Chapter Nine
Prairie Camp
By the fifteenth necessary conversation, Thomas began inventing reasons to answer. Caroline informed him that the Bell wagon's left trace had been checked. He thanked her and reported that the right trace appeared emotionally neglected.
“Leather has no emotions.”
“Then it resembles you this morning.”
Caroline stared. Thomas bowed and moved out of reach.
Her sisters kept count. Charlotte made marks in the margin of the supply page until Caroline confiscated the pencil.
Grace announced each exchange like a horse race.
Lydia placed Thomas ahead by two lengths because he had made Caroline blush.
Caroline threatened to assign all three to dung gathering.
Lucy followed Caroline with a bucket. “If you speak to him twenty times, are you courting?”
“No.”
“What number makes it courtship?”
“There is no number.”
“Mr. Reed will be disappointed. He likes numbers.”
Thomas, passing within hearing, said, “I am adapting.”
At noon, Caroline deliberately sat on the opposite side of the fire. Thomas discussed wheel grease with Coleman and never looked toward her. She resented his cooperation. Eleanor watched the entire performance with the calm of an older sister storing evidence for later use.
Caroline avoided Thomas Reed with such determination that she spoke to him fourteen times before breakfast.
Each exchange was necessary. He needed to know the west ox had rubbed a sore beneath its yoke, the Hall wagon required a new pin, and the creek two miles ahead might be too muddy for watering teams. None of those conversations required Caroline to look at him directly.
Thomas accepted her sudden fascination with harness leather without protest.
Her sisters were less merciful.
“Would you pass the salt?” Charlotte asked.
Caroline handed it over.
“Thomas is standing beside it,” Lydia observed.
“The salt is not involved in anything.”
“Neither is the spoon, but you have polished it three times,” Grace said.
Caroline put the spoon down.
Lucy leaned close. “Was it a good kiss?”
Seven heads turned toward Caroline.
“We are not discussing this.”
“That means yes,” Rebecca said.
Eleanor rescued Caroline by announcing that Nathaniel needed help with the wagon list. Caroline rose too quickly and nearly overturned the coffee pot.
Nathaniel did not need help with the wagon list. Eleanor led Caroline past him, beyond the picketed animals, and stopped beside a low rise.
“You lied,” Caroline said.
“I am married now. Apparently, it has corrupted me.”
“Nathaniel will be pleased.”
“He usually is.” Eleanor's expression gentled. “Are you frightened of Thomas?”
“No.”
“Of kissing him?”
Caroline glanced toward camp. Thomas was helping Samuel Turner reset a wagon bow. His sleeves were rolled, and he listened to the boy's explanation with a seriousness Samuel rarely received from adults.
“No,” she said again.
“Then what?”
Caroline picked at a loose thread on her cuff. “Everything changed when you married Nathaniel. You belong with him now.”
“I still belong with you.”
“Not in the same way.”
“No. In a larger way.” Eleanor took Caroline's hand. “I did not leave the family. I brought Nathaniel into it.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It was terrifying.”
That surprised a laugh from Caroline.
Eleanor squeezed her fingers. “Marriage did not make our family fragile. Your happiness will not subtract from ours. You have spent years counting what everyone else needs. Perhaps you should count yourself among everyone.”
“Thomas may stay at Fort Kearny.”
“Then you will know before you give him more than you can bear to lose.”
Caroline looked toward him again. This time he glanced up. Their eyes met across the camp, and she felt yesterday's kiss as clearly as if his mouth still covered hers.
“I may already have given him enough to make losing difficult,” she said.
Eleanor smiled. “Then avoiding him will surely solve everything.”
“You have become unpleasant since your wedding.”
“Nathaniel says I have always possessed the talent.”
The uneventful afternoon allowed the sisters to invent courtship rules for Caroline without consulting her.
Charlotte proposed a written schedule so Thomas could speak to Caroline without interrupting wagon duties.
Lydia proposed he perform one useful task for every kiss.
Grace asked whether prior kisses created debt.
“There is no debt,” Caroline said.
Rebecca looked at the unrepaired harness strap in Thomas's hand. “There may be one task.”
Thomas accepted the strap. “What qualifies as useful?”
“Anything Caroline would otherwise do herself,” Martha said.
Thomas examined the length of harness. “That definition may include the entire westward migration.”
“It does,” Rebecca said.
Caroline informed them that courtship was not an unpaid labor contract. Lydia said that depended upon the courtship. Thomas bent over the buckle and announced that he wished to review the terms before kissing anyone again.
