Little Author in the Big Woods Read online

  Life in the Big Woods was more social than life on the prairie. Not only did Laura get to play with other children at school, so many friends and relatives stopped by the house to share a meal or to visit. Sometimes there were dances, and Ma would get all dressed up. Laura loved how fine and pretty she looked. When the music started, Pa chimed in with his fiddle. Laura and the other children stood back and watched as the caller shouted out the steps for the dancers to follow.

  The Ingalls family felt safe and happy for the next few months. Laura had lots of playmates. She was especially drawn to Clarence Huleatts, who had red hair and freckles. He liked all the same things she did: running, jumping, and climbing. Mary preferred his little sister, Eva, who had excellent manners. Laura didn’t care for Eva so much.

  While Laura and Mary were busy with school and friends, Pa farmed and hunted, like he always had. But soon the yearning to head west again took hold of him. He missed the wide-open sky and the plains of Kansas. Once again, Ma wasn’t so keen on the idea. She thought their life in the Big Woods was just fine and told Pa he had an “itching toe.” But when Pa was able to persuade his brother Uncle Peter and his wife, Aunt Eliza, to join them, Ma changed her mind. She liked the idea of having family along on the journey.

  Pa sold his farm in the fall of 1873 to a Swedish man named Anderson for $1,000. The Ingalls family moved in with Aunt Eliza and Uncle Peter until it was time to go. And in February 1874, the two families set off together. Pa wanted to settle in the western part of Minnesota. Since it was too cold to travel across the state in the winter, he and Uncle Peter took over an abandoned cabin in southeastern Minnesota where the two families could stay until spring, when the weather warmed up. Uncle Peter found a farm along the Zumbro River and decided to settle with his family there. But Pa felt the need to keep going, so the Ingalls family continued west without them.

  They made their way across the prairie lands until they reached western Minnesota. Finally they came to a village called Walnut Grove. It was no more than a few stores and houses, loosely spread around the railroad tracks. The first railroad linking the East and West coasts of the United States had been completed in 1869. Laura had never been on a train, but she’d been enchanted by the sound of its whistle. While in town, Pa heard about a Norwegian settler who had travel plans of his own. He was willing to sell his homestead to Pa.

  Pa bought the 172 acres of prairie land along Plum Creek. It came with an underground house called a dugout. The small, one-room dugout was carved right into the ground. The roof was made of willow boughs covered by sod, which is grass-covered ground. It was hidden from view except for the stovepipe sticking up through the sod. The walls, made of packed earth, were smoothed and whitewashed. The floor was earth too. Right by the door was a window covered not with glass but with greased paper. It let in only a little bit of light.

  Since they were so close to town, Laura and Mary were able to go to school. Although there was no church when the family arrived, Ma joined a committee to help build one. Pa contributed money for the church bell, and when the church was completed, the Ingalls family attended Sunday services. Laura always remembered the very first decorated Christmas tree in church. The tree held presents for everyone. To Laura, the fur cape and china box she received as gifts were precious.

  Minnesota winters were long and hard. Blizzards lasting three or four days whipped across the plains. When this happened, Laura and Mary had to do their lessons at home. But there was a bright side to blizzard season. All the moisture in the ground made for good crops. In the spring of 1875, Pa planted wheat. He was so confident about the crop that he went into town and came back with a load of yellow pine lumber that had been sent to the prairie by railroad. He also came back with glass windows, factory-milled doors, and white china doorknobs. Pa was going to build a house! The shopkeepers all knew about his big wheat field. He would pay them when he harvested his crop.

  One of their neighbors, Eleck Nelson, helped Pa with the framing, the roofing, the windows, and the walls. Laura thought the new house was wonderful. She and Mary had a hard time keeping Pa’s secret surprise for Ma: her very own cookstove. Laura and her family were thrilled to move into the new house. All summer long, Pa tended the wheat field. What a crop they would have!

