Caroline Read online

  The wheels grated, then skidded in place. Caroline jerked her head up in time to see Laura grab hold of Charles’s shoulder to keep from pitching to the floor.

  “Sit down, Laura,” Charles said, and snapped the reins. The traces went rigid, but the horses’ energy seemed to reach no further than the wagon tongue.

  “Calkins must not be sharp enough,” he muttered as their hooves licked at the ice. “Didn’t expect we’d need to stud their shoes for one crossing.”

  Mary twisted around. “Nettie’s all alone.”

  Caroline held her fast. “Nettie is as safe as we are,” she said, but she heard no comfort in her words. Loosening her grip, Caroline shifted Mary across her lap and motioned Laura in. She wanted them near, but not so close against her that her own unease would touch them. She threaded her arms loosely around their waists, ready to snatch them close if need be, and let her nervous hands smooth their wraps. “Now let’s all be still so Pa can drive.”

  Charles’s mouth was folded so deeply with consternation that the whiskers beneath his lower lip bristled outward. He slackened the horses’ lines so that all their effort would travel straight into the singletree. The strain stood out on the animals’ necks as their legs slanted under them. Watching them, Caroline felt her own sides clench.

  “What’s wrong with the horses?” Laura asked. “Is the wagon too full?”

  “Ben and Beth are strong enough to pull us across,” Caroline assured her, “once they find their footing.” It was the strength of the ice that worried her, with the two horses prying forward like great muscled levers. Beth snorted and stamped a hoof. Caroline winced at the impact. They were a mile from either shore.

  No matter how strong the road might be, the ice would be at its thinnest here in the middle of the lake. It was one thing to pass steadily across the surface—quite another to linger prodding at this frailest point. Could not a deft stroke, like the blows she delivered to the rain barrel’s thick winter skin, open a split down the center?

  Caroline looked over the girls in their hoods and mittens and flannels. Together they were lighter than a single sack of flour, but the drag of so much sodden clothing would carry them straight under if the wagon broke through. Her eyes traced the cinched canvas brow overhead. They were hardly better off than kittens in a gunny sack.

  If the wagon did not budge in the time it took to pray Psalm 121, Caroline decided, she would lift the girls down and lead them across on foot. Even if she had to carry Laura, the three of them could slip over the mile of ice light as mayflies, leaving the team’s burden nearly two hundred pounds the lighter.

  Caroline prayed, and still the wheels had not moved. Nor could she. The psalm had given her imagination time to extend beyond the relief of reaching solid ground—to turning, safely hand in hand, to face Charles stranded on the lake behind them. What could she do for him or their daughters, clutching their small mittens on the opposite bank of the Mississippi, if the wagon rolled forward and the ice opened—

  With a rasp, one metal horseshoe bit into the surface. Caroline held her breath for the collapse. Instead, a muscled jolt inched the wagon ahead. She felt herself leaning toward the team, as if her own scant momentum could coax them forward.

  Once more the iron tires crackled over the ice, this time the sound as welcome as the snap of a tinderbox. Laura clapped her hands and cheered the horses until the wagon slanted up onto the Minnesota bank. Mary slipped out of Caroline’s lap and burrowed under the spring seat to scoop up Nettie. “I won’t leave you alone again,” Caroline heard her promise the doll.

  “Those horseshoes make pretty good ice skates,” Charles proclaimed, “but I don’t believe I’d like to have a pair nailed to my feet.” Mary and Laura giggled. They could not hear the chagrin behind the boom in his voice. He would not say it had been his fault for stopping the wagon, but Caroline knew he would not be dousing such a situation with a joke unless he’d felt a scorch of responsibility.

  “Go on with Mary,” Caroline said, nudging Laura over the seat. Cold air rushed silently in and out of her chest. She was shaking, now that it was over. Relief saturated her, yet there was no lightness in it. Instead she was salted down with regret that she should be so thankful to put Wisconsin behind them.

  “Good thing Ben and Beth pulled through,” Charles said, cheerful again. Caroline had not gained enough control over her breath to groan at his pun. “Would have been a job to portage all this equipment across on foot.”

  Something in his voice slipped between her tremors and turned her head. “Charles?” she asked.

  He cocked a smile at her, mouth half–turned up.

  One look at him and Caroline did not need to ask whether he’d thought about the ice. Not a wisp of fear so much as brushed his whiskers.

  Perhaps the threat she’d felt had only been another queer spell, like she’d had in the store. It was as though a single droplet of any one sensation had the power to soak her through. The notion left her lightheaded, as if she had no traction on the world. Caroline pulled her shawl across the points of her shoulders and elbows, wishing for a sturdier veneer.

  Charles’s brow had begun to furrow. He was still waiting for her to speak. “We should make camp soon,” she said, “if supper is to be ready before dark.”

  “The Richardses said there’d be a place along the shore just north of the crossing,” he said. “Little spot the lumber men use in season. It’s out of the way a mile or so, but I figure you and the girls would rather spend our first night out under a roof instead of around a campfire.”

  A house. The very thought lifted Caroline’s cheeks and smoothed her forehead. “Yes, Charles,” she said. “In weather like this it will be a mercy to have one more night of shelter.”

