By the Shores of Silver Lake Read online

  “It all goes like clockwork,” said Pa. “See, no one stands still, no one hurries.

  “When one scraper is filled another is on the spot to take its place, and the scraper holder is there to grab the handles and fill it. The scrapers never have to wait for the plows, and the plows go just so far ahead before they come back to plow again the ground that has been scraped. They are doing great work. Fred is a good boss.”

  Fred stood on the dump watching the teams and scrapers circling, and the plows coming around inside the circle and moving out ahead of it again. He watched the dumping of the scrapers and the dirt rolling down, and with a nod or a word he told each driver when to dump his scraper, so that the grade would be even, and straight, and level.

  For every six teams, one man did nothing but stand and watch. If a team slowed, he spoke to the driver and he drove faster. If a team went too fast, he spoke to that driver and that driver held his horses back. The teams must be spaced evenly, while they kept on going steadily around the circle, over the plowed land and to the grade and over it and back to the plowed land again.

  Thirty teams and thirty scrapers, and all the four-horse teams and the plows, and all the drivers and the scraper holders, all were going round and round, all in their places and all moving in time, there on the open prairie, just like the works of a clock as Pa had said, and on the prow of the new railroad grade in the dust, Fred, the boss, kept it all going.

  Laura would never have tired of watching that. But farther west there was more to see. Pa said, “Come along, Half-pint, and see how they make a cut and a fill.”

  Laura walked with Pa along the wagon track, where the crushed dead grasses were like broken hay in the dust where wagon wheels had passed. Farther to the west, beyond a little rise of the prairie, more men were building another piece of the railroad grade.

  In the little dip beyond the rise they were making a fill, and farther on they were making a cut through higher ground.

  “You see, Laura,” Pa said, “where the ground is low, they make the grade higher, and where the ground is high they cut through it to make the grade level. A railroad roadbed has to be as level as it can be for the trains to run on.”

  “Why, Pa?” Laura asked. “Why can’t the trains just run over the prairie swells?” There were no real hills, and it seemed a waste of hard work to cut through all the little rises and fill in all the little hollows, just to make the roadbed level.

  “No, it saves work, later on,” Pa said. “You ought to be able to see that, Laura, without being told.”

  Laura could see that a level road would save work for horses, but a locomotive was an iron horse that never got tired.

  “Yes, but it burns coal,” said Pa. “Coal has to be mined, and that’s work. An engine burns less coal running on a level than it does going up and down grades. So you see it takes more work and costs more money now to make a level grade, but later on there’ll be a saving in work and money, so they’ll be used for building something else.”

  “What, Pa? What else?” Laura asked.

  “More railroads,” said Pa. “I wouldn’t wonder if you’ll live to see a time, Laura, when pretty nearly everybody’ll ride on railroads and there’ll hardly be a covered wagon left.”

  Laura could not imagine a country with so many railroads, nor one so rich that nearly everybody could ride on trains, but she did not really try to imagine it because now they had come to high ground where they could see the men working at the cut and the fill.

  Right across the prairie swell where the trains would run, the teams with plows and the teams with scrapers were cutting a wide ditch. Back and forth went the big teams pulling the plows, and round and round went the teams hauling the scrapers, all steadily moving in time with each other.

  But here the scrapers did not go in a circle; they went in a long, narrow loop, into the cut and out again at one end, and at the other end they went over the dump.

  The dump was a deep ditch at the end of the cut, and crossways to it. Heavy timbers shored up the sides of this ditch and made a flat platform over the top of it. There was a hole in the middle of this platform, and earth had been graded high on each side of the ditch, to make a road level with the platform.

  Out of the cut came the teams steadily walking one behind another pulling the loaded scrapers. They went up the grade to the top of the dump and they went across the platform. They passed over the hole, one horse walking on each side of it, while into the hole the driver dumped the scraper-load of dirt. Going steadily on, down the steep grade and around, they went back into the cut to fill the scrapers again.

