Had she known how many Indians she would see through those window panes, Caroline thought as she glanced toward the Indian trail for the dozenth time that day, she might have quelled her delight. She tried to tell herself that it was only the novelty of looking through the glass that made her more aware of the passing barebacked riders, but that was as good as a lie. She told herself that the way they rode, without ever so much as glancing askance at the cabin, there was nothing to worry over. But that did not feel much like the truth, either. They might as well have turned their heads away entirely, they pointed their eyes so resolutely forward. I refuse to see you, that posture proclaimed.
It seemed an indecent thing to envy an Indian, but Caroline did. No matter how she tried, she could not replicate their willful indifference. Every Osage on that trail claimed her attention. And Jack—Jack plain hated to see an Indian pass. All day long he snarled and barked and scrabbled against his chain, until the bare ground was scored with slashes. Charles had to nearly drag the bulldog in for his dinner, he was so reluctant to leave the trail unguarded.
“I can’t say I blame him,” Caroline said. “I declare, Indians are getting so thick around here that I can’t look up without seeing one.”
Charles leaned down at the window to survey the trail. It ran almost through the dooryard before angling away to the northeast. “I wouldn’t have built the house so close if I’d known it’s a highroad. Looked like nobody’d ridden it in months when we got here. They must not use it, spring and summer.”
Caroline would not say that she did not mind. But there was no use in complaining, either. “That can’t be helped now,” she said. She put a bowl of jackrabbit vitals on the floor for Jack, then dredged the remaining pieces with flour, salt, and pepper. The lard in the skillet had begun to crackle. She turned, lifting the plate of meat, and nearly dropped it.
An Indian stood in the doorway. “Goodness,” she gasped. Jack looked up from his bowl and lunged. His jowls were bloodied with jackrabbit, his teeth bared. Charles leapt forward and snatched the dog back by the collar. The Indian had not moved one step, but Caroline saw him draw himself up, his chin and chest both lifting in a kind of internal backing away. “Ho-wah,” he said.
“How!” Charles answered.
The Indian seemed to smother a smirk at Charles’s reply and stepped into the house. He was tall, taller yet than Charles, so that he reached up to gently bend back the feathers on his scalp lock as he crossed the threshold. He walked the length of the house and squatted down beside the fire as though he’d been invited. Charles pulled his belt from its loops and used it to buckle Jack to the bedpost by his collar. Then Charles squatted down alongside the hearth. The two men said nothing. Behind them, the melted lard gave a pop. Mary and Laura sat on their little bed with their backs against the wall, watching.
Caroline stood completely still for a moment before she realized that she was not frightened. She was not entirely at ease, but she was not afraid. In fact, she thought, having the Indian in the house was not so very different from sitting down to milk a new cow for the first time. Caroline had the same sense now of being nominally in charge and at the same time acutely aware of her own physical disadvantage. If the man poised on her hearth had a mind to, he could spring up and harm any one of them. Yet if he had a mind to, he gave no indication of it. The silence between Charles and the Indian seemed almost amicable, and gradually Caroline understood that if she did not carry on with her task, her hesitation would tip their tentative accord out of balance.
So she picked up the plate and a fork and strode to the fire. One by one she laid the raw pieces of rabbit into the hot fat. Everyone watched. They listened to the frying meat bubble and snap. They watched her turn each piece up golden brown and dish a helping onto five plates. She gave one to Charles and one to the Indian. She handed Mary and Laura their portions, as though they ate dinner on their bed every day of the week. Then Caroline picked up Carrie from the big bed and held the baby in her lap while she ate one-handed at the table. No one spoke.
When Charles finished eating, he slowly unkinked his legs and took his pipe and a new paper of tobacco down from the mantel shelf. He filled his pipe and offered the packet to the Indian, who did the same. Thin tendrils of smoke rose up from their two pipes. Caroline wished the smoke might spell out the men’s thoughts. They puffed at the tobacco until the rafters were hazy and their pipes were empty. Then the Indian spoke.
Caroline tilted her head in surprise. He sounded nothing like the two men who had come into the house before. These sounds were so smooth and languorous, they seemed a single long word. French? she wondered.
Charles shook his head. “No speak,” he replied.
The Indian lifted a hand in acknowledgment, and no more was said. After a moment, he stood and walked out the door. Jack pulled against the belt that held him to the bedpost, straining forward with his nose and teeth, but he did not growl.
“My goodness gracious,” Caroline said. She stroked Carrie’s back again and again, as though it were the baby who wanted comforting.
“That Indian was no common trash,” Charles remarked.
