By the Shores of Silver Lake Read online

  Then she heard another voice behind the crowd. It was deep and strong, not loud, but plainly heard. “What’s up, boys?”

  In the dark Laura could not see the red shirt, but only Big Jerry was so tall. He stood head and shoulders above the shadowy figures of the crowd. Beyond them in the dusk was a pale blur that would be the white horse. A confusion of voices answered Big Jerry, then he laughed. His laugh was big and booming.

  “You fools!” Big Jerry laughed. “What’s the fuss about? You want the goods out of the store? Well, tomorrow we’ll take what we want of them. They’ll still be here. Nobody’ll stop us when we get started.”

  Laura was hearing rough language. Big Jerry was using it. What he said was all mixed with swear words and with other words she had never heard. She hardly heard them now, because she felt all broken up; she felt as if everything was smashed like a dropped plate when Big Jerry took sides against Pa.

  The crowd was all around Big Jerry now. He was calling some of the men by their names and talking to them about drinking and playing cards. Some of the crowd went with him toward the bunkhouse, then the rest of it broke into smaller pieces and scattered away in the dark.

  Ma shut the door. “Bedtime, girls,” she said.

  Laura went trembling to bed as Ma told her to do. Pa did not come. Now and then she heard an outbreak of loud, rough voices from the camp, and sometimes singing. She knew she would not sleep till Pa came.

  Then her eyes opened suddenly. It was morning.

  Beyond Silver Lake the sky was burning gold and one line of red cloud lay across it; the lake was rosy, and wild birds flew up clamoring. The camp was noisy too. All around the boarding shanty the men were gathered in a milling crowd, talking excitedly.

  Ma and Laura stood outdoors at the corner of the shanty watching. They heard a shout and saw Big Jerry jump onto his white horse.

  “Come on, boys!” he shouted. “All aboard for the fun!”

  The white horse reared and whirled and reared again. Big Jerry gave a wild whoop, the white horse broke into a run, and away they went over the prairie toward the west. All the men rushed to the stable and in a minute man after man was on his horse and following Big Jerry. The whole crowd went streaming away on the horses and was gone.

  A great, cool quietness came over the camp and over Laura and Ma. “Well!” Ma said.

  They saw Pa walking from the store toward the boarding shanty. Fred, the foreman, came out of it and met him. They talked a minute. Then Fred went to the stable, got on his horse, and galloped away to the west.

  Pa was chuckling. Ma said she did not know what there was to laugh about.

  “That Big Jerry!” Pa’s laugh rang out. “By gum, if he didn’t lead ’em all away to do their devilment somewhere else!”

  “Where?” Ma asked sharply.

  Pa was sober then. “There’s a riot at Stebbins’ camp. Everybody’s flocking there from all the camps. You’re right, Caroline, it’s no laughing matter.”

  All day the camp was quiet. Laura and Mary did not go for their walk. There was no telling what might be happening at Stebbins’ camp, nor when that dangerous crowd would come back. Ma’s eyes were anxious all day, her lips were tight, and now and then she sighed without knowing it.

  After dark the men came. But they rode into camp more quietly than they had left it. They ate supper in the boarding shanty and then they went to bed in the bunkhouse.

  Laura and Mary were still awake when Pa came late from the store. They lay quiet in their bunk and heard Pa and Ma talking beyond the lamplit curtain.

  “Nothing to worry about now, Caroline,” Pa said. “They’re tired out and everything’s quiet.” He yawned, and sat down to take off his boots.

  “What did they do, Charles? Was anybody hurt?” Ma asked.

  “They strung up the paymaster,” said Pa. “And one man was hurt bad. They put him in a lumber wagon and started back east with him to find a doctor. Don’t get so upset, Caroline. We better thank our stars we got off so easy. It’s all over.”

  “I don’t get upset till it is over,” Ma said. Her voice was shaking.

  “Come here,” said Pa. Laura knew that now Ma was sitting on Pa’s knee. “There, I know you don’t,” he said to her. “Never mind, Caroline. The grading’s pretty near done, these camps’ll be closing down and gone before long, and next summer we’ll be settled on the homestead.”

