He hugged Laura up against his side. “We’re across the Mississippi!” he sang out as though they had just now stepped from the ice. “How do you like that, little half-pint of sweet cider half drunk up? Do you like going out west where Indians live?”
Caroline winced. Why must he stoke Laura’s eagerness so? The child would be smoking with curiosity by the time they reached the Territory. If the western tribes were as bold as Concord’s Potawatomis, such eagerness would not bode well. A brush or two with the Chippewas might have nipped Laura’s appetite in the bud, but their cabin had been mercifully free of Indian intruders.
“Yes, Pa!” Laura chimed. “Are we in Indian country now?”
Caroline steered the conversation with a low, steady voice. “‘Indian country’ is a long, long way off. We must drive across Minnesota, and Iowa, and Missouri first,” she said, making the names sound long and foreign. “It will be spring before we see the Kansas line.”
“Oh.” Laura ducked her head and poked at her mush. She looked embarrassed, as though she had done something wrong but did not understand what. Caroline’s appetite faltered. She had not meant to subdue Laura quite so thoroughly. Caroline dismissed her schoolmarm tone and tried again. “The sooner we all finish our breakfast,” she coaxed, “the sooner we will be in Kansas.”
Caroline checked over the room one last time. Nothing showed that they had been there except for the neatly swept floorboards and a few lengths of leftover maple added to the kindling pile. She opened the door to go.
Outside, the air was poised on the edge of freezing—moist, as though the lake had spent the night exhaling through the cracked ice. Charles’s voice boomed out to greet them:
Where the river runs like silver, and the birds they sing so sweet,
I have a cabin, Phyllis, and something good to eat.
Come listen to my story, it will relieve my heart.
So jump into the wagon, and off we will start.
Laura let go of Caroline’s hand and ran ahead to be swung up into the wagon box. Mary waited while Caroline carefully latched the bunkhouse door.
“I don’t like riding in the wagon very much, Ma,” she said. “Can’t we stay and make this house pretty?”
Caroline held out her hand. “Pa will build us a pretty new house in Kansas.”
Mary lingered. She seemed anxious, as though she did not like the feel of disobeying yet could not bring herself to move. Caroline reached into her pocket for the little triangle of brown felt. “See what I’ve found for Nettie to wear? A traveling shawl.”
Caroline helped Mary wrap the fabric over the doll’s shoulders and lap its ends together. “Nettie says thank you,” Mary said. A flush framed her polite smile, as though she were suddenly feverish. “Ma?”
Caroline squatted down and touched her forehead. No warmer than a blush, but Caroline knew something was wrong. Mary had not resisted like this in leaving their own cabin behind. “What is it, Mary?”
Mary did not look at her. Her whisper steamed out in a hot, high-pitched little wail. “Nettie doesn’t like crossing lakes.”
What a splash of relief. Caroline smiled. “You tell Nettie she has nothing to worry about. There are no more lakes to cross.” Mary took her hand and squeezed. A soft little squeeze, yet the depth of reassurance it contained watered Caroline’s eyes. Caroline gave a gentle press back and together they walked to the wagon.
“See Nettie’s new traveling shawl, Pa?” Mary said. “Ma made it.”
“Finest traveling shawl I ever saw,” Charles said, and hoisted Mary over the sideboards. Traveling shawl? he mouthed to Caroline.
She felt her cheeks dimple and put a mittened finger to her lips.
Four o’clock? Or maybe half past, Caroline guessed by the thinning of the light between the evergreens. The way her breasts throbbed made her wish it were later. They were always tender at this stage, but this feeling was something altogether different.
This morning she had left the top two hooks of her busk unfastened, as she sometimes did at home, to spare her breasts the pressure. By midday Caroline had promised herself she would not make that mistake again. Each frozen rut, each icy mudhole that shattered under the wagon’s weight sent an unwelcome burst of heat juddering through them. The daylong embrace of her corset would have been so much the better. For the last hour or more she had sat with her arms folded tight beneath her breasts, bracing against the jolts.
“How far have we come today?” she asked.
“Oh, fifteen, sixteen miles,” Charles said.
It did not seem far enough, when the day before they had managed ten and all that time at the store besides. But Caroline was tired and sore, and with supper yet to fix. Her stomach was just beginning to scratch at itself. “It will take better than an hour to lay a fire and finish the beans,” she said.
“Whoa there,” Charles called to the team.
The wagon jerked to a halt. Caroline winced. Everything was instantly quiet. Behind her the girls’ heads popped up like two rabbits peeking from their burrow.
“In that case, we’ll camp right this minute.” Charles scanned the roadside and shrugged. “It’s as likely a place as any. There’s enough snow, we won’t want for water no matter where we stop.” He turned to Mary and Laura. Their mittens made a dotted line across the back of the spring seat. “Unless you girls think we should keep on?”
“No, Pa!”
Every step across the board floor made Caroline’s numbed toes feel bigger than her shoes. Corners of crates and boxes poked into the aisle, catching at her skirts as she brushed past. Most all of her neat stacks had jiggled into raggedy looking piles.
Caroline did not stop to set them right. She went straight for the kitchen crates and fished out one spongy wedge of dried apple from the sack. The water in her mouth began devouring it before her teeth had bitten it through.
Outside, Charles cleared a place for the fire and hammered the irons into the ground on either side. While he laid the sticks Mary and Laura brought him, Caroline strung the crosspiece and chain for the kettle.
It was an unruly little fire that flashed hot as sunburn on her face and hands, and no further. Her apron was warm to the touch when she tucked her skirt between her knees to stir the beans, but the heat did not penetrate. Everything from her earlobes back was left chill and clammy.
Caroline circled her spoon through the mass of warming beans. The way some of them struck the wood made her wonder if she had waited too long to stop for supper. They had soaked all night and all day, with a parboiling at breakfast and another at noon, and still they were not soft. Some had not even split their skins. Caroline reached for another stick of wood, then changed her mind. The flames already stroked the bottom of the kettle. It was not the fire’s fault, then—it was her own. She had not accounted for how much heat the open air would steal away.