He swung the ax high, and brought it down with a great swing and a grunt from his chest. “Ugh!” The ax whizzed and struck, plung! It always struck exactly where Pa wanted it to.
At last, with a tearing, cracking sound, the whole log split. Its two halves lay on the ground, showing the tree’s pale insides and the darker streak up its middle. Then Pa wiped the sweat from his forehead, he took a fresh grip on the ax, and he tackled another log.
One day the last log was split, and next morning Pa began to lay the floor. He dragged the logs into the house and laid them one by one, flat side up. With his spade he scraped the ground underneath, and fitted the round side of the log firmly down into it. With his ax he trimmed away the edge of bark and cut the wood straight, so that each log fitted against the next, with hardly a crack between them.
Then he took the head of the ax in his hand, and with little, careful blows he smoothed the wood. He squinted along the log to see that the surface was straight and true. He took off last little bits, here and there. Finally he ran his hand over the smoothness, and nodded.
“Not a splinter!” he said. “That’ll be all right for little bare feet to run over.”
He left that log fitted into its place, and dragged in another.
When he came to the fireplace, he used shorter logs. He left a space of bare earth for a hearth, so that when sparks or coals popped out of the fire they would not burn the floor.
One day the floor was done. It was smooth and firm and hard, a good floor of solid oak that would last, Pa said, forever.
“You can’t beat a good puncheon floor,” he said, and Ma said she was glad to be up off the dirt. She put the little china woman on the mantel-shelf, and spread a red-checked cloth on the table.
“There,” she said. “Now we’re living like civilized folks again.”
After that Pa filled the cracks in the walls. He drove thin strips of wood into them, and plastered them well with mud, filling every chink.
“That’s a good job,” Ma said. “That chinking will keep out the wind, no matter how hard it blows.”
Pa. stopped whistling to smile at her. He slapped the last bit of mud between the logs and smoothed it and set down the bucket. At last the house was finished.
“I wish we had glass for the windows,” Pa said.
“We don’t need glass, Charles,” said Ma.
“Just the same, if I do well with my hunting and trapping this winter, I’m going to get some glass in Independence next spring,” said Pa. “And hang the expense!”
“Glass windows would be nice if we can afford them,” Ma said. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
They were all happy that night. The fire on the hearth was pleasant, for on the High Prairie even the summer nights were cool. The red-checked cloth was on the table, the little china woman glimmered on the mantelshelf, and the new floor was golden in the flickering firelight. Outside, the night was large and full of stars. Pa sat for a long time in the doorway and played his fiddle and sang to Ma and Mary and Laura in the house and to the starry night outside.
Chapter 11
Indians in the House
Early one morning Pa took his gun and went hunting.
He had meant to make the bedstead that day. He had brought in the slabs, when Ma said she had no meat for dinner. So he stood the slabs against the wall and took down his gun.
Jack wanted to go hunting, too. His eyes begged Pa to take him, and whines came up from his chest and quivered in his throat till Laura almost cried with him. But Pa chained him to the stable.
“No, Jack,” Pa said. “You must stay here and guard the place.” Then he said to Mary and Laura, “Don’t let him loose, girls.”
Poor Jack lay down. It was a disgrace to be chained, and he felt it deeply. He turned his head from Pa and would not watch him going away with the gun on his shoulder. Pa went farther and farther away, till the prairies swallowed him and he was gone.
Laura tried to comfort Jack, but he would not be comforted. The more he thought about the chain, the worse he felt. Laura tried to cheer him up to frisk and play, but he only grew more sullen.
Both Mary and Laura felt that they could not leave Jack while he was so unhappy. So all that morning they stayed by the stable. They stroked Jack’s smooth, brindled head and scratched around his ears, and told him how sorry they were that he must be chained. He lapped their hands a little bit, but he was very sad and angry.
His head was on Laura’s knee and she was talking to him, when suddenly he stood up and growled a fierce, deep growl. The hair on his neck stood straight up and his eyes glared red.
Laura was frightened. Jack had never growled at her before. Then she looked over her shoulder, where Jack was looking, and she saw two naked, wild men coming, one behind the other, on the Indian trail.
“Mary! Look!” she cried. Mary looked and saw them, too.