  “When are you going to pick it out?” said Ma.

  “Quick as the camps close. I don’t have a minute away from the store till then,” said Pa. “You know that.”

  “Yes, I know, Charles. What did they do about the men that—killed the paymaster?”

  “They didn’t kill him,” Pa said. “It was this way. You see, it’s the same at Stebbins’ camp as here; the office is a lean-to at the back of the store. It has one door into the store and that’s all. The paymaster stayed in the office with the money and kept the door locked. He paid the men through a little opening beside the door.

  “Stebbins has got over three hundred and fifty men drawing pay there, and they wanted their pay up to now, like the men here wanted it. When they got paid only to the fifteenth, they acted ugly. Most of them wear guns, and they were in the store, threatening to shoot up the place unless they got their full pay.

  “In the melee, a couple of men got to quarreling and one of them hit the other over the head with the weight from the scales. He dropped like a struck ox, and when they dragged him out into the air they couldn’t bring him back to his senses.

  “So the crowd started out with a rope, after the man that hit him. They trailed him easy enough into the slough, and then they couldn’t find him in the high grass. They threshed around looking for him through that slough grass taller than their heads, till I guess they’d ruined any trail he’d left.

  “They kept on hunting him till past noon, and lucky for him they didn’t find him. When they got back to the store, the door was locked. They couldn’t get in. Somebody had loaded the hurt man into a wagon and headed back east to look for a doctor.

  “By this time men were piling into the place from all the other camps. They ate everything they could get hold of in the boarding shanty and most of them were drinking. They kept pounding on the store door and yelling to the paymaster to open up and pay them, but nobody answered.

  “A crowd of near a thousand drunken men is an ugly thing to deal with. Somebody caught sight of that rope and shouted, ‘Hang the paymaster!’ The whole crowd took it up and kept on yelling, ‘Hang him! Hang him!’

  “A couple of men got on top of the lean-to roof and tore a hole in the shingles. They left the end of the rope dangling over the edge of the roof and the crowd grabbed hold of it. The two fellows dropped down onto the paymaster and got the noose around his neck.”

  “Stop, Charles. The girls are awake,” said Ma.

  “Pshaw, that’s all there is to it,” Pa said. “They hauled him up once or twice, is all. He gave in.”

  “They didn’t hang him?”

  “Not enough to hurt much. Some of the crowd was breaking down the store door with neckyokes, and the storekeeper opened it. One of the fellows in the office cut the rope and let the paymaster down, and opened up the pay-window and the paymaster paid every man what he claimed was due him. A good many men from the other camps crowded in and drew pay, too. There wasn’t any bothering with time-checks.”

  “Shame on him!” Laura cried out. Pa drew back the curtain. “What did he do it for? I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t!” she went on, before Pa or Ma could say a word. There she was, sitting up on her knees in bed, her fists clenched.

  “You wouldn’t what?” said Pa.

  “Pay them! They couldn’t make me! They didn’t make you!”

  “That mob was bigger than ours. And the paymaster didn’t have Big Jerry to help him,” said Pa.

  “But you wouldn’t have, Pa,” Laura said.

  “Sh!” Ma hushed them. “You’ll wake Grace. I’m thankful the paymas
ter was sensible. Better a live dog than a dead lion.”

  “Oh, no, Ma! You don’t mean that!” Laura whispered.

  “Anyway, discretion is the better part of valor. You girls go to sleep,” Ma murmured.

  “Please, Ma,” Mary whispered. “How could he pay them? Where did he get the money, when he’d already paid out what he had?”

  “That’s so, where did he?” Ma asked.

  “From the store. It’s a big store and it had already taken in most of what the men had been paid; they spend as fast as they get,” said Pa. “Now mind your Ma, girls, and go to sleep.” He let the curtain fall.

  Very softly under the quilt Mary and Laura talked until Ma blew out the lamp. Mary said she wanted to go back to Plum Creek. Laura did not answer that. She liked to feel the great wild prairie all around the little shanty. Her heart beat strong and fast; she could hear in her mind again the savage fierce sound of that crowd’s growl and Pa’s cold voice saying, “Don’t crowd too close.” And she remembered the sweating men and sweating horses moving strongly through clouds of dust, building the railroad in a kind of song. She did not want ever to go back to Plum Creek.

