“I’d head into the southern or western townships if I were you,” Wilson was advising. “There’s still good land open in Rutland, Caney, and Fawn Creek. Just don’t be surprised if the Osages come calling.” He paused to give a wave to the departing Indians. Two of the three riders raised an arm in response. “They’ve got in the habit of collecting five dollars from each settler. Rent, as they see it.”
Five dollars. Four acres’ worth. “Do they always—” Caroline faltered, knowing how the question would sound coming from a woman fresh from the East. “Do they always dress their hair that way?”
Wilson gave her the wry glance she expected. “More often than not. They mostly save the horse hair roaches for special occasions.”
Caroline did not concern herself with the tenor of the storekeeper’s reply. The reaching, listening sensation had vanished from her skin, and her senses seemed to retreat back into her body. In its place there was a vague unease that came from knowing the signals she relied upon to interpret the woodlands tribes had no currency among the Osages.
Charles handed up twenty-five pound sacks of meal and brown sugar and unbolted flour while Wilson and Irwin brought out two bushels of oats and one of shelled corn for the feedbox. No meat.
“I couldn’t do it,” Charles said quietly, “not at these prices. I can hunt us plenty of game, but I can’t shoot feed for Pet and Patty. Feed’s sold by the pound here, not the bushel. Would have bought myself some nails, but I couldn’t afford them and lead for shot. The heavier the goods are, the more they cost. That reminds me—I treated us to roasted coffee beans instead of green. With what they add on for freight, green coffee isn’t any bargain here.”
No great loss without some small gain, Caroline thought, though at times the gain was so trifling as to seem almost spiteful. That was not his fault, though, so Caroline raised her lips into the shape of a smile. “That will be nice.” And then, tentatively, “No letters?”
Charles shook his head. “Not even any post office yet. Letters come in with riders from Oswego, one county over. Costs ten cents apiece to collect them.” He unfolded the map and frowned. “Fontana’s over a hundred miles northeast, up beyond Fort Scott. Oswego’s not marked. But if it’s the other side of the Union Pacific’s south branch, it’s got to be a good thirty miles east.” He took up the reins and turned the mustangs westward.
His plans had not changed, then. Caroline folded her hands and pointed her bonnet brim straight ahead.
For the first time since Wisconsin, Caroline felt a pull from behind. Every mile that spread between them and Independence tugged at Caroline as though her corset strings were looped over the hitching posts. It was not so much the town itself calling to her, Caroline reckoned, but the notion of a town—a link to the society of others, however rudimentary it might be. The farther Charles drove, the more tenuous that join became.
So Caroline was not as startled as Charles when they found themselves suddenly at the edge of the wide cut in the earth. The feeling of an approaching rim had held her poised, leaning slightly backward these last ten miles. And now there was the very break she had sensed, inches from the mustangs’ noses. Perhaps it was not the line between Kansas and the Territory—perhaps they had already passed that boundary—but this cleft in the prairie’s flesh, with the slender vein of creek flowing through its bare red bluffs, spoke to her as the Missouri had spoken to Charles. Life on the opposing shore would be measurably different. How many more wagons must follow them across that creek, Caroline wondered as Charles frowned at his map, before the seam it embodied drew tight and disappeared?
Down into the bottomlands the mustangs went, not pulling now, but pushing to hold the wagon from skidding down the steep grade. Caroline held her spine rigid as the brake lever and angled herself backward, and still she could not fully resist the steady downward momentum. This land was uncanny, she thought as the wagon slid lower and lower, the way it managed to make her body enact the shapes of her emotions.
Between the hot red cliffs the bottomlands spread out still and smooth as the first page of Genesis. Across the creek grazing deer stood and wondered at them, utterly unconcerned by their presence. The place seemed a little world unto itself, unreached even by the wind. Not a breath of air rumpled the grass as Charles stopped the horses to drink. Caroline, too, felt suddenly untouched once the wagon leveled. Down here no unseen currents pulled or pushed at her. In this sheltered place there was nothing to feel but herself. She opened her hands and brought them to her sides, gauging herself from without and within.
The heat of her palms warmed the dusty blue calico and then slowly reached through corset and chemise to greet her skin. Across the gentle stretch of her belly the pulse of each fingertip drummed softly. Somewhere between them, Caroline hoped, the still and silent little creature inside could feel that same calm throbbing and know it signaled welcome. She did not know how much longer she could await the answering telegraph of elbows, knees, and heels before admitting something must be wrong.
Charles leaned toward her, drawing a small breath as if to speak, then closed his mouth and looked back to the creek. Caroline fitted her hands into their accustomed knot and waited. “Creek’s pretty high,” he said. “But I guess we can make it all right.” He pointed out the old wheel ruts that marked a fording place—two deep grooves butting up neatly to the water’s edge. “What do you say, Caroline?”
Her stomach gave off an unexpected shimmer of unease. Close behind, Caroline felt her awareness rising of its own accord, as it had at the sight of the Osages on the street.
Strange. Nothing before her had changed. She had not felt the least bit wary until he asked. Puzzled, she studied the creek up and down, searching for whatever it was that might have put her senses on guard. The water was high and deep, as Charles had said. But she had known that before he’d said so. The swath of darker silver streaking its middle was perfectly plain. She looked at the ruts Charles had pointed out. If they were unlike any of the other ruts she had seen in the last seven hundred miles, she could not say how.