“If he cheats us, Charles—”
“I don’t see how he can. A thief has to be able to run if he wants to keep ahead of the law. Man’s got a wife and four boys, not a one of them over eight years old. There’s a spanking new cookstove and a pair of glass windows in the kitchen. That reminds me.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bundle made of a blue-checked napkin. “Mrs. Jacobs sent a fresh baking of light biscuits.”
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.