by Sarah Miller
Beneath it, Charles had laid the boards from the wagon loft over a crisscross of limbs to raise a floor a few inches above the spongy ground. The platform was just larger than the big straw tick.
It was as she had expected: small, sturdy, and adequate. With the time and means available, he could have built nothing more elaborate.
Charles halted the horses and looked back for her approval. His face pained her. He so wanted to please her, and this was all he had to offer.
Caroline did not have so large a thing as a smile to give in return, but she would not let him be disappointed. There was something smaller and truer she could offer.
“You’ve done well, Charles,” she acknowledged. Saying the words broke a little path through her resignation. Again that ray of thankfulness shone out for a man who so rarely failed to furnish their needs. Still, she did not relish the thought of using such a bleak little thing. Well then, that was all she would do—use it. They would not live in it.
Charles plopped Laura inside the shelter and reached up for Mary. “I’ll dig a latrine pit and a trench for runoff in case the rain comes again. We’re nearer the creek than the wagon, so at least we won’t want for water.”
That was a fact. Caroline could hear the creek churning louder yet than before. By the sounds of it she must not only clarify every bucket with alum but boil the filtered water before it would be fit for drinking or cooking. Caroline put that task to one side of her mind. The tea must be boiled anyhow, and she needed no water to fry bacon and corn dodgers.
Charles built the fire so high, the sound of its burning was like horses galloping. “Tore a few pages from the back of my weather journal for tinder,” he admitted. The flames roasted Caroline’s cheeks deliciously until she felt crisp as a potato skin. How she would relish a potato! First her teeth snipping through the skin, then sinking into the powdery white inside, hot as steam turned solid. Nothing in the world filled a cold belly like a potato. She could feast all day on roasted potatoes—potatoes and thick slices of white bread quilted with butter. Perhaps even a mug of sweet milk, hot from the udder. Such a meal would be velvet on her tongue after all these weeks of salt meat and cornmeal.
Caroline’s stomach grumbled at her, and she set to work. She fried bacon, quick and sizzling. Hot pinpricks of fat spat onto her hands, and she did not flinch from them. The iron spider hissed as she spooned corn dodgers into the drippings. Her mouth watered. Much as she craved the fleecy white meal in her mind, she could not keep hold of her imagined feast with those smells and sounds before her.
In between turning the food she steeped two great mugs of tea for herself and Charles. Each golden swallow ringed her throat with its warmth. For Mary and Laura there was nothing but plain hot water. Filled straight from the kettle their tin cup would blister their hands as well as their mouths, so they squatted patiently beside it and took turns blowing ripples across the steaming surface. Such good girls. Caroline wished again for milk, to cool their cup and treat them to cambric tea.
It did no good to warn them of the bacon, nor Charles. Sparkling hot, the strips of meat branded their mouths and salved their chapped lips with fat. Mary and Laura grinned at each other as their tongues juggled the hot meat. Caroline felt her own smile glistening as she watched. What potato, what bread could fill her as much as the sight of them all warm and dry at last? Caroline set her plate aside and stretched out her legs to toast the soles of her shoes.
“I’m leaving the Colt with you and the girls,” Charles told her. “Under the carpetbag. You remember how to fire it?”
Caroline nodded.
“Good. If you need me for anything in the night, fire a shot,” he continued. “But don’t worry if you hear the rifle before daybreak. Going to see if I can find us some fresh game.”
Caroline raked the last flatiron from the coals and wrapped it in flannel for him. He pocketed the hot bundle.
“Good night,” he said.
She did not reply.
Charles took her softly by the shoulders. “Caroline?”
Her eyes flickered away from his face. What might he ask that she could answer? If it were all right for him to leave them without door or walls? If she were frightened? True or false, she could not answer him. She could barely smooth the trembling from her lips. There were tears gathering uninvited, tears she could not press back alone. Before she shamed herself Caroline looped her arms under Charles’s, laying her palms over his shoulder blades, and pulled herself into his chest.
His hands slid down her sides. Those broad firm hands that had once spanned her waist. Could they feel the laces at the base of her maternity corset now? As if his touch melted through the knots, her body gave a great shiver, then slackened. Caroline pulled in a breath. Nothing hampered its way. Her chest felt spongy as though from crying, but the trembling had gone.
Not a word passed between them as she stood with the crown of her head notched under his chin. Only breath. Her chest rode his inhales, then carried back his exhales.
Charles moved one hand up her back, to the nape of her neck. Caroline felt his heartbeat deepen as his knuckles brushed her chignon.
“Charles,” she whispered. She tilted her head to meet his gaze and the whole coil of her hair tipped into his palm. He kissed her then, chastely, in the space between her brows. The warm print lingered after his lips had left her skin, a seal against whatever fears might reach for her in the night.
Caroline brought her palms to his chest and gently eased herself from him. “Good night,” she said.
She lifted the blanket flap and went in. Mary and Laura lay at her feet with the quilt’s red binding pulled up over their noses. She knelt to kiss each of them as Charles had kissed her, then undressed, said her prayers, and lay down beside them.
The rifle shot woke her. By the time Charles came over the rise with a white bird dangling from his belt, she had smoothed her hair and put the coffee pot on.
“Snow goose,” Charles said. “Must be a straggler, it’s so late in the season. Or maybe it got caught in the storm. Should I fetch the tin kitchen from the wagon?”
“No thank you, Charles. I’ll fry it in the spider for breakfast.”
It was better still than the hot bacon the day before, rich and fresh and running with juice. A hint of salt and pepper made the savory flavor bloom in her mouth.
Laura lifted her drumstick to nibble the last shreds from the bone and said, “Look, Pa.”
Caroline looked up as well, ready to address Laura’s manners. Little though she was, Laura never would have flaunted her table scraps that way at home. But Charles and Laura’s attention was not where Caroline expected to find it. She looked beyond the bone in Laura’s fist and saw a man on a black pony emerging from the trees. Charles rose, plate in hand, as the rider approached.
Caroline sat still as a rabbit poised to run, watching. The stranger was strung together like a ladder—perfectly straight up one side and down the other. His horse was lightly built, slender through the back and face. “That your wagon down there in the dale?” the man asked.
“Certainly is,” Charles said. He handed Caroline his plate and propped his fists at his hips. “This your land?”
“Nearly.”
Caroline blanched at the two plates in her hands. Not only had they set up camp on another man’s stake, but their mouths were half-full of his game. Quietly she stacked the dishes onto her lap and swallowed.
“We’re only passing through,” Charles said. “Be on our way just as soon as I can dig out and ford that creek.”
The man swiped a hand through the air. “You’re welcome to camp as long as you need. I heard a shot this morning and thought I ought to make sure there wasn’t any trouble. The name’s Jacobs,” he said to Charles, then “ma’am,” with a nod to Caroline and a glance that traveled down to her lap.
Caroline could not tell whether it was the plates of purloined goose or her own form that drew his attention; she was rounded enough at the navel now
that anyone who chanced to look might notice. Either way, his eyes did not linger.
Charles extended his hand to Jacobs. Caroline folded her fingers inside her palms to hide the lines of grime under her nails. “Ingalls,” Charles said. “Headed down into Montgomery County.”
“Looks like you’ve come a distance already.”
Caroline would have liked to whisk a sheet over the camp at that. Anyone would think them vagabonds, with their hacked-limb shelter and soggy wraps slumped over the tarpaulin ropes. This man had a silky black beard trimmed so short and neat it lay flat as horsehair. For the first time she noticed how Charles’s hair had grown. The back of her own neck itched to see how far it had strayed into his collar.
“Left Pepin County, Wisconsin, nearly five weeks ago.”
“That so?” Jacobs asked, but his attention was on Ben and Beth. Caroline marked the way he studied them. If he had looked at her so intently, she would not have thought him a gentleman. “Fine, strong team you’ve got there,” the man said.
