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Chapter One
The prairie was like a giant plate, stretching all the way, to the sky at the edges. And we were like two tiny peas left over from dinner, Lester and me. We couldn't even see the soddy from out there — just nothing, nothing in a big circle all around us. We still had Cap then, and he stood very still, shaking his harness now and again while we did our work, throwing cow chips into the back of the wagon, me singing all the while.
"Buffalo chips, buffalo chips, won't you marry me? Oh, come on out, buffalo chips, and dance all night by the sea."
Lester smiled and kept up a complicated clicking sound with his tongue and throat.
"Come on, Lester," I told him. "Sing! Nobody can hear ya out here. Oh, buffalo chips, buffalo chips," I sang louder and louder. "Come on, Lester."
But he just shook his head and even stopped his noises.
"Ah, you're no fun at all, Lester, I said, tossing a paddy of hardened dung into the wagon. I stood glaring at him, my hands on my hips, and tried to bully him. "You know something, if you practice talking and singing with me, and pretend I'm someone else, you might be able to really talk to strangers one day. You know that, Lester? Are you listenin' to me, Lester?"
Lester just smiled. "Leave me alone, prairie dog," he said. "Momma says leave off about that. It's none of your trouble.
None of my trouble, ha! He would never talk, and then I'd have to do all the talking. It was always up to me to answer questions that anyone would ask. I used to think I'd try nottalking, too, like Lester. I clamped my mouth shut and folded my arms across my thin, bony chest. But it was too hard, and too hot to keep all those words inside with that sun beating down on me like hard rain.
"Come on, Lester," I said, breaking my silence. "Let's take a short rest before we start back." I got down on my hands and knees and crept beneath the wagon, the only patch of shade for miles and miles. Lester kept on tossing chips into the wagon, and with each thud the wagon would shake a thin sprinkling of dust on my face.
"Lester! I said, have, a rest! I don't like dung dust in my hair!"
The tossing stopped, but I could see the backs of his brown dusty ankles standing slightly apart, very still.
"What are you doin' now,, Lester? Would you get under here, please."
I'm lookin'."
"What for?"
"The doctor and his wife."
I had forgotten all about that, and from my low place in the prairie grass, I looked around, through the wheels, between Cap's hooves, and saw nothing. "Which direction do you think they'll be comin' from?"
Lester dropped down and peered in at me. "New York is east, prairie dog."
"Lester," I said, with teeth-gritting patience, "they are comin' by railroad to Union Pacific Depot at Grand Island. And Grand Island is south, isn't it?"
"Oh." Lester sat down and leaned back against the wheel of the wagon, facing south. "What'll they be like?" he asked.
"Momma says they're probably very refined, and I heard Mrs. Whitfield say that they probably won't make it through the winter."
I stretched some prairie grass between my fingers and blew on it, making a high piercing whistle.
"Won't make it! Why!" Lester was looking at me, his eyes wide and troubled under his straw-colored hair.
"I don't know. I don't think people from back East are very strong, like we are. I think it's hard for them out here — the cold, the hot, the wind, the snakes. They're weak."
"You mean like Delilah?" His voice was soft.
"Yeah, like Delilah, I guess." I thought about our baby sister then, her round flushed cheeks and her blue eyes like store-bought marbles. "Remember how she used to finish her oatmeal and throw the bowl and yell 'all gone'?"
"Yep. " Lester smiled and turned his face away. "You think the doctor and his wife will die, like Delilah?"
"Maybe," I told him. "Either die or go back East."
Lester was quiet. The prairie rang with silence, and Cap snorted and pawed the ground.
"Come on," I said. "I'm hungry. Let's go back."
We mounted the wagon and turned it around to face our house, or all we could see of it from that distance, the red flower of a windmill, beckoning us home.
Cap plodded on, rhythmically and slowly, and when Lester spotted some more chips, he jumped down from the front board. He gathered them up and sailed those pancakes into the back.
"Oh, darn! I never picked any flowers." I gazed off to the east where a thin mist of purple tinted the prairie grass. "Don't you think it would be nice to have flowers for the doctor and his wife when they come?"
Lester jumped up beside me. "Momma says get right back.
"Well, what difference does it make if we stop for a minute just to get some flowers? I think it would be nice, I think maybe they would like the prairie better if they could see the flowers."
Lester frowned. "I don't want to."
"'Fraid of snakes?" I taunted, watching him out of the comer of my eye. "You know, there are snakes out by the chips, too, just like there are snakes by the flowers."
"Never seen any by the chips," he answered. "Just that time by the flowers. Maybe snakes like flowers."
"Oh, they're all over, Lester, even the one that was in the house that time."
