“They have to watch him,” said Pa. “So I guess you must be watched. Your Ma will have to do it because I must work at Nelson’s. So tomorrow you stay where Ma can watch you. You are not to go out of her sight all day. If you are good all day, then we will let you try again to be a little girl we can trust.
“How about it, Caroline?” he asked Ma.
“Very well, Charles,” Ma said out of the dark. “I will watch her tomorrow. But I am sure she will be good. Now back to bed, Laura, and go to sleep.”
The next day was a dreadful day.
Ma was mending, and Laura had to stay in the dugout. She could not even fetch water from the spring, for that was going out of Ma’s sight. Mary fetched the water, Mary took Carrie to walk on the prairie. Laura had to stay in.
Jack laid his nose on his paws and waggled, he
jumped out on the path and looked back at her, smiling with his ears, begging her to come out. He could not understand why she did not.
Laura helped Ma. She washed the dishes and made both beds and swept the floor and set the table. At dinner she sat bowed on her bench and ate what Ma set before her. Then she wiped the dishes. After that she ripped a sheet that was worn in the middle. Ma turned the strips of muslin and pinned them together, and Laura whipped the new seam, over and over with tiny stitches.
She thought that seam and that day would never end.
But at last Ma rolled up her mending and it was time to get supper.
“You have been a good girl, Laura,” Ma said. “We will tell Pa so. And tomorrow morning you and I are going to look for that badger. I am sure he saved you from drowning, for if you had gone to that deep water you would have gone into it. Once you begin being naughty, it is easier to go on and on, and sooner or later something dreadful happens.”
“Yes, Ma,” Laura said. She knew that now.
The whole day was gone. Laura had not seen that sunrise, nor the shadows of clouds on the prairie. The morning-glories were withered and that day’s blue flags were dead. All day Laura had not seen the water running in the creek, the little fishes in it, and the waterbugs skating over it. She was sure that being good could never be as hard as being watched.
Next day she went with Ma to look for the badger. In the path she showed Ma the place where he had flattened himself on the grass. Ma found the hole where he lived. It was a round hole under a clump of grass on the prairie bank. Laura called to him and she poked a stick into the hole.
If the badger was at home, he would not come out. Laura never saw that old gray badger again.
Chapter 6
Wreath of Roses
Out on the prairie beyond the stable there was a long gray rock. It rose up above the waving grasses and nodding wild flowers. On top it was flat and almost smooth, so wide that Laura and Mary could run on it side by side, and so long that they could race each other. It was a wonderful place to play.
Gray-green lichens with ruffled edges grew flat on it. Wandering ants crossed it. Often a butterfly stopped to rest there. Then Laura watched the velvety wings slowly opening and closing, as if the butterfly breathed with them. She saw the tiny feet on the rock, and the feelers quivering, and even the round, lidless eyes.
She never tried to catch a butterfly. She knew that its wings were covered with feathers too tiny to see. A touch would brush off those tiny feathers and hurt the butterfly.
The sun was always warm on the big gray rock. Sunshine was always on the waving prairie grasses, and birds and butterflies in the sunshine. Breezes always blew there, warm and perfumed from the sun-warmed grasses. Far away, toward the place where the sky came down to the land, small dark things moved on the prairie. They were cattle, grazing.
Laura and Mary never went to play on the gray rock in the mornings, and they did not stay there when the sun was going down, because morning and evening the cattle went by.
They went by in a herd, with trampling hoofs and tossing horns. Johnny Johnson, the herd boy, walked behind them. He had a round red face, and round blue eyes, and pale, whitey-yellow hair. He grinned, and did not say anything. He couldn’t. He did not know any words that Laura and Mary knew.
Late one afternoon Pa called them from the creek. He was going to the big rock to see Johnny Johnson bring the cattle home, and Laura and Mary could go with him.
Laura skipped with joy. She had never been so close to a herd of cattle, and she would not be afraid when Pa was there. Mary came slowly, staying close to Pa.
The cattle were already quite near. Their bawling was growing louder. Their horns tossed above the herd, and a thin, golden dust rose up around them.
“Here they come!” Pa said. “Scramble up!” He boosted Mary and Laura onto the big rock. Then they looked at the cattle.
Red backs and brown backs, black and white and spotted backs, surged by. Eyes rolled and tongues licked flat noses; heads tipped wickedly to gouge with fierce horns. But Laura and Mary were safe on the high gray rock, and Pa stood against it, watching.
The last of the herd was going by, when both Laura and Mary caught sight of the prettiest cow they had ever seen.
She was a small white cow. She had red ears, and in the middle of her forehead there was a red spot. Her small white horns curved inward, pointing to that red spot. And on her white side, right in the middle, there was a perfect circle of red spots as big as roses.