Little House In The Big Woods (2 page)
Read Little House In The Big Woods Online
Authors: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Children, #Young Adult, #Historical, #Biography, #Autobiography, #Classic
The attic was a lovely place to play. The large, round, colored pumpkins made beautiful chairs and tables. The red peppers and the onions dangled overhead. The hams and the venison hung in their paper wrappings, and all the bunches of dried herbs, the spicy herbs for cooking and the bitter herbs for medicine, gave the place a dusty-spicy smell.
Often the wind howled outside with a cold and lonesome sound. But in the attic Laura and Mary played house with the squashes and the pumpkins, and everything was snug and cosy.
Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasn't Susan's fault that she was only a corncob.
Sometimes Mary let Laura hold Nettie, but she did it only when Susan couldn't see.
The best times of all were at night. After supper Pa brought his traps in from the shed to grease them by the fire. He rubbed them bright and greased the hinges of the jaws and the springs of the pans with a feather dipped in bear's grease.
There were small traps and middle-sized traps and great bear traps with teeth in their jaws that Pa said would break a man's leg if they shut onto it.
While he greased the traps, Pa told Laura and Mary little jokes and stories, and after-ward he would play his fiddle.
The doors and windows were tightly shut, and the cracks of the window frames stuffed with cloth, to keep out the cold. But Black Susan, the cat, came and went as she pleased, day and night, through the swinging door of the cat-hole in the bottom of the front door.
She always went very quickly, so the door would not catch her tail when it fell shut behind her.
One night when Pa was greasing the traps he watched Black Susan come in, and he said:
'There was once a man who had two cats, a big cat and a little cat."
Laura and Mary ran to lean on his knees and hear the rest.
“He had two cats,” Pa repeated, “a big cat and a little cat. So he made a big cat-hole in his door for the big cat. And then he made a little cat-hole for the little cat.”
There Pa stopped.
“But why couldn't the little cat—” Mary began.
“Because the big cat wouldn't let it,”
Laura interrupted.
“Laura, that is very rude. You must never interrupt,” said Pa.
“But I see,” he said, “that either one of you has more sense than the man who cut the two cat-holes in his door.”
Then he laid away the traps, and he took his fiddle out of its box and began to play.
That was the best time of all.
The first snow came, and the bitter cold. Every morning Pa took his gun and his traps and was gone all day in the Big Woods, setting the small traps for muskrats and mink along the creeks, the middle-sized traps for foxes and wolves in the woods. He set out the big bear traps hop-ing to get a fat bear before they all went into their dens for the winter.
One morning he came back, took the horses and sled, and hurried away again. He had shot a bear. Laura and Mary jumped up and down and clapped their hands, they were so glad. Mary shouted:
“I want the drumstick! I want the drumstick!”
Mary did not know how big a bear's drumstick is.
When Pa came back he had both a bear and a pig in the wagon. He had been going through the woods, with a big bear trap in his hands and the gun on his shoulder, when he walked around a big pine tree covered with snow, and the bear was behind the tree.
The bear had just killed the pig and was picking it up to eat it. Pa said the bear was standing up on its hind legs, holding the pig in its paws just as though they were hands.
Pa shot the bear, and there was no way of knowing where the pig came from nor whose pig it was.
“So I just brought home the bacon,” Pa said.
There was plenty of fresh meat to last for a long time. The days and the nights were so cold that the pork in a box and the bear meat hanging in the little shed outside the back door were solidly frozen and did not thaw.
When Ma wanted fresh meat for dinner Pa took the ax and cut off a chunk of frozen bear meat or pork. But the sausage balls, or the salt pork, or the smoked hams and the venison, Ma could get for herself from the shed or the attic.
The snow kept coming till it was drifted and banked against the house. In the morn-ings the window panes were covered with frost in beautiful pictures of trees and flowers and fairies.
Ma said that Jack Frost came in the night and made the pictures, while everyone was asleep. Laura thought that Jack Frost was a little man all snowy white, wearing a glittering white pointed cap and soft white knee-boots made of deer-skin. His coat was white and his mittens were white, and he did not carry a gun on his back, but in his hands he had shining sharp tools with which he carved the pictures.
