Little House On The Prairie Read Online Free PDF Page A

ever seen, and two plump prairie hens. Laura jumped up and down and clapped her hands and squealed. Then she caught hold of his other sleeve and hippety-hopped through the tall grasses, beside him.
    “This country's cram-jammed with game,”
    he told her. "I saw fifty deer if I saw one, and antelope, squirrels, rabbits, birds of all kinds.
    The creek's full offish.“ He said to Ma, ”I tell you, Caroline, there's everything we want here. We can live like kings!"
    That was a wonderful supper. They sat by the camp fire and ate the tender, savory, 49 flavory meat till they could eat no more. When at last Laura set down her plate, she sighed with contentment. She didn't want anything more in the world.
    The last color was fading from the enormous sky and all the level land was shadowy. The warmth of the fire was pleasant because the night wind was cool. Phoebe-birds called sadly from the woods down by the creek. For a little while a mockingbird sang, then the stars came out and the birds were still.
    Softly Pa's fiddle sang in the starlight. Sometimes he sang a little and sometimes the fiddle sang alone. Sweet and thin and far away, the fiddle went on singing:
    “None knew thee but to love thee, Thou dear one of my heart. . . . ”
    The large, bright stars hung down from the sky. Lower and lower they came, quivering with music.
    Laura gasped, and Ma came quickly. “What is it, Laura?” she asked, and Laura whispered “The stars were singing.”
    “You've been asleep,” Ma said. “It is only the fiddle. And it's time little girls were in bed.”
    She undressed Laura in the firelight and put her nightgown on and tied her nightcap, and tucked her into bed. But the fiddle was still singing in the starlight. The night was full of music, and Laura was sure that part of it came from the great, bright stars swinging so low above the prairie.

THE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE
    Laura and Mary were up next morning earlier than the sun. They ate their breakfast of cornmeal mush with prairie-hen gravy, and hurried to help Ma wash the dishes. Pa was loading everything else into the wagon and hitching up Pet and Patty.
    When the sun rose, they were driving on across the prairie. There was no road now. Pet and Patty waded through the grasses, and the wagon left behind it only the tracks of its wheels.
    Before noon, Pa said, “Whoa!” The wagon stopped.
    “Here we are, Caroline!” he said. “Right here we'll build our house.”
    Laura and Mary scrambled over the feed-box and dropped to the ground in a hurry. All around them there was nothing but grassy prairie spreading to the edge of the sky.
    Quite near them, to the north, the creek bottoms lay below the prairie. Some darker green tree-tops showed, and beyond them bits of the rim of earthen bluffs held up the prairie's grasses. Far away to the east, a broken line of different greens lay on the prairie, and Pa said that was the river.
    “That's the Verdigris River,” he said, point-ing it out to Ma.
    Right away, he and Ma began to unload the wagon. They took out everything and piled it on the ground. Then they took off the wagon-cover and put it over the pile. The n they took even the wagon-box off, while Laura and Mary and Jack watched.
    The wagon had been home for a long time.
    Now there was nothing left of it but the four wheels and the part that connected them. Pet and Patty were still hitched to the tongue. Pa took a bucket and his ax, and sitting on this skeleton wagon, he drove away. He drove right down into the prairie, out of sight.
    “Where's Pa going?” Laura asked, and Ma said, “He's going to get a load of logs from the creek bottoms.”
    It was strange and frightening to be left without the wagon on the High Prairie. The land and the sky seemed too large, and Laura felt small. She wanted to hide and be still in the tall grass, like a little prairie chicken. But she didn't. She helped Ma, while Mary sat on the grass and minded Baby Carrie.
    First Laura and Ma made the