“That they are.”
Jacobs ventured further. “Fact is, I’ve been on the lookout for a good pair of draft horses. Got three and a half years in on a claim the next section east of here, and a preemption filed on this one. It’s a railroad section, $5.50 an acre.”
Charles gave a low whistle at the price—better than four times what they hoped to pay.
Jacobs nodded. “Don’t I know it. One fine crop would put me within arm’s reach of paying it off—that is, if I can clear enough acreage to sow in time. I wonder if you’d consider a trade?”
Charles glanced at Caroline. She said nothing. “That would depend on your offer.”
Jacobs looked down at his horse, then back to Charles, weighing him in a different way than he had measured Ben and Beth. If he looked much longer, Caroline thought, she would be compelled to rise and stand beside her husband. “I’ll offer my matched pair of mustangs,” Jacobs said at last. “This one and her twin sister.”
Caroline considered the pony. Where Ben’s and Beth’s muscles bowed outward, this creature was small and sleek. Not much more than fourteen hands high, but with a spry stance that belied her stature. And a coat so bright and black, just looking at her gave Caroline pleasure.
“The other mare’s set to foal this summer, so there’s a mule colt in the bargain,” Jacobs went on. “I’ve had a look over your wagon, and there’s nothing in there the pair of them can’t pull as far as the Territory.”
Had he inspected the wagon with the same intensity that he scrutinized everything else? Caroline did not like to think so.
“Guess there’s no harm in going for a look,” Charles said.
“When will we have dinner, Ma?” Laura wondered again. She had been promised dumplings and gravy, and though breakfast still filled her belly, her mind was already hungry with the thought.
“Not until after Pa comes back,” Caroline answered. She laid her dish towel over the iron spider to keep the flies from the drippings. The plates were wiped and the camp tidied, and still he had not returned. A pot filled with the remains of the goose simmered at the edge of the fire.
Caroline brushed her hands on her apron. The calico was tacky with the week’s grime. More than a week. Here it was already Tuesday—another washing day come and gone—and she could not leave the girls alone with the fire to haul water for laundry. And there would be no mending, for her work basket was down in the wagon. There was not a lick of work she could do until Charles returned. Yet she could not sit idle. If she did not busy her hands somehow, her thoughts would begin to chase in circles. Charles had not been gone long, not really, but he had already taken more than enough time to ride half a mile and see a horse.
Beth nickered and tugged at her picket pin. Caroline went to her and reached up to rub the long white blaze on her forehead. “Easy now, Beth,” she said. “They’ll come back. Your Ben and my Charles, they always come back.” Beth shook her head, tinkling the iron ring on her picket pin. Caroline rubbed Beth’s nose and scratched under her chin. She had not known Beth to be nervous before. She half wondered whether the animal could sense what Charles was contemplating on his errand.
“Laura, don’t,” Mary said behind her. Caroline turned. Laura had pulled a stick from the kindling pile to draw on the ground. “You’ll get all dirty.”
Caroline looked at Laura’s muddy squiggles and zigzags and her thoughts lightened. “Mary and Laura,” she asked, “how would you like to learn to write your names?”
Mary’s nose gave a dubious little crinkle. “In the dirt?” she asked.
It was only a single bristle of irritation, and Caroline did not even feel entitled to that. Few would believe her if she said so, but such a fastidious child was not always a blessing. What did Mary expect? She had neither slate nor pencil. All their books and paper but for Charles’s weather journal were buried at the bottom of her trunk. Still, there must be something she could contrive.
Caroline went to the kitchen crate and opened the sack of meal. Her eyes measured the scanty depth. It would not be waste if it fed their minds, she decided, and pulled out a fistful to sprinkle onto a clean tin plate.
“On a dish?” Laura asked.
“Come and see,” Caroline said.
With the handle of the wooden spoon, she traced an L in the grit. “L is for Laura,” she began.
