With her own things in her hands, Caroline warmed to her tasks. She melted a kettle full of snow to a simmer and dropped in as much salt as she could pinch between her thumb and the curl of her first finger. The evening had the thin sort of chill that made her hunger for a pot of bean soup. Instead, hasty pudding would have to do.
She had hardly pulled her wooden spoon from the crate before the girls came rushing to help. Caroline met Laura with the broom and set Mary to straightening up the straw tick. Before long they were whinnying in circles around the bed, the broom held between them as though they were a team of ponies. Caroline let them run—they were restive from travel, and hasty pudding would demand more attention than she could share out if she were not to burn their supper.
The bag of cornmeal was chilled to the core. After the texture of the road, Caroline welcomed the even grit sifting through her fingers. Her hands moved in tandem, one sprinkling, one stirring. As the grains melded with the salted water, a sweet, starchy scent reached upward. Sometimes she crouched and sometimes she bent over the kettle, easing the long sinews in her back and calves by turns while the spoon droned its low swirling song against the iron kettle. Slowly the room behind her began to warm, as slowly Mary and Laura’s play wound down into the rhythm of her stirring.
Caroline’s hands were thankful for the movement, and her mind content with the stillness of hovering over the bubbling pot. If a thought began to stray back across Lake Pepin or ahead to the night to come, her tempo faltered and the hasty pudding bubbled and whined, calling her mind to attention.
By the time Charles came in with the carpetbag and another pail of snow, she had lost her misgivings to the kettle’s eddies. The chamber pail was clamped under his arm. He set everything on the hearth to warm and squatted alongside her, tilting his palms to the fire. “Smells fine,” he said.
Caroline smiled. “It’s nearly ready.”
“Ma?” Mary asked. “There’s no table.”
“That’s because we’re camping now,” Charles said. “Come and get your plates, girls, and I’ll show you how it’s done.” Charles paused, hooked his finger through the loop of Mother Ingalls’s jug and lifted it from the box of tin dishes. “What’s this?”
“Maple syrup,” Caroline said. “Your mother brought it. To eat or trade, she said . . .” She trailed off. His palm was circling the jug’s belly.
“Isn’t that just like Ma,” Charles mused. His whiskers met over his crimped lips, and Caroline saw the clutch of his throat. He opened his mouth and drew a breath, holding it for a moment. “Nothing like maple syrup on hot hasty pudding,” he said to Mary and Laura, and pried the cork loose. It was foolish with the sugar maples of Wisconsin still nearly in sight, but the day had been sharp in so many ways that Caroline could not refuse the sweetness.
They ate from their laps, hunched along the edges of two bunks. Caroline savored the feel of the hasty pudding tracing a soothing line down her center. Its warmth gathered steadily in her belly, then seeped outward to press the chill from her skin.
They did not talk, tired as they were and spread along the wall with nothing but the empty room before them. Caroline tried to imagine how it would look with a man sleeping on every shelf. The place would be little better than a pantry stocked with lumberjacks.
Darkness sank down around them before they finished. Laura waited without a fuss for her turn for a drink, only to open her mouth and yawn mightily into the tin cup when Mary passed it to her.
“It’s bedtime for little girls,” Caroline said. Her own eyelids were thick at the rims, her shoulders grainy with fatigue.
Their nightgowns were still cold red bundles in the carpetbag. Caroline draped them over the broomstick handle and propped it before the fire like a fishing pole. She had Laura’s shoes off and her dress half unbuttoned before Mary said, “I need the necessary, Ma.” Caroline nodded toward the chamber pail at the edge of the hearth. Mary shook her head. “The necessary.”
Caroline pinched off a breath. A ring of exasperation burned below it, but it was her own fault. She had not thought to ask before undressing them. “Go and get your wraps, then, and Laura’s,” she said, walking her fingers back up the row of buttons.
Charles pocketed a pair of matches and put on his overcoat. “I’ll light a lantern in front of the outhouse door,” he said, and left them to bundle into their mittens and hoods.
Caroline went down on her knees to help Laura thread her toes into her shoes. “Ma,” Mary said again, this time with a keener edge. Caroline looked up, primed to urge patience, and saw the grimace on her face.
“All right, Mary,” Caroline said. She hoisted Laura to her hip stocking-footed and slung her shawl across the both of them while Mary scurried to open the door.
The necessary was a four-holer, clean enough, but scaled for grown men. Laura and Mary both sat leaning forward with their palms braced against the plank seat, as though they were afraid they might tumble down the latrine pit if they let go. Neither could they reach the strips of newsprint dangling from a quartet of bent sixtypenny nails on the facing wall. They waited for Caroline to finish her own business and hand them their paper.
Laura melted like a rag doll into Caroline’s chest as Caroline fastened Laura’s drawers and lifted her from the wooden bench. She blanketed Laura with the shawl and rested her cheek against Laura’s forehead.
Outside, the glow of the two bunkhouse windows pointed their way back down the path. The little room had warmed since they first walked through the door, and Caroline found that she had warmed toward it as well. There were the girls’ nightgowns toasting nicely by the fire and the smell of hasty pudding to welcome them. Caroline hummed a low-swaying air as she helped Mary and Laura into their nightclothes, for she did not trust her lips with the words:
Wi’ mony a vow and lock’d embrace,
Our parting was fu’ tender,
And pledging aft to meet again,
We tore oursels asunder.
She had just settled them under the covers when Charles brought in the fiddle box. Laura’s drowsy eyes sparkled awake at the sight of it.
“Not tonight, Half-Pint,” Charles said. “I’m tuckered out. But you and Mary can keep the fiddle warm for me all night, can’t you?” he asked as he snugged the case under the corner of the straw tick at their feet.
“Yes, Pa,” they said solemnly. Charles glanced up at Caroline. She needed no explanation. It was not the fiddle he wanted shelter for, but the box itself. She had seen him tuck the remainder of their cash—just over $138 by her figures—beneath its green felt lining.
“Don’t you be plucking the strings with your toes,” he teased, and ruffled their hair goodnight.