These Happy Golden Years (13 page)

On Sunday afternoon Laura saw them passing several times. Sometimes Almanzo, and sometimes Cap, was braced in the cutter, holding with all his might to the reins, while the wild colts tried to break away and run.

Pa looked up from his paper once and said, “One of those young fellows will break his neck yet. There's not a man in town would tackle handling that team.”

Laura was writing a letter to Mary. She paused and thought how fortunate it was that during the Hard Winter, Almanzo and Cap had taken chances no one else would take, when they had gone after wheat for the starving people.

She had finished her letter and folded it, when someone knocked at the door. Laura opened it, and Cap Garland stood there. With his flashing grin that lighted his whole face, he asked, “Would you like a sleigh ride behind the colts?”

Laura's heart sank. She liked Cap, but she did not want him to ask her to go sleigh riding, and all in an instant she thought of Mary Power and of Almanzo and she did not know what to say.

But Cap went on speaking. “Wilder asked me to ask you, because the colts won't stand. He'll be by here in a minute and pick you up, if you'd like to go.”

“Yes, I would!” Laura exclaimed. “I'll be ready. Come in?”

“No thanks, I'll tell him,” Cap replied.

Laura hurried, but the colts were pawing and prancing impatiently when she came. Almanzo was holding them with both hands, and said to her, “Sorry I can't help you,” as she got herself into the cutter. As soon as she was seated, they dashed away down the street.

No one else was out driving, so the street was clear as the colts fought to break away from Almanzo's grip on the lines. Far out on the road south of town they went racing.

Laura sat quietly watching their flying feet and laid-back ears. This was fun. It reminded her of a time long ago when she and Cousin Lena let the black ponies run away across the prairie. The wind blew hard and cold on her face, and bits of snow pelted back onto the robes.

Then the colts tossed their heads, pricked up their ears, and let Almanzo turn their frisky steps back toward town.

He looked at her curiously. "Do you know there isn't a 144

man in town except Cap Garland who will ride behind these colts?" he asked.

“Pa said so,” Laura replied.

“Then why did you come?” Almanzo wanted to know.

“Why, I thought you could drive them,” Laura said in surprise, and asked in her turn, “But why don't you drive Prince and Lady?”

“I want to sell these colts, and they've got to be broken to drive first,” Almanzo explained.

Laura said no more as the colts tried again to run.

They were headed toward home and wanted to get there quickly. It took all Almanzo's attention and muscle to hold them to a fast and fighting trot. Main Street flashed by in a blur, and far out on the prairie to the north Almanzo quieted the colts and turned them again. Then Laura laughed, “If this is breaking them, I'm glad to help!”

They said little more until an hour had gone by and the winter sun was sinking. Then as Almanzo held the colts and Laura quickly slipped out of the cutter at Pa's door, he said, “I'll come for you Sunday.” The colts jumped and dashed away before Laura could reply.

“I am afraid to have you ride behind those horses,” Ma said as Laura came in.

Pa looked up from his paper. “Does seem like Wilder is trying to get you killed. But I'd say you are enjoying it the way your eyes are shining,” he added.

After this, Almanzo came on Sunday afternoons to 145

take Laura for a sleigh ride. But he and Cap always drove the colts first, more than half the afternoon, to quiet them, and nothing that Laura could say would per-suade Almanzo to let her ride before the colts were somewhat tired.

There was a Christmas tree that year at the new church. Laura and Carrie remembered a Christmas tree long ago in Minnesota, but Grace had never seen one.

Laura thought the best part of that Christmas was seeing Grace's delighted face when she looked at the Christmas tree with its lighted candles shining, the bright-colored mosquito-bar bags of candy and the presents hanging from its branches.

But while she was waiting for Grace's Christmas doll to be brought to her from the tree, Laura was given a package which surprised her so much that she was sure there was some mistake. It was a small black leather case lined with blue silk. Against the lovely blue shone, all white, an ivory-backed hairbrush and comb. Laura looked again at the wrapping paper; her name was plainly written on it, in a handwriting she did not know.

