Caroline: Little House, Revisited(97)

A voice called out. Male. Then another.

“Eng! Gulls!”

“Eng! Gulls!”

Charles lowered the gun as two men came into view. Caroline’s long exhale blanked an entire pane as she fit the syllables together: Ingalls. Both held rifles, the barrels propped against their shoulders.

“It’s Mr. Edwards,” Caroline said, “and Mr. Scott.” Mary and Laura came to peep out. It could not be so bad, Caroline reasoned to herself, if Mr. Scott had left his wife and children at home. They lived to the east, nearer the Indian camps.

Scott and Edwards did not come into the house. Nor did they rest the butts of their rifles on the ground. They stood together outside the stable, talking. Their talk was at once intense and distracted. Caroline saw each of them survey the eastern horizon in turn. Jack had returned his attention to that direction, too. Edwards caught sight of her and the girls, pressed up against the window glass, and favored the children with a nod. Mary and Laura waved, but Caroline had seen the look on Edwards’s face. It was more wince than smile.

When they had gone Charles called to her through the latched door. “Caroline, will you come give me a hand with the milking?”

A cold tingle threaded up Caroline’s spine. He was an hour ahead of milking time. Whatever news the men had relayed could not be said inside the house. “Yes, Charles,” she answered. “Mind the baby, please, Mary. I won’t be long. Laura, will you pull the latch string in behind me and open the door when I come back?” Laura nodded eagerly. Caroline wound her shawl across her chest and went out.

Charles was standing in the stable, waiting. He kneaded the back of his neck as he spoke. “The removal act passed the House and the Senate in July,” he said. “The Osages were granted a reservation south of the Kansas line. This land will be sold at $1.25 an acre, just as we were promised.”

News they had waited months to hear. News that should have made Charles whoop and grab her up in his arms. Now he said it with a grimace.

“July,” she repeated. And then, when he did not explain, “Why haven’t they gone?”

“The Osages only just approved the act. They were late returning from the summer hunt and took five weeks to think it over.”

That, too, was good news. Caroline peered at him. He spoke as though he were confessing a sin.

“Charles,” she said. “Tell me.”

“Fifty Osage warriors went into town a week after they’d approved the act. They stood in the middle of Independence and put on some kind of fancy garb and painted their faces.” Caroline’s skin began to creep as she pictured them undressing in the street, streaking their faces and heaven knows what else with slashes of red and black. “And then they danced,” Charles said.

Caroline blinked. She could not adjust the scene in her mind to match what she had heard. “Danced?”

Charles nodded. “Scott heard it from a man who was there.”

“What does it mean? Is that what they’ve been doing these nights?”

“I don’t know. Neither did Scott. The Indian agent has called in troops.”

“Thank heaven for that, at least.”

Charles swallowed. He would not look at her. Caroline clutched her shawl closer about her neck even as her center filled with heat. Anger or dread would overtake her in a moment—she could not tell which.

“Charles?”

“Scott said their orders are to protect the Indians.”

“The Indians?” Her voice was shrill. She spun so that he could not see her face and stood panting with shock. She would break apart. Caroline could feel it happening. Every tiny grain of her was loosening, preparing to fly apart.

“Caroline, we don’t know—”

She shrugged his hand from her shoulder. “I have to get back to the girls.”



Caroline did not undress that night. She craved the feel of the barrier, however slight, that her corset and stockings and shoes made between her skin and the vibrating air. She sat up in the rocking chair while Charles squatted before the fire, making bullets. Her mind roiled with unwelcome thoughts.

Why had they come? Why, when the mention of Indians made her mind recoil, had she consented to bring their children to a place called Indian Territory? Charles, of course. Charles, who made life seem like a song—a song so sweet and heartfelt she sometimes failed to hear its words. But to think that Charles would have foreseen something like this? Caroline would have laughed at the idea had she been able.

She tried instead to feel nothing. There was no room for it. In a single room with two little girls near enough to watch every blink, without even a pantry door to hide behind, there was no space for anything like anger or tears. The only place to cry was the necessary, and Caroline would not go out where that raw sound might touch her.

Again and again she watched the thin silver stream of liquid lead flow into the bullet mold, then pop out a moment later, hard and shining. If only she could do just that—pour all her scalding thoughts into a tight, smooth ball capable of piercing the very thing she was most frightened of.

Caroline imagined herself sighting down the barrel of a rifle loaded with such a bullet. Toward what would she fire? Images of Towel Thief and Green Shirt faded before fully materializing; she could no longer picture their features. Charles’s face came into focus instead, and Caroline jolted back so that the rocking chair creaked.