Caroline looked around the cabin. Her dredging boxes of flour and salt and pepper all sat on the table in plain sight. The door to the provisions cupboard stood partway open, revealing its cache of bulging sacks and crates. The Indian had not peered inside, but Caroline had no reason to suppose he had not seen them. “Let Indians keep themselves to themselves,” she said, “and we will do the same.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Charles said. “That Indian was perfectly friendly. And their camps down in the bluffs are peaceable enough. If we treat them well and watch Jack, we won’t have any trouble.”
Caroline agreed, but she did not say so. She did not know how to explain to Charles how she could be thankful they were friendly and still not want them inside her house. It did not seem a thing that should need explaining.
“Ma, Baby Carrie’s hungry.”
Caroline did not argue. Mary knew. She had set to learning her baby sister’s signals by rote and could decipher them nearly as well as if Carrie were her own. This once, Caroline was grateful for the interruption. Her fingertips ached from pushing the needle through the rabbit skins. Mary and Laura could hardly wait for their caps to be finished. Each time Caroline laid aside her sewing, they came to kneel beside the work basket and stroke the fur. She herself favored the beaver pelts. Their rich brown underfur was deeper than the lushest velvet; you might sink a finger to the first knuckle into its improbable softness. But those pelts, along with the mink and wolf, they could not afford to keep—not if they were to have a plow and seeds for planting.
Charles had done well, so early in the season. The stack of pelts reached nearly to Laura’s knees. If Charles’s traps kept yielding this way, all the cash in the fiddle case might go toward proving up on the claim.
Caroline stood and stretched and went to stand a minute in the doorway. The air was pleasantly brisk, yet lacked the familiar scent of leaves bronzing in the sun. Autumn here had a golden, grassy smell, dry and soft, like a haymow. She reached for her shawl—its red the color of a sugar maple at full blaze—and pulled it comfortably about her shoulders. This was the welcome stretch of weather that turned the fireplace into a boon companion. Soon enough it would become a ravenous mouth to feed. For now, though, it demanded little in return for the comfort it gave.
Behind her, the baby fussed. Caroline let her. Carrie had nearly grown out of her newborn cry, and Caroline enjoyed listening for the little voice that was beginning to emerge between the growls and shrills. Next autumn there would be no leisure, not with corn and sod potatoes to pick, and Carrie to mind. Next autumn, Carrie would be walking.
Caroline tucked her pinky into the corner of Carrie’s mouth and gently broke the baby’s grip on her nipple. The little mouth yawned as Caroline eased her from the crook of one elbow to another.
At the sound of footsteps Caroline looked up, expecting Charles, anticipating his smile at the sight of her in her rocking chair, the way his eyes would sweep across her face, down her neck and open bodice, to Carrie.
“Gracious!” she cried.
Two brown men stood in the doorway. They headed straight toward the locked cupboard as though the smell of flour and lard had lured them in off the prairie. Quickly Caroline buttoned up. Her fingers fumbled, mismatching the holes. They must not see the key on its string.
The baby was only half-fed. She whimpered and squirmed. This day of all days, her appetite chose to be impatient. Caroline put her finger in Carrie’s mouth. Carrie sucked and bawled, and Caroline felt the prickle of her milk letting down. Her cheeks flared as the stain warmed the calico of her bodice. Furious with shame, she slipped an arm between herself and the baby, clamping the heel of her hand against her breast to hold the leak steady.
The injustice of it was scathing—that she must withhold food from one child to protect the provisions for the others.
At least the children were all within sight this time, within reach, even. The girls were at her sides, Mary with her rag doll—Caroline did not know how or when she had gotten it—and Laura clutching her half-finished fur cap. She heard a quick hiss of pain from Laura and knew that the needle she had left poised in a seam had stabbed her daughter’s palm. Laura did not make another sound.
One Indian, the one wearing a dingy green calico shirt above buckskin leggings, lifted the corner of the dishtowel from the pan of cornbread on the table. Green Shirt motioned to the other man, who came over and snatched the towel away so sharply it cracked against the air. He laid it out and tied the loaf of cornbread in it, to take. The Indian’s dusty hands snagged the fabric as he knotted it to his belt.
Caroline swallowed hard. Mother Ingalls had given her that towel, its corner embroidered with a pine tree that had once been green. It was so threadbare now it was good for nothing more than screening leftovers from the flies, but she did not want to let it go this way. If that is the most valuable thing they take, she promised herself.
