They swooped and almost seemed to fly. If Carrie lost her balance, Laura held her up. If Laura was unsteady, Carrie’s hand steadied her.
Close to the farther shore, almost in the shadow of the high bank, they stopped. Something made Laura look up to the top of the bank.
And there, dark against the moonlight, stood a great wolf!
He was looking toward her. The wind stirred his fur and the moonlight seemed to run in and out of it.
“Let’s go back,” Laura said quickly, as she turned, taking Carrie with her. “I can go faster than you.”
She ran and slid and ran again as fast as she could, but Carrie kept up.
“I saw it too,” Carrie panted. “Was it a wolf?”
“Don’t talk!” Laura answered. “Hurry!”
Laura could hear their feet running and sliding on the ice. She listened for a sound behind them, but there was none. Then they ran and slid without a word until they came to the path by the water hole. As they ran up the path, Laura looked back but she could see nothing on the lake nor on the bank beyond.
Laura and Carrie didn’t stop running. They ran up the hill to the house, opened the back door and ran into the lean-to. They ran across that, burst through the door into the front room and slammed it shut behind them. Then leaned against it, panting.
Pa sprang to his feet, “What is it?” he asked. “What has frightened you?”
“Was it a wolf, Laura?” Carrie gasped.
“It was a wolf, Pa,” Laura gulped, catching her breath. “A great, big wolf! And I was afraid Carrie couldn’t run fast enough but she did.”
“I should say she did!” Pa exclaimed. “Where is this wolf?”
“I don’t know. It is gone,” Laura told him.
Ma helped them take off their wraps. “Sit down and rest! You are all out of breath,” she said.
“Where was the wolf?” Pa wanted to know.
“Up on the bank,” Carrie said, and Laura added, “The high bank across the lake.”
“Did you girls go clear there?” Pa asked in surprise. “And ran all the way back after you saw him! I had no idea you would go so far. It is a good half-mile.”
“We followed the moonpath,” Laura told him. Pa looked at her strangely. “You would!” he said. “I thought those wolves had gone. It was careless of me. I’ll hunt them tomorrow.”
Mary sat still, but her face was white. “Oh, girls,” she almost whispered. “Suppose he had caught you!”
Then they all sat silent while Laura and Carrie rested.
Laura was glad to be safe in the warm room with the desolate prairie shut out. If anything had happened to Carrie, it would have been her fault for taking her so far across the lake.
But nothing had happened. She could almost see again the great wolf with the wind ruffling the moonlight on his fur.
“Pa!” she said in a low voice.
“Yes, Laura?” Pa answered.
“I hope you don’t find the wolf, Pa,” Laura said.
“Why ever not?” Ma wondered.
“Because he didn’t chase us,” Laura told her. “He didn’t chase us, Pa, and he could have caught us.”
A long, wild, wolf howl rose and faded away on the stillness.
Another answered it. Then silence again.
Laura’s heart seemed to turn over with a sickening flop and she found herself on her feet. She was glad of Ma’s steadying hand on her arm.
“Poor girl! You are nervous as a witch and no wonder,” Ma said softly.
Ma took a hot flatiron from the back of the stove, wrapped it tightly in a cloth and gave it to Carrie.
“It is bedtime,” she said. “Here is the hot iron for your feet.”
“And here is yours, Laura,” as she wrapped another. “Be sure you put it in the middle of the bed so Mary’s feet can reach it too.”
As Laura shut the stair door behind them, Pa was talking earnestly to Ma. But Laura could not hear what he said for the ringing in her ears.
Chapter 18
Pa Finds the Homestead
After breakfast next morning Pa took his gun and set out. All that morning Laura was listening for a shot and not wanting to hear it. All morning she remembered the great wolf sitting quiet in the moonlight that shimmered through his thick fur.
Pa was late for dinner. It was long past noon when he stamped the snow from his feet in the lean-to. He came in and put his gun on the wall, and hung his cap and coat on their nail. His mittens he hung, by their thumbs, to dry on the line behind the stove. Then he washed his face and hands in the tin basin on the bench, and before the small glass that hung above it he combed his hair and his beard.
