“I tan, too!” said Carrie, and she reached up both hands and turned the door knob. She could do it! Carrie was big enough to open the door.
Laura and Mary hurried fast, bringing in wood. Carrie opened the door when they came to it, and shut it behind them. Mary could carry larger armfuls, but Laura was quicker.
They filled the woodbox before it began to snow. The snow came suddenly with a whirling blast, and it was small hard grains like sand. It stung Laura’s face where it struck. When Carrie opened the door, it swirled into the house in a white cloud.
Laura and Mary forgot that Ma had told them to stay in the house when it stormed. They forgot everything but bringing in wood. They ran frantically back and forth, bringing each time all the wood they could stagger under.
They piled wood around the woodbox and around the stove. They piled it against the wall. They made the piles higher, and bigger.
Bang! they banged the door. They ran to the woodpile. Clop-clop-clop they stacked the wood on their arms. They ran to the door. Bump! it went open, and bang! they backbumped it shut, and thumpity-thud-thump! they flung down the wood and ran back, outdoors, to the woodpile, and panting back again.
They could hardly see the woodpile in the swirling whiteness. Snow was driven all in among the wood. They could hardly see the house, and Jack was a dark blob hurrying beside them. The hard snow scoured their faces. Laura’s arms ached and her chest panted and all the time she thought, “Oh, where is Pa? Where is Ma?” and she felt “Hurry! Hurry!” and she heard the wind screeching.
The woodpile was gone. Mary took a few sticks and Laura took a few sticks and there were no more. They ran to the door together, and Laura opened it and Jack bounded in. Carrie was at the front window, clapping her hands and squealing. Laura dropped her sticks of wood and turned just in time to see Pa and Ma burst, running, out of the whirling whiteness of snow.
Pa was holding Ma’s hand and pulling to help her run. They burst into the house and slammed the door and stood panting, covered with snow. No one said anything while Pa and Ma looked at Laura and Mary, who stood all snowy in shawls and mittens.
At last Mary said in a small voice, “We did go out in the storm, Ma. We forgot.”
Laura’s head bowed down and she said, “We didn’t want to burn up the furniture, Pa, and freeze stark stiff.”
“Well, I’ll be darned!” said Pa. “If they didn’t move the whole woodpile in. All the wood I cut to last a couple of weeks.”
There, piled up in the house, was the whole woodpile. Melted snow was leaking out of it and spreading in puddles. A wet path went to the door, where snow lay unmelted.
Then Pa’s great laugh rang out, and Ma’s gentle smile shone warm on Mary and Laura. They knew they were forgiven for disobeying, because they had been wise to bring in wood, though perhaps not quite so much wood. Sometime soon they would be old enough not to make any mistakes, and then they could always decide what to do. They would not have to obey Pa and Ma any more.
They bustled to take off Ma’s shawl and hood and brush the snow from them and hang them up to dry. Pa hurried to the stable to do the chores before the storm grew worse. Then while Ma rested, they stacked the wood neatly as she told them, and they swept and mopped the floor.
The house was neat and cosy again. The tea-kettle hummed, the fire shone brightly from the draughts above the stove hearth. Snow swished against the windows.
Pa came in. “Here is the little milk I could get here with. The wind blew it up out of the pail. Caroline, this is a terrible storm. I couldn’t see an inch, and the wind comes from all directions at once. I thought I was on the path, but I couldn’t see the house, and—well, I just barely bumped against the corner. Another foot to the left and I never would have got in.”
“Charles!” Ma said.
“Nothing to be scared about now,” said Pa. “But if we hadn’t run all the way from town and beat this storm here—” Then his eyes twinkled, he rumpled Mary’s hair and pulled Laura’s ear. “I’m glad all this wood is in the house, too,” he said.
Chapter 36
Prairie Winter
Next day the storm was even worse. It could not be seen through the windows, for sn
ow swished so thickly against them that the glass was like white glass. All around the house the wind was howling.
When Pa started to the stable, snow whirled thick into the lean-to, and outdoors was a wall of whiteness. He took down a coil of rope from a nail in the lean-to.
“I’m afraid to try it without something to guide me back,” he said. “With this rope tied to the far end of the clothes-line I ought to reach the stable.”
They waited, frightened, till Pa came back. The wind had taken almost all the milk out of the pail, and Pa had to thaw by the stove before he could talk. He had felt his way along the clothes-line fastened to the lean-to, till he came to the clothes-line post. Then he tied an end of his rope to the post and went on, unwinding the rope from his arm as he went.
He could not see anything but the whirling snow. Suddenly something hit him, and it was the stable wall. He felt along it till he came to the door, and there he fastened the end of the rope.
So he did the chores and came back, holding on to the rope.
All day the storm lasted. The windows were white and the wind never stopped howling and screaming. It was pleasant in the warm house. Laura and Mary did their lessons, then Pa played the fiddle while Ma rocked and knitted, and bean soup simmered on the stove.
All night the storm lasted, and all the next day. Fire-light danced out of the stove’s draught, and Pa told stories and played the fiddle.