2018.08.04

It's Saturday.

The very next morning, when Pa opened the door to go to the stable, Laura saw Jack standing in the Indian trail. He stood stiff,his back bristled, and all his teeth showed. Before him in the path the tall Indian sat on his pony. Indian and pony were still at still. Jack was telling them plainly that he would spring if they moved. Only the eagle feathers that stood up from the Indian’s scalplock were waving and spinning in the wind. When the Indian saw Pa, he lifted his gun and pointed straight at Jack. Laura ran to the door, but Pa was quicker. He stepped between Jack and that gun, and he reached down and grabbed Jack by the collar. He dragged Jack out of the Indian’s way, and the Indian rode on, along the trail. Pa stood with his feet wide apart, his hands in his pockets, and watched the Indian riding farther and farther away across the prairie. Pa said that that had been a darned close call, and well, it was his path, and an Indian trail, long before they had come. He drove an iron ring into a log of the house wall, and he chained Jack to it. After that, Jack was always chained. He was chained to the house in the daytime, and at night he was chained to the stable door, because horse-thieves were in the country now. They had stolen Mr. Edwards’ horses. Jack grew crosser and crosser because he was chained. But it could not be helped. He would not admit that the trail was the Indian’s trail, he thought it belonged to Pa. And Laura knew that something terrible would happen if Jack hurt an Indian. Winter was coming now. The grasses were a dull color under a dull sky. The winds wailed as if they were looking for something they could not find. Wild animals were wearing their thick winter fur, and Pa set his traps in the creek bottoms. Every day he visited them, and every day he went hunting. Now that the nights were freezing cold, he shot deer for meat. He shot wolves and foxes for their fur, and his traps caught beaver and muskrat and mink. He stretched the skins on the outside of the house and carefully tacked them there, to dry. In the evenings he worked and dried skins between his hands to make them to the bundle in the corner. Every day the bundle of furs grew bigger.