Read Online Little Town On The Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder - Free Book Online

they'll break their trot.”
    But they were pulling it, and they were trotting.
    Evenly, without a break, the eight brown legs kept moving in a perfect trot. The dust-cloud rose up and hid them. The n bursting out of it, up the other side of the track the teams and buggies were speeding. One buggy— No, two buggies! were behind the peddler's cart. Three buggies were behind it. Only the bays were ahead of it.
    “Oh, come on! Come on! Win Win!” Laura was begging the brown horses. She so wanted them to trot faster that it seemed her wishing was pulling them.
    The y were almost around the track. The y were coming now around the turn and on toward the line.
    The bays were ahead. The Morgans could not do it, they could not win, the weight was too much for them, but still Laura kept on wishing with all of her.
    “Faster, faster, only a little faster. Oh, come on, come on!”
    Almanzo leaned forward from the high seat and seemed to speak to them. Still smoothly trotting, they came faster. Their heads reached Mr. Owen's buggy and slowly, smoothly crept by it. All the legs were moving fast, fast, while so slowly the brown heads came up, even with the bays'. All four horses were coming now in a line, faster, faster.
    “A tie. By gosh, it's a tie,” a man said.
    Then Mr. Owen's buggy whip flashed out. It swished down, once, twice, as he shouted. The bays leaped ahead. Almanzo had no whip. He was leaning forward, lightly holding the reins firm. Once more he seemed to speak. Fast and smooth as swallows flying, the brown Morgans passed the bays and crossed the line. They'd won!
    The whole crowd shouted. It surged to surround the brown horses and Almanzo high on the cart. Laura found that she had been holding her breath. Her knees were wobbly. She wanted to yell and to laugh and to cry and to sit down and rest.
    “Oh, they won! they won! they won!” Carrie kept saying, clapping her hands. Laura did not say anything.
    “He earned that five dollars,” said Mr. Boast.
    “What five dollars?” Carrie asked.
    “Some men in town put up five dollars for the best trotting team,” Pa explained. “Almanzo Wilder's won it.”
    Laura was glad she had not known. She could not have borne it if she had known that the brown horses were running for a five-dollar prize.
    “He has it coming to him,” said Pa. “That young man knows how to handle horses.”
    The r e were no more races. There was nothing more to do but stand around and listen to the talking.
    The lemonade was low in the barrel. Mr. Boast brought Laura and Carrie a dipperful and they divided it. It was sweeter than before, but not so cold.
    The teams and buggies were going away. Then Pa came from the dwindling crowd and said it was time to go home.
    Mr. Boast walked with them along Main Street. Pa said to him that the Wilders had a sister who was a schoolteacher back east in Minnesota. “She's taken a claim half a mile west of town here,” said Pa, “and she wants Almanzo to find out if she can get this school to teach next winter. I told him to tell her to send in her application to the school board. Other things being equal, I don't know why she can't as well have it.”
    Laura and Carrie looked at each other. Pa was on the school board, and no doubt the others would feel as he did. Laura thought, “Maybe if I am a very good scholar and if she likes me, maybe she might take me driving behind those beautiful horses.”

BLACKBIRDS
    In August, the days were so hot that Laura and Mary took their walks in the early mornings before the sun had risen far. The air still had some freshness then and it was not too hot to be pleasant.
    But every walk seemed like a little bit of the last walk they would have together, for soon Mary was going away.
    She was really going to college, that fall. They had looked forward so long to her going, that now when she really was going, it did not seem possible. It was hard to imagine, too, because none of them knew what college would be like; they