“Sorry I kept dinner waiting, Caroline,” he said. “I was gone longer than I thought. Went farther than I intended.”
“It doesn’t matter, Charles; I’ve kept dinner warm,” Ma replied. “Come to the table, girls! Don’t keep Pa waiting.”
“How far did you go, Pa?” Mary asked.
“Better than ten miles, all told,” said Pa. “Those wolf tracks led me a chase.”
“Did you get the wolf, Pa?” Carrie wanted to know. Laura did not say anything.
Pa smiled at Carrie and said, “Now, now, don’t ask questions. I’ll tell you all about it. I went across the lake, followed the marks you girls made last night. And what do you suppose I found in that high bank where you saw the wolf?”
“You found the wolf,” Carrie said confidently. Laura still said nothing. Her food was choking her; she could hardly swallow the smallest mouthful.
“I found the wolves’ den,” said Pa. “And the biggest wolves’ tracks I ever saw. Girls, there were two big buffalo wolves at that den last night.”
Mary and Carrie gasped. Ma said, “Charles!”
“It’s too late to be scared now,” Pa told them. “But that’s what you girls did. You went right up to the wolves’ den and there were the wolves.
“Their tracks were fresh, and all the signs show plain as day what they were doing. It’s an old den, and from their size they’re no young wolves. I’d say they’d been living there for some years. But they haven’t been living there this winter.
“They came down from the northwest sometime yesterday evening and went pretty straight to that den. They stayed around it, in and out of it, maybe till this morning. I followed their tracks from there, down along Big Slough and out on the prairie, southwest.
“From the time they left the old den, those wolves never stopped. They trotted along, side by side, as if they had started on a long journey and knew where they were going. I followed them far enough to be sure that I couldn’t get a shot at them. They’ve left for good.”
Laura took a deep breath as though she had forgotten to breathe till now. Pa looked at her. “You are glad they got away, Laura?” he asked.
“Yes, Pa, I am,” Laura answered. “They didn’t chase us.”
“No, Laura, they didn’t chase you. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why they didn’t.”
“And what were they doing at that old den?” Ma wondered.
“They were just looking at it,” said Pa. “My belief is they came back to visit the old place where they lived before the graders came in and the antelope left. Maybe they used to live here before the hunters killed the last buffalo. Buffalo wolves were all over this country once, but there’s not many left now, even around here. The railroads and settlements kept driving them farther west. One thing’s certain if I know anything about wild animal tracks; those two wolves came straight from the west and went straight back west, and all they did here was to stop one night at the old den. And I wouldn’t wonder if they’re pretty nearly the last buffalo wolves that’ll ever be seen in this part of the country.”
“Oh, Pa, the poor wolves,” Laura mourned.
“Mercy on us,” Ma said briskly. “There’s enough to be sorry for, without being sorry for the feelings of wild beasts! Be thankful the brutes didn’t do any worse than scare you girls last nigh
t.”
“That isn’t all, Caroline!” Pa announced. “I’ve got some news. I’ve found our homestead.”
“Oh, where, Pa! What’s it like? How far is it?” Mary and Laura and Carrie asked, excited. Ma said, “That’s good, Charles.”
Pa pushed back his plate, drank his tea, wiped his mustache, and said, “It is just right in every way. It lies south of where the lake joins Big Slough, and the slough curves around to the west of it. There’s a rise in the prairie to the south of the slough, that will make a nice place to build. A little hill just west of it crowds the slough back on that side. On the quarter section there’s upland hay and plow land lying to the south; and good grazing on all of it, everything a farmer could ask for. And it’s near the townsite, so the girls can go to school.”
“I’m glad, Charles,” said Ma.
“It’s a funny thing,” Pa said. “Here I’ve been looking around this country for months and never finding a quarter section that just exactly suited me. And that one was lying there all the time. Likely enough I wouldn’t have come across it at all, if this wolf chase hadn’t taken me across the lake and down along the slough on that side.”