  Chapter 12

  Wings Over Silver Lake

  The weather grew colder and the sky was full of wings and great birds flying. From east to west, from north to south, and as far up into the blue sky as eyes could see, were birds and birds and birds sailing on beating wings.

  At evening down they came endlessly from the sky, sliding down long slopes of air to rest on the water of Silver Lake.

  There were great, gray geese. There were smaller, snow-white brant that looked like snow at the water’s edge. There were ducks of many kinds; the large mallards with a shimmering of purple and green on their wings, the redheads, the bluebills, the canvasbacks, and teals and many others whose names Pa did not know. There were herons, and pelicans, and cranes. There were little mudhens, and the small hell-divers that peppered the water thickly with their little black bodies. When a shot cracked, hell-divers up-ended and vanished quicker than winking. They went far down in the water and stayed there a long time.

  At sunset the whole large lake was covered with birds of all kinds speaking in every kind of bird’s voice to each other before they went to sleep for a night of rest on their long journey from north to south. The winter was driving them; the winter was coming behind them from the north. They knew it and started early so that they could rest on the way. All night they rested, comfortable on the water that held them so softly, and when dawn came, up they rose again to swim onward in the high air with their rested, strong wings.

  One day Pa came from hunting, bringing a great, snow-white bird.

  “I’m sorry, Caroline,” he said soberly. “I would not have done it if I’d known. I’ve shot a swan. It was too beautiful to kill. But I had no idea it was a swan. I never saw one flying before.”

  “It can’t be helped now, Charles,” Ma told him. They all stood looking sorrowfully at the beautiful, snowy bird that would never fly again. “Come,” said Ma. “I’ll pluck its feathers and you skin it. We’ll cure the skin with the swan’s-down on.”

  “It’s bigger than I am,” Carrie said. The swan was so large that Pa measured it. Its feathery white wings measured eight feet from tip to tip.

  Another day Pa brought a pelican to the shanty to show Ma what it was like. He opened the long bill and dead fish fell out of the pouch of skin underneath it. Ma snatched up her apron and pressed it to her face, and Carrie and Grace held their noses.

  “Take it away, Charles, quick!” said Ma through the apron. Some of those fish were fresh, and some were fish that had been dead a long, long time. Pelicans were not fit to eat. Even their feathers smelled so strongly of rotten fish that Ma could not save them for pillows.

  Pa shot all the ducks and geese that they could eat, but he shot nothing else except hawks. Sometimes he shot a hawk because hawks kill other birds. Every day Laura and Ma plucked feathers from the scalded skins of the ducks and geese that Pa shot for dinner.

  “We’ll soon have enough for another feather bed,” said Ma. “Then you and Mary can sleep in feathers this winter.”

  All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings. Wings beating low over the blue water of Silver Lake, wings beating high in the blue air far above it. Wings of geese, of brant, of ducks and pelicans and cranes and heron and swans and gulls, bearing them all away to green fields in the south.

  The wings and the golden weather and the tang of frost in the mornings made Laura want to go somewhere. She did not know where. She wanted only to go.

  “Let’s go west,” she said one night after supper. “Pa, can’t we go west when Uncle Henry does?”

  Uncle Henry and Louisa and Charley had earned money enough to go west. They were going back to the Big Woods to sell their farm, and in the spring, with Aunt Polly, they were all driving west to Montana.

  “Why can’t we?” Laura said. “There’s all the money you’ve earned Pa; three hundred dollars. And we’ve got the team and wagon. Oh, Pa, let’s go on west!”

  “Mercy, Laura!” Ma said. “Whatever—” She could not go on.

  “I know, little Half-Pint,” said Pa, and his voice was very kind. “You and I want to fly like the birds. But long ago I promised your Ma that you girls should go to school. You can’t go to school and go west. When this town is built there’ll be a school here. I’m going to get a homestead, Laura, and you girls are going to school.”

  Laura looked at Ma, and then again at Pa, and she saw that it must happen; Pa would stay on a homestead, and she would go to school.