“Whoever could have given me such a present, Ma?”

she asked.

Then Pa leaned to admire it, too, and his eyes twinkled. “I could not swear who gave it to you, Laura,” he said. “But I can tell you one thing. I saw Almanzo Wilder buying that very case in Bradley's drugstore,” and he smiled at Laura's astonishment.

The first March winds were blowing hard on a Thursday when Laura came home from school.

She was breathless, not only from struggling with the wind, but from the news she brought. Before she could tell it, Pa spoke.

“Could you be ready to move to the claim this week, Caroline?”

“This week?” said Ma in surprise.

“The school district's going to put up a schoolhouse on Perry's claim, just south of our south line,” Pa said. “All the neighbors will help build it, but they want to hire me to boss the job. We ought to be moved out before I begin, and if we go this week, there'll be plenty of time to finish the schoolhouse before the first of April.”

“We can go any day you say, Charles,” Ma answered.

“Day after tomorrow, then,” said Pa. "And there is something else. Perry says their school board would like to have Laura teach the school. How about it, Laura?

You will have to get a new certificate."

“Oh, I would like to have a school so near home,”

said Laura. Then she told her news. “Teachers' examinations are tomorrow. Mr. Owen announced them today. They will be at the schoolhouse, so there's no school tomorrow. I do hope I can get a second-grade certificate.”

“I am sure you can,” Carrie encouraged her stoutly.

“You always know your lessons.”

Laura was a little doubtful. “I have no time to review and study. If I pass, I have to do it on what I know now.”

“That is the best way, Laura,” Ma told her. “If you tried to study in a hurry you would only be confused. If you get a second grade we will all be glad, and if it is only third grade we will be glad of that.”

“I will try my best,” was all that Laura could promise.

Next morning she set out alone, and nervously, to the teachers' examinations at the schoolhouse. The room seemed strange, with only a few strangers sitting here and there among empty seats, and Mr. Williams at the desk instead of Mr. Owen.

The lists of questions were already written on the blackboard. All morning there was silence, except for the scratching of pens and small rustles of paper. Mr.

Williams gathered the papers at the end of every hour, whether they were finished or not, and graded them at his desk.

Laura finished each of her papers in good time, and that afternoon, with a smile, Mr. Williams handed her a certificate. His smile told her, even before she quickly saw the words he had written on it, “Second Grade.”

She walked home, but really she was dancing, running, laughing and shouting with jubilation. Quietly she handed the certificate to Ma, and saw Ma's smile light her whole face.

“I told you so! I told you you would get it,” Carrie gloated.

“I was sure you would pass,” Ma praised her, “if you didn't get bothered by your first public examination among strangers.”

“Now I will tell you the rest of the good news,” Pa smiled. “I thought I'd save it as a reward, for after the examination. Perry says the school board will pay you twenty-five dollars a month for a three months' school, April, May, and June.”

Laura was nearly speechless. “Oh!” she exclaimed.

Then, “I didn't expect...Why! Why, Pa...that will be a little more than a dollar a day.”

Grace's blue eyes were perfectly round. In solemn awe she said, “Laura will be rich.”

They all burst out laughing so merrily that Grace had to join in, without knowing why. When they were sober 149

again, Pa said, “Now we'll move out to the claim and build that schoolhouse.”

So during the last weeks of March, Laura and Carrie walked to school again from the claim. The weather was spring-like in spite of March winds, and every evening when they came home they saw that more work had been done on the little schoolhouse that was rising from the prairie a little way to the south.

In the last days of March, the Perry boys painted it white. There never had been a prettier, small schoolhouse.

It stood snowy white on the green land, and its rows of windows shone brightly in the morning sunshine as Laura walked toward it across the short, new grass.

Little Clyde Perry, seven years old, was playing by the doorstep where his First Reader had been carefully laid.

He put the key of the new door into Laura's hand and said solemnly, “My father sent you this.”

Inside, too, the schoolhouse was bright and shining.

