Chapter Twenty
West by Choice
Mr. Avery produced his fiddle before breakfast, which Caroline considered an abuse of both music and daylight. By the time the coffee boiled, half the company had come by to congratulate them.
“The older Mrs. Bell says you proposed while crossing the flood,” Grace told Thomas.
He sat beside the fire with his injured foot on an overturned bucket. “That would have required more breath than I possessed.”
“Mr. Coleman says Caroline carried you out herself,” Lydia added.
“That version may remain,” Caroline said.
Martha brought a plate of small sweet biscuits, each made with a scandalous spoonful of saved sugar. “I rationed these for a significant occasion.”
Rebecca took one. “You did not know there would be an engagement.”
“There are eight of us. Probability favored me.”
Charlotte smiled over the rim of her cup. Lucy had already begun planning flowers that did not exist in Nebraska Territory.
Eleanor waited until the teasing had softened before she handed Caroline the lead-wagon record. “This is yours.”
Caroline looked at the familiar book. “I have been keeping it.”
“For me. Now you will keep it for the Whitaker wagons.” Eleanor glanced toward Rebecca. “You and Rebecca will manage them day to day. Nathaniel and I have the company. Your engagement changes nothing about your authority.”
“Except that she has acquired another person to order,” Rebecca said.
Thomas accepted a biscuit from Martha. “I entered the courtship with full knowledge of the risk.”
The warmth in Caroline’s chest had little to do with the fire. She took the record from Eleanor. “Thank you.”
The engagement had altered the company's behavior overnight.
Mr. Hall addressed Thomas as “bridegroom” until Thomas threatened to revise every distance in Hall's route notes.
The younger Mrs. Bell began saving ribbon.
Mr. Avery offered three tunes for the wedding and played portions of each before breakfast.
Caroline tried to inspect the lead wagon while people congratulated her. She checked the axle twice because Mrs. Lawson asked about flowers during the first inspection. Rebecca took the checklist away.
“You are counting the same wheel.”
“It remains important.”
“There are three others.”
Thomas sat near the fire with his injured foot elevated. Lucy placed a folded blanket behind him, then another, until only his face showed above the pile. “He must be comfortable,” she explained.
“I have lost the use of both arms,” Thomas said.
“Your ankle cannot be injured if you cannot reach it.”
Caroline rescued him after determining he had suffered enough to be admitted to the family. Thomas thanked her and asked whether Whitaker medical practice always involved burial in bedding.
“Only for difficult patients.”
Martha said he had qualified before sunrise. That was when the sisters began discussing the wedding date as though Thomas and Caroline were the least relevant members of the company.
Breakfast became a negotiation over the wedding date before Caroline had agreed that a negotiation was occurring. Lucy favored the next Sunday. Martha said Thomas's ankle would not permit him to stand. Lydia suggested he sit. Grace suggested Caroline sit too so the ceremony appeared intentional.
“We are not marrying beside flooded ground,” Caroline said.
The younger Mrs. Bell looked up from the biscuits. “Why not? It is memorable.”
“So is cholera. We do not invite it.”
Thomas, wisely, concentrated on his coffee.
Eleanor asked what Caroline wanted. The question quieted the others more effectively than command.
Caroline wanted time for Thomas to heal, firmer country, and a day that did not require the company to choose between a wedding and saving livestock.
Thomas agreed with every condition and added that he preferred to stand when promising a lifetime.
Nathaniel offered to conduct the ceremony when they reached a suitable camp. Martha began inventorying sugar. Charlotte opened a page in the family record, then closed it when Caroline looked at her.
The conversation ended without a date, as it should. Caroline's engagement would not remove her from the lead wagon or turn her future into another decision made by committee. Later, when Thomas spread the official route book across a crate, they began with the work still before them.
Once the wedding debate ended, Caroline inspected Thomas's travel arrangement. The younger Mrs. Bell had built a nest of blankets in her wagon and placed a crate beneath his injured leg. Thomas objected to the word nest. Mrs. Bell added another blanket.
“You will remain there until noon,” Caroline said.
“I can ride.”
Rebecca looked at the swollen ankle. “You can fall from a horse.”
“That was not my proposal.”
“It was the likely result.”
Thomas appealed to Nathaniel, who reminded him that captains respected medical judgment. Martha, the medical judgment in question, threatened to remove his remaining boot if he continued.
