At his knee he wore beautiful fringed garters, woven in bold zigzags of green, blue, and black. Had he been wearing them that day in the cabin? Caroline could not recall anything beyond his glare and the movements of his hands.
He did not acknowledge them now, did not so much as look in their direction. Caroline straightened her back and thrust out her chin, determined that he should notice them. He would look her in the eye and see that she was not afraid now. But he did not. He rode by, gesturing with his free hand as he talked with the man riding alongside him. Caroline felt as though she’d been slighted. Was it possible that what had happened inside their cabin did not hold enough significance to stand out in his memory?
She scanned the line of Indians, looking to see whether the first two men to frighten her were here, too—the ones who had come asking for food before Carrie was born. Caroline could recall nothing of them but swaying silver earrings and prominent rib bones. A dozen of the men riding past might fit that description. Some of them looked toward her. Others did not. Caroline recognized none of them.
She turned her attention to the women. Nothing the men had done had frightened her so much as the sounds the Osage women had made last autumn in the early hours before dawn. Those endless, wailing notes had come from their throats. Their voices were so quiet now, it did not seem possible. Each one that passed carved a hollow feeling deeper into Caroline’s center. In all this time, as Caroline longed for her sisters and her mother, Mrs. Scott had been the only woman she’d seen. Now, dozens. Sisters, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, none of them with the slightest link to her.
No, Caroline realized, that was not so. Some of them must be wives or mothers of the men who had come into the cabin. Was there one among them who had received a loaf of cornbread, tied up in a towel with a pine tree embroidered at the corner? Perhaps that towel was folded carefully into one of the bundles tied to the horses, or incorporated into a garment. Caroline studied the women individually as they passed. Their hair, so smooth at the parting it looked wet, was so enticing that Caroline put her hands into her pockets to keep her fingers from fidgeting over the imagined strands. Their clothing was an assemblage of deerskin and calico, in vibrant hues she had not worn since she was a child. Rich yellows, reds, and violets, decorated with beads, fringe, and ribbon work. Through the fabric Caroline could see the shape of their uncorseted breasts against their chests and the way they puddled on the women’s laps. One woman, a little older than herself, lifted her blouse to nurse an infant, and Caroline could not avert her eyes from that bare brown breast. She had never seen a nipple so dark.
What did Charles think, looking at such women? Was he imagining running a hand over that sleek black hair, as Caroline herself was?
“Pa,” Laura said, “get me that little Indian baby.” Caroline turned in surprise. She had never heard such a tone from her daughter. Laura was not asking, she was commanding. Beneath the firmness, her small voice quivered with desire. Coming from a man’s mouth, that timbre would mean avarice, or lust.
“Hush, Laura,” Charles said.
She only spoke faster, her voice rising, “Oh, I want it! I want it! It wants to stay with me. Please, Pa, please!”
Laura did not look at Charles as she begged. Her eyes were fixed on what she wanted. Caroline traced Laura’s gaze and saw an infant tucked into a basket that hung over the flank of a piebald pony. There was nothing to set it apart from the other Osage children, except that it seemed to be looking squarely back at Laura. “I declare, I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Caroline said.
“Hush, Laura,” Charles said again. “The Indian woman wants to keep her baby.”
“Oh, Pa!” Laura said. Her voice cracked. Tears spilled down her face and dripped from her chin.
Caroline did not know what to say. Some of the Indians were looking at them now. What would they think—what might they do—if they heard Laura and understood what she had said? “For shame, Laura,” she chided, and regretted it immediately. Laura had lost all hold of herself. She could hardly breathe enough to sob. Caroline crouched down beside her daughter and asked, softly, “Why on earth do you want an Indian baby, of all things?”
Laura panted and hiccoughed before she managed to answer. “Its eyes are so black,” she whimpered, looking past Caroline through a blur of tears. As if she were no more than coveting a dress for its buttons. It made no sense. Laura knew it, too, and grimaced with the effort of trying again. Caroline wiped Laura’s cheeks with her apron, hoping the touch itself might help her grasp what Laura was trying to convey. It did not. Whatever Laura felt, she did not have the words for it. It was too large, and she was so small she could neither contain it nor release it. All she could do was look up at Caroline with eyes that begged to be understood. Beseeching. Caroline knew the word well enough, but she had never seen it like this. Laura’s misery was so raw, Caroline could feel the throbbing of it herself.
“Why, Laura,” she said, and suddenly she was the one pleading. “You don’t want another baby. We have a baby, our own baby.” The rest of the words caught in her throat. She gestured toward the doorway, where the crown of Carrie’s dark little head was visible above the board.
Laura tried for an instant to agree. Then her face crumpled. “I want the other one, too!”
Her outburst struck Caroline’s face like a wind. She sat back on her heels, too bewildered to try anything else. “Well, I declare!” she said.
“Look at the Indians, Laura,” said Charles. “Look west, and then look east, and see what you see.”
Laura obeyed, and Caroline with her. The line of Indians seemed to rise up out of the grass to the east, then sink back into the west, as though they were as much a feature of the prairie as the creek and the bluffs. When Laura turned back, the black-eyed baby was out of sight. Caroline braced herself for a fresh surge of desperation and protest. Instead Laura accepted the blow as if she were grown. The expression slid from her face until her features were slack. Her shoulders jerked with jagged, silent sobs. However incomprehensible its cause, Laura’s grief was real. The sight of it left Caroline staggered, as though something had been taken from her, too.
Caroline took Laura’s hand and held it until the last of the Indians had passed. She wanted Carrie more, to turn her back to the Osage procession and take the baby up in her arms so that Carrie might feel how vital she was, no matter how many black-eyed Indian babies might pass through the dooryard. But it was Laura who needed her, not Carrie, though Caroline could think of nothing to do but stand by the child until Laura had absorbed the brunt of her loss.