“It stands on end anyway, Caroline,” he said, flopping down flat on his back beside her. “When I was courting you, it never would lie down, no matter how much I slicked it with bear grease.”
He had tried, she remembered, valiantly. The slightest whiff of rosemary swept her back to their courtship, when every doff of his hat had filled the room with the smell of that herb-scented grease. Caroline combed her fingers through the unruly brown mass, remembering how her younger brother and sister used to hold their noses and tease, Is Rosemary Ingalls coming to call? “You’ve done well to build that chimney up so high, all by yourself,” she praised him, twiddling a lock between her fingers.
His forehead shifted beneath her palm as he lifted his eyebrows to smile up at her. Just for a moment, Caroline let herself conjure a picture of the pleasurable diversions they might take, right here on the quilt, if there were not two little girls romping in the grass nearby. A sweet, warm current coursed through her at the thought. Caroline closed her eyes and turned her face to the breeze, letting the soft wind whisk it from her.
All of them waited before the new mantel shelf while Caroline went to her trunk and lifted the lid. Beneath the brown paper bundle that was her delaine, nested snugly between the good pillows, sat the cardboard box she had packed most carefully of all. She burrowed one hand deep into its center of crumpled newsprint until her fingertips brushed something cool and smooth. Please, Caroline prayed. If it were not in one piece—Caroline blinked away the thought. She would not cry over such a thing, not with Charles and the girls looking on. Gently she pressed the paper wrapping back, hollowing out a path until a glint of golden china hair peeped out. Once again Caroline tunneled down, wrapping her fingers protectively around the narrow china neck and waist. Up through the rustling papers, all in one piece, came her china shepherdess.
Caroline’s heart gave a happy lurch. No matter that the painted lips could not speak, nor the tiny molded hands return the warm embrace of Caroline’s palm. She was so bright and beautiful, so small and delicate, Caroline had never been able to get enough of looking at her. She flushed a little, feeling Charles and the girls watching. Here she was a grown woman with two dear girls of her own, and still she had as much affection for that china lady as Mary did for her rag doll.
Caroline wiped the dainty figure carefully with an apron corner, half cleaning, half caressing the smooth porcelain, then stood the china shepherdess right in the center of the mantel shelf, where she belonged.
Two words settled themselves comfortably in her mind: Welcome home.
Eighteen
If Charles brought home a prairie chicken, Caroline decided, she would lay a hot fire in the hearth and fry it up crisp and brown. She hummed softly to herself, half waltzing to the tune as she swept. The logs of the puncheon floor lay with their pale yellow hearts turned up to her. She almost hated to walk across them, they were so flat and new and even. But, oh, the sound of her heels on that thick floor. The swish of the willow-bough broom.
She leaned a moment on the broom handle, reveling in the shade of the new slab roof. Caroline missed the glow of the canvas as she’d known she would, but it was a welcome relief to have a place away, to close herself off entirely from wind and sun. That endless wind made her aware of every inch of her skin. It was too much, being touched so constantly. Once more Caroline gazed up at that good solid ceiling, silently thanking Mr. Edwards for the half keg of nails he had loaned so that Charles need not whittle pegs to secure the slabs to the beams. There had not been occasion before to consider the particular virtue of each fragment of a house. Apart from the occasional lashing of rain that made her fear for the shingles, their house had been a house, and she was thankful for it. Now Caroline harbored a separate admiration for the shutters, the hearth, even the chinking between the logs.
Every slab, every peg and nail inched them closer to owning the place. By the time the government opened a land office and offered the land, they would be firmly settled, and as settlers they would have first right to file a preemption on the quarter section they occupied. That was the law. The speculators and railroads must stand aside for the people who lived and worked on the land. The more she and Charles improved the land in the meantime, the more solid their claim, for the law had declared that a man’s sweat contained as much worth as his pocketbook—more, even. Caroline looked out at the roll of prairie sloping off toward the creek. This time next year there would be a field of sod potatoes and another of corn taking root. Right beneath the window, a garden green with unfurling sprouts. This time next year, there would be a child clinging to her hip, sucking its fist and fussy with teething.
Outside, Jack growled. Caroline turned toward the open door. “My goodness!”
Two Osages stood in the doorway, their tufted scalp locks brushing the lintel. A narrow belt of colored wool held up their breechclouts. Above that, their lower ribs pressed faintly against their skin. Caroline flushed at the sight of so much bareness.
At each hip hung a knife and a hatchet. Her muscles tensed, as though she might spring at them if they came toward her, but she knew she could not move. A horse hair roach, black at the tips, made a ridge from their scalp locks down the back of their shining skulls. The broad base was a color so vivid Caroline had no name for it—neither red, nor pink, nor purple.
One of them went straight to the crate of provisions. The other looked at her so steadily in the face, it felt indecent. Caroline folded her hands tight against the crest of her belly, hugging her sides with her elbows. She prayed they would see and leave her be.
Outside, Jack’s chain rattled and snapped against its iron ring. Caroline had never heard him so savage.
All at once the air seemed to shatter. She could not hear Mary and Laura—had not heard them since before the Indians came into the house. Alarm sluiced past her elbows and knees.
She could not look out the window without turning her back to the Indians. If anything had happened to her girls, Caroline told herself, she should have heard them scream. But she had not made a sound herself. She could not even call their names with her heart drumming at the base of her throat.
The first man set the sack of cornmeal on the checked tablecloth between them. Then patted it. Caroline shied from the sound. The Indian spoke—a low ripple of syllables. Caroline shook her head. She could not hear where one word ended and another began. The other man held out the sack, pointing it at her, then the hearth.