In the back room behind the feed store, Almanzo was busy. He had taken saddles, harness, and clothes from the end wall and piled them on the bed. He had pushed the table against the cupboard and in the cleared space he had set a chair for a sawhorse.
He had set a frame of two-by-fours a foot from the end wall. Now he was sawing boards one by one and nailing them on the frame. The rasping of the saw and the hammering were hardly louder than the blizzard’s noise.
When he had built the inner wall up halfway, he took out his jack-knife and ripped open a sack of his seed wheat. He lifted up the hundred-and-twenty-five-pound sack and carefully let the wheat pour into the space between the new wall and the old one.
“I figure she’ll hold it all,” he said to Royal who sat whittling by the stove. “When I build all the way up so the bin won’t show.”
“It’s your funeral,” said Royal. “It’s your wheat.”
“You bet your life it’s my wheat!” Almanzo replied.
“And it’s going into my ground, come spring.”
“What makes you think I’d sell your wheat?” Royal demanded.
“You’re pretty near sold out of grain already,” Almanzo answered. “This blizzard’ll let up sometime, or. it’ll be the first one that didn’t, and soon as it does the whole town’ll come piling in here to buy wheat. Harthorn and Loftus have got just three sacks of flour left between ’em, and this storm’ll hold up the train till after Christmas at best.”
“All that don’t mean I’d sell your wheat,” Royal insisted.
“Maybe not, but I know you, Roy. You’re not a farmer, you’re a storekeeper. A fellow comes in here and looks around and says, ‘What’s the price of your wheat?’ You say, ‘I’m sold out of wheat.’ He says, ‘What’s that in those sacks?’ You tell him, ‘That’s not my wheat, it’s Manzo’s.’ So the fellow says, ‘What’ll you boys sell it for?’ And don’t try to tell me you’ll say, ‘We won’t sell it.’ No siree, Roy, you’re a storekeeper. You’ll say to him, ‘What’ll you give?’”
“Well, maybe I would,” Royal admitted. “What’s the harm in that?”
“The harm is that they’ll bid up prices sky-high before a train gets through. I’ll be out hauling hay or somewhere and you’ll figure that I wouldn’t refuse such a price, or you’ll think you know better than I do what’s for my best interests. You never would believe I mean what I say when I say it, Royal Wilder.”
“Well, well, keep your shirt on, Manzo,” said Royal. “I am considerable older than you be and maybe I do know best.”
“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. Be that as it may be, I’m going to run my own business my own way. I’m nailing up my seed wheat so nobody’ll see it and nobody’ll bring up any question about it and it’ll be right here when seedtime comes.”
“All right, all right,” Royal said. He went on carefully whittling a linked chain out of a stick of pine and Almanzo, bracing his legs, lifted the sacks one by one to his shoulder and let the wheat pour into its hiding place. Now and then a heavier blow of the winds shook the walls and now and then the red-hot stove puffed out smoke. A louder roar of the storm made them both listen and Almanzo said, “Golly, this one’s a daisy!”
“Roy,” he said after a while, “whittle me a plug to fit this knothole, will you? I want to get this job done before chore time.”
Royal came to look at the knothole. He rounded it with his knife and chose a piece of wood that would make a plug to fit.
“If prices go up like you say, you’re a fool not to sell your wheat,” he remarked. “They’ll have the train running before spring. You can buy your seed back and make a profit like I’m figuring on doing.”
“You said that before,” Almanzo reminded him. “I’d rather be sure than sorry. You don’t know when the train’ll be running and you don’t know they’ll ship in seed wheat before April.”
“Nothing’s sure but death and taxes,” said Royal.
“Seedtime’s pretty sure to come around,” Almanzo said. “And good seed makes a good crop.”
“You talk like Father,” Royal mentioned. He tried the plug against the knothole and set to whittling it again. “If the train don’t get through in a couple of weeks or so, I wonder how this town’ll hold out. There’s not much left in the grocery stores.”
“Folks manage to get along when they’ve got to,” said Almanzo. “Pretty near everybody brought out supplies last summer like we did. And we can make ours stretch till warm weather if we must.”
Chapter 18
Merry Christmas
The blizzard stopped at last. After three days of its ceaseless noise, the stillness rang in Laura’s ears.
Pa hurried away to get a load of hay and when he came back he put David in the stable. The sun was still glittering on the snow, there was no cloud in the northwest, and Laura wondered why he stopped hauling hay.
“What’s wrong, Charles?” Ma asked quietly when Pa came in.
Pa answered, “Gilbert made it to Preston and back. He’s brought the mail!”
It was as if Christmas had happened unexpectedly. Ma hoped for the church paper. Laura and Mary and Carrie hoped that Reverend Alden had sent them something to read; sometimes he did. Grace was excited because they were excited. It was hard to wait for Pa to come back from the post office.
He was gone a long time. As Ma said, it did no good to be impatient. Every man in town was at the post office and Pa must wait his turn.
When at last he came, his hands were full. Ma reached eagerly for the church papers and Laura and Carrie both tried to take the bundle of Youths Companions. There were newspapers too.
“Here! Here!” Pa laughed. “Don’t mob a fellow! And that’s not the whole of it. Guess what I got!”
“A letter? Oh Pa, did you get a letter?” Laura cried.
“Who is it from?” Ma asked.
“You’ve got the Advances, Caroline,” Pa replied.
“And Laura and Carrie’ve got the Youths Companions. I’ve got the Inter-Ocean and the Pioneer Press. Mary gets the letter.”
Mary’s face shone. She felt the letter’s size and thickness. “A big, fat letter! Please read it, Ma.”
So Ma opened the letter and read it aloud.
The letter was from Reverend Alden. He was sorry that he had not been able to come back and help organize a church last spring, but he had been sent farther north. He hoped to be with them when spring came again. The children of the Sunday School in Minnesota were sending a bundle of Youths Companions to the girls, and would send another bundle next year. His church had shipped them a Christmas barrel and he hoped the clothing would fit. As his own Christmas gift and some slight return for their hospitality to him and to Reverend Stuart last winter at Silver Lake, he had put in a Christmas turkey. He wished them all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
There was a little silence when Ma had finished reading. Then she said, “We have this good letter, anyway.”
“Gilbert brought word that they’re putting on a double work crew and two snowplows at the Tracy cut,” Pa told them. “We may get the barrel by Christmas.”
“It’s only a few days,” Ma said.
“A lot can be done in a few days,” said Pa. “If this spell of clear weather holds out, no reason they can’t get the train through.”
“Oh, I hope the Christmas barrel comes,” Carrie said.
“The hotels have shut down,” Pa told Ma the news. “They’ve been burning lumber and now Banker Ruth has bought out the lumberyard, down to the last shingle.”
“We couldn’t afford to burn lumber anyway,” said Ma. “But Charles, we are almost out of coal.”
“We’ll burn hay,” Pa answered cheerfully.
“Hay?” Ma said, and Laura asked, “How can we burn hay, Pa?”
She thought of how quickly the prairie fires swept through dry grass. Flame licks through the light, thin stems and is gone before the frail ashes can fall. How could a room be kept warm by a fire so quic
kly burning out, when even the steady glow of hard coal could not keep out the cold?
“We will have to contrive,” Pa told her. “We’ll manage it! Needs must, when the devil drives.”
“Likely the train will get through in time,” Ma said.
Pa put on his cap again and asked Ma to make dinner a little late. He had time to haul another load of hay if he hustled. He went out and Ma said, “Come, girls, put the bundle of Youths Companions away. We must get out the washing while the weather’s clear so we can.”
All that day Laura and Carrie and Mary looked forward to the Youths Companions and often they spoke of them. But the bright day was short. They stirred and punched the clothes boiling on the stove; they lifted them on the broom handle into the tub where Ma soaped and rubbed them. Laura rinsed them, Carrie stirred the blueing bag in the second rinsewater until it was blue enough. Laura made the boiled starch. And when for the last time Ma went out into the cold to hang the freezing wash on the line, Pa had come for dinner.