The walls of new lumber were clean and smelled fresh.

Sunshine streamed in from the eastern windows. Across the whole end of the room was a clean, new blackboard.

Before it stood the teacher's desk, a boughten desk, smoothly varnished. It gleamed honey-colored in the sunlight, and on its flat top lay a large Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

Before this desk stood three rows of new, boughten seats. Their smooth honey-colored finish matched the teacher's desk. The ends of the outside rows were tight 150

against the walls; between them there was space for the third row and the two aisles. There were four seats in each row.

Laura stood a moment in the doorway, looking at that fresh, bright expensive room. Then going to her desk, she set her dinner pail on the floor beneath it and hung her sunbonnet on a nail in the wall.

A small clock stood ticking beside the big dictionary; its hands stood at nine o'clock. It must have been wound last night, Laura thought. Nothing could be more complete and perfect than this beautiful little schoolhouse.

She heard children's voices at the door, and she went to call her pupils in.

Besides Clyde, there were two others, a little boy and a girl who said their name was Johnson. They were both in the Second Reader. That was the size of the school. In all the term, no more children came.

Laura felt that she was not earning twenty-five dollars a month, teaching only three children. But when she said this at home, Pa replied that these three were as much entitled to schooling as if there were a dozen, and that she was entitled to pay for the time that she spent teaching them.

“But Pa,” she protested. “Twenty-five dollars a month!”

“Don't let that worry you,” he answered. “They are glad to have you at that price. Large schools are paying thirty dollars.”

It must be right, since Pa said so. Laura contented herself by giving each little pupil the very best of schooling.

They were all quick to learn. Besides reading and spelling, she taught them to write words and figures, and how to add and subtract. She was proud of their progress.

Never had she been so happy as she was that spring.

In the fresh, sweet mornings she walked to her school, past the little hollow blue with violets that scented all the air. Her pupils were happy, too, every one as good as gold, and eager and quick to learn. They were as careful as she, not to mar or dim the freshness of their shining new schoolhouse.

Laura took her own books to school, and while her little pupils studied at their desks, between recitations, she studied at hers, with help from the big dictionary. At recess and during the long noon hour, she knitted lace while the children played. And always she was aware of the cloud shadows chasing each other outside the windows, where meadow larks sang and the little striped gophers ran swiftly about their affairs.

After each happy day, there was the walk home past the little hollow where the violets grew, spreading their fragrance on the air.

Sometimes on Saturday Laura walked westward across the prairie to Reverend Brown's house—on his claim. It was a long mile and a half walk, and she and Ida made it longer by going to the highest point of the rise of ground 152

beyond the house. From there they could see the Wes-singen Hills, sixty miles away, looking like a blue cloud on the horizon.

“They are so beautiful that they make me want to go to them,” Laura said once.

“Oh, I don't know,” Ida replied. “When you got there they would be just hills, covered with ordinary buffalo grass like this,” and she kicked at a tuft of the grass where the green of spring was showing through last year's dead blades.

In a way, that was true; and in another way, it wasn't.

Laura could not say what she meant, but to her the Wessington Hills were more than grassy hills. Their shadowy outlines drew her with the lure of far places.

They were the essence of a dream.

Walking home in the late afternoon, Laura still thought of the Wessington Hills, how mysterious their vague shadow was against the blue sky, far away across miles after miles of green, rolling prairie. She wanted to travel on and on, over those miles, and see what lay beyond the hills.

That was the way Pa felt about the west, Laura knew.

She knew, too, that like him she must be content to stay where she was, to help with the work at home and teach school.

That night Pa asked her what she planned to do with all her school money when she got it.

“Why,” Laura said, “I'll give it to you and Ma.”

“I'll tell you what I have been thinking,” said Pa. "We should have an organ when Mary comes home, so she can keep up the music she's learning in college, and it would be nice for you girls, too. Some folks in town are selling out and going back east, and they have an organ. I can get it for one hundred dollars. It is a good organ, I tried it to see. If you will pay your school money for