Laura and Mary were allowed to take Ma's thimble and make pretty patterns of circles in the frost on the glass. But they never spoiled the pictures that Jack Frost had made in the night.
When they put their mouths close to the pane and blew their breath on it, the white frost melted and ran in drops down the glass.
Then they could see the drifts of snow outdoors and the great trees standing bare and black, making thin blue shadows on the white snow.
Laura and Mary helped Ma with the work.
Every morning there were the dishes to wipe.
Mary wiped more of them than Laura because she was bigger, but Laura always wiped carefully her own little cup and plate.
By the time the dishes were all wiped and set away, the trundle bed was aired. Then, standing one on each side, Laura and Mary straightened the covers, tucked them in well at the foot and the sides, plumped up the pillows and put them in place. Then Ma pushed the trundle bed into its place under the big bed.
After this was done, Ma began the work that belonged to that day. Each day had its own proper work. Ma used to say:
"Wash on Monday, Iron on
Tuesday, Mend on
Wednesday, Churn on
Thursday, Glean on
Friday, Bake on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday."
Laura liked the churning and the baking days best of all the week.
In winter the cream was not yellow as it was in summer, and butter churned from it was white and not so pretty. Ma liked everything on her table to be pretty, so in the wintertime she colored the butter.
After she had put the cream in the tall crockery churn and set it near the stove to warm, she washed and scraped a long orange-colored carrot. Then she grated it on the bottom of the old, leaky tin pan that Pa had punched full of nail-holes for her. Ma rubbed the carrot across the roughness until she had rubbed it all through the holes, and when she lifted up the pan, there was a soft, juicy mound of grated carrot.
She put this in a little pan of milk on the stove and when the milk was hot she poured milk and carrot into a cloth bag. Then she squeezed the bright yellow milk into the churn, where it colored all the cream. Now the butter would be yellow.
Laura and Mary were allowed to eat the carrot after the milk had been squeezed out.
Mary thought she ought to have the larger share because she was older, and Laura said she should have it because she was littler. But Ma said they must divide it evenly. It was very good.
When the cream was ready, Ma scalded the long wooden churn-dash, put it in the churn, and dropped the
wooden churn-cover over
it. The churn-cover had a
little round hole in the
middle, and Ma moved
the dash up and down,
up and down, through the
hole.
She churned for a
long time. Mary could
sometimes churn
while Ma rested, but
the dash was too
heavy for Laura.
At first the splashes
of cream
showed thick and smooth around the little hole. After a long time, they began to look grainy. Then Ma churned more slowly, and on the dash there began to appear tiny grains of yellow butter.
When Ma took off the churn-cover, there was the butter in a golden lump, drowning in the buttermilk. Then Ma took out the lump with a wooden paddle, into a wooden bowl, and she washed it many times in cold water, turning it over and over and working it with the paddle until the water ran clear. After that she salted it.
Now came the best part of the churning.
Ma molded the butter. On the loose bottom of the wooden butter-mold was carved the picture of a strawberry with two strawberry leaves.
With the paddle Ma packed butter tightly into the mold until it was full. Then she turned it upside-down over a plate, and pushed on the handle of the loose bottom. The little, firm pat of golden butter came out, with the strawberry and its leaves molded on the top.
Laura and Mary watched, breathless, one on each side of Ma, while the golden little butter-pats, each with its strawberry on the top, dropped onto the plate as Ma put all the butter through the mold. Then Ma gave them each a drink of good, fresh buttermilk.
On Saturdays, when Ma made the bread, they each had a little piece of dough to make into a little loaf. They might have a bit of cookie dough, too, to make little cookies, and once Laura even made a pie in her patty-pan.
After the day's work was done, Ma sometimes cut paper dolls for them. She cut the dolls out of stiff white paper, and drew the faces with a pencil. Then from bits of colored paper she cut dresses and hats, ribbons and laces, so that Laura and Mary could dress their dolls beautifully.