Caroline did not finish the thought. As she watched their eyes probed every niche of the house. She saw them study the mantel shelf, the windowsills. Green Shirt squatted down to reach into her work basket. Mary and Laura skittered backward. One by one he inspected every one of her crochet hooks and knitting needles. Looking for the key, Caroline thought, and hugged Carrie closer. They had not seen it on her neck, she realized. If they were looking for it, it was because they did not know where it was.
Before she could feel any relief, Green Shirt made an exclamation and held up a triumphant hand. Caroline jolted at the sight. The key to her trunk.
“Oh,” she said without meaning to. The Indians’ faces lit up as her hand flew to her lips. Without a word they set upon the lock of the provisions cupboard.
The key would not fit. The shaft was round instead of flat. The tip would not reach far enough inside to give them even the satisfaction of a hopeful jiggle. Towel Thief smacked the padlock so hard the hasp rang out. Green Shirt made a sound that sounded like swearing. Could they swear, Caroline heard herself wondering somewhere far inside her mind, in another language, against a heathen god?
Green Shirt turned, the key pinched in his fingers. Looking for the hole that it would fit into. He raised his eyebrows at her, and his wrist pivoted in the air. Back and forth, back and forth. A question.
If she so much as exhaled in the direction of her trunk, he would go to it. Caroline lifted her chin to point her eyes straight over his head. I will bake them a cake, she thought. A cake with white flour and sugar, and a roast prairie hen apiece if only they will not open that trunk. Both men turned, following her gaze. She saw their attention move to the empty pegs over the door, and she watched their lips spread wide as they understood that Charles’s rifle was not in the house. Caroline shivered as though a bead of hot lead were rolling down the back of her neck. They might take anything they wanted now.
Green Shirt gave his wrist a violent flick. The key flew, glanced off the basket, and clattered against the toes of Mary’s shoes. Mary yelped and ducked behind the rocker. Carrie screeched, and Caroline’s stomach chilled with the realization that her grip on the baby had tightened so hard, she could feel Carrie’s thigh bone.
One of them—Towel Thief—picked up the pile of pelts.
No. Caroline was on her feet. She did not step toward them, did not speak, only let the force of the thought vault her out of the chair and billow from her skin like steam until it filled the room.
Carrie stopped crying. The men stopped moving. They spoke in what sounded like half words. Towel Thief shook his head. Green Shirt struck his palm with the side of one hand, swiping as though he were brushing away an insect. Towel Thief glowered. Green Shirt jabbed a finger in Caroline’s direction. The entire core of Caroline’s body recoiled as he spoke, his hands making motions she did not want to interpret. Towel Thief dropped the furs in a heap and stalked out the door.
“All’s well that ends well,” Charles said when she told him what had nearly happened.
No, Caroline thought, it is not. She could not say so. If she opened her mouth, she would cry. Her every muscle was fixed with the task of holding the corners of her lips steady. The very sight of a man in green calico, even her husband, wearing a bright, clean shirt she had made with her own hands, made her almost dizzy. The only scrap of consolation was the absence of Charles’s usual blitheness. But the resignation Caroline heard in his voice instead was no comfort. The Indians would come and go as they pleased. Charles would do nothing about it, because there was nothing to be done.
Caroline tried to imagine the scene as it would appear to Charles: the Indians had not hurt her, had not even touched her, nor made off with anything of value. On the surface the encounter did not sound considerably different from the first two men who had come into the house months ago.
But it was. She had been wrong to be afraid of those first men. Caroline could see that now. Everything that had frightened her that day had risen out of her own dread of what they might do, not from anything they had actually done. Her fear had blotted out the subtle expressions and gestures that ought to have signaled civility, and so she had not understood that they were asking, not demanding. Green Shirt and Towel Thief’s behavior had been crude enough to violate not only her own standards but the Osages’ customs as well. There was no one thing she could point to as proof, yet Caroline was certain. All the courtesy she had been incapable of understanding before was entirely absent in them.
“If you had seen the way they looked at everything,” Caroline began. Charles’s face stopped her. All the sympathy she had wanted so desperately after her first encounter with the Osages was there in his eyes and mouth. It was so genuine, it hurt, and all the more because it was misplaced.
He believed he understood: his wife was afraid of Indians, the way a child fears the dark, and she had been left alone in the dark.