  All the time, a circle of wagons was moving through the dump, under the hole in the platform. Every time a scraper dumped its load, a wagon was under the hole to catch the dirt. Each wagon waited till five scraper-loads had poured down into it, then it moved on and the wagon behind it moved under the hole and waited.

  The circle of wagons came out of the dump and curved back to climb up over the end of the high railroad grade that was coming toward the cut. Every wagon, as it passed over the grade, dumped its dirt and made the grade that much longer. The wagons had no wagon-boxes; they were only platforms of heavy planks. To dump the dirt the teamster turned those planks over, one at a time. Then he drove onward, down over the end of the fill and back in the endless circle, through the dump to be loaded again.

  Dust blew from the plows and the scrapers, and from the dump and the end of the hill. A great cloud of dust rose all the time, up over the sweating men and the sweating horses. The men’s faces and arms were black with sunburn and dust, their blue and gray shirts were streaked with sweat and dust, and the horses’ manes and tails and hair were full of dust and their flanks were caked with muddy sweat.

  They all went on, steadily and evenly, circling into the cut and out while the plows went back and forth, and circling under the dump and back over the end to the fill and under the dump again. The cut grew deeper and the fill grew longer while the men and teams kept on weaving their circles together, never stopping.

  “They never miss once,” Laura marveled. “Every time a scraper dumps, there’s a wagon underneath to catch the dirt.”

  “That’s the boss’s job,” Pa said. “He makes them keep time just like they were playing a tune. Watch the boss, and you’ll see how it’s done. It’s pretty work.”

  On the rise above the cut and on the end of the fill and along the circles, the bosses stood. They watched the men and the teams and kept them moving in time. Here they slowed one team a little, there they hurried another. No one stopped and waited. No one was late at his place.

  Laura heard the boss call out from the top of the cut. “Boys! Move along a little faster!”

  “You see,” Pa said, “it’s nearing quitting time, and they’d all slowed down a little. They can’t put that over on a good boss.”

  The whole afternoon had gone while Pa and Laura watched those circles moving, making the railroad grade. It was time to go back to the store and the shanty. Laura took one last, long look, and then she had to go.

  On the way, Pa showed her the figures painted on the little grade-stakes that were driven into the ground in a straight line where the railroad grade would be. The surveyors had driven those stakes. The figures told the graders how high to build the grade on low ground, and how deep to make the cuts on high ground. The surveyors had measured it all and figured the grade exactly, before anyone else had come there.

  First, someone had thought of a railroad. Then the surveyors had come out to that empty country, and they had marked and measured a railroad that was not there at all; it was only a railroad that someone had thought of. Then the plowmen came to tear up the prairie grass, and the scraper-men to dig up the dirt, and the teamsters with their wagons to haul it. And all of them said they were working on the railroad, but still the railroad wasn’t there. Nothing was there yet but cuts through the prairie swells, pieces of the railroad grade that were really only narrow, short ridg
es of earth, all pointing westward across the enormous grassy land.

  “When the grade’s finished,” Pa said, “the shovelmen will come along with hand shovels, and they’ll smooth the sides of the grade by hand, and level it on top.”

  “And then they’ll lay the rails,” Laura said.

  “Don’t jump ahead so fast, Flutterbudget.” Pa laughed at her. “The railroad ties have got to be shipped out here and laid before it’s time for the rails. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither’s a railroad, nor anything else worth having.”

  The sun was so low now that each prairie swell began to have its shadow lying eastward, and out of the large, pale sky the flocks of ducks and the long wedges of geese were sliding down to Silver Lake to rest for the night. The clean wind was blowing now with no dust in it, and Laura let her sunbonnet slip down her back so that she could feel the wind on her face and see the whole great prairie.

  There was no railroad there now, but someday the long steel tracks would lie level on the fills and through the cuts, and trains would come roaring, steaming and smoking with speed. The tracks and the trains were not there now, but Laura could see them almost as if they were there.

  Suddenly she asked, “Pa, was that what made the very first railroad?”

  “What are you talking about?” Pa asked.

  “Are there railroads because people think of them first when they aren’t there?”

  Pa thought a minute. “That’s right,” he said. “Yes, that’s what makes things happen, people think of them first. If enough people think of a thing and work hard enough at it, I guess it’s pretty nearly bound to happen, wind and weather permitting.”

  “What’s that house, Pa?” Laura asked.

  “What house?” Pa asked.

  “That house, that real house.” Laura pointed. All this time she had been meaning to ask Pa about that house standing by itself on the north shore of the lake, and she had always forgotten.

  “That’s the surveyors’ house,” Pa said.

  “Are they there now?” Laura asked.

  “They come and go,” said Pa. They had almost reached the store, and he went on. “Run on along home now, Flutterbudget. I’ve got work to do on the books. Now you know how a railroad grade’s made, be sure to tell Mary all about it.”

  “Oh, I will, Pa!” Laura promised. “I’ll see it out loud for her, every bit.”

  She did her best, but Mary only said, “I really don’t know, Laura, why you’d rather watch those rough men working in the dirt than stay here in the nice clean shanty. I’ve finished another quilt patch while you’ve been idling.”

  But Laura was still seeing the movement of men and horses in such perfect time that she could almost sing the tune to which they moved.

  Chapter 11

  Payday

  Two weeks had gone by and now Pa worked every evening after supper in his little office at the back of the store. He was making out the time-checks.

  From the time-book he counted up the days each man had worked, and figured how much he had earned. Then Pa figured up how much the man owed the store; to that he added the man’s board-bill at the cook-shanty. He subtracted that amount from the man’s wages, and made out his time-check.

  On payday Pa would give each man his time-check and the money due him.

  Always before, Laura had helped Pa with his work. When she was very little, in the Big Woods, she had helped him make the bullets for his gun; in Indian Territory she had helped finish the house, and on Plum Creek she had helped with the chores and the haying. But she could not help him now, for Pa said that the railroad company would not want anyone but him to work in the office.

  Still she always knew what he was doing, for the store was in plain sight from the shanty’s doorway and she saw everyone who came and went.

  One morning she saw a fast team come dashing up to the store’s door, and a man in fine clothes got quickly out of the buggy and hurried into the store. Two more men waited in the buggy, watching the door and looking around them on every side as if they were afraid.

  In a little while the first man came out and got into the buggy. After another look all around, they drove away quickly.

  Laura ran out of the shanty toward the store. She was sure that something had happened there. Her heart was beating wildly, and it gave a great flop when she saw Pa, safe and sound, come out of the store.

  “Where are you going, Laura?” Ma had called after her, and now Laura answered, “Nowhere, Ma.”

  Pa came into the shanty and swung the door shut behind him. He took a heavy canvas bag out of his pocket.

  “I want you to take care of this, Caroline,” he said. “It’s the men’s pay. Anybody that tried to steal it would come to the office.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Charles,” Ma said. She wrapped the bag in a clean cloth and worked it deep into her open sack of flour. “Nobody’ll ever think of looking there for it.”

  “Did that man bring it, Pa?” Laura asked.

  “Yes. That was the paymaster,” said Pa.

  “Those men with him were afraid,” Laura said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. They were only guarding the paymaster to keep him from being robbed,” Pa said. “He’s carrying a good many thousand dollars in cash to pay all the men in the camps, and somebody might try to get it. But those men had guns enough on them and in the buggy. They had no need to be afraid.”

  As Pa went back to the store, Laura saw the handle of his revolver showing from his hip pocket. She knew he was not afraid, and she looked at his rifle over the door and his shotgun standing in the corner. Ma could use those guns. There was no fear that robbers could get that money.

