by Sarah Miller
They were warm yet. Caroline untied the corners of the cloth. A moist, yeasty cloud filled her nose. “My land,” Caroline said. She sat slowly down on the spring seat and tapped the golden bottom of one biscuit with her fingernail. The light hollow sound set her mouth swimming.
“There’s just something about them, Caroline,” Charles continued. “I know Ben and Beth’ll pull us anywhere I point them, but this pair seems to want to move. Their feet are as itchy as mine.” The spark in his eyes told her the deal was as good as done, but still he looked at her, asking.
Caroline chalked out her thoughts one last time. Aside from bumping into her pride, Jacobs himself had done nothing to arouse ill ease. That alone was not ample reason to doubt him at his word. Yet it did not seem prudent to entrust their team to a perfect stranger with nothing to back his end of the trade. Caroline drew a breath to speak, and the scent of the warm bread in her lap beckoned to something beyond prudence.
“If you think it’s best for all of us to trade, well then, we’ll trade,” she consented.
Charles slapped his knees and sprang up. “I’ll take Ben and Beth over to Jacobs’s place right this minute. Do them both a world of good to be under a solid roof for a while.”
Laura trotted alongside Charles to Beth’s picket pin. “Where are Ben and Beth going?” she asked.
“They’re going to stay with Mr. Jacobs’s horses in his stable.”
“What about us?” Mary wanted to know.
“We’re going to wait right here until the creek goes down and the mud dries up.”
“I’d rather stay in a stable than any old hut.”
Caroline’s voice whipped out sharp. “Mary!”
Charles interrupted. “Jacobs did offer, Caroline.” He spoke low and easy, the way he talked to the horses—the way she herself spoke when she wanted him to moderate his voice.
That was too much. She gentled her tone, not her sentiment. “We are not going to sleep in the hay like animals. Pa has made us a good shelter right here.”
“Bible-Mary stayed in a stable,” Mary pressed, “and her baby, too.”
Caroline threw up her hands. “Mercy, child!”
Laura pulled at Charles’s coattails. “Did you get to see his ladder, Pa?” she asked.
“What’s that, Half-Pint?”
“Jacob’s ladder.”
Charles’s great laugh rang out across the clearing. As quickly as she had snapped at Mary, Caroline put a hand to her lips. Try as she might to hold her mirth close, she felt her smile unrolling into her cheeks. It was as though Providence were winking at them.
“This Jacobs is a mister,” Mary explained. “They didn’t have misters in Bible times.”
“Pa doesn’t call him mister,” Laura said to her shoes, and Charles laughed again.
Caroline shook her head. Oh, these children and their notions. What a pair they made—Mary, with her thoughts plain and straight as hems, and Laura’s head a tangle of fancies. Between the two of them Caroline could scarcely find her footing.
Laura’s chin brushed her collar. Caroline’s hand slipped down to her throat and her smile turned over. Dear little thing. She looked forlorn as a little brown wren without a song.
“That’s all right, Laura,” Caroline soothed. “I’m pleased to see you can remember your Bible stories as well as Mary.”
Laura peeped up. Caroline nodded at her. Yes, truly, that nod said.
Back came Laura’s smile, and Caroline marveled at the power these children granted her to render them happy or sad.
The creek needed only a few days to calm; the soggy ground lingered for a week. One solid week they were neither wet nor cold nor moving. Every day Charles dug at the mired wheels. Every evening Caroline soaked and scrubbed his mud-stiffened trouser legs in buckets by the fire. For a day or two Caroline reveled in the motionlessness, then the camp blurred like the road—all bean porridge, backache, and lye.
Not one thing in the camp, not the bed, the cookware, nor the spring seat, stood taller than knee high. The wagon’s low cover had only made her imagine she was forever stooping. Out here, her body quickly informed her of the difference. Caroline did not allow herself to complain in words the girls might hear, but her hunched and crouching muscles cursed freely.