“You may submit revisions in writing,” Caroline said.
Charlotte opened the family record. “I can witness them.”
Thomas looked around the circle. “I have entered negotiations with a committee.”
“Anything Caroline does not have to redo,” Martha said.
The standard proved severe. Thomas repaired the strap, carried water, and split kindling. Caroline redid none of it. Lucy kept count and announced that he had earned three-quarters of a kiss.
“How is a quarter measured?” Thomas asked.
“You are the surveyor,” Lydia said.
Caroline confiscated the counting stick and assigned everyone to supper preparation. Thomas told her privately that he had hoped courtship involved fewer fractions. She told him to blame his profession.
The day's travel passed without crisis. By sunset, that qualified as a celebration. Mrs. Bell proposed a storytelling evening after supper, and no one had sufficient energy to escape.
The company formed a circle around the largest fire.
Children sat on blankets. Adults brought stools, overturned buckets, wagon tongues, and whatever else might support a tired body.
Nathaniel settled beside Eleanor with his right arm protected against his chest. Thomas took a place across the flames from Caroline.
Mr. Daugherty told a story about hunting a bear that grew larger every time someone questioned him. Martha countered with a tale Father had loved, about a farmer who tried to teach a mule humility and learned the lesson himself.
Lydia objected that both stories contained lessons and therefore violated the spirit of the evening. She stood, planted one boot on an overturned bucket, and announced that she would tell a true account of the night a chicken saved the Whitaker family from ruin.
Caroline said, “We have never owned a heroic chicken.”
“That is what makes the story remarkable.” Lydia waited until Lucy stopped giggling. “Her name was Beatrice, and she possessed the soul of a soldier.”
The chicken, as Lydia told it, had discovered a thief beneath the kitchen window, attacked him with military precision, and preserved both the family's silver and Father's dignity.
Caroline remembered the incident. The thief had been a raccoon, the silver had been two pewter spoons, and Father had fallen into the rain barrel while trying to catch it.
“You have improved the facts,” Charlotte said.
“Facts become rude when allowed to interrupt a good story.”
Mr. Daugherty laughed so hard that he had to remove his pipe. Even Thomas smiled, although he looked toward Caroline as if asking which portions might be trusted.
“None,” she told him.
“Beatrice was real,” Lydia protested.
“Beatrice was roasted the following Sunday.”
Lucy covered her ears. “A hero deserves a kinder ending.”
Grace took the next turn. Her tale concerned a princess with six older sisters and one younger sister, each of whom offered advice before the princess had finished describing her problem.
Eleanor advised patience. Caroline made a list. Charlotte found a contradiction in the villain's story.
Rebecca suggested shooting him. Martha fed everyone before they attempted anything difficult.
Lydia ignored the plan. Grace herself made an observation no one appreciated until too late.
“And what did the youngest sister do?” Lucy demanded.
“She announced every secret in the kingdom before breakfast,” Grace said.
The circle erupted. Lucy threw a rolled stocking at her. Grace caught it and bowed.
Thomas leaned toward Caroline. “The resemblances are subtle.”
“Grace has always struggled with invention.”
Rebecca did not volunteer, but Samuel Turner begged for the story of the runaway bull.
Rebecca relented only after he promised not to imitate it.
Her version was spare and practical: a neighbor's bull broke its pen, six grown men climbed a fence, and seventeen-year-old Rebecca led the animal into a shed with a pan of grain.
“You forgot the part where your skirt caught on the gate,” Martha said.
“That did not affect the bull.”
“It affected the minister,” Eleanor said. “He had to lend you his coat.”
Rebecca stared into the fire. “The minister has surely forgotten.”
“He preached on modesty the next Sunday,” Caroline said.
Even Rebecca laughed then, quick and unwilling, and Samuel looked at her as if she had defeated an army.
Charlotte offered a quieter story about Mother hiding written clues through the house on birthdays.
The final clue always led to a gift too small to justify the search: a ribbon, a peppermint, a new pencil.
Yet Charlotte remembered every hiding place.
By the time she finished, the fire had settled low, and the sisters' laughter had softened into remembrance.
Martha reached for Eleanor's hand. Lucy leaned against Grace. Caroline felt the familiar ache of missing their parents, sharpened and eased by hearing them restored through seven different memories.
Thomas did not offer comfort she had not requested. He simply shifted the water bucket closer to her feet so she could warm both hands around her cup.