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There was another drought, and Manly still was not fully recovered. He and Laura decided they would go to Minnesota, to his father’s thriving farm. Help was always needed there. The Wilders packed up what little they had left after the fire and traveled by covered wagon to Minnesota.

    Manly’s family welcomed them with open arms, and Laura quickly grew to love her in-laws. Laura and Manly stayed for about a year but were advised that a warmer climate might be good for Manly’s crippled hands and feet. Laura’s cousin Peter had moved to Florida. He wrote, urging them to come. They decided to give it a try. Once again, Laura and Manly were on their way. This time they went by train, well stocked with food given to them by the generous Wilders.
    To Laura, Florida might as well have been the moon. With a mixture of fascination and revulsion, she described a place “where butterflies are enormous, where plants … eat insects … and alligators inhabit the slowly moving waters.” While she tried to adjust, Manly may have worked in the lumber camps near Westville, or he may simply have tried to recover his strength. But Laura could not get used to Florida.

    The moist, dense air made her feel sick. Their new neighbors shunned the Northerners, whom they called Yankees. She took to carrying a revolver in her skirt pocket and did not let Rose out of her sight. Laura longed to go home.
    So in 1892, after less than a year, the Wilders packed up again and took the train back to De Smet. They stayed with Ma and Pa before moving to a house just a block away. Manly did carpentry or painting, or he worked as a clerk in Royal’s variety store. Laura worked at a dressmaker’s shop, where she earned $1.00 a day. Little Rose stayed with her grandparents. Ma taught her to sew and knit. At the age of five, Rose started attending the De Smet school, and like her mother, Laura, she was immediately recognized as an unusually gifted student. Laura was proud of her.
    At night, after work, Laura and Manly tried to come up with another plan. Large-scale farming was out of the question now. If they were going to farm, it would have to be on a much smaller scale. And they needed a place that was not too cold. They started to hear about land in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. One of their neighbors had visited the Ozarks. When he came back, he brought a shiny red apple. Laura had never seen an apple so big or so red. Surely that must be a sign of something good. She and Manly agreed. Missouri was the place to be.
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    SIX
    A Budding Writer, and Rose Leaves Home
    1894−1903
    Rocky Ridge, Missouri
    On a morning in July of 1894, Laura, Manly, and Rose were ready for their trip to the Ozarks. There had been a big farewell dinner at Ma and Pa’s the night before. The family had all gathered together; even Mary was home from school. After they ate, Pa sang and played the fiddle.
    Laura was nervous about the long ride in the black painted wagon. But she was somewhat comforted by the knowledge that she had a $100 bill stashed safely away among her things. This was money she had earned working for the dressmaker, and she was counting on using it to buy a piece of the inexpensive land available in Mansfield, Missouri. One other comforting thing she had with her was a small diary, purchased for 5 cents. She thought it would be interesting to keep a record of her travels.

    The Wilders were joined on the trip by the Cooleys, a family they had met in De Smet. Starting from De Smet, the two families went south to Yankton, South Dakota, which was on the Missouri River. They had to cross the slow, muddy river on a ferry. They continued south, and then east, through Nebraska and Kansas. The prairie was hot and dry, as it always was in the summer. In her diary, Laura wrote that the temperature often reached 100 degrees or more.

    On August 22, they left Kansas and crossed the Missouri state line. Here was a big