Little House On The Prairie Read Free Page A

skin.”
    Before Pa could answer, Laura cried, “Oh, where's Jack?”
    They had forgotten Jack. They had left him on the other side of that dreadful water and now they could not see him anywhere. He must have tried to swim after them, but they could not see him struggling in the water now.
    Laura swallowed hard, to keep from crying.
    She knew it was shameful to cry, but there was crying inside her. All the long way from Wisconsin poor Jack had followed them so patiently and faithfully, and now they had left him to drown. He was so tired, and they might have taken him into the wagon. He had stood on the bank and seen the wagon going away from him, as if they didn't care for him at all.
    And he would never know how much they wanted him.
    Pa said he wouldn't have done such a thing to Jack, not for a million dollars. If he'd known how that creek would rise when they were in midstream, he would never have let Jack try to swim it. “But that can't be helped now,” he said.
    He went far up and down the creek bank, looking for Jack, calling him and whistling for him.
    It was no use. Jack was gone.
    At last there was nothing to do but to go on. Pet and Patty were rested. Pa's clothes had dried on him while he searched for Jack. He took the reins again and drove uphill, out of the river bottoms.
    Laura looked back all the way. She knew she wouldn't see Jack again, but she wanted to. She didn't see anything but low curves of land coming between the wagon and the creek, and beyond the creek those strange cliffs of red earth rose up again.
    Then other bluffs just like them stood up in front of the wagon. Faint wheel tracks went into a crack between those earthen walls. Pet and Patty climbed till the crack became a small grassy valley. And the valley widened out to the High Prairie once more.
    No road, not even the faintest trace of wheels or of a rider's passing, could be seen anywhere. That prairie looked as if no human eye had ever seen it before. Only the tall wild grass covered the endless empty land and a great empty sky arched over it. Far away the sun's edge touched the rim of the earth. The sun was enormous and it was throbbing and pulsing with light. All around the sky's edge ran a pale pink glow, and above the pink was yellow, and above that blue. Above the blue the sky was no color at all. Purple shadows were gathering over the land, and the wind was mourning.
    Pa stopped the mustangs. He and Ma got out 26 of the wagon to make camp, and Mary and Laura climbed down to the ground, too.
    “Oh, Ma,” Laura begged, “Jack has gone to heaven, hasn't he? He was such a good dog, can't he go to heaven?”
    Ma did not know what to answer, but Pa said: “Yes, Laura, he can. God that doesn't forget the sparrows won't leave a good dog like Jack out in the cold.”
    Laura felt only a little better. She was not happy. Pa did not whistle about his work as usual, and after a while he said, “And what we'll do in a wild country without a good watchdog I don't know.”

CAMP ON THE HIGH PRAIRIE
    Pa made camp as usual. First, he unhitched and unharnessed Pet and Patty, and he put them on their picket-lines.
    Picket-lines were long ropes fastened to iron pegs driven into the ground. The pegs were called picket-pins. When horses were on picket-lines they could eat all the grass that the long ropes would let them reach. But when Pet and Patty were put on them, the first thing they did was to lie down and roll back and forth and over. They rolled till the 28 feeling of the harness was all gone from their backs.
    While Pet and Patty were rolling, Pa pulled all the grass from a large, round space of ground. There was old, dead grass at the roots of the green grass, and Pa would take no chance of setting the prairie on fire. If fire once started in that dry under-grass, it would sweep that whole country bare and black. Pa said, “Best be on the safe side, it saves trouble in the end.”
    When the space was clear of grass, Pa laid a handful of dry