It's Monday.
Pa said that then they had come to the head of a draw, running down into the creek bottoms, and the big gray leader had gone down it, and all the rest of the pack had trotted down into it, behind him, and as soon as the last one had been in the draw, and he had let Patty go, and she had headed straight for home, across the prairie, and she couldn’t have run faster if he had been cutting into her with a rawhide whip, and he had been scared the whole way, and he had thought the wolves might be coming this way and they might be making better time than he had been, and he had been glad that Ma had had the gun, and glad the house was built, and he had known Ma could keep the wolves out of the house, with the gun, but Pet and the colt had been outside. Ma said that he need not have worried and she guessed she would manage to save their horses. Pa said that he had not been fully reasonable, at that time, and he knew Ma would save the horses, and those wolves wouldn’t bother her, anyway, and if they had been hungry, he wouldn’t be here. Ma said that little pitchers had big ears. She meant that he must not frighten Mary and Laura. Pa replied that all was well that ended well, and those wolves were miles from here by that time. Laura asked him what had made them act like that. pa said that he didn’t know and he guessed they had just eaten all they could hold, and they had been on their way to the creek to get a drink, or perhaps they had been out playing any attention to anything but their play, like little girls did sometimes, and perhaps they had seen that he hadn’t had his gun and couldn’t do them any harm, or perhaps they had never seen a man before and hadn’t known that man could do them any harm, so they hadn’t thought about him at all.
