Laura’s fingers filled the spaces between the boards at Caroline’s back. “Oh, where’s Jack?” she cried as she pulled herself up from under the blanket.
Jack. Caroline’s shaking halted all at once. Her conscience bulged up so hard and solid, she could feel nothing else. They had left him. She had left him. It was not Charles who told Laura the bulldog could swim. Caroline remembered how Jack had growled at the Indians on the street, yet did no more than scrunch his eyes shut to brace himself for Laura’s mauling hugs. He had asked nothing of them but to be allowed to follow behind his ponies, and she had abandoned that steadfast creature to the creek. She could picture him standing on that shore just as plainly as though she had turned to look. But she had not.
They waited better than an hour while Charles searched, his whistle shrilling through the creek bottoms again and again after his voice would no longer carry. An hour with Laura so desperately hopeful that Caroline could not bear to look at her when Charles returned. Instead she saw Charles’s face, saw him meet Laura’s wishful gaze and know for the first time in his life he had failed his little Half-Pint. Caroline did not know how so much disappointment would fit inside one small wagon.
Charles said nothing to either of them. There was nothing to say. His clothes were dry, and there was no bulldog trotting behind him. It was past time for making camp. He climbed to the spring seat and flicked the reins.
It was a wasted meal. Not one of them could eat, yet they picked and pushed at their food until it was as good as sand on their plates. Her own looked like the creek bank, all grit and muddy molasses. Caroline’s throat burned and swelled as she scraped the plates over the latrine pit. Even the scraps were wasted without Jack there to finish them.
God that doesn’t forget the sparrows won’t leave a good dog like Jack out in the cold, Charles had promised Laura when she begged for Jack to be allowed into heaven. The sentiment soothed the child, but it was no consolation to Caroline. Her conscience throbbed all the harder to think of it: After all her answered prayers for protection on this journey, she had left one of His creatures without so much as a backward glance. She could ask for nothing after this. Nothing but forgiveness.
“We’ll camp here a day or two,” Charles said when she came back to the dishpan. “Maybe we’ll stay here. Good land, timber in the bottoms, plenty of game—everything a man could want. What do you say, Caroline?”
Everything a man could want. Caroline’s hands stilled beneath the cooling dishwater. And a woman? Caroline did not dare look inside herself to ask such a thing. She did not want to be inside herself at all, did not want to be part of a person who had been so selfish. After this day, it would be mercy enough simply to arrive.
“We might go farther and fare worse,” she ventured. Asking without asking.
Charles knew her better than that. He waited for the rest, watching her over the glow of his pipe as she scrubbed guiltily at the dishes. “Anyway, I’ll look around tomorrow,” he answered when she said no more. “Get us some good fresh meat.”
Caroline nodded. She rinsed the dishcloth and walked out of the bright ring of firelight. When her hem rustled against the tall grass, she stopped and laid the dishcloth to dry over the long yellow blades. Caroline looked out into the wide open darkness. All this time, was this the place they had had been moving toward? She imagined the little campfire with a roof and walls around it, the heart of a small house with Charles smoking and the girls yawning drowsily in the flickering light.
A howl wavered into the air, the sound cutting a thin line into the blank space around her. Caroline felt it slide through her, too, tickling the gaps between each bone of her spine as though she were no more solid than the sky. As she turned from the prairie to the campsite the darkness became palpable against her back. Caroline refused to let it make her shiver, or hurry. The girls must not see their ma flushed from the grass like a frightened grouse, not by a sound as familiar as thunder. Anyway, she was not truly frightened. Charles’s rifle and pistol were loaded, and there was the fire just steps away. She only wished again for something thicker than a shawl to mark the boundary between herself and all that dark and shapeless space.
“About half a mile away, I’d judge,” Charles said.
Mary and Laura looked at each other. Both of them knew well by now how little time it took to cover half a mile.
“Bedtime for little girls,” Caroline sang out softly.
Her fingers were down to Mary’s fourth button when Laura cried, “Look, Pa, look! A wolf!”
Charles had the rifle butt notched into his shoulder before Caroline saw what Laura was pointing to. Two molten globes hovering in the long grass where she had just been standing, each reflecting the firelight like the brass disc behind a kerosene lamp. Eyes. Creeping closer. She heard the click of Charles cocking the rifle and held her breath for the shot. None came. The animal had crept another step, then stopped still—a perfect target.
Charles did not fire. He lifted his cheek an inch from the stock and peered over the tip of the barrel at those motionless eyes. “Can’t be a wolf,” he said, “unless it’s mad.”
Caroline hefted Mary into the wagon without feeling it happen. She leaned down for Laura and Charles shook his head. His finger was loose on the trigger now. “Listen to the horses,” he murmured. Caroline cocked an ear. Nothing but their teeth snipping at the grass. Nor was she afraid, Caroline realized. Her body was poised for it, and yet she felt no sensation of fear. Alert, yes, and cautious, too, but though she kept herself and Laura held safely back, her mind seemed to lean forward, curiously drawn toward the riddle of what that creature might be. “A lynx?” she guessed aloud.
“Or a coyote,” Charles said, picking up a scrap of firewood. “Hah!” he shouted, and pitched it toward the shining eyes.
Any sensible animal should have bolted. This one dropped to the ground. To spring, or cower? Quicker than bullets, Caroline put herself between Laura and the animal as slowly, inexplicably, it began to crawl toward Charles.
Caroline felt so strange. The animal’s eyes seemed to scrape the ground. Please, those eyes said. It was pitiful enough to make her wince. No wild creature would humble itself so, unless it were sick or hurt.
Charles walked toward the edge of the firelight, the gun out before him.
“Don’t, Charles.” Whether she meant don’t shoot, or don’t move, Caroline did not know. The darkness around the creature began to thin as it continued forward. The swirl of a shining black nose took shape. Then a bone-yellow glint of teeth, pointing straight to the sky.
The burst of sound came from all around her. Charles shouting, Laura screaming. Everything moved in the wrong direction. Caroline reeled forward as Laura and the creature tumbled together in the dirt.