Isaac and I remembered how Laura, Mary, Carrie, Ma and baby Grace had caught the train at the Walnut Grove depot, how Laura had promised to ''see'' for her sister, blinded by fever. As the boys dozed, Jeff and I watched the tracks follow us out of town and lead on westward.

ON TO THE PRAIRIE

We arrived in De Smet, S.D., around noon; the same trip had taken the Ingalls family a day and a half, even with help from the train. We followed signs to the Ingalls Homestead, a 160-acre farm museum.

I was dazzled by its bigness, by the blindingly blue sky and seemingly infinite prairie. The boys found a litter of kittens in a barn. Isaac was drawn to a wagon-wheel see-saw, Joe to a dark soddy down the hill. They took turns scrubbing cloths on a washboard; I asked why they didn't take this much interest in laundry at home.

We caught a covered wagon crossing the prairie. The driver, Brian Sullivan, 16, let the kids hold the reins. We disembarked at a schoolhouse, brought in from 5 miles east of town. The teacher, Cathy Kazmerzak Nelson of nearby Lake Preston, led kids through their lessons. The little kids, like Isaac, spelled their names or counted to three. The big kids tackled bigger words: apron, bonnet and pony (which Joe spelled correctly, thank you).

We headed back to town to see the surveyor's house, where the Ingalls family spent their first lonely winter as Dakota Territory pioneers, and to see the home Pa built for Ma when they moved to town soon after Laura married Almanzo Wilder.

It's a sweet, white house on a shaded street in town.

Ma got what she wanted. It was about time. Still, I found that I didn't want to linger at another museum.

My eyes were set west, to the Pierre Best Western.

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