkhouse to see Old Johnny, and later he told Ma that Jerry had taken care of the poor old man all night. Johnny said that Jerry had even spread his own blanket over him to keep him warm and gone without any covering himself in the cold.

  “He couldn’t take better care of his own father than he did of Old Johnny,” Pa said. “For that matter, Caroline, I don’t know but what we’re beholden to him ourselves.”

  They all remembered how Big Jerry had come out of the prairie on his white horse when the strange man was following them and the sun was setting.

  “Well,” Pa said, getting up slowly, “I’ve got to go sell the boys the ammunition for their guns. I hope Jerry doesn’t come back to camp tonight. If he just rode up to see how Old Johnny is, rode up to the stable to put his horse in, they’d shoot him.”

  “Oh, no, Charles! Surely they wouldn’t do that!” Ma exclaimed.

  Pa pulled on his hat. “The one that’s doing most of the talking’s already killed one man,” he said. “He got off easy on a plea of self-defense, but he’s served a term in State’s prison. And Big Jerry cleaned him out, last payday. He hasn’t got the nerve to face Big Jerry, but he’ll bushwhack him if he gets the chance.”

  Pa went to the store, and Ma soberly began to clear the table. While Laura washed the dishes, she thought of Big Jerry and his white horse. She had seen them many times, galloping over the brown prairie. Big Jerry always wore a bright red shirt, he was always bareheaded, and his white horse never wore a strap.

  The night was dark when Pa came from the store. He said that half a dozen men with loaded guns were lying in wait around the stable.

  It was bedtime. There was not a light in the camp. The dark shanties, low against the land, could hardly be seen; only if you knew where to look, you could see them darker in the dark. There was a little starshine on Silver Lake, and all around it stretched the black prairie, flat under the velvet-dark sky sparkling with stars. The wind whispered cold in the dark, and the grass rustled as if it were afraid. Laura looked and listened, and hurried shivering into the shanty again.

  Behind the curtain Grace was sleeping and Ma was helping Mary and Carrie to bed. Pa had hung up his hat and sat down on the bench, but he was not taking off his boots. He looked up when Laura came in, and then he got up and put on his coat. He buttoned it all the way up and turned up its collar so that his gray shirt did not show. Laura did not say a word. Pa put on his hat.

  “Don’t sit up for me, Caroline,” he said cheerfully. Ma came from behind the curtain, but Pa was gone.

  She went to the doorway and looked out. Pa had disappeared in the darkness. After a minute Ma turned around and said, “Bedtime, Laura.”

  “Please, Ma, let me stay up too,” Laura begged.

  “I believe I won’t go to bed,” said Ma. “Not for a while, anyway. I’m not sleepy. It’s no use to go to bed when you’re not sleepy.”

  “I’m not sleepy, Ma,” Laura said.

  Ma turned down the lamp and blew it out. She sat down in the hickory rocker that Pa had made for her in Indian Territory. Laura went softly on her bare feet across the ground and sat close beside Ma.

  They sat in the dark, listening. Laura could hear a thin, faint humming in her ears; it seemed to be the sound of her listening. She could hear Ma’s breathing and the slow breathing of Grace, asleep, and the faster breathing of Mary and Carrie lying awake behind the curtain. The curtain made a faint sound, moving a little in the air from the open doorway. Outside the doorway there was an oblong of sky and stars above the faraway edge of dark land.

  Out there the wind sighed, the grass rustled, and there was the tiny, ceaseless sound of little waves lapping on the lake shore. A sharp cry in the dark jerked all through Laura; she almost screamed. It was only the call of a wild goose, lost from its flock. Wild geese answered it from the slough, and a quacking of sleepy ducks rose.

  “Ma, let me go out and find Pa,” Laura whispered.

  “Be quiet,” Ma answered. “You couldn’t find Pa. And he doesn’t want you to. Be quiet and let Pa take care of himself.”

  “I want to do something. I’d rather do something,” Laura said.

  “So would I,” said Ma. In the dark her hand began softly to stroke Laura’s head. “The sun and the wind are drying your hair, Laura,” Ma said. “You must brush it more. You must brush your hair a hundred strokes every night before you go to bed.”

  “Yes, Ma,” Laura whispered.

  “I had lovely long hair when your Pa and I were married,” Ma said. “I could sit on the braids.” She did not say any more. She went on stroking Laura’s rough hair while they listened for the sound of shooting.

  There was one shining large star by the black edge of the doorway. As time went on, it moved. Slowly, it moved from east to west, and more slowly still the smaller stars wheeled about it.

  Suddenly Laura and Ma heard footsteps, and in an instant the stars were blotted out. Pa was in the doorway. Laura jumped up, but Ma only went limp in the chair.

