It's Friday.
Supper was ready. The camp fire made a circle of light in the dark. Laura and Mary stayed close to the fire, and kept Baby Carrie with them. They could feel the dark all around them, and they kept looking behind them at the place where the dark mixed with the edge of the firelight. Shadows moved there, as if they were alive. Jack sat on his haunches beside Laura. The edges of his ears were lifted, listening to the dark. Now and then he walked all around the camp fire, and came back to sit beside Laura. The hair lay flat on his neck and he did not growl. His teeth showed a little but that was because he was a bulldog. Laura and Mary ate their corncakes, and the Prairie hen’s drumsticks, and they listened to Pa while he told Ma about the wolves. He had found some more neighbors. Settlers were coming in and settling along both sides of the creek. Less than three miles away, in the hollow on the High Prairie, a man and his wife were building a house. Their name was Scott, and Pa said they were nice folks. Six miles beyond them, two bachelors were living in one house. They had taken two farms, and built the house on the line between them. One man’s bunk was against one wall of the house, and the other man’s bunk was against the other wall. So each man slept on his own farm, although they were in the same house and the house was only eight feet wide. They cooked and ate together in the middle of the house.
