Caroline sat down on her trunk and pulled her shawl from its peg. She propped the revolver’s barrel on the windowsill, pulled back the hammer to full cock, and slipped her finger inside the trigger guard. So long as the wolves sat still, Caroline’s thoughts kept still, suspended in an aura of calm. If the wolves came nearer, she knew her finger would squeeze the trigger before her mind formed the command, and so there was no need for her thoughts to go straying ahead.
The wolves made not a move, as though they sensed how near they could come without provoking a reaction. They sat, neither welcoming nor threatening, more acknowledging the boundary between them. Even Jack did not advance, did not so much as put his nose beyond the quilt hanging in the doorway. All of them silently watched one another. The moonlight glinted on the wolves’ shaggy coats and made their eyes glow deep and green-gold. What part of her, she wondered, did the animals fix their gaze on? What feature most proclaimed her human—her clothing, her hairless skin? More likely her hands, Caroline decided, and the gun they held.
From the west side of the cabin came a long, smooth howl. As Caroline watched the wolves outside her window showed their white throats to the moon and a circle of sound rose up from them. The sound enveloped the cabin, reverberating all the way into the soft marrow of Caroline’s bones until she felt it might lift her away. Was it music to them, she wondered, or prayer, the way it ascended into the sky?
Before she could rebuke herself for thinking something so profane Laura was up—straight up, clutching the quilt so tightly Caroline could see the little points of her knees and toes beneath the taut fabric.
At the sight of Charles with his gun Laura’s grip on the bedclothes loosened.
“Want to see them, Laura?” Charles asked.
Laura nodded and went to him. Caroline knew she ought not take her eyes from her window, but she could not help it. The tableau of Charles lifting Laura to the windowsill captivated her in a way the motionless wolves could not. The child believed so wholeheartedly that no harm could reach her as long as her pa was near that her fear all but vanished in an instant.
That was as it should be, Caroline supposed. She herself had hardly any recollection of such a feeling. She had been five years old the last time she saw her own pa. Looking back, she remembered the terrible sensation of the earth rocking beneath her feet at the news of his death better than anything that came before the day the schooner Ocean sank. Caroline stroked the smooth metal seam of the revolver’s grip with her thumb as the memories moved past her. Eventually the world had become stable enough that she could trust her footing again, thanks first to Papa Frederick and then to Charles, but the shadow of that dreadful day lingered still. Ever after she lived alongside the knowledge that nothing on this earth could protect her completely.
Before they slept another night, Charles had built the doors for the house and the stable both.
Then for three days he was gone, helping Edwards raise his house and barn. Three days, alone with the girls. He came home for supper, of course, slept every night beside her and was there for breakfast in the morning. Edwards’s claim was only two miles away, but it did not feel the same as when Charles was out all day hunting or working the land.
Always before, their separate labors were bound up in the same endeavor. With the straw Charles brought her from the threshing Caroline wove the hat that would shade his neck while he sowed the grain she would bake into bread. From that harvest came yet more straw, and round and round it went, like “The House That Jack Built.”
Now Charles was away, engaged in something apart from her. Not that she begrudged Edwards. Not one bit. If not for Edwards’s help, they might have been sleeping in a tent the night the wolves encircled them. This was a plain trade, a simple back-and-forth between two men, and when it was over Caroline had no doubt she and Charles would resume their usual rhythm.
That was not the trouble. That was not what made her thoughts dreary and her smiles limp, even when the wind carried the sound of his approaching whistle up from the creek bottoms.
Caroline did not know quite what it was until after supper the second night, when Charles said, “Bring me my fiddle, Laura, I want to try out a song Edwards sang.”
His eyes twinkled mischievously as he felt for the notes. It was a catchy melody with a good strong beat, well-suited for an accompaniment of swinging axes and hammers. Likely she would find herself humming it over the butter churn one day.
“What are the words, Pa?” Mary asked.
The bow gave a little squawk, and Charles colored ever so slightly. “Well, you know, I don’t seem to remember any more than the tune,” he said quickly.
Caroline knew from his grimace that the words were not fit for mixed company. That in itself was no great shock. She could imagine Charles and Edwards indulging in the occasional oath or bawdy song, just as there were things women would speak of only if there were no men within earshot.
Caroline rested her folded arms across the shelf of her belly. There, she thought. That was what she had been missing while Charles was away. Not her husband’s company, but the chance to share her own. The girls had their games and giggles, the men their brash hijinks. Caroline had only herself.
Before the roof, before the floor, came the fireplace. Charles might have dug himself a well first and saved himself hauling water from the creek to mix the mud for plastering between the chimney stones. Instead he built the chimney and hearth, so she would not have to tussle with the elements to keep her cookfire going. That was the sort of husband Charles Ingalls was.
Caroline sat in the shade of the north wall, turning scraps of red calico into curtain ties and watching Charles stack the chimney stones while the child tumbled lazily beneath her ribs. It seemed to have discovered its limbs, its movements more purposeful now, more akin to a spoon stirring a pot than the tentative winglike flutters of the past several weeks. The straighter she held her back, the more room it gave the both of them, but her muscles were tired of bracing her spine like a ramrod all day long. Her corset helped only so much. The straw tick, with nothing but the dirt floor beneath it, did not help at all.
Truth be told, what Caroline wanted most in that house was a chair. Not an upturned crate or log to perch on, but a true chair, with a back and arms. She would cook outside all summer long, if only there were a chair to ease her weary back after supper. Her mind strayed to her rocker, and she smiled wistfully. But Charles, in his thoughtfulness, was building her a fireplace—and fairly wearing himself out in his hurry to please her, lifting stones and hauling water and clay for mud.
He stood back, smearing the sweat from his forehead into his hair and setting it all askew.
“You look like a wild man, Charles,” she teased. “You’re standing your hair all on end.”