  Five

  It was a bunkhouse, with beds lining the walls like shelves. Dry kindling by the hearth, a stubbled broom. Nothing more.

  “Looks like you won’t have to cook out tonight, Caroline,” Charles said.

  Caroline’s lips smiled, but her cheeks did not follow. Already she felt herself shrinking from the starkness confronting her. The wagon was cramped and chill, but compared to this empty room it was intensely their own.

  Mary snugged Nettie into the fold of her elbow. “It isn’t very nice inside,” she ventured.

  “It will keep us warm and dry,” Caroline said, speaking as much to herself as to Mary, “and that is plenty to be thankful for.” She eyed the narrow bunks.

  “I’ll bring the big straw tick in for you and the girls,” Charles said. “Best if I sleep out with the wagon and team.”

  She could not allow herself to consider how it might feel to sleep in this place without him—not if she was to get supper before dark. Caroline swallowed twice to spread the muscles in her throat. “And the two crates of kitchen things, please, Charles.”

  First he brought her two pails of snow and an armload of weathered-looking firewood from the pile outside the door—mostly pine, with some maple mixed in. She set the hardwood aside and laid a modest cookfire with the rest. The flames blazed up merrily, the warmth burnishing her cheeks.

  “We will need more hardwood to bank the fire for the night,” Caroline said when he came in with the crates. “The pine hasn’t enough pitch left to burn through until morning.” She hated to ask him after all he had done this day, but already the dry pine was burning too hot and fast to trust with a pan of cornbread. Charles only nodded and buttoned up his overcoat.

  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 t
he 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.

  While the girls cuddled down to sleep, Caroline smoothed the leftover hasty pudding into a bread pan and covered it with a dishcloth to set up overnight. For breakfast there would be the fried mush, and bacon; the rest of the cold white bread and molasses would serve for next day’s dinner.

  Crouching by the hearth, she heated water in the dishpan and wiped the dishes clean. Into the kettle she quietly ladled a half dozen scoops of dry beans, then covered them with snowmelt and put the mixture to the back of the fireplace to soak.

  She was unpinning her hair when Charles came in to pocket the two flatirons she had laid on the hearth to warm for him. “Asleep already?” he whispered, pointing with his whiskers toward the girls.

  Caroline nodded.

  “Good. Come on outside. I want you to learn how to load that Colt.”

  A wrinkle traveled up her spine. Caroline gave herself a moment to mute the sensation against her shawl, then followed him out.

  The wooden box lay open beside a lantern on the wagon tongue. Compartments lined with red felt surrounded the revolver and its accoutrements. “It’s an 1860 army issue—the same as your brother Joseph would have carried at Shiloh,” Charles told her, as though she might be afraid of it. She was not frightened of the thing itself; she was only afraid of needing it.

  “It’s not so much different from the rifle. Tip the powder flask to measure out a charge, then pour the powder into the open chamber on the right. Drop a bullet in on top. No patch cloth. Last comes the cap.” He pinched a bit of brass shaped like a tiny dented button from a tin with a green paper label. “This fits over the percussion nipple at the back of the chamber. Now watch.” Charles pulled the hammer to half cock and twisted the cylinder so that the loaded chamber rested above the trigger. Then as if husking an ear of corn, he pried a lever loose from the
underside of the barrel and bent it back until it clicked. “This tamps down the loaded charge in place of a ramrod,” he said. “And that’s all there is to it.”

  Charles let the hammer down softly before handing her the pistol. Caroline stripped off her mittens and tucked them under one arm. The revolver was cold in the places he had not touched, and heavy as the family Bible. “Go ahead,” Charles said.

  She could not push the latch of the loading lever straight down as Charles had done; it bit into the tips of her fingers until she rotated her grip and pulled it free of the catch from below. “That’s fine,” Charles said when she finished. “You’ll need two hands to fire it—hold your arms out straight ahead and lace your fingers around the stock, the way you do to pray.” Caroline’s tongue rose to object to the juxtaposition, then halted. If ever she had cause to fire this gun, there would indeed be a prayer behind it.

  “That’s right,” Charles said, “steady and even, just like that. We’ll only keep five of the chambers loaded with caps while we’re traveling. Safer that way. Just remember to twist a loaded chamber up to the barrel as you cock it.”

  Caroline cupped her elbows beneath her shawl as he packed the pistol away again and climbed up over the sideboards. “It’ll ride up here, under the seat,” Charles said. “I’ll still use the rifle for hunting. With any luck that’s the last time we’ll need to open the box.” He sat facing her with his hands laced between his knees.

  She handed him the lantern. In the instant before he blew it out, the glow framed him in a halo of canvas. Firelight from the bunkhouse windows dusted over them. “Will you be warm enough?” she asked.

  He patted his coat pockets. “Be snug as a tent in here with the canvas cinched down at both ends and these flatirons all to myself.” His eyes slid down the curving length of her braid. Caroline felt the pinking of her cheeks and lifted her shawl over her head. She could not let him put his hands to her hair. There was neither time nor place for what would surely follow.