By the time Charles declared they would strike camp the following morning, Caroline was ready to welcome road and wagon both. Their drawers and socks were clean, if dingy from the creek water, and she had gotten ahead of the mending. She had nothing else to show for it.
Caroline climbed into the wagon behind Mary and Laura. Beneath her steps the boards rang out solid and even as she straightened the crates and squared the sheets over the straw tick. The clean white walls spread over her, smelling of sun-bleached cloth. Pleased, she took her seat. Up off the ground she felt lofty as a ridgepole.
“Come here, girls,” she said, patting the board beside her, “and let me tie on your sunbonnets. Then we will be all ready to go when Pa comes with the horses.”
Laura spotted Charles and Jacobs first, each leading one black mare down into the hollow. A brindle bulldog trotted along behind. “It’s Pa!” she said.
“Those aren’t Ben and Beth,” Mary said. “Are they, Ma?”
“But that’s Pa,” Laura insisted.
“You are both right,” Caroline answered. Neither was satisfied, and they peered out across the grass.
“You have very nice ponies, Mr. Jacobs,” Mary said politely as the pair approached the falling tongue.
“I’m glad to hear it, Miss Ingalls,” Jacobs said, leading one right up to the wagon box, “because they’re yours now.”
Mary blushed to be addressed so gallantly. Laura dropped from the spring seat and leaned out over the front of the wagon on tiptoe. “Look at our pretty ponies, Ma!” To Charles she said, “What’s their names?” and the little horses tossed their heads and stamped their feet, preening. Charles was right—in the sun the mustangs’ sleek black backs had the sheen of silk.
Caroline sat still, watching Jacobs as Mary and Laura were allowed to finger the velvet noses and rechristen the mustangs Pet and Patty. His wistful smile touched her, made her almost lonesome. Eager as he was to break his land, he had traded away something fine and beautiful to do it, and his face could not hide the loss.
The full measure of the trade did not sink into the girls until Charles and Jacobs began hitching the mustangs to the wagon. For that matter, it was not fully real to Caroline until she saw the men tightening up Ben’s and Beth’s belly bands and drop straps to fit the smaller animals.
“Where are Ben and Beth?” Mary asked.
“They’re staying here to help Mr. Jacobs plow his fields,” Charles said.
Laura whirled around. “Ma?” Her lips quavered.
Caroline set her face and nodded. Mary and Laura looked at each other, then just as quickly looked straight ahead. Caroline did the same. There was nothing she could say. Her throat had closed. She could not watch her daughters’ faces ripple and clench. It stung more to see them so little and so brave than it would to watch them cry.
It was not just the girls that threatened her composure. Ben and Beth were only stock, but she and Charles had had those horses longer than they had had Mary and Laura. Acre after acre, mile upon mile they had been a good, steady team. Caroline was grateful to them in a way she did not know how to express, and now, she realized, she would not have the chance to try. To drive away without giving them so much as a pat goodbye was nearly like leaving home all over again.
Caroline’s eyelids burned. Her hand darted into her pocket and clenched her handkerchief. There had been no tears leaving Pepin. How absurd to think of crying now, over horses. Everywhere she tried to pin her gaze made the burning worse. Then her eyes found the bulldog. He was already squinting up at her, and with some suspicion. His jaw was thrust out, the lower teeth denting into the upper lip like pinking shears poised to snip. The black folds of his nose quivered in Caroline’s dire
ction, then he snorted, twice. He seemed vexed, as though something clouded her smell and would not let him scent her properly. He sniffed instead at Charles’s ankles, then circled the wagon once, twice, three times. On the third pass Caroline heard him wetting on one of the wheels. Then he trotted back to the mustangs’ heels, plunked himself down, and licked his nose.
Jacobs buckled the last mud strap and ran his hand over the mare’s flank before extending it to Charles across the wagon tongue. “Good luck to you,” Jacobs said. He tipped his hat to Caroline and the girls.
“And the same to you,” Charles said.
Jacobs took a single step back, as though trying out the feeling of turning his team over to Charles. Charles waited, respecting the man’s last opportunity to change his mind. All the heavy straps and buckles that harnessed the animals to their wagon did not matter. For as long as Jacobs cared to linger, the mustangs still belonged to him. Slowly he put his hands into his pockets, and Caroline knew his mind had made the break. Only his gaze seemed unable to let the beautiful little creatures go.
Caroline said, “The light biscuits Mrs. Jacobs sent were a treat after so much travel. Please thank her for us.”
Jacobs turned his face gratefully up to her. “I’ll do that, Mrs. Ingalls.” He gave a nod, curt and final, then turned and walked quickly eastward.
The bulldog did not follow. He sat completely unperturbed, watching Jacobs go.
Charles climbed up onto the spring seat and still the dog did not budge. “Charles,” Caroline said.
Charles called out, “You want to whistle for your dog?”
Jacobs half turned, still walking away as he spoke. “No sir. If he wants to follow me he’s welcome. Otherwise, he’s all yours. I couldn’t lure that fella back with a side of beef. He’s taken a shine to those mustangs like you’ve never seen in your life. I guess you could say the three of them were pups together. As far as he’s concerned, those are his ponies. You and I just have the loan of them.”
“That so?” Charles asked.
Jacobs slowed only enough to keep from shouting as the distance between them widened. “That’s a fact. He’ll let me take one pony at a time anywhere I please. But the minute I start hitching up the both of them, he’s waiting under the wagon like a sentry. I promise you’ve never seen the like of it. You won’t want for a better watchdog. Once he sees you’re the one taking care of those mustangs, he’ll guard every stitch you’ve got and treat your children like his own.”
“What’s his name?” Laura called.
“He answers to Jack, but I don’t think he’ll much care what you call him, so long as he’s with his ponies. Good luck,” Jacobs said again over his shoulder.
Charles shrugged and then chirruped to the mustangs. Pet and Patty thrust forward, their small muscled rumps rounding. With a great creak the wagon came unmoored and bumped up to level. Charles turned the horses sharply to keep the rear wheels from sinking into the hollow. Up bounded the bulldog and dodged between the wheels to follow.
“Well I declare,” Caroline said.
For a little while the wagon rolled along flat and smooth in the soft earth, then began the long climb toward the road. Caroline craned into the slope, curious how these small horses would take the load. Where Ben and Beth had only to lean ever forward to make the wagon follow, this team strove ahead, truly pulling. Caroline could see the effort of it flowing under their hides with every step. At the lip of the road the mustangs touched noses, the gesture like a wink between them, as though they knew their labor made them even more beautiful.
Charles laughed.
Caroline blushed. Perhaps she had spoken the thought aloud. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Charles said. “I just feel like laughing. Maybe it’s the horses.”
“They are lovely to watch,” she mused.
“It’s something more than that. Feel them,” he said, handing her the reins.
She took the lines firmly in her hands. In only a few steps the team’s eager rhythm loosened her wrists, traveling past her elbows and into her shoulders. It was like dancing, with the leather straps a line of music running from the horses into her palms. Caroline’s breath lifted, light and airy, into two soft notes of laughter.
Charles grinned. “Feel it?”
Caroline nodded.
“I don’t know when I’ve run across a finer matched pair than these,” Charles said. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know how we’ll tell them apart after the one foals.”
Caroline studied the rounded sides of the mare in front of her—the one Mary named Pet. “She can carry that colt, and the wagon, too?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
She flushed more deeply and gave him half a smile in return. “I’m not pulling the wagon, Charles.”
He laughed again and took the reins.
Eleven
Kansas.
The land seemed to move, to breathe all around them.
It was not empty, not void of trees, as Caroline had assumed from the grand boasts of Charles’s handbill. But the scattered stands of timber did not define the landscape as they did in Wisconsin and Minnesota. They did not even hem the edges of the roads and fields as they had throughout Iowa and Missouri. Here on the prairie they gathered modestly in low-lying areas along creek beds and riverbanks to mark the places where water flowed, fringing Caroline’s view with hints of green.
