“Are you ready to go inside?” Caroline asked when the Indians were gone. Laura shook her head. “All right. We’ll sit on the doorstep awhile.”
Caroline sat down with her back propped against the doorway and pulled aside the board that separated them from Carrie. The baby scooted out and found her place in Caroline’s lap. Caroline’s body eased some as Carrie settled back against her. Carrie knew perfectly well where she belonged. Caroline stroked Carrie’s plump knee with her palm—round and round, as though she were polishing it.
It was time for dinner, and Caroline could not compel herself to move. “I don’t feel like doing anything,” she said to Charles, “I feel so—” She did not know how to say what she meant, any more than Laura had. There was no single word for it. The weight of the Indians’ departure, balanced against the lightness of her relief, had left her blank inside. Everything she could feel was outside of herself—the smoothness of Carrie’s knee under her palm, the curve of the baby’s spine against her chest. “So let down,” she finished. That was not it, but it was as near as she could manage.
“Don’t do anything but rest,” Charles said. Caroline did not have it in her to smile, but her cheeks rounded at his tone. He had not spoken to her that way since she was pregnant.
“You must eat something, Charles.”
“No,” he said, looking at Laura. “I don’t feel hungry.” He went to the stable then and hitched the mustangs to the plow. She and Laura and Mary were not hungry, either. Together they sat, watching the path the Indians had worn across the yard. Blade by blade, the grass would grow up through the footprints and horse tracks. There would be no trace of their leaving.
Thirty-One
Caroline set down the pails and lifted the back ruffle of her bonnet so that the breeze could find the nape of her neck. Three rows remained to be watered: the carrots, the sweet potatoes, and the tomatoes. One thing never changed, and that was the everlasting heaviness of water. Pail after pail she pulled from the well and toted to her kitchen garden. Each dainty plant must have its dipperful if it was not to suffer during the long afternoon.
The soil here was sandier than she was accustomed to. It was warmer to the touch and easier to work, but did not hold water in the same way. Water splayed outward over the surface of the ground before sinking in, leaving only a thin layer moistened. Caroline had shown Laura how to carefully press a little dimple into the earth around each stem, so that the soil might cup the water long enough to soak the thin white roots. Twice a day Caroline bent double all along the length of each row, emptying each dipper of water where it could do the most good. Laura begged to help, but Caroline diverted her to digging a shallow trench around the perimeter, to ensure no rainwater fell out of reach of the seedlings. Careful as Caroline was with the dipper and pails, her hem was always damp and gritty by the time she finished. Laura would no doubt douse herself to the kneecaps.
Mary sat on a quilt spread over the grass, minding Carrie and sorting out remnants of calico from the scrap bag to sew her own nine-patch quilt. Caroline shook her head fondly, watching Mary arrange her favorites into pretty patterns. Five going on twenty-five, that child.
A gleeful squeal came out from under the sun canopy Caroline had contrived out of a pillowcase draped across two crates. The string of Indian beads dangled from one of the wooden slats, and Carrie lay in the shade, jabbering at the brightly colored beads. Caroline considered the three rows of plants still waiting for water. They would not wilt in five minutes’ time. She sidled down on the edge of the quilt and propped herself on an elbow at Carrie’s feet. The hair that had been fine and black as soot had given over to a warm golden brown. Her knobby little knees and elbows were rosying up like crabapples. A smile ripened Caroline’s cheeks to see it. Caroline reached up to tinkle the beads with a fingertip. Carrie flapped her arms at the air and squealed. Caroline put her hand to the baby’s belly. Its warm curve reached up to fill her palm.
“Letter for you, Ingalls,” Mr. Edwards’s voice called.
Caroline bounded up from the quilt, lightened with hopes for the circulator. “Mind the baby, Mary,” she said as she smoothed her hair and strode out to the edge of the field where Charles and Edwards were meeting. “It’s good of you to remember us at the post office, Mr. Edwards,” she said.
“Just got back from Independence last night,” he replied, handing Charles the envelope. “News should be pretty fresh. The clerk there at the post office said it hadn’t been sitting but a week or two yet.”
It was addressed only to Charles, in a hand she did not recognize. Caroline felt fidgety as a child while she and Charles and Edwards exchanged pleasantries: news from town, an invitation to supper, a polite refusal. Edwards had hardly turned his back to head home before Caroline was holding out a hairpin for Charles to slit open the envelope. “Who is it from, Charles?”
“Couldn’t be anybody but Gustafson.”
A single sheet of paper. He read it once, then Caroline saw his eyes return to the top of the page and begin again. He said nothing.
“Does he send any news of Henry and Polly?”
Charles turned the letter over, then looked inside the envelope. “I don’t know.”
“Charles?”
Charles licked his lips. “He’s reneged. Can’t make the payments, so he’s moving out—moving on. That twenty dollars he sent last summer is the last money we’ll see from him. The property defaults to us.”
No more payments. Caroline’s mouth went dry. Every dollar and a quarter the Swede did not send was an acre lost. “How much is left in the fiddle box?”
“Not quite twenty-five acres’ worth. Thirty-one dollars and twenty cents.” He turned to the plow and slapped it gently with the letter. “Could have had forty acres for what this cost. Don’t that beat all. Traded fifty dollars in furs for a steel plow and the only land I can afford to till is seven hundred miles away.”
“The land office wouldn’t have traded furs for acreage,” Caroline said gently.
Charles whipped his hat down onto the freshly turned furrow. “Damn it all.”
Caroline winced at the strike of his words. She glanced back at the girls. They were watching. Not scared yet, but alert that something was happening. Caroline moved so that they could not see Charles’s face and lowered her voice. “If we raise a crop—”
“This ground won’t raise anything but sod potatoes and sod corn until the grass roots have rotted out.” Charles pronounced sod as though it were a vulgarity. “We can’t raise anything of value in time to make payment.”