  “You’ll thank me some day, Laura. And you too, Charles,” Ma said gently.

  “Just so you’re content, Caroline, I’m satisfied,” said Pa. That was true, but he did want to go west. Laura turned back to the dishpan and went on washing the supper dishes.

  “Another thing, Laura,” said Pa. “You know Ma was a teacher, and her mother before her. Ma’s heart is set on one of you girls teaching school, and I guess it will have to be you. So you see you must have your schooling.”

  Laura’s heart jerked, and then she seemed to feel it falling, far, far down. She did not say anything. She knew that Pa and Ma, and Mary too, had thought that Mary would be a teacher. Now Mary couldn’t teach, and—“Oh, I won’t! I won’t!” Laura thought. “I don’t want to! I can’t.” Then she said to herself, “You must.”

  She could not disappoint Ma. She must do as Pa said. So she had to be a school teacher when she grew up. Besides, there was nothing else she could do to earn money.

  Chapter 13

  Breaking Camp

  Now all the vast, low earth rippled softly in gentle colors under a faded sky. Grasses were golden-stemmed, and over the prairie they spread a coverlet of buff and tan and brown and warm brownish gray; only the sloughs were darker with green. The birds were fewer, and hurrying. Often at sunset a long flock talked anxiously, high above Silver Lake, and instead of sinking to eat and rest on the water that must have tempted them so much, the tired leader fell back, another took his place, and they went on flying southward. Winter’s cold was not far behind them and they could not pause to rest.

  In the frosty mornings and the chilly evenings when they went to milk the cows, Laura and Lena wore shawls snug over their heads and pinned under their chins. Their bare legs were cold and the wind nipped their noses, but when they squatted down to milk the warm cows, the shawls covered them cosily and their feet warmed under them. And they sang while they milked.

  “Where are you going, my pretty maid?

  I’m going a-milking, sir, she said.

  May I go with you, my pretty maid?

  Oh, yes, if you please, kind sir, she said.

  “What is your fortune, my pretty maid?

  My face is my fortune, sir, she said.

  Then I can’t marry you, my pretty maid.

  Nobody asked you, sir, she said.”

  “Well, I guess we won
’t be seeing each other again for a long time,” Lena said one evening. The grading job at Silver Lake was nearly finished. Next morning early, Lena and Jean and Aunt Docia were leaving. They were going away before sun-up because they were getting away with three big wagonloads of goods from the company’s stores. They would not tell anybody where they were going, for fear the company would catch them.

  “I wish we’d had time to ride the black ponies again,” Laura said.

  “Gosh!” Lena spoke that wicked word boldly. “I’m glad this summer’s over! I hate houses.” She swung the milk pail and chanted. “No more cooking, no more dishes, no more washing, no more scrubbing! Whoop-ee!” Then she said, “Well, good-by. I guess you’re going to stay right here as long as you live.”

  “I guess so,” Laura said miserably. She was sure that Lena was going out west. Maybe even to Oregon. “Well, good-by.”

  Next morning Laura milked the lone cow by her lonely self. Aunt Docia had driven away with a load of oats from the feed room. Lena had driven a wagonload of goods from the store, and Jean still another big load of scrapers and plows. Uncle Hi would follow them as soon as he settled with the company.

  “I guess Hi’s debt is big enough this time with all those goods charged to him,” Pa said.

  “Shouldn’t you have stopped it, Charles?” Ma worried.

  “It’s not my look-out,” said Pa. “My orders were to let the contractor take anything he wanted, and charge it to him. Oh, come, Caroline! It wasn’t stealing. Hi hasn’t got away with any more than’s due him for his work here and at the camp on the Sioux. The company cheated him there, and he’s got even here. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Well,” Ma sighed, “I’ll be glad when these camps are gone and we’re settled again.”

  Every day the camp was noisy with men drawing their last pay and leaving. Wagon after wagon went away to the east. Every night the camp was emptier. One day Uncle Henry, Louisa, and Charley started the long drive back to Wisconsin, to sell the farm. The boarding shanty and the bunkhouse were deserted, the store was empty, and Pa was only waiting till the company man came to check his bookkeeping.