Just gazing across the prairie made her eyes feel somehow larger, fuller. Caroline had not known they could hold so much space at once. Without trees acting as walls there was not even a ceiling, nothing to fool her eyes into halting at some arbitrary height. It was as though a lid had suddenly lifted from the world. Caroline knew she was not seeing more, not really, but the sensation of it was so very different from taking in a view made up of separate pieces all vying for her attention. Clearer, invigorating. The world ceased to be an assemblage and became one thing, one simple thing.
It sounded different, as well. Always the sounds of the wind had come from above, rustling the leaves and tousling the evergreens. Here it whispered beneath her, so that its voice seemed to rise up from the ground. She could hear great sweeps of it passing across the prairie, lifting and falling like living breath. Here the very shape of the wind was visible. The tall swaying grass made it so, and by looking closely Caroline saw that the wind was not composed of one single movement—it fanned with hundreds of fingers through the tall blades all at once, stroking ruffled, swirling patterns all over the prairie.
Charles was smitten. She had not seen his face so soft with wonder since the day Laura was born, had never in her life seen him so at ease. The constant rushes of motion around them worked a kind of magic on him, appeasing the restlessness he’d always battled. Caroline herself was not sure whether he was driving more leisurely, or if the way the grass seemed to dash alongside the wagon had altered her own sense of speed.
They breasted a roll of prairie, spring green and golden. The sky was sudsy with clouds. Before them, the sun was sinking between the hills like a coin tucked into a pocket. Light melted into the hollows and dales. From where she sat high on the spring seat, Caroline fancied she could feel the very curve of the earth.
This was to be home, she told herself. This was where her child would be born. She hugged her folded hands around the small hill that was her belly. Her own roundness mirrored the abundant swells before her, making her welcome.
All her life she had been accustomed to making do with little if any to spare. We must cut the coat to fit the cloth, her mother had so often said, and by mimicking the careful movements of Ma’s broad hands Caroline had learned well how to stretch every thin scrap of food or fabric or fuel she was given.
On this wide teeming land life could be different. She could smell it in the moist soil, feel it in the way the waving tufts of grass seemed to brush at her heart. Caroline looked again at Charles. He was aglow. Simply aglow. You could not sit beside him without feeling i
t. But it was in her, too. Seeing the spread of this country opened her somehow, broadened her so that it seemed her expectations stretched out not just before her, but all around her in a way she had never felt before nor could quite describe. Perhaps, she thought, this was what Charles had felt all the time back home, this boundless outward reaching. No wonder his fiddle so often sang of lively marches without horizons. The music was the only part of him that could not be constricted by walls and fences and trees.
Belated sympathy for him saturated Caroline’s chest. So much of what she had fallen in love with—what she had taken for vibrancy and zest—had in truth been frustration. Ten years, and she’d only now begun to understand. Perhaps if she were a different kind of woman, one that looked outward more often than inward, she might have recognized it sooner. Were she not carrying this child, this fleck of him inside her, she wondered, would she have been able to grasp it at all? Caroline tucked her bonnet brim aside to study him. Charles was already a fine man, and this land could only change him for the better. Almost against her will, that thought rippled into another: Could he change so fully that she would no longer recognize him? No, she assured herself, that was not possible. This place would not alter him, but give him room to fully unfold himself. Suddenly it dazzled her to imagine how much more of a husband and father he might become, now that he would not always be butting up against the edges of his world like the honeybees that buzzed into their cabin only to be confounded into exhaustion by trying to fly back out through the windowpanes.
The further south they drove, the more the landscape opened, and the further it opened the more deeply Caroline pondered its possibilities. This was a place made for a man as versatile as Charles. Farmer, hunter, and trapper alike could make a living from the land alone. Carpenters would surely be in high demand before long. He could define himself any way he liked, or not at all, as he pleased. If he so chose he could devote himself to any business he had a mind for instead of cobbling together a livelihood piecemeal. Country like this lay as an invitation for Charles to reap as much as he could sow—whether from the land itself or from those who would settle it—with nothing to hamper his reach.