But the best time of all was at night, when Pa came home.
He would come in from his tramping through the snowy woods with tiny icicles hanging on the ends of his mustaches. He would hang his gun on the wall over the door, throw off his fur cap and coat and mittens, and call: “Where's my little half-pint of sweet cider half drunk up?”
That was Laura, because she was so small.
Laura and Mary would run to climb on his knees and sit there while he warmed himself by the fire. Then he would put on his coat and cap and mittens again and go out to do the chores and bring in plenty of wood for the fire.
Sometimes, when Pa had walked his trap-lines quickly because the traps were empty, or when he had got some game sooner than usual, he would come home early. Then he would have time to play with Laura and Mary.
One game they loved was called mad dog. Pa would run his fingers through his thick, brown hair, standing it all up on end. Then he dropped on all fours and, growling, he chased Laura and Mary all around the room, trying to get them cornered where they couldn't get away.
They were quick at dodging and running, but once he caught them against the wood-box, behind the stove. They couldn't get past Pa, and there was no other way out.
Then Pa growled so terribly, his hair was so wild and his eyes so fierce that it all seemed real. Mary was so frightened that she could not move. But as Pa came nearer Laura screamed, and with a wild leap and a scramble she went over the wood-box, dragging Mary with her.
And at once there was no mad dog at all.
There was only Pa standing there with his blue eyes shining, looking at Laura.
“Well!” he said to her. "You're only a little half-pint of cider half drunk up, but by Jinks!
you're as strong as a little French horse!"
“You shouldn't frighten the children so, Charles,” Ma said. “Look how big their eyes are.”
Pa looked, and then he took down his fiddle. He began to play and sing.
“Yankee Doodle went to town, He wore his striped trousies, He swore he couldn't see the town, There was so many houses.”
Laura and Mary forgot all about the mad dog.
"And there he saw some great big guns, Big as a log of maple, And every time they turned
'em round, It took two yoke of cattle.
“And every time they fired 'em off, It took a horn of powder, It made a noise like father's gun, Only a nation louder.”
Pa was keeping time with his foot, and Laura clapped her hands to the music when he sang,
“And I'l sing Yankee Doodle-de-do, And I'l sing Yankee Doodle, And I'l sing Yankee Doodle-de-do, And I'll sing Yankee Doodle!”
All alone in the wild Big Woods, and the snow, and the cold, the little log house was warm and snug and cosy. Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie were comfortable and happy there, especially at night.
Then the fire was shining on the hearth, the cold and the dark and the wild beasts were all shut out, and Jack the brindle bulldog and Black Susan the cat lay blinking at the flames in the fireplace.
Ma sat in her rocking chair, sewing by the light of the lamp on the table. The lamp was bright and shiny. There was salt in the bottom of its glass bowl with the kerosene, to keep the kerosene from exploding, and there were bits of red flannel among the salt to make it pretty. It was pretty.
Laura loved to look at the lamp, with its glass chimney so clean and sparkling, its yellow flame burning so steadily, and its bowl of clear kerosene colored red by the bits of flannel. She loved to look at the fire in the fireplace, flickering and changing all the time, burning yellow and red and sometimes green above the logs, and hovering blue over the golden and ruby coals.
And then, Pa told stories.
When Laura and Mary begged him for a story, he would take them on his knees and tickle their faces with his long whiskers until they laughed aloud. His eyes were blue and merry.
One night Pa looked at Black Susan, stretching herself before the fire and running her claws out and in, and he said:
“Do you know that a panther is a cat? a great, big, wild cat?”
“No,” said Laura.
“Well, it is,” said Pa. “Just imagine Black Susan bigger than Jack, and fiercer than Jack when he growls. Then she would be just like a panther.”
He settled Laura and Mary more comfortably on his knees and he said, “I'll tell you about Grandpa and the panther.”
“Your Grandpa?” Laura asked.
“No, Laura, your Grandpa. My father.”
“Oh,” Laura said, and she wriggled closer against Pa's arm. She knew her Grandpa. He lived far away in the Big Woods, in a big log house. Pa began: