And then she sees him: the boy with the fair hair and blue eyes who “moved as beautifully as a cat.” This is Laura’s first glimpse of Cap Garland, who would later come to enchant her heart, even if for a brief and private time, over that of her Manly. Quite spontaneously, Cap tosses a ball to Laura, who in turn catches it mid-air. With the boys protesting and the other girls looking on, Laura sinks with embarrassment and continues to measure herself against the appearance of the other girls.

Despite her continued sense of awe at the orderly schoolroom and its polished desks in neat rows, Laura begins to feel a bit of ease. Her teacher, Cap’s sister, readily assesses Laura’s learning level and settles Laura and Carrie into their own seats. Laura takes comfort in the familiar Bible reading from the 23rd Psalm. (I would not doubt that in her heart Laura recites these words again before the day comes to a close.)  As the week progresses, Laura makes quick friends of Mary Power and Minnie Johnson, joining them at recess to watch the boys play catch: Ben Woodworth, Arthur Johnson … and Cap. Cap, whose grin “changed everything.” At night Laura conveys the day’s lessons to Mary, who dreams of attending college. The family’s new routine of life in town settles in comfortably for the winter.

When Monday comes again, Laura cringes at wearing her red flannel underwear. Ma insists that, while the weather is mild, it is the proper time of year to wear the extra, albeit itchy, layer of clothing. As Laura finds herself thoroughly distracted from her lessons by the irritating flannels, the schoolroom is at once startlingly overshadowed. The immediate, blanketing gloom is not unnoticed by the children or Miss Garland. Laura knows this sky, this hush, just as the wild animals at Plum Creek had known. Her thoughts turn to Pa and his whereabouts, to Carrie and her fragile nature, to the polished desks and their longevity as a heat source.

As worry seizes Laura, the schoolhouse door opens to a bundled Mr. Foster, come to bring the children back to town. The children quickly, but quietly, gather their wraps, and in this moment Cap loses his smile. Laura takes great care to prepare Carrie in body and spirit as best she can. The moment the children step out of the schoolhouse, the snow swallows them in a blinding white pool. The winds whip them about, stealing their senses. No longer able to see, hear, feel or speak, the little band is consumed.

Laura soon realizes that they should have reached Main Street by now. Miss Garland and Mr. Foster seem to come to the same conclusion, hesitating in confusion. From the corner of her eye, Laura sees Cap’s shadowy figure tear away into the blizzard alone. She senses that Cap is correctly headed toward Main Street, but trudges on with the rest of the group… away from what she intuitively knows to be safe harbor. Have they passed the last shelter of town only to be lost on the boundless prairie? Laura realizes in the pause just how numb with cold she has grown and fears for Carrie’s ability to forge on much longer.

At that moment Laura is buffeted by something hard… something solid… a wall. Her calls to the others go out in vain. With all her breath she calls again into the deafening howls of the wind, managing to draw attention. The group huddles near, following the wall… Mead’s Hotel, the last building of town before open prairie. The lined street provides navigation for each child to now find their way to family and shelter. At their own door, Laura finds her hands too numb to use the handle. Pa, preparing to leave in search of his girls, ushers them in near the fire, which warmed them from without, while Ma’s ginger tea warms them from within: the tea and the spirit of home, and of family.  

Cap Garland had indeed reached town in search of help for the lost group. “Cap Garland’s a smart boy,” declares Pa, grateful to have his girls gathered around him. Just how smart and how courageous they have yet to learn … but for now the snow is outside and they are inside — together. And that is all that matters.

So the Ingalls family is moving to town for the winter. Mostly the chapter is spent telling us exactly what Pa’s store building looks like, where it is in town, and how it’s set up for winter. A good prairie primer on interior decoration (though the best of the put-a-room-together paragraphs are yet to come in later books).

Pa, we learn, has old-school cred already. His building is already weathered gray; it’s been around for a whole six months, not the mere weeks certain new kids have been on the block.

Main Street, now Calumet Avenue. Pa's building was on the corner of Second and Main (right edge of photo). Across Second is Heritage House, currently a B&B.

During this read-through I paid strict attention to the description of the building, since, well, I guess I really haven’t before. But as I learned in those what-does-this-object-look-like-when-it’s-folded-up questions in the standardized tests I took in high school, I’m not that spacially adept. So I’ll do the best I can.

There’s a kitchen in the back, and a front room (which is, uh, in the front). The lean-to opens into the kitchen under the stairs that lead to the second floor. Its north-ish window looks toward the Depot. Once the family has unpacked, it contains, best I can tell, the cookstove and a drygoods box that stands upright as a cupboard, useful for storing dishes in exactly the same places they were in the shanty for easy blind access. That’s pretty much it.

The table goes into the front room. Two windows are on either side of the front room’s door, and Laura is itching to get curtains over them to keep prying eyes out. Also in the room is a coal heater, next to the table. (I find myself filled with foreboding and dread, wanting to warn them: “No! Don’t waste coal in the extra room! You’re going to need it!”) Braided rag rugs are laid in front of each door. After the rocking chairs are placed by the window (to take advantage of sunlight for reading), and cushions placed on them, the last object in the room is a gorgeous “boughten” varnished yellow roll-top desk, which has been bequeathed by Judge Carroll — presumably to be used by Pa in his role as Justice of the Peace. Except as readers, we do not know this.

(Has Judge Carroll been renting Pa’s building up until now? During “An Errand To Town,” all it says about Pa’s building is that “It was rented and two men sat inside it talking.”)

Outside, we learn that the Garlands are their neighbors, sort of behind the stable on the north side of the building. Florence Garland, who happens to teach the school Laura is so reluctant to attend, lives there with her family, including everyone’s towheaded crush, Cap Garland. Alas, more to come on him in the next chapter.

Laura, Carrie and Mary will sleep above the kitchen; Ma and Pa (and presumably Grace?) will sleep in the room above the front room. These rooms, we learn, are divided with a “building-paper partition.” Building paper? Ma and Laura pull the bedstead pieces Pa hands to them through the trap door, and they assemble the beds while Carrie and Pa fill the hay-ticks. Well, straw-ticks, except there’s no straw, so the families have to sleep on the slough. Or specifically, on feather beds on top of the slough. And they are sweet-smelling.

Laura can see the school out the window down Second Street. They’ve heard the kids going by at school’s end, which compels Ma to say something on the order of “Hooray, now you girls can go to school!”

Which begs the question: If the Long Winter hadn’t already started and the heap big snow did not come, would Laura and Carrie have gone to school?

We wrap up with the now-ominous-sounding confidence that living in town means never running short of supplies; then Pa makes his best guess at the size of the town, naming all the families living there. “Then the Wilder boys” — the Wilder boys!! — “are baching in the feed store,” he says, and we can’t help but crave pancakes.

(In a later chapter, it’s worth noting, “baching” has been switched to “batching.” And speaking of grammatical snafus, there’s one sentence in this chapter that I can’t make sense of whatsoever–and this is the first time I’ve noticed it. It’s in the last third of the chapter. Can you find it too?)

Pa begins again waxing poetic about the great wide West. “Oregon’s the place to be nowadays,” he says, sounding for all the world like your shiftless uncle who shows up every Thanksgiving wisful about his latest failed plan. Ma merely indulges his verbal daydreaming, waiting till he’s done to pleasantly but firmly lay down the law. “Now is the time for the girls to be getting some schooling.”

by guest contributor Laura McLemore (aka Dr. Laura)

Well, this chapter sure opens a can of worms. Racism rears its ugly head once again. Since we have discussed the topic at least three times I will simply refer you to Laura Welser’s post, Should Little House Be Banned? It is a worthy discussion and has been addressed on several other blog sites. (Google “racism in the Little House books” if you’d like to know more.)

Our chapter cozily opens one afternoon following the October blizzard. Several of the town’s men folk are gathered in Harthorn’s store. The trains are running again and the men are there to buy supplies but more importantly to catch up on the local gossip. Who says men don’t gossip?

Mr. Boast is there entertaining the group with stories and “setting it laughing when he laughed.” Poor Pa walks in with his gun on his arm to buy salt pork. Seems he was hunting for jack rabbits but didn’t see a one (an ominous sign for sure) so he had to buy salt pork instead. Cue entrance of a mysterious visitor:

No one heard a footstep, but Pa felt that someone was behind him…Then suddenly Mr. Boast stopped talking.

The men all stand up indicating the presence of something unfamiliar that they need to be wary of. Even Almanzo slides down from the counter in preparation. Then we know “it was only an Indian.” This indicates several things, in my humble opinion. It signals that perhaps he wasn’t a person of great importance and apparently he wasn’t a person of danger either. He was “only” an Indian. Laura respectfully describes a very old Indian but her description seems to be a stereotypical description. Garth Williams’ illustration of the Indian looks more like an Osage rather than Dakota and Cheyenne.

The Indian has apparently come to tell the men something.

“Heap big snow come.”

I have to admit that when I read this to my grandson the other night I cringed for the very first time. I have always been able to glide past the politically incorrect scenes in Laura’s books and have held many discussions with people about historical fiction and racism. But somehow, this time, the language really affected me.

“Heap big snow.” “Many moons.” “I tell-um you.” This sounds like movie dialogue from the 1930’s. Oh wait, that’s when Laura was writing her books! Anyway, for me, the wording really got in the way of understanding the importance of the message at this point in the chapter.

The Indian had come to warn the white men that a bad winter was coming. Seven months of blizzards every seven years and, after three seven-year cycles, the hardest winter of all. Pa knew that what the Indian was saying was true. He had seen the signs himself, the thick walls of the muskrat lodge, the little auk, and now the absence of jackrabbits, a prairie staple.

Royal, Almanzo, Pa and Mr. Boast discuss their options. The Wilder boys and Pa decide to move into town while Mr. Boast realizes that he cannot leave his livestock and that he has too many animals to move into town. We sense Pa’s urgency as he walks quickly home. The family can tell immediately that something is wrong. He tries to assure Ma and the girls that nothing is wrong, but Ma knows better. Perhaps it is because he so bluntly said “We are moving to town as quick as we can.” Ma expresses her distress at Pa’s action but Laura, the ever-faithful daughter, tells her that nothing is wrong because Pa said so!

Ma asks Pa why they must hurry so. He said only that he feels like hurrying. He then makes an error by telling Ma that an Indian had somehow figured into his decisions. This gets Ma’s dander up. Laura tells us that Ma despised Indians and that she wrinkled her nose in disgust when Pa mentioned the old Indian. Pa as always, defended the Indian and then dismisses the subject. He hurries out to load hay with Laura in tow to help.

Laura is not allowed to go to town with Pa. She stands looking across the prairie on the Indian Summer afternoon. Laura dreads going to town and wishes for the wings of a bird so that she could fly away “fast, fast and far away.” With sobriety she realizes that none of them had wings and that after all, they were only moving to town.