  Then, one day, a dark cloud passed in front of the sun. The cloud turned out to be an invasion of grasshoppers. The sky filled with them, and the whirring of their wings made a loud, terrible drone. When they hit the ground, it sounded like a hailstorm. Once they hit, they began to eat: all the wheat Pa had grown, all the vegetables in Ma’s garden. Leaves, grass, flowers, and fruit. They stripped the fields and prairie bare. The government tried to fight back: they offered children up to $1.00 for every bushel of dead grasshoppers they collected, and 50 cents for a gallon of their eggs.

  Despite the terrible grasshopper devastation to their farm, Pa and Ma were not ready to abandon it. So, before the harvest in late August, Pa walked 200 miles across Minnesota to find work. He was not alone; dozens of men and boys went too, all desperate to make some money. They were housed and fed by local farmers who took pity on them.

  While Pa was gone, Ma and the girls stayed behind, living in a rented house behind the church, where life would be easier when the winter came. It was hard for Ma to be alone. She had to be both mother and father to the girls. She waited anxiously for word from Pa, and when the first letter came, she cried with relief. Pa came home in the fall, his purse filled with money.

  On November 1, 1875, Laura’s family welcomed a new baby brother, Charles Frederick Ingalls. They called him Freddie. The girls had fun that winter, both in school and at home with baby Freddie. Spring came, and with it, a chance to plant again. But the grasshoppers had laid their eggs, and now they were back, eating every live plant in sight. When Pa and Ma saw the grasshoppers again, they became discouraged. Then another opportunity arose. Some friends from church, the Steadmans, were buying a hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa. They asked Ma and Pa to help them run it. A new settler named Keller bought their house and farm along Plum Creek. The Ingalls family packed up and moved southeast.

  On the way, they stopped at Uncle Peter and Aunt Eliza’s farm near South Troy, Minnesota. They were not needed in Burr Oak until the fall, so they would stay and work on the farm for the summer. Laura loved playing with her cousins Pete, Alice, Ella, Edith, and Lansford. And she loved her daily chores of watching the cows and guarding the haystacks. As the cows grazed, she and her cousins played along the banks of the Zumbro River, gathering and eating the sweet, juicy plums.

  The only dark note was the worry they all felt about little Freddie. He was a weak baby, and often sick. Laura could only hope that he would grow stronger before it was time to pack up and move on to Burr Oak.

  THREE

  A Terrible Illness

  1876−1879

  Iowa–Minnesota

  It was late summer, and the Ingalls family was deeply sad. Laura’s baby brother, Freddie—less than a year old—had been sick for months, and on a dreadful day in August 1876, he died. Losing babies in those times was not uncommon, but it still affected the family powerfully, and they all mourned his death. He was buried at Uncle Peter and Aunt Eliza’s farm in Minnesota, under a small white gravestone. When autumn came, they had to leave even that reminder behind; they packed up their wagon and headed to Burr Oak, Iowa. They were on their way to help the Steadmans at their hotel.

  To Laura, the hotel seemed very grand. On the street level, there was a parlor, the hotel office, and a tavern. Right off the parlor was a big bedroom occupied by the hotel’s wealthiest boarder. Down below were the kitchen, the dining room, and a sleeping area. Upstairs, there were four small bedrooms.

  Life at Burr Oak was busy from morning until night. Guests were always coming and going; they lined up in the dining room to get their meals. The hotel was also used for weddings and dances. Some people lived there permanently; they were called steady boarders, and the hotel establishment took g
reat pains to keep them happy.

  Laura’s jobs included going out behind the barn to the springhouse to retrieve butter and eggs. The one-room springhouse was built over a brook. The cool water maintained a constant temperature inside the house all year long. Perishable food would not spoil as quickly.

  Laura and Mary also made beds, washed dishes, and waited on tables in the dining room. Ma and Pa were busy all the time too. There was plenty of work for everyone at the inn.

  Pa and Ma didn’t like the noisy tavern and the constant flow of people. And they especially didn’t like the saloon right next door. To Ma, saloons were nothing but trouble: rough men, rough language, and bad behavior. Late one night, the saloon caught fire. Ma quickly woke Mary, Laura, and Carrie and hustled them outside. The girls stood and watched as the bucket brigade—men who stood in a line by the town pump, passing pails of water along to douse the flames—was finally able to get the blaze under control. Ma and Pa were so grateful that the fire had not spread to the inn and that none of their family had been hurt. But they were still frightened.

  After that, Pa and Ma didn’t want to live so close to the saloon, so they moved from the inn to a redbrick house that stood near an oak forest. Pa bought a cow, and it was Laura’s job to take her out to the pasture in the morning and home again at night.

  One day, Laura came home late from an errand that had taken a long time. There she found a brand-new baby sister, with Mary’s blond hair and Pa’s blue eyes. Ma named her Grace Pearl.

  Now that the family had four girls, Pa had to work even harder to make ends meet. Though he could always get work as a carpenter or help out on a farm, he still needed more money. Laura did not fully understand this. Her family lived in a nice house. They had enough to eat, and they were happy. They were not poor. Or were they? Other people in town seemed to think so, and one of them, Mrs. Starr, asked if she could help them out by having Laura come live with her. Her own girls were grown and gone; she was lonely and wanted Laura’s companionship. Laura was horrified. Leave Ma and Pa, and her sisters? Never! She was so glad when Ma thanked Mrs. Starr for her kindness but said no, they could not spare Laura.

  Clearly, they needed to do something. And Laura had a hunch that she knew what it was: Pa was hankering to set out again. Laura knew just how he felt, because she shared his passion. “No one, who has not pioneered, can understand the fascination of it … storms, blizzards, grasshoppers, burning hot winds, and fires … yet it seemed that we wanted nothing so much as we wanted to keep going west!” she later wrote. Yes, life on the prairie was hard. But they all had pulled together to make the best of it.

  In the fall of 1877, the Ingalls family made the long journey from Iowa back to Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Their arrival in town was celebrated as a kind of homecoming, and they were invited to stay with their good friends the Ensigns until Pa could build them a house of their own. Pa and Ma knew the family from church, and Laura knew their children—Willard, Anna, and Howard—because they had often played together. Doubling up was a common practice on the frontier, and no one seemed to mind making room for neighbors until they could get back on their feet again.

  Almost immediately, Pa found a job in a store. And because he was such a skilled carpenter, he was able to get carpentry work on the side too. Ma took care of baby Grace, and she helped Mrs. Ensign with all the chores. Mary, age 13, Laura, age 10, and Carrie, age 8, went off to school every day.

  Just like before, Laura was happy in school. She was quickly reacquainted with her old friends and sometimes rivals, like Nellie and Willie Owens. And she made friends with the newcomers too. The children of Walnut Creek were a rowdy bunch. Before class began in the mornings, and during recess, they had raucous snowball fights and fast races. Laura loved all the activity and energy; she jumped right into whatever game her classmates were playing.

  Not Mary. She never wanted to join in. Unlike Laura, Mary was a lady. She even tried to keep Laura from acting so adventurous. One day, Laura was rushing out to join a snowball fight that was already in progress. Mary grabbed Laura by the hair to keep her from going out. But Laura would not be stopped. She just dragged Mary to the open door, and the two girls were both pelted with snowballs. When she finally broke free, Laura ran out into the snow so she could get her revenge on her attackers.

  Even though she was a “wildcat” (her cousin’s word), she was an excellent student. She loved history and spelling and could often outspell the whole class when the teacher arranged spelling bees. Pa bought her a new schoolbook—she had to share it with Mary—for 61 cents. The book was all about the history of the United States. Laura read it avidly and was very proud when Pa informed her that some of his ancestors had come to Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower.

  Things were going well for the family. In the spring of 1878, Pa bought a patch of land in the pasture behind a new hotel owned by a man named William Masters. Pa then had the taxing job of building a new house. Ma was so glad to have her own place again. She loved the Ensigns, but enough was enough. Although she missed farming, she was grateful that they could stay in one place for the time being. Now Pa could play the fiddle in the evenings again; he taught the girls how to dance, and sometimes they even performed for company.