  “Sitting up, Caroline?” Pa said. “Pshaw, you didn’t need to do that. Everything’s all right.”

  “How do you know that, Pa?” Laura asked. “How do you know Big Jerry—?”

  “Never mind, Flutterbudget!” Pa stopped her cheerfully. “Big Jerry’s all right. He won’t be coming into camp tonight. I wouldn’t be surprised though, if he rode in this morning on his white horse. Now go to bed. Let’s get what sleep we can before sunrise.”

  Then Pa’s great laugh rang out like bells. “There’ll be a sleepy bunch of men working on the grade today!”

  While Laura was undressing behind the curtain and Pa was taking off his boots on the other side
of it, she heard him say in a low voice to Ma, “The best of it is, Caroline, there’ll never be a horse stolen from Silver Lake camp.”

  Sure enough, early that morning Laura saw Big Jerry riding by the shanty on his white horse. He hailed Pa at the store and Pa waved to him; then Big Jerry and the white horse galloped on and away toward where the men were working.

  There never was a horse stolen from Silver Lake camp.

  Chapter 10

  The Wonderful Afternoon

  Early every morning while Laura washed the breakfast dishes, she could look through the open door and see the men leaving the boarding shanty and going to the thatched stable for their horses. Then there was a rattling of harness and a confusion of talking and shouts, and the men and teams went out to the job leaving quietness behind them.

  All the days went by, one like another. On Mondays Laura helped Ma do the washing and bring in the clean-scented clothes that dried quickly in the wind and sunshine. On Tuesdays she sprinkled them and helped Ma iron them. On Wednesdays she did her task of mending and sewing though she did not like to. Mary was learning to sew without seeing; her sensitive fingers could hem nicely, and she could sew quilt-patches if the colors were matched for her.

  At noon the camp was noisy again with all the teams and the men coming in to dinner. Then Pa came from the store, and they all ate in the little shanty with the wind blowing against it and the wide prairie outside the door. Softly colored in all shades from dark brown to russet and tan, the prairie rolled in gentle swells to the far edge of the sky. The winds were blowing colder at night, more and more wild birds were flying southward, and Pa said that winter would not be long in coming. But Laura did not think about winter.

  She wanted to know where the men were working and how they made a railroad grade. Every morning they went out, and at noon and at night they came back, but all that she saw of working was a smudge of dust that came up from the tawny prairie in the west. She wanted to see the men building the railroad.

  Aunt Docia moved into the camp one day, and she brought two cows. She said, “I brought our milk on the hoof, Charles. It’s the only way to get any, out here where there aren’t any farmers.”

  One of the cows was for Pa. She was a pretty, bright-red cow named Ellen. Pa untied her from the back of Aunt Docia’s wagon, and handed the halter rope to Laura. “Here, Laura,” he said. “You’re old enough to take care of her. Take her out where the grass is good, and be sure to drive down the picket pin good and firm.”

  Laura and Lena picketed the cows not far apart in good grass. Every morning and every evening they met to take care of the cows. They led them to drink from the lake, and moved the picket pins to fresh grass, and then they did the milking, and while they milked they sang.

  Lena knew many new songs and Laura learned them quickly. Together, while the milk streamed into the bright tin pails, they sang:

  “A life on the ocean wave,

  A home on the rolling deep,

  The pollywogs wag their tails

  And the tears roll down their cheeks.”

  Sometimes Lena sang softly, and so did Laura.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t marry a farmer,

  He’s always in the dirt,

  I’d rather marry a railroad man

  Who wears a striped shirt.”

  But Laura liked the waltz songs best. She loved the Broom song, though they had to sing “broom” so many times to make the tune swing.

  “Buy a broo-oom, buy a broom, broom!

  Buy a broom, broom, buy a broom, broom!

  Will you buy of this wandering Bavarian a broom?

  To brush off the insects

  That come to annoy you,

  You’ll find it quite useful

  By night and by day.”

  The cows stood quiet, chewing their cuds, as though they were listening to the singing until the milking was done.

  Then with the pails of warm, sweet-smelling milk, Laura and Lena walked back toward the shanties. In the mornings the men were coming out of the bunkhouse, washing in the basins on the bench by the door and combing their hair. And the sun was rising over Silver Lake.

  In the evenings the sky flamed with red and purple and gold, the sun had set, and the teams and men were coming in, dark along the dusty road they had worn on the prairie, and singing. Then quickly Lena hurried to Aunt Docia’s shanty, and Laura to Ma’s, because they must strain the milk before the cream began to rise, and help get supper.

  Lena had so much work to do, helping Aunt Docia and Cousin Louisa, that she had no time to play. And Laura, though she did not work so hard, was busy enough. So they hardly ever met except at milking time.

  “If Pa hadn’t put our black ponies to work on the grade,” Lena said one evening, “you know what I’d do?”

  “No, what?” Laura asked.

  “Well, if I could get away, and if we had the ponies to ride, we’d go see the men working,” said Lena. “Don’t you want to?”

  “Yes, I want to,” Laura said. She did not have to decide whether or not she would disobey Pa, because they couldn’t do it anyway.

  Suddenly one day at dinner Pa set down his teacup, wiped his mustache, and said, “You ask too many questions, Flutterbudget. Put on your bonnet and come up to the store along about two o’clock. I’ll take you out and let you see for yourself.”

  “Oh, Pa!” Laura cried out.

  “There, Laura, don’t get so excited,” Ma said quietly.

  Laura knew she should not shout. She kept her voice low. “Pa, can Lena go too?”

  “We will decide about that later,” said Ma. After Pa had gone back to the store, Ma talked seriously to Laura. She said that she wanted her girls to know how to behave, to speak nicely in low voices and have gentle manners and always be ladies. They had always lived in wild, rough places, except for a little while on Plum Creek, and now they were in a rough railroad camp, and it would be some time before this country was civilized. Until then, Ma thought it best that they keep themselves to themselves. She wanted Laura to stay away from the camp, and not get acquainted with any of the rough men there. It would be all right for her to go quietly with Pa to see the work this once, but she must be well-behaved and ladylike, and remember that a lady never did anything that could attract attention.

  “Yes, Ma,” Laura said.

  “And Laura, I do not want you to take Lena,” said Ma. “Lena is a good, capable girl, but she is boisterous, and Docia has not curbed her as much as she might. If you must go where those rough men are working in the dirt, then go quietly with your Pa and come back quietly, and say no more about it.”

  “Yes, Ma,” Laura said. “But—”

  “But what, Laura?” Ma asked.

  “Nothing,” said Laura.

  “I don’t know why you want to go anyway,” Mary wondered. “It’s much nicer here in the shanty, or taking a little walk by the lake.”

  “I just want to. I want to see them building a railroad,” Laura said.

  She tied on her sunbonnet when she set out and resolved to keep it tied on. Pa was alone in the store. He put on his broad-brimmed hat and padlocked the door, and they went out on the prairie together. At that time of day when there were no shadows the prairie looked level, but it was not. In a few minutes its swells hid the shanties, and on the grassy land there was nothing to be seen but the dusty track of the road and the railroad grade beside it. Against the sky ahead rose up the smudge of dust, blowing away on the wind.

  Pa held on to his hat and Laura bent her head in the flapping sunbonnet, and they trudged along together for some time. Then Pa stopped and said, “There you are, Half-Pint.”

  They were standing on a little rise of the land. Before them the railroad grade ended bluntly. In front of it, men with teams and plows were plowing onward toward the west, breaking a wide strip of the prairie sod.

  “Do they do it with plows?” Laura said. It seemed strange to her to think that men with plows went ahead into this country that had
never been plowed to build a railroad.

  “And scrapers,” said Pa. “Now watch, Laura.”

  Between the plowing and the blunt end of the grade, teams and men were going slowly around in a circle, over the end of the grade and back to cross the plowed strip. The teams were pulling wide, deep shovels. These were the scrapers.

  Instead of one long shovel handle, each scraper had two short handles. And a strong half-hoop of steel curved from one side of the scraper to the other side. The team was hitched to this curve of steel.

  When a man and his team came to the plowed land, another man took hold of the scraper handles and held them just high enough to thrust the round shovel point into the loose earth of the plowed ground while the team went on and earth filled the scraper. Then he let go of the handles, the full scraper sat level on the ground, and the horses pulled it on around the circle, up the side of the grade.

  On the grade’s blunt end the men who drove the team caught hold of the scraper’s handles and tipped the whole scraper over in a somersault inside the curving steel that the horses were hitched to. All the dirt was left right there, while the team drew the empty scraper down the grade and on around the circle to the plowed land again.

  There the other man caught hold of the handles and held them just high enough to thrust the round shovel point into the loose earth until the scraper was filled again. And on around the circle it came sliding behind the team, up the steep slope of the grade, and somersaulting over again.

  Team after team came around the circle, scraper after scraper tipped over. The teams never stopped coming, the scrapers never stopped filling and tipping.

  As the loose soil was scraped from the plowed land, the curve widened out so that the scrapers passed over freshly plowed ground ahead, while the plow teams came back and plowed again the ground that had been scraped.