It seemed an indecent thing to envy an Indian, but Caroline did. No matter how she tried, she could not replicate their willful indifference. Every Osage on that trail claimed her attention. And Jack—Jack plain hated to see an Indian pass. All day long he snarled and barked and scrabbled against his chain, until the bare ground was scored with slashes. Charles had to nearly drag the bulldog in for his dinner, he was so reluctant to leave the trail unguarded.
“I can’t say I blame him,” Caroline said. “I declare, Indians are getting so thick around here that I can’t look up without seeing one.”
Charles leaned down at the window to survey the trail. It ran almost through the dooryard before angling away to the northeast. “I wouldn’t have built the house so close if I’d known it’s a highroad. Looked like nobody’d ridden it in months when we got here. They must not use it, spring and summer.”
Caroline would not say that she did not mind. But there was no use in complaining, either. “That can’t be helped now,” she said. She put a bowl of jackrabbit vitals on the floor for Jack, then dredged the remaining pieces with flour, salt, and pepper. The lard in the skillet had begun to crackle. She turned, lifting the plate of meat, and nearly dropped it.
An Indian stood in the doorway. “Goodness,” she gasped. Jack looked up from his bowl and lunged. His jowls were bloodied with jackrabbit, his teeth bared. Charles leapt forward and snatched the dog back by the collar. The Indian had not moved one step, but Caroline saw him draw himself up, his chin and chest both lifting in a kind of internal backing away. “Ho-wah,” he said.
“How!” Charles answered.
The Indian seemed to smother a smirk at Charles’s reply and stepped into the house. He was tall, taller yet than Charles, so that he reached up to gently bend back the feathers on his scalp lock as he crossed the threshold. He walked the length of the house and squatted down beside the fire as though he’d been invited. Charles pulled his belt from its loops and used it to buckle Jack to the bedpost by his collar. Then Charles squatted down alongside the hearth. The two men said nothing. Behind them, the melted lard gave a pop. Mary and Laura sat on their little bed with their backs against the wall, watching.
Caroline stood completely still for a moment before she realized that she was not frightened. She was not entirely at ease, but she was not afraid. In fact, she thought, having the Indian in the house was not so very different from sitting down to milk a new cow for the first time. Caroline had the same sense now of being nominally in charge and at the same time acutely aware of her own physical disadvantage. If the man poised on her hearth had a mind to, he could spring up and harm any one of them. Yet if he had a mind to, he gave no indication of it. The silence between Charles and the Indian seemed almost amicable, and gradually Caroline understood that if she did not carry on with her task, her hesitation would tip their tentative accord out of balance.
So she picked up the plate and a fork and strode to the fire. One by one she laid the raw pieces of rabbit into the hot fat. Everyone watched. They listened to the frying meat bubble and snap. They watched her turn each piece up golden brown and dish a helping onto five plates. She gave one to Charles and one to the Indian. She handed Mary and Laura their portions, as though they ate dinner on their bed every day of the week. Then Caroline picked up Carrie from the big bed and held the baby in her lap while she ate one-handed at the table. No one spoke.
When Charles finished eating, he slowly unkinked his legs and took his pipe and a new paper of tobacco down from the mantel shelf. He filled his pipe and offered the packet to the Indian, who did the same. Thin tendrils of smoke rose up from their two pipes. Caroline wished the smoke might spell out the men’s thoughts. They puffed at the tobacco until the rafters were hazy and their pipes were empty. Then the Indian spoke.
Caroline tilted her head in surprise. He sounded nothing like the two men who had come into the house before. These sounds were so smooth and languorous, they seemed a single long word. French? she wondered.
Charles shook his head. “No speak,” he replied.
The Indian lifted a hand in acknowledgment, and no more was said. After a moment, he stood and walked out the door. Jack pulled against the belt that held him to the bedpost, straining forward with his nose and teeth, but he did not growl.
“My goodness gracious,” Caroline said. She stroked Carrie’s back again and again, as though it were the baby who wanted comforting.
“That Indian was no common trash,” Charles remarked.
Caroline looked around the cabin. Her dredging boxes of flour and salt and pepper all sat on the table in plain sight. The door to the provisions cupboard stood partway open, revealing its cache of bulging sacks and crates. The Indian had not peered inside, but Caroline had no reason to suppose he had not seen them. “Let Indians keep themselves to themselves,” she said, “and we will do the same.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Charles said. “That Indian was perfectly friendly. And their camps down in the bluffs are peaceable enough. If we treat them well and watch Jack, we won’t have any trouble.”
Caroline agreed, but she did not say so. She did not know how to explain to Charles how she could be thankful they were friendly and still not want them inside her house. It did not seem a thing that should need explaining.
“Ma, Baby Carrie’s hungry.”
Caroline did not argue. Mary knew. She had set to learning her baby sister’s signals by rote and could decipher them nearly as well as if Carrie were her own. This once, Caroline was grateful for the interruption. Her fingertips ached from pushing the needle through the rabbit skins. Mary and Laura could hardly wait for their caps to be finished. Each time Caroline laid aside her sewing, they came to kneel beside the work basket and stroke the fur. She herself favored the beaver pelts. Their rich brown underfur was deeper than the lushest velvet; you might sink a finger to the first knuckle into its improbable softness. But those pelts, along with the mink and wolf, they could not afford to keep—not if they were to have a plow and seeds for planting.
Charles had done well, so early in the season. The stack of pelts reached nearly to Laura’s knees. If Charles’s traps kept yielding this way, all the cash in the fiddle case might go toward proving up on the claim.
Caroline stood and stretched and went to stand a minute in the doorway. The air was pleasantly brisk, yet lacked the familiar scent of leaves bronzing in the sun. Autumn here had a golden, grassy smell, dry and soft, like a haymow. She reached for her shawl—its red the color of a sugar maple at full blaze—and pulled it comfortably about her shoulders. This was the welcome stretch of weather that turned the fireplace into a boon companion. Soon enough it would become a ravenous mouth to feed. For now, though, it demanded little in return for the comfort it gave.
Behind her, the baby fussed. Caroline let her. Carrie had nearly grown out of her newborn cry, and Caroline enjoyed listening for the little voice that was beginning to emerge between the growls and shrills. Next autumn there would be no leisure, not with corn and sod potatoes to pick, and Carrie to mind. Next autumn, Carrie would be walking.