She understood, but she would not take the meal from his hand. Caroline forced herself to nod and point to the table.
Her mind pivoted back to Brookfield while her hands measured and mixed the cornbread of their own accord. She had been wearing her blue-sprigged calico the day the Potawatomi man walked into their house and took the peacock feathers from the vase beside the looking glass. Caroline could see him still, strolling away with those shimmering plumes gazing back at her from his hair. More vibrant than the feathered eyes was the memory of her ma’s groan when they realized little Thomas had disappeared with the Indian.
The same sound was rising in her now, grating against the back of her breastbone as her whole body strained with the effort of listening for Mary and Laura. She started to press her palms into the top of the loaves, then jerked back. Her pulse stormed in her fingertips. She would not give these men the sweetening of the prints of her hands. That belonged only to Charles. Caroline wiped the grains of meal briskly on her apron and dropped the naked loaves into the bake oven. The iron cover rattled into place.
They looked at everything. Caroline watched the loops of beaded silver wire sway from their long earlobes as they probed through the cabin. Charles’s tobacco pouch disappeared into one brown fist as though she had no more presence than the china shepherdess. They might take anything and she would not move, if only they had left her daughters untouched.
The Potawatomis had stolen only feathers, she reminded herself, not her baby brother. While the rest of the family watched the Indian decorate his hair with their peacock plumes, the little boy had toddled out of sight into the corn patch. She prayed these Osages might be as vain, that Mary and Laura were sheltered by Providence as Thomas had been.
But this was not Brookfield with its woods and corn patches. Through the window she could see clear to the willows along the creek—clear to the bluffs beyond—but she could not see her daughters. If she called their names, the fear in her voice would point the Indians straight to them. The baby thrashed against her bladder. Caroline’s jaw clenched with the strain.
Suddenly Jack erupted into such a fury the Indians went to the window. Caroline could hear the bulldog lunging against the chain, scrabbling at the dirt. With each charge the metal links clattered and thrummed.
In a flash of calico the girls darted into the house. Caroline’s relief frothed up like saleratus. Laura ducked behind the slabs Charles had left propped in the corner for the bedstead. Mary skittered barefoot across the length of the house and clung to Caroline’s sleeve. The instant she felt Mary’s hands around her wrist, Caroline closed her eyes and offered her thanks heavenward. Now she only wanted Laura’s tangled brown hair under her fingers.
The Indians’ eyes traced her gaze across the cabin, where half of Laura’s face peeped from behind the slabs. They peered at her, bending down so that their hatchets dangled from their hips. One man spoke, and the other said, “Hah!” Laura jolted, cowering tight against the wood with nothing but her little white fingertips showing.
Caroline pulled Mary to the hearth and yanked the lid from the bake oven. “It’s done,” she announced. The Indians turned. Caroline thrust a finger toward the pale loaves and stepped back. The hot iron lid in her fist dared them to frighten Laura again.
The two men squatted low on the hearth, their legs bent like hairpins. Silently, each ate an entire loaf of the half-baked bread, pinching every damp crumb from the floorboards. By the time they finished, Mary’s tears had warmed her sleeve.
The Indians stood. The shorter of the two pointed his chin at Mary and said, “Mi’-na.” The other man smirked and nodded. Not a shred of malice slanted their expressions. Instead they looked amused, as though they had recognized something so plain they expected Caroline to see and join her smile with theirs.
She would do no such thing. Caroline shifted sideways, slicing through their view with her body. The lid to the bake oven was still in her hand.
The planes of the men’s faces leveled. Without a word, they turned their backs and went out. The lid dropped from Caroline’s fist and rolled on its edge to the stack of slabs.
Laura came running.
Caroline sat down hard on the straw tick, nearly pulling the girls with her. Relief corkscrewed through her.
“Do you feel sick, Ma?” Mary asked.
“No,” she managed. Tremors welled in every joint; even her jaw quivered. “I’m just thankful they’re gone.”
“We thought they would hurt you,” Mary said.
“We left Jack and came to help,” Laura interrupted.
Caroline cupped their cheeks with her palms and cradled their heads against her shoulders. “My brave little girls,” she said. Overwhelmed by their nearness, her breasts prickled, weeping warm flecks of foremilk into her chemise.
The table was set and a fresh mixing of cornmeal in the bowl when Charles came whistling through the grass. A jackrabbit dangled by its hocks at his belt, and he swung two headless prairie hens in one fist. The girls nearly toppled over each other in their scramble to tell him the news. Caroline was glad for their zeal. She did not want to recollect the Indians’ visit any more than she must.
“Did Indians come into the house, Caroline?”
She held her voice even as a line of print as she told him about the tobacco and how much cornbread the two men had eaten. “They took the meal straight from the crate with me standing there. The way they pointed, I didn’t dare refuse.” The memory swelled her mind. “Oh, Charles! I was afraid!” Her chest constricted; she had not meant to tell him that part of it. Nor the girls, for that matter.
He assured her she had done right, that it was better to sacrifice a few provisions than make an enemy of any Osage, but she was not comforted. “The cornmeal was already running short,” she added. It was petty; she had seen their ribs.
“One baking of cornbread won’t break us.” Charles lifted his fistful of game. The prairie hens’ blunted necks wagged at her. “No man can starve in a country like this. Don’t worry, Caroline.”
She did not know what she had wanted him to say, but it was not this. He had not even looked at the sack of meal. Nor was he the one who would have to make it stretch. Her chin stabbed out like a child’s. “If that’s so, I don’t know why they can’t make do without our cornmeal. And all of your tobacco,” she added, hoping to pry something more out of him.
Charles waved a hand. “Never mind. I’ll get along without tobacco until I can make that trip to Independence.”
Independence. The irony needled her. Two days she and the girls would be stranded on the high prairie while he went to town to replace what the Indians had taken. Maybe three. Three days with those men free to wander in and demand whatever else they liked of her.