2018.05.26

It's Saturday.

Pa had not said anything about the wolves yet. Laura wished he would. But she knew that she must not interrupt when Pa was talking. He said that these bachelors did not know that anyone else was in the country. They had seen nobody but Indians. So they were glad to see Pa, and he stayed there longer than he had meant to. Then he rode on, and from a little rise in the prairie he saw a white speck down in the creek bottoms. He thought it was a covered wagon, and it was. When he came to it, he found a man and his wife and five children. They had come from Iowa, and they had camped in the bottoms because one of their horses was sick. The horse was better now, but the bad night air so near the creek had given them fever, ague. The man and his wife and the three oldest children were too sick to stand up. The little boy and the girl no bigger than Mary and Laura, were taking care of them. So Pa did what he could for them, and then he rode back to tell the bachelors about them. One of them rode right away to fetch that family up on the high Prairie, where they will soon get well in the good air. One thing had led to another, until Pa was starting home later than he had meant. He took a short cut across the prairie, and as he was loping along on Patty, suddenly out of a little draw came a pack of wolves. They were all around Pa in the moment.

draw: a gully shallower than a ravine