Then they washed the dishes, they scrubbed the floor and blacked the stove, and washed the inside of the windowpanes. Ma brought in the frozen-dry clothes and they sorted them and sprinkled them and rolled them tightly, ready for ironing.
Twilight had come. It was too late to read that day and after supper there was no lamplight because they must save the last of the kerosene.
“Work comes before pleasure,” Ma always said. She smiled her gentle smile for Laura and Carrie and said now, “My girls have helped me do a good day’s work,” and they were rewarded.
“Tomorrow we’ll read a story,” Carrie said happily.
“Tomorrow we have to do the ironing,” Laura reminded her.
“Yes, and we should air the bedding and give the upstairs a thorough cleaning, in this good weather,” said Ma.
Pa came in and heard them. “Tomorrow I’m going to work on the railroad,” he said.
Mr. Wood worth had word to put at work on the tracks all the men he could get. The superintendent at the Tracy cut was driving the work there and shovel gangs were shoveling eastward from Huron.
“If muscle and will-power can do it, we’ll have a train through by Christmas!” Pa declared.
That night he came back from work with a broad smile on his sun-red face. “Good news!” he called out. “The work train will come through sometime tomorrow! The regular train’ll come next, day after tomorrow probably.”
“Oh, good! Good! Goody!” Laura and Carrie exclaimed together, and Ma said, “That is good news, indeed. What is wrong with your eyes, Charles?”
His eyes were red and puffed. He answered cheerfully, “Shoveling snow in the sunshine is hard on eyes. Some of the men are snow-blind. Fix me up a little weak salt-water, will you, Caroline? And I’ll bathe them after I do the chores.”
When he had gone to the stable, Ma dropped into a chair near Mary. “I’m afraid, girls, this will be a poor Christmas,” she said. “What with these awful storms and trying to keep warm, we’ve had no time to plan for it.”
“Maybe the Christmas barrel…” Carrie began.
“We mustn’t count on it,” said Mary.
“We could wait for Christmas till it comes,” Laura suggested. “All but…” and she picked up Grace who was listening wide-eyed.
“Can’t Santa Claus come?” Grace asked, and her lower lip began to tremble.
Laura hugged her and looked over her golden head at Ma.
Ma said firmly, “Santa Claus always comes to good little girls, Grace. But girls,” she went on, “I have an idea. What do you think of saving my church papers and your bundle of Youths Companions to open on Christmas day?”
After a moment Mary said, “I think it is a good idea. It will help us to learn self-denial.”
“I don’t want to,” Laura said.
“Nobody does,” said Mary. “But it’s good for us.”
Sometimes Laura did not even want to be good. But after another silent moment she said, “Well, if you and Mary want to, Ma, I will. It will give us something to look forward to for Christmas.”
“What do you say about it, Carrie?” Ma asked, and in a small voice Carrie said, “I will, too, Ma.”
“That’s my good girls,” Ma approved them. She went on. “We can find a little something in the stores for…” and she glanced at Grace. “But you older girls know, Pa hasn’t been able to get any work for wages this year. We can’t spare money for presents, but we can have a happy Christmas just the same. I’ll try to contrive something extra for dinner and then we’ll all open our papers and read them, and when it’s too dark to read, Pa will play the fiddle.”
“We haven’t much flour left, Ma,” Laura said.
“The storekeepers are asking twenty-five cents a pound for flour so Pa’s waiting for the train,” Ma replied. “There’s nothing to make a pie, anyway, and no butter or eggs for a cake and no more sugar in town. But we’ll think of something for Christmas dinner.”
Laura sat thinking. She was making a little picture frame of cross-stitch in wools on thin, silver-colored cardboard. Up the sides and across the top she had made a pattern of small blue flowers and green leaves. Now she was outlining the picture-opening in blue. While she put the tiny needle through the perforations in the cardboard and drew the fine, colored wool carefully after it, she was thinking how wistfully Carrie had looked at the beautiful thing. She decided to give it to Carrie for Christmas. Someday, perhaps, she could make another for herself.