Caroline watched him surrender with poor grace and considerable charm.
Their engagement had not made either of them easier.
It had merely given them a lifetime in which to practice listening.
She tucked the route book beside him for the morning and kept the compass in her pocket.
Work, authority, affection, and annoyance traveled west together.
Before Thomas opened the route book, the sisters presented him with what Lydia called an entrance examination for the Whitaker family. Caroline said no examination existed. Lydia replied that one existed now.
Charlotte asked him to name all seven unmarried sisters in order.
Thomas did so, including ages, which Caroline considered unnecessary courage.
Martha asked what he would do if Caroline forgot to eat while balancing accounts.
He answered that he would place food on the ledger.
Rebecca asked whether he could repair a harness. He said poorly but under supervision.
Grace asked what he would do if Lucy followed him on a survey without permission. Thomas looked at Lucy. “Return her to Caroline before she found a cliff.”
“There may not be a cliff,” Lucy objected.
“Then I would return you before you found one.”
Lydia asked the final question. “If Caroline says she does not need help, what does she mean?”
Thomas considered long enough to prove wisdom. “It depends whether she is carrying one task or twelve.”
Eleanor laughed. Rebecca nodded once. Martha gave him a biscuit. Lydia announced that he had passed, though Charlotte pointed out no scoring method had been established.
Caroline folded her arms. “Am I permitted an examination?”
Thomas handed her his notebook. “Name three mistakes in yesterday's ridge figures.”
She found four.
“You pass,” he said.
The sisters groaned at the romance of arithmetic and scattered toward their work.
Caroline remained beside Thomas. The foolish questions had carried a serious promise beneath them: marriage would not remove her from the family, and the family would not allow Thomas to imagine he had married only one Whitaker.
Later, Thomas spread the official route book across a crate. Caroline sat opposite him while he copied the flood detour in ink. His ankle remained wrapped and elevated on a folded blanket; they had agreed there would be no wedding until he could stand through it without leaning on the minister.
He entered the ridge bearing, the clay descent, the safe order of approach, and the height of the flood debris. Beside several decisions, he wrote C. Whitaker.
“You do not have to put my name on every one,” she said.
“I am recording the source.”
“You are trying to provoke me.”
“Also accurate.”
He reached for the brass instrument beside her hand. Beneath the repaired hinge, he had scratched two small words into the case.
Caroline’s compass.
She traced the letters. “It was Father’s.”
“And he entrusted it to his daughters. You recovered it from his papers, learned its use, broke it, permitted its repair, and navigated a search with it. Objects may have histories without having only one owner.”
Caroline opened the lid. The needle swung beneath the cracked glass and settled north.
“Caroline’s compass,” she said.
“A notoriously opinionated instrument.”
“It points in one direction.”
“And explains at length why the other directions are wrong.”
She leaned across the route book and kissed him. From behind the nearest wagon, Lucy groaned.
“You may come out,” Caroline called.
Lucy appeared, offended. “I was giving you privacy.”
“From six feet away?”
“Grace said I must practice.”
Packing for departure became a celebration of the engagement, done at speed. Grace tied a blue ribbon to the lead wagon bow. Rebecca removed it because the ox tried to eat it. Lucy tied it higher. The ox regarded this as a challenge.
The tents came down next. Grace pulled the wrong line and dropped one side of the sisters' canvas fly over Charlotte, who continued reciting the packing list from beneath it.
Lydia announced that Charlotte had become a speaking parcel.
Charlotte replied that parcels were generally treated with greater care.
Caroline lifted the canvas while Rebecca freed the peg Grace had knotted twice for safety and once by accident.
Lucy rolled three bedrolls together and produced a bundle too wide for either Whitaker wagon.
She argued that keeping them together would save time at evening camp.
Martha asked how much time they would save after carrying the bundle through Nebraska by hand.
Lucy reconsidered and separated them, though she tied her own cup inside Grace's blanket and did not discover it until the bundle rang.
Caroline started to correct every knot. Then she saw Rebecca checking the second wagon's lashings, Charlotte counting the folded canvas, and Martha assigning the cookware without waiting for instruction.
Nothing had been forgotten. Nothing required Caroline to take the work back merely because she could do it herself.