Read Online The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder - Free Book Online Page B

     as she went about the work.
    It was a busy summer for Laura, what with the housework, caring for Rose, and helping
     Manly whenever he needed her. But she didn't mind doing it all, for Manly was recovering
     the use of his hands and feet.
    Slowly the paralysis was wearing off. He was spending a great deal of time working among
     the young trees. It had been too dry for them to grow well the summer before and they were not
     starting as they should this spring.
    Some of them had died. The dead ones Manly replaced, setting the new ones carefully. He
     pruned them all, dug around their roots, and then plowed all the ground between.
    And the wheat and oats grew rank and green. “We'll be all right this year,” Manly said.
     “One good crop will straighten us out and there never was a better prospect.” The horses were not working hard now. Skip and Barnum did what was necessary and the ponies, Trixy and Fly, were growing fat on their
     picket ropes. Manly said they should be ridden, but Laura could not leave Rose alone;
     neither could she take her during the day with safety and pleasure.
    It was quiet and there was nothing to do after supper when Rose was put to bed. She was so
     tired with her play that she slept soundly for hours. So Laura and Manly came to saddling
     the ponies and riding them on the road before the house, on the run for a half mile south
     and back,
    then around the half-circle drive before the house, a pause to see that Rose was still
     sleeping, and a half mile run north and back for another look at Rose until the ponies and
     riders were ready to stop. Trixy and Fly enjoyed the races they ran in the moonlight and
     the shying at the shadow of a bunch of hay in the road or the quick jump of a jack rabbit
     across it.
    Cousin Peter came one Sunday to tell Manly and Laura that Mr. Whitehead wanted to sell his
     sheep, a hundred purebred Shropshires.
    A presidential election was coming in the fall and it looked as though the Democrats were
     due to win. If they did, Mr. Whitehead, being a good Republican, was sure the country
     would be ruined. The tariff would be taken off, and wool and sheep would be worth nothing. Peter
     was sure they could be bought at a bargain. He would buy them himself if only he had a
     place to keep them. “How much of a bargain? What would you have to pay?” Manly asked. Peter was sure he could buy them for two dollars apiece since Mr. Whitehead was feeling particularly uneasy about the election. “And the sale of their wool next spring ought
     nearly to pay for them,” he added. There were one hundred sheep. Peter had one hundred
     dollars due him in wages. That would be half of the money needed to buy them at two
     dollars each. Laura was thinking aloud. They had land enough by using the school section
     that lay just south of them: a whole section of land with good grazing and hay free to
     whoever got there first and used it. For the first time Laura was glad of the Dakota law
     that gave two sections in every township to the schools. And especially glad that one of
     them adjoined their tree claim.
    “We'd have pasture and hay enough and we could build good shelter,” Manly said.
    “But the other one hundred dollars?” Laura asked doubtfully.
    Manly reminded her of the colt that they had bought with her school money, and said he be
     lieved he could sell it now for one hundred dollars. She could buy half the sheep if she
     wanted to gamble on them.
    And so it was decided. If Peter could get the sheep for two hundred, Laura would pay half. Peter was to care for the sheep, herding them
     on the school section in summer. Together Peter and Manly would put up the hay, with Manly
     furnishing teams of machinery. Back of the hay barn they would build on another one for
     the sheep, opening onto a yard fenced with wire. Peter would live with them and help with the chores in return. A few days after the colt was sold, Peter
     came driving