Today is Monday.
Ma asked Laura to lie down. Laura lay down. She felt cold and sick. Her eyes were shut tight, but she could still see the terrible water and Pa’s brown beard drowning in it. For a long, long time the wagon swayed and swung, and Mary cried without making a sound, and Laura’s stomach felt sicker and sicker. Then the front wheels struck and grated, and Pa shouted. The whole wagon jerked and jolted and tipped backward, but the wheels were turning on the ground. Laura was up again, holding to the seat; she saw Pet’s and Patty’s scrambling wet backs climbing a steep bank, and Pa running beside them, shouting. At the top of the bank they stood still, panting and dripping. And the wagon stood still, safely out of that creek. Pa stood panting and dripping, too. Ma said Pa’s name, Charles. And Pa said Ma’s name, Caroline, too. He said they were all safe and thanked to a good tight wagon-box well fastened to the running-gear. He said he had never seen a creek rise so fast in his life. Pet and Patty were good swimmers but Pa said they wouldn’t have made it if he hadn’t helped them. If Pa had not known what to do, or if Ma had been too frightened to drive, or if Laura and Mary had been naughty and bothered her, then they would have all been lost. The river would have rolled them over and over and carried them away and drown them, and nobody would have ever known what became of them. For weeks, perhaps, no other person would come along that road.
