Little House on the Prairie.pdf

LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE

LAURA INGALLS WILDER

BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

Ages -

The adventures continue for Laura Ingalls and her family as they leave their little house in the

Big Woods of Wisconsin and set out for Kansas. They travel for many days in their covered

wagon until they find the best spot to build their little house on the prairie. Soon they are

planting and plowing, hunting wild ducks and turkeys, and gathering grass for their cows.

Sometimes pioneer life is hard, but Laura and her folks are always busy and happy in their

new little house.

And so continues Laura Ingalls Wilder's beloved story of a pioneer girl and her family. The

nine Little House books have been cherished by generations of readers as both a

unique glimpse into America's frontier past and a heartwarming, unforgettable story.

LAURA INGALLS WILDER was born in in the log cabin described in LITTLE HOUSE IN

THE BIG WOODS. As her classic Little House books tell us, she and her family traveled by

covered wagon across the Midwest. She and her husband, Almanzo Wilder, made their own

covered-wagon trip with their daughter, Rose, to Mansfield, Missouri. There Laura wrote her

story in the Little House books, and lived until she was ninety years old. For millions of

readers, however, she lives forever as the little pioneer girl in the beloved Little House books.

THE PRAIRIE

GOING WEST A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were

little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary

and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. They drove

away and left it lonely and empty in the clearing among the big trees, and they never saw that

little house again. They were going to the Indian country. Pa said there were too many people

in the Big Woods now. Quite often Laura heard the ringing thud of an ax which was not Pa's

ax, or the echo of a shot that did not come from his gun. The path that went by the little house

had become a road. Almost every day Laura and Mary stopped their playing and stared in

surprise at a wagon slowly creaking by on that road.

Wild animals would not stay in a country where there were so many people. Pa did not like to

stay, either. He liked a country where the wild animals lived without being afraid. He liked to

see the little fawns and their mothers looking at him from the shadowy woods, and the fat,

lazy bears eating berries in the wild-berry patches. In the long winter evenings he talked to

Ma about the Western country. In the West the land was level, and there were no trees. The

grass grew thick and high. There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a

pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only

Indians lived there. One day in the very last of the winter Pa said to Ma, "Seeing you don't

object, I've decided to go see the West. I've had an offer for this place, and we can sell it now

for as much as we're ever likely to get, enough to give us a start in a new country."

"Oh, Charles, must we go now?" Ma said. The weather was so cold and the snug house was so

comfortable.

"If we are going this year, we must go now," said Pa. "We can't get across the Mississippi after

the ice breaks." So Pa sold the little house. He sold the cow and calf. He made hickory bows

and fastened them upright to the wagon box. Ma helped him -stretch white canvas over them.

---------

In the thin dark before morning Ma gently shook Mary and Laura till they got up. In firelight

and candlelight she washed and combed them and dressed them warmly. Over their long

red-flannel underwear she put wool petticoats and wool dresses and long wool stockings. She

put their coats on them, and their rabbit-skin hoods and their red yarn mittens. Everything

from the little house was in the wagon, except the beds and tables and chairs. They did not

need to take these, because Pa could always make new ones. There was thin snow on the

ground. The air was still and cold and dark. The bare trees stood up against the frosty stars.

But in the east the sky was pale and through the gray woods came lanterns with wagons and

horses, bringing Grandpa and Grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins. Mary and Laura

clung tight to their rag dolls and did not say anything. The cousins stood around and looked

at them. Grandma and all the aunts hugged and kissed them and hugged and kissed them

again, saying good-by.

Pa hung his gun to the wagon bows inside the canvas top, where he could reach it quickly

from the seat. He hung his bullet-pouch and powder-horn beneath it. He laid the fiddle-box

carefully between pillows, where jolting would not hurt the fiddle.

The uncles helped him hitch the horses to the wagon. All the cousins were told to kiss Mary

and Laura, so they did. Pa picked up Mary and then Laura, and set them on the bed in the

back of the wagon. He helped Ma climb up to the wagon-seat, and Grandma reached up and

gave her Baby Carrie. Pa swung up and sat beside Ma, and Jack, the brindle bulldog, went

under the wagon.

So they all went away from the little log house. The shutters were over the windows, so the

little house could not see them go. It stayed there inside the log fence, behind the two big oak

trees that in the summertime had made green roofs for Mary and Laura to play under. And

that was the last of the little house.

Pa promised that when they came to the West, Laura should see a papoose.

"What is a papoose?" she asked him, and he said, "A papoose is a little, brown, Indian baby."

---They drove a long way through the snowy ----woods, till they came to the town of Pepin.

Mary and Laura had seen it once before, but it looked different now. The door of the store and

the doors of all the houses were shut, the stumps were covered with snow, and no little

children were playing outdoors. Big cords of wood stood among the stumps. Only two or

three men in boots and fur caps and bright plaid coats were to be seen. Ma and Laura and

Mary ate bread and molasses in the wagon, and the horses ate corn from nose-bags, while

inside the store Pa traded his furs for things they would need on the journey. They could not

stay long in the town, because they must cross the lake that day.

The enormous lake stretched flat and smooth and white all the way to the edge of the gray

sky. Wagon tracks went away across it, so far that you could not see where they

went; they ended in nothing at all. Pa drove the wagon out onto the ice, following those

wagon tracks. The horses' hoofs clop-clopped with a dull sound, the wagon wheels went

crunching. The town grew smaller and smaller behind, till even the tall store was only a dot.

All around the wagon there was nothing but empty and silent space. Laura didn't like it. But

Pa was on the wagon seat and Jack was under the wagon; she knew that nothing could hurt

her while Pa and Jack were there. At last the wagon was pulling up a slope of earth again, and

again there were trees. There was a little log house, too, among the trees. So Laura felt better.

Nobody lived in the little house; it was a place to camp in. It was a tiny house, and strange,

with a big fireplace and rough bunks against all the walls. But it was warm when Pa had built

a fire in the fireplace. That night Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie slept with Ma in a bed

made on the floor before the fire, while Pa slept outside in the wagon, to guard it and the

horses. In the night a strange noise wakened Laura. It sounded like a shot, but it was sharper

and longer than a shot. Again and again she heard it. Mary and Carrie were asleep, but Laura

couldn't sleep until Ma's voice came softly through the dark. "Go to sleep, Laura," Ma said.

"It's only the ice cracking." ---Next morning Pa said, "It's lucky --we crossed yesterday,

Caroline. Wouldn't wonder if the ice broke up today. We made a late crossing, and we're

lucky it didn't start breaking up while we were out in the middle of it."

"I thought about that yesterday, Charles," Ma replied, gently.

Laura hadn't thought about it before, but now she thought what would have happened if the

ice had cracked under the wagon wheels and they had all gone down into the cold water in

the middle of that vast lake.

"You're frightening somebody, Charles," Ma said, and Pa caught Laura up in his safe, big hug.

"We're across the Mississippi!" he said, hugging her joyously. "How do you like that, little

half-pint of sweet cider half drunk up? Do you like going out west where Indians live?" Laura

said she liked it, and she asked if they were in the Indian country now. But they were not;

they were in Minnesota. It was a long, long way to Indian Territory. Almost every day the

horses traveled as far as they could; almost every night Pa and Ma made camp in a new place.

Sometimes they had to stay several days in one camp because a creek was in flood and they

couldn't cross it till the water went down. They crossed too many creeks to count. They saw

strange woods and hills, and stranger country with no trees. They drove across rivers on long

wooden bridges, and they came to one wide yellow river that had no bridge. That was the

Missouri River. Pa drove onto a raft, and they all sat still in the wagon while the raft went

swaying away from the safe land and slowly crossed all that rolling muddy-yellow water.

After more days they came to hills again. In a valley the wagon stuck fast in deep black mud.

Rain poured down and thunder crashed and lightning flared. There was no place to

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