Caroline: Little House, Revisited(110)

By the time Charles returned from the Scott claim she was squeezing the last of the suds from the clothes. The stains were not gone, especially where the smoke and the sweat had mixed, but they had faded enough that Caroline was satisfied the garments would not appear marred.

“The Scotts are all well and safe,” Charles said. “They’d seen Edwards as well. His place wasn’t touched. The fire never crossed the creek.”

“I’m thankful for that.” She held out his shirt so that he could see the holes.

“Close call,” he said. “Never felt a thing. There was talk,” he added, fingering the burned places, “that the Indians set the fire to drive off the settlers.”

Caroline let the news settle, working it over in her mind as she pressed the fabric against the washboard. Then she spoke as though the idea were of no consequence. “They’ve already agreed to leave.”

Charles nodded. He dipped up a bucket of rinse water from the well for her before replying. “I didn’t say I believed it.”

“But Mr. Scott does.”

“Yes.”

“And Mrs. Scott.”

He did not answer that. Likely he couldn’t, but Caroline knew. The way Mrs. Scott had spoken of the Indians before the fire left no room for doubt. For all her kindness to her neighbors, Mrs. Scott had seemed to savor the thought of what depredations Indians—any Indians—were capable of, as though it vindicated her hatred for them. Caroline could not say whether she herself hated them any less, but she found nothing to relish in it. Nor was it a conviction she cared to cultivate any more deeply.

She sat back on her heels to look at him, her hands submerged in the cold rinse water. “If I am to live here, Charles, it cannot be under the cloud of what the Indians might have done, or may do.” She said it without force. It was not a threat—only a fact. “I’ve seen enough that I can already imagine more than I care to.”

He understood. Or rather, he agreed. He did not understand. Charles would never share her sentiments toward the Indians. He could stand before an Indian man without feeling his viscera clench and his bowels shudder, without the fine hairs on every surface of his skin rising up in a feeble attempt at protection. Caroline’s body told her to be afraid, and she obeyed it; there need not be a reason. Charles’s did not.

Caroline could not change his response to the presence of the Osages any more than she could change her own. Yet Charles was willing to abide by her condition. He had agreed with only a moment’s consideration, without coaxing or scoffing. Warmth swarmed suddenly around her heart, and Caroline surprised them both with a smile. Charles smiled back without knowing why, happy, as always, to have pleased her. She would let that be enough. Caroline heard her thoughts and spared another smile, for her ma this time. More than enough.



“Come here, Caroline. And you, Mary and Laura.”

Something to see, Caroline guessed. Perhaps an animal, by the way Charles called out to them—low and slow, so as not to frighten whatever it was away. Unless there were a bison grazing in the yard, she could not think what would make him interrupt her work. Caroline gave a scolding smile to the crochet thread in her hands. It was not work, really. The mending was done, and the half-finished row of scalloped lace she had begun so long ago in Wisconsin had been so tempting, there at the bottom of the work basket. So she had let herself pretend it could be used to disguise the burned hem of her lavender calico, even though its pattern was far too elaborate for an everyday dress. Her hands delighted in the intricate movements, so unlike braining hides and wringing laundry that she was not vexed each time the thread snagged on the rough tips of her fingers. How long since she had made something beautiful for its own sake?

And now Charles’s voice was boring a hole through her concentration. With a sigh, she realized she had lost count of the stitches. She set the lacework back into the basket and stood, treating her back to a luxuriant stretch. “Let’s go see what Pa has to show us,” she said to Mary and Laura.

The girls ran outside ahead of her, scampering over the board Charles had propped across the doorway to keep Carrie indoors. In the weeks since the fire she had begun creeping across the floor, pulling with her hands and scooting her knees along behind. Soon she would be crawling. Now Carrie followed her sisters as far as she could, then gripped the board with hands and mouth. “We’ll have to ask your pa to tack a strip of canvas to that edge,” Caroline told the baby as she hitched up her skirt to step out. Otherwise the child would chew off a mouthful of splinters.

Caroline reached up to shade her eyes against the sun. When she could see, she stopped short. Her hand dropped to her chest. At once she understood why Charles had called her name first, before the girls. Never in her life had she seen so many Indians. Scores of them, mounted and on foot, with baskets and bundles, all pointed west.

“Oh, the pretty ponies! See the pretty ponies!” Laura cried, clapping her hands. “Look at the spotted one.”

It was plain from the way the ponies were packed that the Indians were leaving. Blankets, hoes, cookpots. They had left nothing behind. “Mercy,” Caroline heard herself say. She had not expected to watch them go—only to learn one day that their camps were empty, that they had fulfilled their agreement with the government and moved south of the Kansas line.

“Thank God,” Caroline said. She meant it, but she did not feel it. Not yet. Here before her eyes was an answered prayer, and she could neither rejoice nor reflect, only witness its happening. Now that it was happening, Caroline wondered what she had supposed she would feel. Glad, relieved? She felt so little, she could not put a name to it. The moment flowed by without seeming to leave a mark.