Caroline closed her eyes as she had done on the street in Independence. This time nothing leapt out at her in warning. The creek flowed no differently, no more menacingly in her mind. She opened her eyes. Charles was looking at her, waiting. Still she did not speak. The cold liquid feeling remained lodged in her middle, though there was not one thing in the scene before her that she could blame for it. It was as placid a spot as could be, with the soft green willow boughs swaying lazily above the surface of the creek.
Caroline thought again of the Indians and their scalp locks. She had not been fully right about them, but neither had she been fully wrong. In Wisconsin the flutter of apprehension they had triggered might well have saved her life. Here it had only made her look foolish and fearful. She squirmed inside, remembering how Mr. Wilson had looked at her when she asked about the Indians’ hair. The storekeeper could think her a silly woman if he liked, but Caroline could not abide the thought of her husband giving her that same look. She wished Charles had not asked.
There.
The little swell of recognition momentarily pushed her fear aside. That was it—not the creek at all, but the question itself. It was not like Charles to ask such a thing. Always he consulted her before deciding when and where to camp, but the roads with their forks and fords and bridges, those were his business. If the route confounded him somehow, he muttered only to himself over the map.
There was no mistaking his wariness now. It wafted from him like a scent. He was not just taking in the scenery as Pet and Patty drank, but scrutinizing it. Caroline watched him look at the horses, then at Jack, searching for a reaction to link with his own. Something, some tiny thing, must have whispered at him not to cross, so faintly he could not make it out.
Did you hear that, too? That was the question buried under what he had asked. She had not, and so she did not know what to say. She could not say yes and did not want to say no. All she could think to do was give him permission to do as he thought best.
Caroline spoke low and firm. The words alone would sound flippant if she were not careful. He must hear the trust embedded in them. “Whatever you say, Charles.”
Such a long pause. Even Pet and Patty stopped drinking to listen. Caroline heard the water dripping from their noses, the lapping of Jack’s tongue as it poked in and out of the creek.
“I’ll tie down the wagon cover,” Charles decided.
No. The word flashed through her whole body, bright and sizzling cold. Then, with a shudder, it flashed out again. Charles had jumped to the ground, leaving the spring seat jiggling back and forth behind him. He yanked at the canvas straps so harshly that Caroline could hardly keep hold of her thoughts with the wagon shuddering around her. He was only being careful, she told herself, by securing the cover so tightly. He had never in his life knowingly put them in danger. She must trust his intuition as she had trusted her own.
“They may have to swim, out there in the middle,” he said as he sat down beside her again. “But we’ll make it all right, Caroline.”
Another pinprick of unease struck her, and her body recoiled ever so slightly from the wall of her corset. She had not asked for reassurance. It could only be himself Charles was reassuring, and it had not worked. Everything about him was pulled taut as the wagon cover—his mouth, the grimacing muscles around his eyes. He had the reins wrapped so firmly around his fist as to make the skin stand out in little bulges between the leather. Caroline looked again at the line of ruts. They pointed so clearly into the creek, there could be no questioning this as a ford.
As the wheels dropped into the ruts Laura piped up behind them, “I wish Jack could ride in the wagon, Pa.”
If Laura took to the new baby half so quickly as she had taken to that secondhand bulldog, Caroline thought, she would count herself lucky. Charles did not answer. Had he even heard?
“Jack can swim, Laura,” Caroline said. “He will be all right.”
One by one the mustangs’ legs cut into the flowing water, carving wide V shapes across its surface. Then came a little sideways tug as the creek began wending its way between the spokes of the wheels like a needle pulling a thread through cloth. Charles slapped the reins again and the team continued gamely forward.
Caroline watched the water lap gently at their bellies with a sympathetic shiver. It crept steadily up the horses’ sides until their wet black backs shone patent leather smooth in the sun, then disappeared altogether. Beneath her, Caroline felt as much as heard the creek sloshing now and then at the underside of the floorboards.
They were already nearly halfway across. Charles leaned back a little and the rigid angle of his elbows eased. He smiled bashfully at her, a smile like that of a boy suddenly no longer frightened of the dark. Caroline unclenched herself and felt the gentle hug of her corset welcoming her back. Then the reins drooped. The mustangs had hesitated, their ears swiveling upstream.
There was no time to ask what or why. A gush of water came splashing at the sideboards. It hit with a jolt that jostled Caroline’s jawbone, then pushed its way under and around the wagon box. The furrows around Pet’s and Patty’s necks melted away as the current scooped them up. The wagon gave a funny sort of dip and then they were floating, horses and all.
Instinctively Caroline scooted inward, lifting her feet from the floor, but no water breached the seams. Only the churning of the mustangs’ hooves reverberated through the water and up the wagon’s wooden tongue into the box. Caroline felt the faint echo of their chugging in her chest as though a steam locomotive were passing.
“Gee!” Charles called out, and Caroline’s attention expanded outward. He was half standing, leaning with the reins, trying to steer the mustangs toward the right.
Upstream. It felt immediately wrong. They always forded crosswise so that the horses could work with the current, not against it. Caroline searched the opposite bank for her bearings. Nothing aligned. No opposing set of ruts, nothing. It might have been a different creek altogether. Even the willow trees lining the shore hunched closer overhead, as though they had shrunk. No, Caroline realized, not shrunk. It was the creek itself that had risen, enough to catch hold of the willows by their lowermost leaves and slant the boughs downstream.
Caroline looked out beyond the horses’ heads. There was the ford, already some rods upstream from where it had been when they set out moments before. The surge had washed them past in a matter of seconds. Caroline watched with one hand over her mouth as the landing place began slipping out of sight altogether.