  That night Laura woke up often, and often she heard Pa stirring too, in the bunk on the other side of the curtain. The night seemed darker and full of strange sounds, because that money was in the flour-sack. But no one would think of looking for it there, and no one did.

  Early in the morning, Pa took it to the store. This was payday. After breakfast all the men gathered around the store, and one by one they went inside. One by one they came out again, and stood in little groups, talking. They would not work that day; it was payday.

  At supper Pa said he must go back to the office again. “Some of the men don’t seem to understand why they got only two weeks’ pay,” he said.

  “Why don’t they get paid for the whole month?” Laura asked him.

  “Well, you see, Laura, it takes time to make out all those time-checks and send them in, and then the paymaster has to bring out the money. I’m paying the men their wages now up to the fifteenth, and in another two weeks I’ll pay them up to now. Some of them can’t get it through their thick heads that they’ve got to wait two weeks for their pay. They want to be paid right up to yesterday.”

  “Don’t fret about it, Charles,” said Ma. “You can’t expect them to understand how business is handled.”

  “And they don’t blame you, do they, Pa?” said Mary.

  “That’s the worst of it, Mary. I don’t know,” Pa answered. “Anyway I’ve got some bookwork to do at the office.”

  The supper dishes were soon washed, and Ma sat rocking Grace to sleep, with Carrie snuggled beside her. Laura sat beside Mary in the doorway, watching the light fade from the waters of the lake. She was seeing it out loud for Mary.

  “The last light is shining pale in the middle of the smooth lake. All around it the water is dusky, where the ducks sleep, and the land is black beyond. The stars are beginning to twinkle in the gray sky. Pa has lighted his lamp. It shines out yellow from the back of the black store. Ma!” she cried out. “There’s a big crowd of men—look.”

  The men were crowding around the store. They did not say anything, and there was not even any sound of their feet on the grass. Only the dark mass of men was growing larger very fast.

  Ma rose quickly and laid Grace on the bed. Then she came and looked out over Laura’s head and Mary’s. She spoke softly. “Come inside, girl
s.”

  When they obeyed her she shut the door, all but a crack. She stood looking out through the crack.

  Mary sat in the chair with Carrie, but Laura peeped under Ma’s arm. The crowd was close around the store. Two men went up the step and pounded on the door.

  The crowd was quiet. The whole dusky twilight was quiet for a moment.

  Then the men pounded again on the door and one called, “Open the door, Ingalls!”

  The door opened, and there in the lamplight stood Pa. He shut the door behind him, and the two men who had knocked stepped backward into the crowd. Pa stood on the step with his hands in his pockets.

  “Well, boys, what is it?” he asked quietly.

  A voice came from the crowd. “We want our pay.”

  Other voices shouted. “Our full pay!” “Come across with that two weeks’ pay you kept back!” “We’re going to get our pay!”

  “You’ll have it two weeks from now, just as soon as I can get your time-checks made out,” said Pa.

  The voices shouted again. “We want it now!” “Quit stalling!” “We’re going to have it now!”

  “I can’t pay you now, boys,” Pa said. “I won’t have the money to pay you till the paymaster comes again.”

  “Open up the store!” somebody answered. Then the whole crowd yelled. “That’s it! That’s good enough—Open the store! Open up that store!”

  “No, boys. I won’t do that,” Pa said coolly. “Come in tomorrow morning, and I’ll let each man have all the goods he wants, on his account.”

  “Open up that store or we’ll open it for you!” came a shout. A growl rumbled from the crowd. The whole mass of men moved in toward Pa as if that growl moved them.

  Laura ducked under Ma’s arm, but Ma’s hand clenched on her shoulder and pulled her back.

  “Oh, let me go! They’ll hurt Pa! Let me go, they’ll hurt Pa!” Laura screamed in a whisper.

  “Be still!” Ma told her in a voice Laura had never heard before.

  “Stand back, boys. Don’t crowd too close,” said Pa. Laura heard his cold voice and stood trembling.