Father Ingalls tipped his hat and stepped from sight. Caroline craned forward, but the wagon’s canvas bonnet beveled out overhead, blocking her view. They had already said goodbye, Caroline reminded herself as she straightened her shawl and folded her hands into her lap. They were her mother’s hands, nearly as broad as a man’s. Like her mother, she kept them always folded, the long fingers tucked neatly into her palms.
Charles released the brake lever and the wheels hitched forward. The snap of movement loosed Caroline’s grip on herself. A sob juddered halfway up her throat before she could clasp it back.
Charles looked at her, the tears in his eyes only adding a luster to his excitement. Caroline tightened her cheeks to echo his smile as best she could.
Those she could not bear to leave sat close around her, yet as she looked backward through the keyhole of canvas at the blur of waving hands, Caroline could not help but wonder whether Charles and the girls would be enough.
Four
The town was muted with snow. A steamy chill hung in the air, as though the drifts were exhaling. Charles drove past McInerney’s and the Prussian dry-goods shops to the Richardses’s storefront. “Always one of them willing to strike a bargain,” Charles said. Caroline did not answer. Her back was striped with aches. The wagon rolled to a stop, and her body swayed with it. All the seven miles down into town she had held herself taut against the slope of the land. Now the leveling of the road left her unmoored, as though the steadying pull of the little cabin could no longer reach her.
Caroline held Laura on her hip and Mary by the hand as Charles and the two younger Richards brothers piled provisions onto the counter. To the food Charles added painted canvas tarpaulins, a ten-gallon water keg, and a pair of collapsible gutta-percha buckets. “Need more powder and caps, and lead for shot, too,” he said.
“What kind of firearms you carrying?” Horace Richards asked.
“Rifle,” Charles answered.
“That old single-shot muzzle-loader?” Linus Richards said.
Charles bristled. “One shot’s always been plenty for me.”
Linus Richards chuckled and put up his hands. “I’ll be the last one to impugn your aim, Ingalls. Nobody trades more bear pelts here than you do.” He glanced at Caroline and the children and dropped his voice only low enough to make her cock her ear toward the men. “Stalking a wild animal’s one thing—a mounted brave with a full quiver and tomahawk besides is quite another. All I’m saying is, I wouldn’t take my little ones into the Indian Territory without a decent pistol to level the field.”
Caroline felt Mary’s grip tighten as Horace Richards pulled two snub-nosed guns from under the counter. “We’ve got Colt army-model percussion revolvers and one brand-new Smith and Wesson Model Three top-break cartridge revolver.”
Dry at the mouth, Caroline put Laura down and guided both girls toward the row of candy jars. “You may each choose a penny’s worth,” she said. The girls looked up at her, their astonished eyes like blue china buttons. “Go ahead. You’re big enough to choose for yourselves. Any one you like.”
From a neighboring shelf, Caroline gathered castor oil, ipecac, paregoric, rhubarb, and magnesia while the men haggled and the girls pored over the sweets. “Let’s get two different flavors,” she heard Mary tell Laura. “I’ll give you half of my stick, and you give me half of yours. Then we’ll both have two kinds of candy.”
Caroline smiled. “That’s my smart girl,” she said.
Elisha Richards stood at the till with his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his vest and his nails scratching beneath them as though he were tallying the Ingallses’s account against his flanks. With every undulation of his fingers, the sum mounted in Caroline’s mind, until her head seemed to teeter on her neck. The expense was well within their reach, yet she could not keep hold of the numbers any more than she could take her eyes from the storekeeper’s vest. It was cut from a rust-colored paisley that swirled her senses in a way she could not describe. Charles began to count one bill after another into Elisha Richards’s palm, peeling the wedge of cash like an onion, and the movement of gray-green against the paisley field made the room roll around her.
It struck her that her body was behaving as though she could taste that vest and feel the pattern augering into her stomach. Caroline balked at the senselessness of it; she would not let such a thing as a swath of cloth take command of her. She set her jaw, refusing to acknowledge the saliva pooling under her tongue, but the queasiness that had overcome her before the stove was already at her throat. Senseless or not, she must put something between her eyes and her stomach.
“Mary, Laura, it’s time for dinner.” They half turned, reluctant to obey. She knew they wanted to stand at the counter to see their two sticks of candy paid for, but that could not be helped. It did not matter now what she looked at. Another minute and she would be sick where she stood. She swept forward and took them by the wrists. “Come, girls. Pa will bring your sweets.”
Out in the wagon, she unwrapped the bundle of bread and plunged her teeth into a slice as the girls gawked at her. The first bite worked quick as a sponge. Her stomach grumbled for more. It was not garish smells or sights that set her senses raving, Caroline realized as she parceled out portions of bread and molasses to Mary and Laura, but hunger. She would have to guard against that on the road.
Cold stiffened the molasses so that it clung to their teeth in thin strands. Laura slipped a fingernail underneath a brown festoon and tried to pry it loose from her slice.
“Laura,” Mary said with a shake of her head.
“It looks like lace,” Laura protested. “It’s too pretty to eat.”
Laura’s scolding melted on Caroline’s tongue. They had never noticed before the care she took drizzling the molasses. Perhaps for a treat she would try spelling out their names. She imagined her wrist guiding the graceful flow of the syrup, the smiles of her daughters as they watched their names drawn out in curls of sweetness. It was the kind of frivolity her own mother could never spare time nor money for, yet practical, too—it was high time both of them began learning their letters.
“Ma,” Mary insisted, pointing at Laura. “Look.”
Caroline’s hand blanketed Mary’s. “It’s very rude to point,” she reminded. “Now finish your dinner nicely, girls, so you may have your candy,” she said.
The back of the wagon jolted under a hundredweight of flour. “All stocked up and cash to spare,” Charles announced. “Where are all those empty sacks, Caroline?” he asked, shifting through the crates and bundles.
“Leave that to me, Charles,” Caroline said. “You must have something to eat before loading all those provisions.”