  Later that spring, he got the notion that Walnut Grove needed a butcher shop. During the long, cold winters, people used up their store of cured meats and needed more. So he opened one, though he continued to do his carpentry too.

  Laura stayed in school, which ran right through to the summer. Ordinarily this would have made her very happy, but she found herself constantly irritated by a snobby girl from New York, Genevieve Masters, who was the niece of the teacher, Sam Masters. Pa told her to ignore Genevieve, but she just couldn’t do it. Genevieve soon became rivals with Nellie Owens. Both girls tried to gain control of all the others at school; it became a fierce competition between them.

  Laura kept aloof. Though Genevieve tried to sweet-talk her and Nellie tried to bribe her with little gifts from the store her father owned, their tactics did not work. Somehow, Laura’s independent spirit caught the attention of the other girls. To her surprise, she soon found that she was the most popular girl of all. And it wasn’t just the girls who courted her favor. The boys always wanted her to play with them: ante I over, pull away, prisoners’ base, handball, and baseball. There was only one boy in the school who could run faster than Laura.

  The school term ended in June, and Laura, now 11, was offered a job. Mrs. Masters asked her to work at the hotel, where she would earn 50 cents an hour waiting on tables, washing dishes, making beds, and looking after Mrs. Masters’s grandbaby. Laura liked her work. During the quiet times between meals, Mrs. Masters let her slip off to read. Laura made her way through a big stack of the New York Ledger, a weekly paper, losing herself in their exciting stories. She didn’t know it, but her future life as a writer was already beginning, right there amid the pages of those newspapers. When she was all done with her chores and her reading, she could walk across the pasture to her home.

  Other people in Walnut Grove began to notice what a good worker Laura was: careful, responsible, and capable. Soon she was running errands and doing all sorts of odd jobs for friends and neighbors. The nickels and dimes she earned made her—and her parents—proud.

  On Sundays, the Ingalls family attended the Congregational church and Sunday school, and in the afternoons, Laura went to services at the Methodist church as well. The Methodists were offering a prize to the girl or boy who could repeat the golden texts and central truths from the Bible. This was just the sort of challenge Laura loved. There were 104 verses to remember, and Laura was determined to master them all. Like in a spelling bee, the children tried to recite all the verses, only to fail and be disqualified. Finally, just Laura and one other boy were left—both had recited the verses perfectly. Although there was just one prize Bible, the minister’s wife told Laura that if she was willing to wait, a nicer, even fancier version would be ordered and give
n to her. Laura agreed—it was a prize worth waiting for.

  Laura had just turned 12 in the winter of 1879 when Mary suddenly became very sick. She complained of a throbbing in her head, and her fever spiked so high that Ma cut off all her lovely blond hair—the hair Laura, a brunette, had always envied—in a desperate effort to cool her down. The doctor came, but he could do nothing to help her get better. Ma and Pa were sure she would die.

  Laura was afraid for her sister. They were so close. Sometimes they quarreled. Sometimes Laura was jealous, because Mary was so pretty and well behaved, while she thought of herself as plain and stout. But despite that, Mary was her best friend, and she loved her sister deeply. They had already lost Freddie. What would happen if Mary died? Laura couldn’t bear to think of it.

  The exact nature of Mary’s illness was never determined but it was severe enough to have damaged her optic nerve and it caused her to go blind. But Mary surprised them. She was strong and pulled through. Although she was only 14 years old, she did not complain or mourn; she seemed to accept her sightlessness and was deeply grateful for the love and support of her family.

  When it was clear that Mary would never be able to see again, Pa took Laura aside. He had something very important to ask. Now that Mary was blind, Laura must act as her eyes. Through Laura, Mary would keep in contact with the world, and it would be Laura’s job to describe the things that her sister could no longer see. Laura was quick and lively, so Pa had confidence in her. Laura nodded very solemnly in response to Pa’s request. She knew it was a big responsibility, but she was ready to take it on. She would do as Pa asked, now and always.