“In Dixie land I’ll take my stand,
And live and die in Dixie!
Away, away, away, away,
Away down south in Dixie!”
They sang with a lilt and a swing that almost lifted Laura right out of bed. She must lie still and not wake Carrie. Mary was sleeping, too, but Laura had never been wider awake.
She heard Jack making his bed under the wagon. He was turning round and round, trampling down the grass. Then he curled into that round nest with a flop and a sigh of satisfaction.
Pet and Patty were munching the last of their corn, and their chains rattled. Bunny lay down beside the wagon.
They were all there together, safe and comfortable for the night, under the wide, starlit sky. Once more the covered wagon was home.
The fiddle began to play a marching tune, and Pa’s clear voice was singing like a deep-toned bell.
“And we’ll rally round the flag, boys,
We’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle-cry of Freedom!”
Laura felt that she must shout, too. But softly Ma looked in through the round hole in the wagon-cover.
“Charles,” Ma said, “Laura is wide awake. She can’t go to sleep on such music as that.”
Pa didn’t answer, but the voice of the fiddle changed. Softly and slurringly it began a long, swinging rhythm that seemed to rock Laura gently.
She felt her eyelids closing. She began to drift over endless waves of prairie grasses, and Pa’s voice went with her, singing:
“Row away, row o’er the waters so blue,
Like a feather we sail in our gum-tree canoe.
Row the boat lightly, love, over the sea;
Daily and nightly I’ll wander with thee.”
The End