“I wish you had filed on it last fall,” Ma worried.
“Nobody’ll be in here this winter,” Pa said confidently. “I’ll get out to Brookings and file on that claim next spring before anybody else is looking for a homestead.”
Chapter 19
Christmas Eve
It had snowed all day and soft, large flakes were still falling. The winds were quiet so that the snow lay deep on the ground, and Pa took the shovel with him when he went to do the evening chores.
“Well, it’s a white Christmas,” he said.
“Yes, and we’re all here and all well, so it’s a merry one,” said Ma.
The surveyors’ house was full of secrets. Mary had knitted new, warm socks for Pa’s Christmas present. Laura had made him a necktie from a piece of silk she found in Ma’s scrap bag. Together in the attic, she and Carrie had made an apron for Ma from one of the calico curtains that had hung in the shanty. In the scrap bag they found a piece of fine, white muslin; Laura had cut a small square from it, and secretly Mary had hemmed the square with her fine stitches and made a handkerchief for Ma. They put it in the apron pocket. Then they had wrapped the apron in tissue paper and hidden it under the quilt blocks in Mary’s box.
There had been a blanket, striped across the ends in red and green. The blanket was worn out, but the striped end was good, and from it Ma had cut bed shoes for Mary. Laura had made one, and Carrie the other, seaming and turning and finishing them neatly with chords and tassels of yarn. The shoes were hidden carefully in Ma’s bedroom so that Mary would not find them.
Laura and Mary had wanted to make mittens for Carrie, but they had not enough yarn. There was a little white yarn, and a little red, and a little blue, but not enough of any color to make mittens.
“I know!” Mary said. “We’ll make the hands white, and the wrists in red and blue strips!” Every morning while Carrie was making her bed in the attic, Laura and Mary had knitted as fast as they could; when they heard her coming down stairs, they hid the mittens in Mary’s knitting basket. The mittens were there now, finished.
Grace’s Christmas present was to be the most beautiful of all. They had all worked at it together in the warm room, for Grace was so little that she didn’t notice.
Ma had taken the swan’s skin from its careful wrappings, and cut from it a little hood. The skin was so delicate that Ma trusted no one else to handle that; she sewed every stitch of the hood herself. But she let Laura and Carrie piece out the lining, of scraps of blue silk from the scrap bag. After Ma sewed the swan’s-down hood to the lining, it would not tear.
Then Ma looked again in the scrap bag, and chose a large piece of soft blue woolen cloth, that had once been her best winter dress. Out of it she cut a little coat. Laura and Carrie sewed the seams and pressed them; Mary put the tiny stitches in the hem at the bottom. Then on the coat Ma sewed a collar of the soft swan’s-down, and put narrow swan’s-down cuffs on the sleeves.
The blue coat trimmed with the white swan’s-down, and the delicate swan’s-down hood with its lining as blue as Grace’s eyes, were beautiful.
“It’s like making doll’s clothes,” Laura said.
“Grace will be lovelier than any doll,” Mary declared.
“Oh, let’s put them on her now!” Carrie cried, dancing in her eagerness.
But Ma had said the coat and the hood must be laid away until Christmas, and they were. They were waiting now for tomorrow morning to come.
Pa had gone hunting. He said he intended to have the biggest jack rabbit in the territory for the Christmas dinner. And he had. At least, he had brought home the very biggest rabbit they had ever seen. Skinned and cleaned and frozen stiff, it waited now in the lean-to to be roasted tomorrow.
Pa came in from the stable, stamping the snow from his feet. He broke the ice from his mustache and spread his hands in the warmth above the stove.
“Whew!” he said. “This is a humdinger of a cold spell for the night before Christmas. It’s too cold for Santa Claus to be out,” and his eyes twinkled at Carrie.
“We don’t need Santa Claus! We’ve all been—” Carrie began, then she clapped her hand over her mouth and looked quickly to see if Laura and Mary had noticed how nearly she had told secrets.
