“When will we have dinner, Ma?” Laura wondered again. She had been promised dumplings and gravy, and though breakfast still filled her belly, her mind was already hungry with the thought.
“Not until after Pa comes back,” Caroline answered. She laid her dish towel over the iron spider to keep the flies from the drippings. The plates were wiped and the camp tidied, and still he had not returned. A pot filled with the remains of the goose simmered at the edge of the fire.
Caroline brushed her hands on her apron. The calico was tacky with the week’s grime. More than a week. Here it was already Tuesday—another washing day come and gone—and she could not leave the girls alone with the fire to haul water for laundry. And there would be no mending, for her work basket was down in the wagon. There was not a lick of work she could do until Charles returned. Yet she could not sit idle. If she did not busy her hands somehow, her thoughts would begin to chase in circles. Charles had not been gone long, not really, but he had already taken more than enough time to ride half a mile and see a horse.
Beth nickered and tugged at her picket pin. Caroline went to her and reached up to rub the long white blaze on her forehead. “Easy now, Beth,” she said. “They’ll come back. Your Ben and my Charles, they always come back.” Beth shook her head, tinkling the iron ring on her picket pin. Caroline rubbed Beth’s nose and scratched under her chin. She had not known Beth to be nervous before. She half wondered whether the animal could sense what Charles was contemplating on his errand.
“Laura, don’t,” Mary said behind her. Caroline turned. Laura had pulled a stick from the kindling pile to draw on the ground. “You’ll get all dirty.”
Caroline looked at Laura’s muddy squiggles and zigzags and her thoughts lightened. “Mary and Laura,” she asked, “how would you like to learn to write your names?”
Mary’s nose gave a dubious little crinkle. “In the dirt?” she asked.
It was only a single bristle of irritation, and Caroline did not even feel entitled to that. Few would believe her if she said so, but such a fastidious child was not always a blessing. What did Mary expect? She had neither slate nor pencil. All their books and paper but for Charles’s weather journal were buried at the bottom of her trunk. Still, there must be something she could contrive.
Caroline went to the kitchen crate and opened the sack of meal. Her eyes measured the scanty depth. It would not be waste if it fed their minds, she decided, and pulled out a fistful to sprinkle onto a clean tin plate.
“On a dish?” Laura asked.
“Come and see,” Caroline said.
With the handle of the wooden spoon, she traced an L in the grit. “L is for Laura,” she began.
Over ten years had passed since she had been anyone’s teacher, yet the charge of excitement it gave her was as potent as ever. She had not been much more than a girl herself then, but Caroline remembered how it had felt to coax a pupil to the threshold of understanding. Then that breathless moment—waiting, watching, for the mind to reach forward and grasp. Oh, she had shown Mary how to sew a seam, and both of them were mastering a growing list of little household tasks, but this was different. This was real learning. And these were her own two girls.
Both of them were so quick to learn, Caroline’s pride and pleasure whirled inside her. Each stroke held her poised for the next like their first wobbling steps forward.
Mary frowned at her work. “I want it to look like yours, Ma.”
Caroline lavished them with her best praise. “You have both done very well.”
“I mean when you write letters on paper. It’s prettier, all long and fine.”
“Like ribbons,” Laura agreed.
“Our letters look like sticks,” Mary said.
“This is called printing. Once you have learned to print each letter nicely, I will teach you how to write.”
“Show us, now, Ma,” Mary begged. “Please.”
Caroline gave the plate a shake, then drummed the underside with her fingertips to even the surface of the meal. She eased a hairpin from its nest and began to trail it across the tin, taking extra care with the flourishes and gracefully knotting the cross of each t.
Dear Ma and Papa Frederick,
The girls have asked me to write a few lines. Though these words will not reach you, I hope that you are well and not worrying yourselves on our account.
Beth whinnied, and there was Charles coming up over the rise. A bulging flour sack rode on his back as though he were Santa Claus. Suddenly self-conscious of what she was doing, Caroline shook her letter from the plate and quickly threaded her hairpin back into place. “Well, Charles?” she asked before he had one foot out of the stirrups.
He swung down from the saddle and tossed the sack into the shelter. “Straw,” he said. “Jacobs spared us some for the tick.”
“Charles! You didn’t ask him for such a thing?”
“Pshaw. You know me better than that. He offered. Said he’d seen the straw on the ground by the wagon and figured we’d have use for some fresh.”
Caroline did not know how to greet this news. She could not fault the man’s generosity, but there seemed to be nothing about them that escaped Jacobs’s notice. If they must be so bared, she wished he would do the courtesy of leaving some things unremarked.
“Man’s got a good piece of land up there,” Charles went on, squatting down to peek inside the bake oven. “I can see why he wants to trade. There’s a good many trees to clear, but none that’ll leave stumps anything like I grubbed out of the Big Woods. Ben and Beth should have an easy time of it.”
“And his team?” Caroline prodded softly.
“Oh, they’re a fine-looking pair. You’d think their coats were woven out of black silk, the way he keeps them brushed. Jacobs is so eager to get Ben and Beth started on his acreage, he offered to stable both teams until the creek goes down.”
Again that keen generosity. It was beginning to rub almost too close to charity. Something in her wanted to object, if only to give herself a moment to hold the decision in her own hands. “It sounds as though it’s more than a fair proposal,” she allowed. “But without Ben and Beth how will we plow our own claim?”
Charles pulled the fading Montgomery County handbill from his pocket and passed it to her. Its corners were rounded with wear. “‘Wide Open Land: One Dollar and a Quarter an Acre,’” he quoted. “Where we’re going I won’t need draft horses to break ground. Anyhow, place like that’ll be flooded with folks coming and going before long. Plenty of opportunity to trade for a bigger team if these two aren’t up to the job. Meantime it’ll save us a week’s worth of feed and then some. Mustangs won’t eat like draft horses. They’ll need less land for grazing, and less timber for a barn. I can’t think of any good reason to refuse.”