Caroline held her fast. “Nettie is as safe as we are,” she said, but she heard no comfort in her words. Loosening her grip, Caroline shifted Mary across her lap and motioned Laura in. She wanted them near, but not so close against her that her own unease would touch them. She threaded her arms loosely around their waists, ready to snatch them close if need be, and let her nervous hands smooth their wraps. “Now let’s all be still so Pa can drive.”
Charles’s mouth was folded so deeply with consternation that the whiskers beneath his lower lip bristled outward. He slackened the horses’ lines so that all their effort would travel straight into the singletree. The strain stood out on the animals’ necks as their legs slanted under them. Watching them, Caroline felt her own sides clench.
“What’s wrong with the horses?” Laura asked. “Is the wagon too full?”
“Ben and Beth are strong enough to pull us across,” Caroline assured her, “once they find their footing.” It was the strength of the ice that worried her, with the two horses prying forward like great muscled levers. Beth snorted and stamped a hoof. Caroline winced at the impact. They were a mile from either shore.
No matter how strong the road might be, the ice would be at its thinnest here in the middle of the lake. It was one thing to pass steadily across the surface—quite another to linger prodding at this frailest point. Could not a deft stroke, like the blows she delivered to the rain barrel’s thick winter skin, open a split down the center?
Caroline looked over the girls in their hoods and mittens and flannels. Together they were lighter than a single sack of flour, but the drag of so much sodden clothing would carry them straight under if the wagon broke through. Her eyes traced the cinched canvas brow overhead. They were hardly better off than kittens in a gunny sack.
If the wagon did not budge in the time it took to pray Psalm 121, Caroline decided, she would lift the girls down and lead them across on foot. Even if she had to carry Laura, the three of them could slip over the mile of ice light as mayflies, leaving the team’s burden nearly two hundred pounds the lighter.
Caroline prayed, and still the wheels had not moved. Nor could she. The psalm had given her imagination time to extend beyond the relief of reaching solid ground—to turning, safely hand in hand, to face Charles stranded on the lake behind them. What could she do for him or their daughters, clutching their small mittens on the opposite bank of the Mississippi, if the wagon rolled forward and the ice opened—
With a rasp, one metal horseshoe bit into the surface. Caroline held her breath for the collapse. Instead, a muscled jolt inched the wagon ahead. She felt herself leaning toward the team, as if her own scant momentum could coax them forward.
Once more the iron tires crackled over the ice, this time the sound as welcome as the snap of a tinderbox. Laura clapped her hands and cheered the horses until the wagon slanted up onto the Minnesota bank. Mary slipped out of Caroline’s lap and burrowed under the spring seat to scoop up Nettie. “I won’t leave you alone again,” Caroline heard her promise the doll.
“Those horseshoes make pretty good ice skates,” Charles proclaimed, “but I don’t believe I’d like to have a pair nailed to my feet.” Mary and Laura giggled. They could not hear the chagrin behind the boom in his voice. He would not say it had been his fault for stopping the wagon, but Caroline knew he would not be dousing such a situation with a joke unless he’d felt a scorch of responsibility.
“Go on with Mary,” Caroline said, nudging Laura over the seat. Cold air rushed silently in and out of her chest. She was shaking, now that it was over. Relief saturated her, yet there was no lightness in it. Instead she was salted down with regret that she should be so thankful to put Wisconsin behind them.
“Good thing Ben and Beth pulled through,” Charles said, cheerful again. Caroline had not gained enough control over her breath to groan at his pun. “Would have been a job to portage all this equipment across on foot.”
Something in his voice slipped between her tremors and turned her head. “Charles?” she asked.
He cocked a smile at her, mouth half–turned up.
One look at him and Caroline did not need to ask whether he’d thought about the ice. Not a wisp of fear so much as brushed his whiskers.
Perhaps the threat she’d felt had only been another queer spell, like she’d had in the store. It was as though a single droplet of any one sensation had the power to soak her through. The notion left her lightheaded, as if she had no traction on the world. Caroline pulled her shawl across the points of her shoulders and elbows, wishing for a sturdier veneer.
Charles’s brow had begun to furrow. He was still waiting for her to speak. “We should make camp soon,” she said, “if supper is to be ready before dark.”
“The Richardses said there’d be a place along the shore just north of the crossing,” he said. “Little spot the lumber men use in season. It’s out of the way a mile or so, but I figure you and the girls would rather spend our first night out under a roof instead of around a campfire.”
A house. The very thought lifted Caroline’s cheeks and smoothed her forehead. “Yes, Charles,” she said. “In weather like this it will be a mercy to have one more night of shelter.”
Five
It was a bunkhouse, with beds lining the walls like shelves. Dry kindling by the hearth, a stubbled broom. Nothing more.
“Looks like you won’t have to cook out tonight, Caroline,” Charles said.
Caroline’s lips smiled, but her cheeks did not follow. Already she felt herself shrinking from the starkness confronting her. The wagon was cramped and chill, but compared to this empty room it was intensely their own.
Mary snugged Nettie into the fold of her elbow. “It isn’t very nice inside,” she ventured.
“It will keep us warm and dry,” Caroline said, speaking as much to herself as to Mary, “and that is plenty to be thankful for.” She eyed the narrow bunks.
“I’ll bring the big straw tick in for you and the girls,” Charles said. “Best if I sleep out with the wagon and team.”
She could not allow herself to consider how it might feel to sleep in this place without him—not if she was to get supper before dark. Caroline swallowed twice to spread the muscles in her throat. “And the two crates of kitchen things, please, Charles.”
First he brought her two pails of snow and an armload of weathered-looking firewood from the pile outside the door—mostly pine, with some maple mixed in. She set the hardwood aside and laid a modest cookfire with the rest. The flames blazed up merrily, the warmth burnishing her cheeks.
“We will need more hardwood to bank the fire for the night,” Caroline said when he came in with the crates. “The pine hasn’t enough pitch left to burn through until morning.” She hated to ask him after all he had done this day, but already the dry pine was burning too hot and fast to trust with a pan of cornbread. Charles only nodded and buttoned up his overcoat.