Pa turned around to warm his back in the heat from the oven, and he looked happily at them all.
“We’re all snug under cover anyway,” he said. “Ellen and Sam and David are warm and comfortable too, and I gave them an extra feed for Christmas Eve. Yes, it’s a pretty good Christmas, isn’t it, Caroline?”
“Yes, Charles, it is,” said Ma. She set the bowl of hot corn meal mush on the table, and poured out the milk. “Come now, and eat. A hot supper will warm you quicker than anything else, Charles.”
At supper they talked about other Christmases. They had had so many Christmases together, and here they were again, all together and warm and fed and happy. Upstairs in Laura’s box there was still Charlotte, the rag doll from her Christmas stocking in the Big Woods. The tin cups and the pennies from Christmas in Indian Territory were gone now, but Laura and Mary remembered Mr. Edwards who had walked forty miles to Independence and back, to bring those presents from Santa Claus. They never had heard of Mr. Edwards since he started alone down the Verdigris River, and they wondered what had become of him.
“Wherever he is, let’s hope he’s as lucky as we are,” said Pa. Wherever he was, they were remembering him and wishing him happiness.
“And you’re here, Pa,” Laura said. “You’re not lost in a blizzard.” For a moment they all looked silently at Pa, thinking of that dreadful Christmas when he almost had not come home and they feared he never would.
Tears came into Ma’s eyes. She tried to hide them, but she had to brush them away with her hand. They all pretended not to notice. “It’s just thankfulness, Charles,” Ma said, blowing her nose.
Then Pa burst out laughing. “That was the joke on me!” he said. “Starving to death for three days and nights, and eating the oyster crackers and the Christmas candy, and all the time I was under the bank of our own creek, not a hundred yards from the house!”
“I think the best Christmas was the time there was the Sunday-school Christmas tree,” said Mary. “You’re too little to remember, Carrie, but Oh! how wonderful that was!”
“It wasn’t really as good as this one,” Laura said. “Because now Carrie is old enough to remember, and now we have Grace.” There was Carrie—the wolf didn’t hurt her. And there on Ma’s lap sat the littlest sister Grace, with her hair the color of sunshine and eyes as blue as violets.
“Yes, this is best after all,” Mary decided. “And maybe next year there’ll be a Sunday-school here.”
The mush was gone. Pa scraped the last drop of milk from his bowl and drank his tea. “Well,” he said, “we can’t have a tree
, for there isn’t so much as a bush on Silver Lake. We wouldn’t want one anyway, just for ourselves. But we can have a little Sunday-school celebration of our own, Mary.”
He went to get his fiddle box, and while Ma and Laura washed the bowls and the pot and set them away, he tuned the fiddle and rosined the bow.
Frost was thick on the windowpanes and frost furred the cracks around the door. Thickly against the clear upper edges of the windowpanes the snowflakes fluttered. But lamplight was bright on the red-and-white tablecloth, and the fire glowed behind the open drafts of the stove.
“We can’t sing so soon after eating,” said Pa. “So I’ll just limber up the fiddle.”
Merrily he played, “Away Down the River on the O-hi-o!” And, “Why Chime the Bells So Merrily.” And,
“Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way!
Oh, what fun it is to ride,
In a one-hoss open sleigh!”
Then he stopped and smiled at them all. “Are you ready to sing now?”
The voice of the fiddle changed; it was going to sing a hymn. Pa played a few notes. Then they all sang:
“Yes, a brighter morn is breaking,
Better days are coming on.
All the world will be awaking
In a new and golden dawn.
And many nations shall come and say,
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord!
And He will teach us, will teach us of His ways,
And we will walk in His paths.”
The fiddle’s voice wandered away, Pa seemed to be playing his thoughts to himself. But a melody grew out of them and throbbed softly until they all joined in and sang:
“The sun may warm the grass to life,
The dew the drooping flower;
And eyes grow bright and watch the light
Of autumn’s opening hour;
But words that breathe of tenderness