Pa’s throat rasped and Ma said: “Have another cup of tea, Charles. It will help get the smoke out of your throat.”
When Pa had drunk the tea, he went back to the wheat-field with another load of old hay and manure.
In bed, Laura and Mary could still hear the whirring and snipping and chewing. Laura felt claws crawling on her. There were no grasshoppers in bed, but she could not brush the feeling off her arms and cheeks. In the dark she saw grasshoppers’ bulging eyes and felt their claws crawling until she went to sleep.
Pa was not downstairs next morning. All night he had been working to keep the smoke over the wheat, and he did not come to breakfast. He was still working.
The whole prairie was changed. The grasses did not wave; they had fallen in ridges. The rising sun made all the prairie rough with shadows where the tall grasses had sunk against each other.
The willow trees were bare. In the plum thickets only a few plum-pits hung to the leafless branches. The nipping, clicking, gnawing sound of the grasshoppers’ eating was still going on.
At noon Pa came driving the wagon out of the smoke. He put Sam and David into the stable, and slowly came to the house. His face was black with smoke and his eyeballs were red. He hung his hat on the nail behind the door and sat down at the table.
“It’s no use, Caroline,” he said. “Smoke won’t stop them. They keep dropping down through it and hopping in from all sides. The wheat is falling now. They’re cutting it off like a scythe. And eating it, straw and all.”
He put his elbows on the table and hid his face with his hands. Laura and Mary sat still. Only Carrie on her high stool rattled her spoon and reached her little hand toward the bread. She was too young to understand.
“Never mind, Charles,” Ma said. “We’ve been through hard times before.”
Laura looked down at Pa’s patched boots under the table and her throat swelled and ached. Pa could not have new boots now.
Pa’s hands came down from his face and he picked up his knife and fork. His beard smiled, but his eyes would not twinkle. They were dull and dim.
“Don’t worry, Caroline,” he said. “We did all we could, and we’ll pull through somehow.”
Then Laura remembered that the new house was not paid for. Pa had said he would pay for it when he harvested the wheat.
It was a quiet meal, and when it was over Pa lay down on the floor and went to sleep. Ma slipped a pillow under his head and laid her finger on her lips to tell Laura and Mary to be still.
They took Carrie into the bedroom and kept her quiet with their paper dolls. The only sound was the sound of the grasshoppers’ eating.
Day after day the grasshoppers kept on eating. They ate all the wheat and the oats. They ate every green thing—all the garden and all the prairie grass.
“Oh, Pa, what will the rabbits do?” Laura asked. “And the poor birds?”
“Look around you, Laura,” Pa said.
The rabbits had all gone away. The little birds of the grass tops were gone. The birds that were left were eating grasshoppers. And prairie hens ran with outstretched necks, gobbling grasshoppers.
When Sunday came, Pa and Laura and Mary walked to Sunday school. The sun shone so bright and hot that Ma said she would stay at home with Carrie, and Pa left Sam and David in the shady stable.
There had been no rain for so long that Laura walked across Plum Creek on dry stones. The whole prairie was bare and brown. Millions of brown grasshoppers whirred low over it. Not a green thing was in sight anywhere.
All the way, Laura and Mary brushed off grasshoppers. When they came to the church, brown grasshoppers were thick on their petticoats. They lifted their skirts and brushed them off before they went in. But careful as they were, the grasshoppers had spit tobacco-juice on their best Sunday dresses.
Nothing would take out the horrid stains. They would have to wear their best dresses with the brown spots on them.
Many people in town were going back east. Christy and Cassie had to go. Laura said goodby to Christy and Mary said good-by to Cassie, their best friends.
They did not go to school any more. They must save their shoes for winter and they could not bear to walk barefooted on grasshoppers. School would be ended soon anyway, and Ma said she would teach them through the winter so they would not be behind their classes when school opened again next spring.
Pa worked for Mr. Nelson and earned the use of Mr. Nelson’s plow. He began to plow the bare wheat-field, to make it ready for next year’s wheat crop.
Chapter 26
Grasshopper Eggs
One day Laura and Jack wandered down to the creek. Mary liked to sit and read and work sums on the slate, but Laura grew tired of that. Outdoors was so miserable that she did not much like to play, either.