It's Monday.

Chapter twelve: TEXAS LONGHORNS

One evening Laura and Pa were sitting on the doorstep. The moon shone over the dark prairie, the winds were still, and softly Pa played his fiddle. He let a last note quiver far, far away, until it dissolved in the moonlight. Everything was so beautiful that Laura wanted it to stay so forever. But Pa said it was time for little girls to go to bed. Then Laura heard a strange, low, distant sound. She asked what that was. Pa listened and told her that must be the cattle herds going north to Fort Dodge. After she was undressed, Laura stood in her nightgown at the window. The air was very still, not a grass blade rustled, and far away and faint she could hear that sound. It was almost a rumble and almost a song. She asked if that was singing. Pa said yes and the cowboys were singing the castle to sleep. He asked her, the little scalawag, to hop into bed. Laura thought of cattle lying on the dark ground in the moonlight, and of cowboys softly singing lullabies. Next morning when she ran out of the house two strange men were sitting on horses by the stable. They were talking to Pa. They were as red-brown as Indians, but their eyes were narrow slits between squinting eyelids. They wore flaps of leather over their legs, and spurs, and wide-brimmed hats. Handkerchiefs were knotted around their necks, and pistols were on their hips. They said so long to Pa and hi yip to their horses, and they galloped away. Pa said to Ma that here was a piece of luck. Those men were cowboys. They wanted Pa to help them keep the cattle out of the ravines among the bluffs of the creek bottoms. Pa would not charge them any money, but he told them he would take a piece of beef. Pa asked her how she would like a good piece of beef. Ma’s eyes shone. Pa tied his biggest handkerchief around his neck. He showed Laura how he could pull it up over his mouth and nose to keep the dust out. Then he rode Patty west along the Indian trail, till Laura and Mary couldn’t see him any more.