Man. This one really is kind of a downer from the get-go. Mary is blind now, Plum Creek hasn't worked out, everyone is sick and depressed, JACK DIES, you get the picture. Then they head out west to South Dakota so Pa can work for the railroads until they can lay claim to a homestead. There's stuff about horse-thieving, 13-yr-old brides, and attempted murder. As an adult, I now see that a lot of what Ma says and does isn't to be a kill-joy who doesn't want Laura to go anywhere or have any fun. It's likely that she had a lot of anxiety about her daughters' safety around the crews working the railroad and the stream of homesteaders boarding at their house every night in a pretty lawless frontier area. So she tried to keep the girls off the radar as much as possible. Thank heavens it at least ends on a cheerful note.