Little House In The Big Woods (13 page)

"Then I remembered that Ma and my little girls were waiting for me to bring home some good fresh venison. I made up my mind that next time I would shoot.

"After a while a big bear came lumbering out into the open. He was so fat from feasting on berries and roots and grubs all summer that he was nearly as large as two bears. His head swayed from side to side as he went on all fours across the clear space in the moonlight, until he came to a rotten log. He smelled it, and listened. Then he pawed it apart and sniffed among the broken pieces, eating up the fat white grubs.

"Then he stood up on his hind legs, per-fectly still, looking all around him. He seemed to be suspicious that something was wrong. He was trying to see or smell what it was.

"He was a perfect mark to shoot at, but I was so much interested in watching him, and the woods were so peaceful in the moonlight, that I forgot all about my gun. I did not even think of shooting him, until he was waddling away into the woods.

'"This will never do,' I thought. 'I'll never get any meat this way'

"I settled myself in the tree and waited again. This time I was determined to shoot the next game I saw.

"The moon had risen higher and the moonlight was bright in the little open place. All around it the shadows were dark among the trees.

"After a long while, a doe and her yearling fawn came stepping daintily out of the shadows. They were not afraid at all. They walked over to the place where I had sprinkled the salt, and they both licked up a little of it.

"Then they raised their heads and looked at each other. The fawn stepped over and stood beside the doe. They stood there together, looking at the woods and the moonlight. Their large eyes were shining and soft.

"I just sat there looking at them, until they walked away among the shadows. Then I climbed down out of the tree and came home."

Laura whispered in his ear, “Vm g/ad you didn't shoot them!”

Mary said, “We can eat bread and butter.”

Pa lifted Mary up out of her chair and hugged them both together.

“You're my good girls,” he said. “And now it's bedtime. Run along, while I get my fiddle.”

When Laura and Mary had said their prayers and were tucked snugly under the trundle bed's covers, Pa was sitting in the fire-light with the fiddle. Ma had blown out the lamp because she did not need its light. On the other side of the hearth she was swaying gently in her rocking chair and her knitting needles flashed in and out above the sock she was knitting.

The long winter evenings of fire-light and music had come again.

Pa's fiddle wailed while Pa was singing:

“Oh, Susi-an-na, don't you cry for me, I'm going to Cal-i-for-ni-a, The gold dust for to see.”

Then Pa began to play again the song about Old Grimes. But he did not sing the words he had sung when Ma was making cheese. These words were different. Pa's strong, sweet voice was softly singing:

“Shall auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind? Shall auld acquaintance be forgot, And the days of auld lang syne? And the days of auld lang syne, my friend, And the days of auld lang syne, Shall auld acquaintance be forgot, And the days of auld lang syne?”

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”

"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,“ Pa said. ”Go to sleep, now."

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, “This is now.” She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now.

They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Come Home to Little House