Over ten years had passed since she had been anyone’s teacher, yet the charge of excitement it gave her was as potent as ever. She had not been much more than a girl herself then, but Caroline remembered how it had felt to coax a pupil to the threshold of understanding. Then that breathless moment—waiting, watching, for the mind to reach forward and grasp. Oh, she had shown Mary how to sew a seam, and both of them were mastering a growing list of little household tasks, but this was different. This was real learning. And these were her own two girls.
Both of them were so quick to learn, Caroline’s pride and pleasure whirled inside her. Each stroke held her poised for the next like their first wobbling steps forward.
Mary frowned at her work. “I want it to look like yours, Ma.”
Caroline lavished them with her best praise. “You have both done very well.”
“I mean when you write letters on paper. It’s prettier, all long and fine.”
“Like ribbons,” Laura agreed.
“Our letters look like sticks,” Mary said.
“This is called printing. Once you have learned to print each letter nicely, I will teach you how to write.”
“Show us, now, Ma,” Mary begged. “Please.”
Caroline gave the plate a shake, then drummed the underside with her fingertips to even the surface of the meal. She eased a hairpin from its nest and began to trail it across the tin, taking extra care with the flourishes and gracefully knotting the cross of each t.
Dear Ma and Papa Frederick,
The girls have asked me to write a few lines. Though these words will not reach you, I hope that you are well and not worrying yourselves on our account.
Beth whinnied, and there was Charles coming up over the rise. A bulging flour sack rode on his back as though he were Santa Claus. Suddenly self-conscious of what she was doing, Caroline shook her letter from the plate and quickly threaded her hairpin back into place. “Well, Charles?” she asked before he had one foot out of the stirrups.
He swung down from the saddle and tossed the sack into the shelter. “Straw,” he said. “Jacobs spared us some for the tick.”
“Charles! You didn’t ask him for such a thing?”
“Pshaw. You know me better than that. He offered. Said he’d seen the straw on the ground by the wagon and figured we’d have use for some fresh.”
Caroline did not know how to greet this news. She could not fault the man’s generosity, but there seemed to be nothing about them that escaped Jacobs’s notice. If they must be so bared, she wished he would do the courtesy of leaving some things unremarked.
“Man’s got a goo
d piece of land up there,” Charles went on, squatting down to peek inside the bake oven. “I can see why he wants to trade. There’s a good many trees to clear, but none that’ll leave stumps anything like I grubbed out of the Big Woods. Ben and Beth should have an easy time of it.”
“And his team?” Caroline prodded softly.
“Oh, they’re a fine-looking pair. You’d think their coats were woven out of black silk, the way he keeps them brushed. Jacobs is so eager to get Ben and Beth started on his acreage, he offered to stable both teams until the creek goes down.”
Again that keen generosity. It was beginning to rub almost too close to charity. Something in her wanted to object, if only to give herself a moment to hold the decision in her own hands. “It sounds as though it’s more than a fair proposal,” she allowed. “But without Ben and Beth how will we plow our own claim?”
Charles pulled the fading Montgomery County handbill from his pocket and passed it to her. Its corners were rounded with wear. “‘Wide Open Land: One Dollar and a Quarter an Acre,’” he quoted. “Where we’re going I won’t need draft horses to break ground. Anyhow, place like that’ll be flooded with folks coming and going before long. Plenty of opportunity to trade for a bigger team if these two aren’t up to the job. Meantime it’ll save us a week’s worth of feed and then some. Mustangs won’t eat like draft horses. They’ll need less land for grazing, and less timber for a barn. I can’t think of any good reason to refuse.”
“If he cheats us, Charles—”
“I don’t see how he can. A thief has to be able to run if he wants to keep ahead of the law. Man’s got a wife and four boys, not a one of them over eight years old. There’s a spanking new cookstove and a pair of glass windows in the kitchen. That reminds me.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bundle made of a blue-checked napkin. “Mrs. Jacobs sent a fresh baking of light biscuits.”
