Caroline: Little House, Revisited(90)

“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.

“No,” Caroline answered.

He crossed the room and put his hand on the latch, but he did not open the door. Caroline did not know him well enough to make out what he was thinking now. By his outward appearance alone she would never have suspected what kind of a man Edwards was. Tobacco stained the corners of his lips. His hair looked as though he’d been cutting at it with his razor rather than a pair of shears. It was long and fine and inclined to snarl, a lustrous golden brown halfway between Mary’s and Laura’s. He had been towheaded as a boy, Caroline reckoned, and not so terribly long ago. She rubbed her finger and thumb together, imagining the feel of it.

“Mr. Edwards?” She paused, sure of her intentions, yet unable to gauge how he would receive such an invitation.

“Ma’am?”

“Mr. Edwards, I know it is quite some time off, but I wonder if you would consider having your Christmas dinner with us. Our family would be proud to have you.”

She saw how the words touched him, how he wanted to smile but could not trust himself to do it. He swallowed once before speaking. “Yes, ma’am,” Edwards said. Solemn. The muscles at the corners of his mouth jerked, once. “I should like that very much.”

Caroline shut the door behind him and pulled in the latch string.



It was too late for Charles to come home. There was no sense in sitting up, no call for him to drive so late, in the dark and the wind. By now he would be camping somewhere, surely. But Caroline was every bit as reluctant as the girls had been to go to bed—more so, even.

The latch clattered in the wind, and she forbade herself from turning to check the latch string again. It was pulled in. She had not laid a finger on it since letting Edwards out. No one had. The shutters were bolted. Jack lay between the lintels, his belly against the threshold. There was nothing to fear.

There was only the wind, which was certainly nothing to be afraid of. If Mary or Laura woke, frightened, Caroline would tell them so, and it would be true. The wind itself was no threat. Yet two facts remained: the wind was blowing, and Caroline was discomfited.

The way it touched the house—slapping the walls, snatching at the latch and rattling the shutters, like something trying to get inside—Caroline could not help thinking it was punishing them for standing in its way. And the sound. If anything living had shrieked that way, she would have rushed outside to assuage it. Or inside for the gun, Caroline thought as another gust crashed against the shutters. It did not matter how many times she assured herself that the sounds signified nothing. Every nerve in her body reacted to them, insistent that something was amiss.

Caroline rocked in her chair, thankful for its movement, and trained her eyes on the fire. One by one, she conjured up images of the things Charles would bring back with him: salt meat, linseed oil, sacks of flour and oats and beans, a keg of nails to repay Mr. Edwards, perhaps a jar of pickles for herself. Of course, there would be a treat for Mary and Laura to squeal over. She pictured Eliza, and Ma, and Martha, and Henry and Polly reading the letter she had sent, and felt her face soften momentarily.

But the pictures were no more than a haze; Caroline could not hold them before her for even a minute without the thing she did not want to think of showing through. Her eyes strayed to the shelf that held the pistol, and she closed them. There is no need, she told herself, rocking deeply. Only stop thinking about Indians. But her mind would not obey. It rubbed and rubbed at that thought until it shone too brightly to ignore.

Caroline went to the bed. For a moment she stood, watching Carrie sleep. Her little fists lay flung open on either side of her head. Anyone with sense would stop fretting and climb into bed beside that baby girl, she thought. But the baby was not what Caroline wanted. She put one hand on the mantel shelf, stepped onto the bed rail, and reached up over Carrie’s sleeping form. Her fingers touched the cold metal barrel first. Then the stock, polished smooth with use. Her thumb found a scratch in the wood she had not noticed before.