By The Shores Of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder Page B

up, but she couldn't. She did not want to go back east again. She hated to leave Silver Lake to go east. They had got as far as Silver Lake and she wanted to hang on there, not to be pushed back. But if they must be, they must; next spring they could start again. It would do no good to complain.
    “Don't you feel well, Laura?” Ma asked her.
    “Oh, yes, Ma!” she answered. But she felt so heavy and dark that trying to be cheerful only made her more miserable.
    The company man had come to check Pa's bookkeeping, and the last wagons from the west were going by. Even the lake was almost empty of birds and the sky was bare, except for one hurrying streak of flyers. Ma and Laura mended the wagon-cover and baked bread for the long drive.
    That evening Pa came whistling from the store, and blew into the shanty like a breeze.
    “How'd you like to stay here all winter, Caroline?”
    he sang out. “In the surveyors' house!”
    “Oh, Pa! Can we?” Laura cried.
    “You bet we can!” said Pa. "If your Ma wants to. It's a good, sound, weather-tight house, Caroline. The head surveyor was at the store just now, and he says they thought they had to stay and they laid in coal and provisions enough to last them through, but if I'll take charge and be responsible for the company tools till spring, they'll go out for the winter. The company man's agreed.
    "There's flour and beans and salt meat and potatoes, and even some canned stuff, he told me. And coal. We can have the whole of it for nothing, just for staying out here this winter. We can use the stable for the cow and team. I told him I'd let him know early tomorrow morning. What do you say, Caroline?"
    They all looked at Ma and waited. Laura could hardly keep still in her excitement. To stay at Silver Lake ! Not to have to go back east, after all! Ma was disappointed; she had been wanting to go back to settled country. But she said, “It does seem Providential, Charles. There's coal, you say?”
    “I wouldn't think of staying without it,” said Pa.
    “But the coal's there.”
    “Well, supper's on the table,” said Ma. “Wash up and eat before it gets cold. It does look like a good chance, Charles.”
    At supper they talked of nothing else. It would be pleasant to live in a snug house; the shanty was cold with wind blowing through its cracks, though the door was shut and a fire was in the stove.
    “Don't it make you feel rich—” Laura began.
    “'Doesn't,'” said Ma.
    “Doesn't it make you feel rich, Ma, just to think of the whole winter's provisions laid in, already?” said Laura.
    “Not a penny going out till spring,” said Pa.
    “Yes, Laura, it does,” Ma smiled. “You're right, Charles, of course; we must stay.”
    “Well, I don't know, Caroline,” Pa said. "In some ways maybe we'd better not. So far as I know, we won't have a neighbor nearer than Brookings. That's sixty miles. If anything happened—"
    A knock at the door startled them all. In answer to Pa's “Come in!” a big man opened the door. He was bundled in thick coats and a muffler. His short beard was black, his cheeks were red, and his eyes were as black as the eyes of the little papoose in Indian Territory whom Laura had never forgotten.
    “Hullo, Boast!” Pa said. “Come up to the fire; it's chilly tonight. This is my wife and girls. Mr. Boast has filed on a homestead out here, and he's been working on the grade.”
    Ma gave Mr. Boast a chair by the fire and he held his hands out to the warmth. One hand was bandaged.
    “Did you hurt your hand?” Ma asked kindly.
    “Only a sprain,” said Mr. Boast, “but the heat feels good on it.” Turning to Pa he went on, “I'm needing some help, Ingalls. You remember my team that I sold Pete? He paid me part down and said he'd pay the rest next payday. But he's kept putting it off, and now I'm darned if he hasn't skipped out with the team. I'd go after him and take them, but his son's with him and they'd put up a fight. I don't want trouble with