It was as if he had no concept of malice, Caroline marveled. He would trust anything, man or beast, until it gave him reason not to. And, she thought with a sudden gust of understanding, he takes for granted that the same is true of the Osages. No wonder then, that he could leave her alone, that he was so imperturbed by the Indians’ intrusions. Charles knew that she and the girls would do nothing to provoke them, and so in his mind they were safe. The realization made her woozy. Perhaps if he had gone to war, Caroline thought, he would know better. Charles Ingalls was something out of a world that no longer existed—or a better one yet to come. She felt the flicker of a smile even as her breath hitched. More often than not, that was one of the things she loved best in him.
Charles simply could not comprehend that she was at their mercy each time an Osage walked into the house. One Indian was like another to him. Unless there were weapons drawn Charles would never feel what she had felt, half-unbuttoned, with the baby clutched in one arm and the key all but burning a hole through her corset as those men pointed at her. Caroline tasted acid in her throat, remembering.
If she did not put that scene out of her thoughts, it would score her mind with ruts too deep to pull herself out of. Caroline closed her eyes and made a picture of nothing—only the softly moving darkness behind her eyelids.
She could banish the image, and that was all. The residue of everything she had felt remained, thick and unfamiliar in her chest. A sort of anger without heat, without focus. She did not want to aim it at Charles, but there was nowhere else for it.
Charles sensed it. He spoke and moved carefully, as though she’d been bruised and he dared not jostle her. The instant Carrie began to flail and bleat after her bedtime feed, he picked her up, eager to spare Caroline anything that might further trouble her.
He bounced and walked and patted. Tickled the baby, sang to her. Carrie was tired to a frazzle. Caroline could hear it in the breathy whine before each cry. Hweh, hweh, Carrie whimpered. Hweeeh-heh.
Caroline closed her eyes, touched her fingertips to her forehead, rocked in her chair. Still, the baby fussed. Leave them be, Caroline urged herself. Let him find his own way. But Carrie. Carrie could not say more plainly what she wanted, any more than Caroline could pretend not to understand.
“She can’t be hungry,” Charles protested as Caroline rose from the rocker. “And she’s bone dry.” If he had seen the thumb-shaped bruise on Carrie’s thigh when he diapered her, he had said nothing of it.
Caroline held out her arms. Charles seemed to shrug as he lifted Carrie into them.
Caroline nestled Carrie into the space between her breasts, fitting the little round cheek into her palm. The baby’s ear lay over her heart. Caroline enfolded herself around her daughter, so that every soft part of her body pressed gently against Carrie’s skin. “Shhhhhhhh,” she whispered, holding almost still. “Shhhhh.” Caroline began to sway, more gently than a breeze. The baby shuddered, panted, quieted. Out of the corner of her eye Caroline saw Charles’s expression, his half smile betraying a medley of admiration and hurt. Caroline leaned down to nuzzle her own cheek against Carrie’s hair and felt at once how the singular fit of their bodies excluded him. She was sorry for Charles, yet could not bring herself to separate herself enough from Carrie to open their tight circle to him. Selfish, she thought, selfish and spiteful, and closed her eyes so that she would not see if she had pained Charles further.
Into the long silence came the snap of the fiddle box’s clasps. The bow glided through rosin, then there were the hollow woody plunks of the fiddle itself being lifted from the felt and into its place beneath Charles’s chin. The bow sighed tentatively across the strings, then sang out.
“Blue Juniata.”
Oh, Charles, Caroline thought, helpless. And there she was again, back at the cornhusking dance when Charles had looked out across his fiddle strings and seen that she was looking back at him—and only him. He’d seen her face and known that his own furtive, hopeful gazes had not been wasted. Caroline could still hear the laughter, the thrum of dancing feet swirling around her. She remembered the blush blooming on her cheeks and her pulse tingling in her fingers and toes. And his eyes, those twinkling, teasing blue eyes that were known on both banks of the Oconomowoc—how those eyes had shone. They might well have said their marriage vows right then and there, Caroline had thought ever after.
The notes could just as well have been his hands, the way the music touched her. He was sorry. He could not have made it plainer, nor more sincere, with his own voice. Likely he did not know quite what he was apologizing for, Caroline thought. It did not matter to Charles. He would not hold to anything if it meant he could not also have her.
Caroline let out a little puff of air, the tiniest signal of defeat, and began to sing:
Wild roved an Indian maid, bright Alfarata,
Where flow the waters of the blue Juniata.
Strong and true my arrows are, in my painted quiver,
Swift goes my light canoe adown the rapid river.
She sang it his way, adopting all the trifling mistakes she had so boldly chided him for that first time she heard him sing it—girl became maid, and snowy turned to sunny—every verse, just as he had written it into the little poetry booklet that even now was locked safely inside her trunk.
Her words met his music, and the two joined to form one seamless sound.