Jack would not lie down. His fur bristled and flattened, as though the wind were blowing inside the house. He circled and paced, sniffed at the windows and whined at the door. When Caroline opened it, he would not go out.
“Jack’s afraid of something,” Mary said.
“Jack’s not afraid of anything, ever!” Laura declared.
Even as Caroline admonished Laura for contradicting, she wondered which of them was right. She had never seen Jack frightened, but there was no doubt he was uneasy. All of them were. The girls were mostly impatient. Every minute Charles did not come disappointed them. They had counted four long days without complaint, eager for the first hour that they could begin to hope for his return. All the care Caroline had taken all day long to say might and maybe each time they asked if Pa would be home tonight did not matter once the sun began sloping toward the horizon. Insensible to the rising wind, Mary and Laura huddled shoulder to shoulder at the window, peering down the creek road with an intensity that might have parted the grass.
For all her own eagerness, Caroline could not keep from watching Jack. It was as though he were stirring some intangible something with his body, trying to smooth it, or herd it from the house. Perhaps, she thought, they both were roused by the same vague apprehension. Her mind had circled in the same way for two days, veering around the invisible forms of Mrs. Scott’s unspoken rumors. “Indian trouble” could take so many shapes; without one to fix upon, Caroline felt as though her head were clouded with smoke. Something dark and shifting passed continually along the edges of her internal gaze, so persistently that when she unlocked the provisions cabinet for supper, she did so with a furtive glance out both windows. The treeless vista was a comfort and a worry, both. Any man or beast intent on doing harm would have to belly crawl twenty rods or more through the grass to avoid being seen. Why, then, was Jack so restive? The wind? Caroline wondered. Perhaps it carried some far-off scent only Jack could detect, as it had the day Charles outran the wolf pack. That was a mistake, Caroline chided herself, thinking of the wolf pack.
Jack kicked up a clamor of barking, and all of them jumped. “Someone’s knocking,” Mary said over the racket. Caroline hesitated. Jack’s nose pointed to the roof and the force of his baying had lifted his front paws up on tiptoe, yet his tail waggled and he did not snarl. It could not be Charles, for the latch string was out. Caroline had not made up her mind before the door flapped open and there was Edwards, thrust across the threshold as though the wind were shoving him forward.
“You snuck up on us, Mr. Edwards,” Laura scolded. “We’ve been watching the creek road for Pa all afternoon.”
Edwards’s answer came so readily, Caroline wondered if he had rehearsed it. “I was out hunting jackrabbits for my supper, and came up the Indian trail instead.”
“Did you get any?” Mary asked.
“Nope.” He shifted his eyes toward Caroline, adding, “Didn’t see anything big enough to aim at.”
The way he said anything—with a tweak of emphasis that made it seem a sentence in itself—Caroline felt a tingle at the back of her neck. Nothing on the Indian path. Likely he meant to reassure her, but the knowledge that he had felt compelled to look there made her wonder if she ought to coax the girls from the window and bolt the shutter.
Edwards shook himself almost like a dog. “That wind!” he said. “You might be bundled up tighter than a sausage in its casing and it’ll still find a way through.”
“Warm yourself a minute, Mr. Edwards,” Caroline said. He took no more than that before trudging out for the chores, pushing back into the wind with his chin tucked to his collar. Caroline went out behind him to draw an extra pail of water for the night. The instant she passed from the lee of the house, the wind submerged her. Like the current in that terrible creek, Caroline thought with a shudder. Her shawl whipped around her, pulling as the wind pushed. When she turned back to the cabin after tussling with the pail and the rope, she could feel the wind splitting across her face as though her nose were the blade of a plow.
Edwards was not long behind. He set the pail of milk on the table and stooped down before the fire, putting his palms out to the blaze.
“I wish I could contrive a way to send some of this milk home with you,” Caroline said. “It’s been so kind of you to do the chores while Mr. Ingalls is away.”
Edwards ducked his head in a kind of nod and did not answer. Had she embarrassed him? Caroline wondered. No. She could see him thinking, turning something over in his mind as though debating whether to bring it out into the room.
“The Osages are camping in the shelter of the bluffs,” he said at length. “The smoke was rising up out of there when I crossed the bottoms.” Caroline did not permit herself to react. She simply took in the words, as though by saying nothing she could force the space they had occupied to seal itself over, leaving the room and everything in it undisturbed. Edwards rubbed his hands fast. They seemed almost to hiss. He spoke again, without changing the tone or volume of his voice: “Do you have a gun?”
“I have Mr. Ingalls’s pistol,” Caroline answered.
Edwards nodded. “I reckon they’ll stay close in camp, a night like this.”
“Yes,” Caroline said, as if saying it would make it so.
A furrow appeared between Edwards’s brows. “I can make myself right comfortable with hay in the stable. I’ll stay there all night if you say so.”
Did he know she was afraid, Caroline wondered, or only presume that she must be? She glanced furtively at the children. Laura’s face had brightened at the thought of Mr. Edwards staying all night, but the offer had made Mary wary. Her china-blue eyes were measuring Caroline, as if she were considering whether or not to be scared.
A little more fear toward the Indians would do Laura no harm, was Caroline’s first, rueful thought. But if by accepting Edwards’s offer she might be teaching her daughters to be fearful inside their own house—with the door latched and the pistol on its shelf and the bulldog keeping watch—simply because Indians existed? If they realized their ma was not certain she could protect them as their pa did—what then?
Caroline had no choice but to make the words brisk and calm. The way he had asked her about the gun, Edwards would surely understand. “No, thank you, Mr. Edwards, I won’t put you to that trouble. Jack will look after us. I’m expecting Mr. Ingalls any minute now.”
He looked at her long enough, Caroline wondered for an instant if she were making a mistake. Mary and Laura and even Carrie trusted her implicitly to keep them safe, without regard for how she accomplished it. Was it a peculiar strain of vanity that made her insist upon doing it herself?
“I don’t guess anything will bother you, anyway,” Edwards said, standing.