It's Friday.
He climbed to his place beside Ma, gathered the reins into his own hands, and chirruped to Pet and Patty. Jack went under the wagon. Pet whinnied to Bunny, who came to walk beside her. And they were off. Just before the creek road went down into the bottoms, Pa stopped the mustangs, and they all looked back. As far as they could see, to the east and to the south and to the west, nothing was moving on all the vastness of the High Prairie. Only the green grass was rippling in the wind, and white clouds drifted in the high, clear sky. Pa told Ma that it was a great country, Caroline, but there would be wild Indians and wolves here for many a long day. The little log house and the little stable sat lonely in the stillness. Then Pet and Patty briskly started onward. The wagon went down from the bluffs into the wooded creek bottoms, and high in a tree-top a mockingbird began to sing. Ma aid that she had never heard a mockingbird sing so early, and Pa answered, softly that he was telling them good-by. They rode down through the low hills to the creek. The ford was low, an easy crossing. On they went, across the bottoms where antlered deer stood up to watch them passing, and mother deer with their fawns bounded into the shadows of the woods. And up between the steep red-earth cliffs the wagon climbed to prairie again. Pet and Patty were eager to go. Their hoofs had made a muffled sound in the bottoms, but now they rang on the hard prairie. And the wind sang shrill against the foremost wagon bows. Pa and Ma were still and silent on the wagonseat, and Mary and Laura were quiet, too. But Laura felt all excited inside. You never know what will happen next, nor where you'll be tomorrow, when you are traveling in a covered wagon. At noon Pa stopped beside a little spring to let the mustangs eat and drink and rest. The spring would soon be dry in the summer's heat, but there was plenty of water now. Ma took cold cornbread and meat from the food-box, and they all ate, sitting on the clean grass in the shade of the wagon.