How fortunate it was that she had finished knitting the lace for her petticoat. She would give that to Mary. And to Ma she would give the cardboard hair receiver that she had already embroidered to match the picture frame. Ma could hang it on the corner of her looking glass, and when she combed her hair she would put the combings in it to use later in the hairswitch she was making.
“But what can we do for Pa?” she asked.
“I declare I don’t know,” Ma worried. “I can’t think of a thing.”
“I’ve got some pennies,” Carrie said.
“There’s my college money,” Mary began, but Ma said, “No, Mary, we won’t touch that.”
“I have ten cents,” Laura said thoughtfully. “How many pennies have you, Carrie?”
“I have five,” Carrie told her.
“We’d need twenty-five to get Pa a pair of suspenders,” Laura said. “He needs a new pair.”
“I have a dime,” said Ma. “So that is settled. Laura, you and Carrie had better go and buy them as soon as Pa has gone to work tomorrow morning.”
Next day, when their morning work was done, Laura and Carrie crossed the snowy street to Mr. Harthorn’s store. Mr. Harthorn was there alone and the shelves were bare. On both long walls there were only a few pairs of men’s boots and women’s shoes and some bolts of calico.
The bean barrel was empty. The cracker barrel was empty. The little brine in the bottom of the pork barrel had no pork in it. The long, flat codfish box held only a little salt scattered on its bottom. The dried-apple box and the dried-blackberry box were empty.
“I’m sold out of groceries till the train gets here,” Mr. Harthorn said. “I was expecting a bill of groceries when the train stopped.”
Some pretty handkerchiefs, combs, and hairpins, and two pairs of suspenders were in the showcase. Laura and Carrie looked at the suspenders. They were plain, dull gray.
“Shall I do them up for you?” Mr. Harthorn asked.
Laura did not like to say no, but she looked at Carrie and saw that Carrie hoped she would.
“No, thank you, Mr. Harthorn,” Laura said. “We will not take them now.”
Out in the glittering cold again, she said to Carrie, “Let’s go to Loftus’ store and see if we can’t find prettier ones.”
They bent their heads against the strong, cold wind and struggled along the icy path on the store porches till they reached the other Dry Goods and Groceries.
That store was bare and echoing, too. Every barrel and box was empty, and
where the canned goods had been there were only two flat cans of oysters.
“I’m expecting a stock of groceries when the train comes tomorrow,” Mr. Loftus told them. “It won’t get here any too soon either.”
In his showcase was a pair of blue suspenders, with small red flowers beautifully machine-woven along them, and bright brass buckles. Laura had never seen such pretty suspenders. They were just right for Pa.
“How much are they?” she asked, almost sure that they would cost too much. But the price was twenty-five cents. Laura gave Mr. Loftus her own two five-cent pieces, Carrie’s five pennies, and Ma’s thin silver ten-cent piece. She took the slim package and the wind blew her and Carrie breathlessly home.
At bedtime that night no one spoke of hanging up stockings. Grace was too young to know about hanging stockings on Christmas eve and no one else expected a present. But they had never been so eager for Christmas day, because the tracks were clear now and the train would come tomorrow.
Laura’s first thought in the morning was, “The train is coming today!” The window was not frosted, the sky was clear, the snowy prairie was turning rosy in early sunshine. The train would surely come and joyfully Laura thought about her Christmas surprises.
She slid out of bed without waking Mary and quickly pulled on her dress in the cold. She opened the box where she kept her own things. She took out the roll of knitted lace, already wrapped carefully in tissue paper. Then she found the prettiest card she had ever been given in Sunday school and she took the little embroidered picture frame and the cardboard hair receiver. With these in her hands, she hurried tiptoe downstairs.
Ma looked up in surprise. The table was set and Ma was putting on each plate a little package wrapped in red-and-white striped paper.
“Merry Christmas, Ma!” Laura whispered. “Oh, what are they?”
“Christmas presents,” Ma whispered. “Whatever have you got there?”