They waited almost three hours to cross at Boston Ferry and gave up four dollars from the fiddle box for the privilege. Ferries farther downstream in St. Joseph were apt to charge as much or more, Mrs. Boston said, and their lines were sure to be longer. “Why, by the time you get there you might not even cross today, and those that run their boats on the Sabbath aren’t the sort I’d trust with all my worldly goods.”
That settled that. Charles could not keep himself confined to the wagon long enough for dinner much less another full day, not with Kansas in plain sight. He stood poised along the bank, hardly remembering to eat the wedge of cornbread and molasses Caroline put in his hand. Caroline considered the opposite shore. No pattern, texture, or color marked the Kansas side as distinct from Missouri. Yet there Charles stood, looking as though he were about to step from burlap to brocade. That land called to him, and he could scarcely wait to answer.
Mary did not like it, not from the moment she spotted the ferryman opening up a hatch to shovel water from the hull. She spent the last half hour before their turn to cross scooted in close to Caroline, with Nettie clamped under one arm and her fingers woven into Caroline’s shawl, while Laura asked Charles a dozen questions. What’s this do, Pa? and What’s that? What makes it go, Pa? and Why does it go sideways? Charles named the stob and pulleys and cables for her, and tried to explain how the ferryman slanted the oar board against the current to trick the water into pushing the raft across instead of downstream, but it was more than either of the girls could grasp. For Laura it was enough that her pa understood how it worked. Mary was not comforted.
Caroline ran her hand over Mary’s hair as Mary struggled to make sense of it. Barbs of chapped skin snagged the fine golden strands. On either side of the part, Caroline could see the lines the comb had scored that morning. All of them needed a good soak in the washtub. At home their hair would have been glossy by week’s end. Now it was only dusty and lusterless, the part faintly gray instead of white.
The wagon gave a little jolt and Mary startled. The ferryman was signaling Charles onto the raft. “I don’t want to see anymore,” Mary said. “I want to go back on the straw tick.”
Caroline put her hand to Mary’s knee. “Stay here where I can reach you until we reach the other side.”
“I don’t want to.” She was beginning to flutter with panic as the raft loomed nearer. Caroline pressed more firmly. “Ma? I don’t want to.”
Charles heard and slowed the team. The ferryman waved again. “Move ahead!” he called out.
The wagon stayed in place. Caroline could feel both Charles and the ferryman turn toward her. She must appease the child or scold her, and fast. The quickest would be to let Mary go and burrow under the gray blanket. But this was no two-mile ice crossing. The child had watched the ferry shuttle more than half a dozen wagons safely from shore to shore. She could not let Mary’s fear keep cutting itself larger and larger patterns.
Caroline spoke low and swift. “Mary, we must all learn to do things we don’t want to do. You may be afraid, but you may not let your fear chase you away from what must be done. This is a good sturdy raft, and it will see us to the other side if we all sit still and let the ferryman do his job. Be a brave girl, now, and don’t keep the ferryman waiting.” She gave Mary her handkerchief and faced herself forward.
“All ready?”
Hands folded, she nodded pertly to Charles and ahead they rolled. Mary hiccoughed silently beside her. Each little spasm jabbed at Caroline’s conscience. She had been sure of herself when she spoke, but how could it be the right thing if it left the both of them stinging? Caroline gave her head the tiniest shake. She could not ask herself such things. A question like that had no serviceable answer. If she did not block its path, it would circle her mind, searching for one. So she began to sing:
We are waiting by the river,
We are watching on the shore,
Only waiting for the boatman,
Soon he’ll come to bear us o’er.
All of them perked up at that, even the impatient ferryman, and it cheered Caroline to see it. She matched her tempo to the sharp ringing of the horses’ hooves on the boards, and so she could not help slowing nearly to a stop as the ferryman motioned Charles to drive closer, closer, closer yet to the front of the raft. As the wagon began to tilt toward the center of the river Mary closed her eyes so tight the lashes all but disappeared.
Caroline resisted the urge to pull Mary onto her lap. She had promised the child she was safe where she sat and must not do anything to contradict that. Caroline made herself as still as she had told Mary to be, except for her toes, which slid forward to brace against the wagon box. Laura leaned back and gripped the edge of the spring seat and asked, “Why, Pa?”
“The logs at the ends of the ferry boat are cut at a slant like the blade of my ax,” Charles said. “That makes them fit snug to the riverbank’s slope under the water. The ferryman can’t move us unless we help tip the logs off the bank. Watch him, now.”
Behind them the young man—Mrs. Boston’s son, judging by the look of him—unfastened the mooring rope and sank a pole into the water between the raft and the bank. He pried upward against the hull until with a sandy scrape the ferry came loose. Then with a leisurely swoop he leapt aboard.
“Center them up now,” he instructed Charles.
Ben and Beth found level, and Caroline felt herself lift as though the water had unhitched her from her own weight. “Oh!” she said. Mary and Laura and Charles all looked at her. “It’s so light.” She did not know how else to explain. Her own bed was not half so yielding as this river. There on the hard spring seat her whole body felt as though it were suspended in that soft space between wakefulness and sleep. She leaned back and let the swaying, swishing current rise up through the logs, the wheels, and the boards to rock her.
This was altogether different from tiptoeing across the brittle Mississippi. This river was a living road. It opened itself for them, made room for them to settle into its waters, beckoned them with the tug of its current. This river would not crack behind them.
Just over halfway across the ferryman cranked the windlass and the ferry’s nose swung around to angle downstream. “Back them up a couple of yards now, if you please,” he said to Charles.
With his hand on the brake Charles persuaded the team backward. One step at a time the front of the raft began to edge out of the water. Mary’s breath hissed in and no further. She did not breathe, but she sat there with her hands folded just like Caroline’s, a perfect little statue of obedience and bravery. Pride buoyed Caroline up so light, she was still floating as the ferry docked and the wagon pulled off down the road.
Charles was jubilant. “Kansas!” he said, and that was all for nearly a mile, he was so lost in his own satisfaction. Then his toes began to bounce. Next thing Caroline knew he was whistling “The Campbells Are Coming,” and then he was grinning too broadly to whistle. He slapped his knee and chortled instead.
“Charles?” Caroline said. Her own voice curled toward laughter.
His eyes did not twinkle—they shone. Charles bellowed out: