Little house on the prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder; Garth Williams

Author:Laura Ingalls Wilder; Garth Williams
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: 1867-1957, Children: Grades 4-6, Fiction, Families - Great Plains, Families, Ages 9-12 Fiction, Frontier and pioneer life - Great Plains, 19th Century, Social Issues, Frontier and pioneer life, Juvenile Fiction, Family life, Social Issues - New Experience, General (see also headings under Social Issues), Laura Ingalls, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Historical, Family - General, People & Places, Classics, Family life - Great Plains, Lifestyles, Great Plains, United States, Farm & Ranch Life, Family, Wilder, Family - Great Plains, Children's Books, General, New Experience, Historical - United States - 19th Century, General & Literary Fiction
ISBN: 9780064400022
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1953-12-13T20:00:00+00:00

INDIAN CAMP

Day after day was hotter than the day before. The

wind was hot. "As if it came out of an oven,"

Ma said.

The grass was turning yellow. The whole world was

rippling green and gold under the blazing sky.

At noon the wind died. No birds sang.

Everything was so still that Laura could hear the

squirrels chattering in the trees down by the

creek. Suddenly black crows flew overhead,

cawing their rough, sharp caws. Then everything was still

again.

Ma said that this was midsummer.

Pa wondered where the Indians had gone. He

said they had left their little camp on the prairie.

And one day he asked Laura and Mary if they

would like to see that camp.

Laura jumped up and down and clapped her

hands, but Ma objected.

"It is so far, Charles," she said. "And in this

heat."

Pa's blue eyes twinkled. "This heat

doesn't hurt the Indians and it won't hurt

us," he said. "Come on, girls!"

"Please, can't Jack come, too?" Laura

begged. Pa had taken his gun, but he looked at

Laura and he looked at Jack, then he

looked at Ma, and he put the gun up on its

pegs again.

"All right, Laura," he said. "I'll

take Jack, Caroline, and leave you the gun."

Jack jumped around them, wagging his stump of a

tail. As soon as he saw which way they were going,

he set off, trotting ahead. Pa came next

and behind him came Mary, and then Laura. Mary

kept her sunbonnet on, but Laura let hers

dangle down her back.

The ground was hot under their bare feet. The

sunshine pierced through their faded dresses and tingled

on their arms and backs. The air was really as hot

as the air in an oven, and it smelled faintly like

baking bread. Pa said the smell came from all the

grass seeds parching in the heat.

They went farther and farther into the vast prairie.

Laura felt smaller and smaller. Even Pa

did not seem as big as he really was. At

last they went down into the little hollow where

the Indians had camped.

Jack started up a big rabbit. When it

bounded out of the grass Laura jumped. Pa said,

quickly: "Let him go, Jack! We have meat

enough." So Jack sat down and watched the big

rabbit go bounding away down the hollow.

Laura and Mary looked around them. They stayed

close to Pa. Low bushes grew on the sides

of the hollow--buck-brush with sprays of berries

faintly pink, and sumac holding up green cones

but showing here and there a bright red leaf. The

goldenrod's plumes were turning gray, and the

ox-eyed daisies' yellow petals hung down

from the crown centers.

All this was hidden in the secret little hollow.

From the house Laura had seen nothing but

grasses, and now from this hollow she could not see the

house. The prairie seemed to be level, but it

was not level.

Laura asked Pa if there were lots of

hollows on the prairie, like this one. He said there

were.

"Are Indians in them?" she almost whispered.

He said he didn't know. There might be.

She held tight to his hand and Mary held

to his other hand, and they looked at the Indians'

camp. There were ashes where Indian camp fires

had been. There were holes in the ground where

tent-poles had been driven. Bones were

scattered where Indian dogs had gnawed them.

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