Chapter Twenty #2
She limited herself to the lead wagon. The compass went into its blue-wool wrap beneath the route book, where she could reach both without disturbing the flour chest. Father's papers remained dry in the leather pouch.
Caroline fastened the flap, tested it once, and stepped away before a second inspection became an argument with Rebecca.
From his blanket nest in the Bell wagon, Thomas called, “Was that restraint?”
“It was efficiency.”
“I will revise my terminology.”
Rebecca passed with an armful of tent poles. “Do that quietly. She may attempt efficiency again.”
Martha handed Thomas a parcel of biscuits for the Bell wagon. “You must eat.”
“Mrs. Bell has already fed me twice.”
“That was breakfast.”
“Both times?”
“She worries in courses,” Caroline said.
Charlotte brought the route book. “Where should I record the engagement?”
“You should not,” Caroline said.
“It changed the composition of the company.”
“No one joined or left.”
Lydia looked at Thomas. “He joined.”
“He was already here.”
“Not properly,” Grace said.
Thomas accepted the route book from Charlotte and wrote one line beneath the flood entry: May 17—C. Whitaker agreed to a permanent joint survey.
Caroline read it. “That is not an official route event.”
“It altered my destination.”
She tried to remain stern. The attempt lasted until Lucy asked whether a joint survey required matching hats.
The company rolled west before noon. Caroline drove the lead Whitaker wagon. Rebecca held the reins of the second. Eleanor and Nathaniel rode the line of twelve wagons, and Thomas traveled where the younger Mrs. Bell could prevent him from stepping on his injured ankle.
At the ridge’s western edge, Caroline took one last bearing. The flooded country lay behind them. Fort Kearny remained ahead, but it was a landmark now, not Thomas’s destination.
Before the traveler appeared, Caroline and Rebecca reviewed the next day's wagon order together.
Rebecca proposed moving the Lawson wagon ahead of the Bells because the younger team tired on grades.
Caroline asked two questions, accepted the change, and entered it in the record under both their names.
Eleanor watched from Nathaniel's horse. “Do you need me?”
The old answer rose automatically. Caroline swallowed it. “Not for the wagons. Mrs. Turner wants to ask about Samuel's cough.”
Eleanor smiled and rode toward the Turner family. No one had been displaced. The work had simply found the person best able to do it.
The first halt came beside a long rise where the grass offered the teams better grazing than the rocky ground beneath the wheels suggested.
Caroline called twenty minutes. Mr. Hall said twenty minutes was not a halt but an insult delivered while standing still.
Rebecca told him he could complain while watering his oxen.
Caroline moved down the company with the record tucked beneath her arm. At the fourth wagon she heard a dry chirp at every turn of the left rear wheel. The sound stopped when the wagon stopped, which caused Mr. Bell to declare the matter cured.
“It will begin again when the wheel does,” Caroline said.
“Then we should avoid alarming it.”
Rebecca crouched beside the hub and touched two fingers to the axle end. “Grease is thin. No heat yet.”
Caroline looked toward the Bell wagon. Thomas had shifted high enough among the blankets to see over the sideboard. He held the route book on his good knee and wore the expression of a man prepared to be useful from an inconvenient distance.
“Do not get down,” Caroline called.
“I have not moved.”
“Your face was moving toward advice.”
“A serious condition,” Mr. Bell said. “Runs in surveyors.”
Thomas raised his voice. “Check the retaining pin before adding grease. The clay may have worked beneath the washer.”
Rebecca drew the pin and found a ridge of dried mud exactly where he had predicted. She scraped it clean with the back of her knife while Caroline fetched the grease pot. Mr. Bell watched them work and announced that he had intended to inspect the pin as soon as someone identified it.
“You have owned this wagon for nine years,” Mrs. Bell said.
“And it has possessed the pin for all nine without introducing us.”
Caroline greased the axle while Rebecca reset the washer and pin. When they rolled the wagon forward, the chirp was gone. She entered the repair in the Whitaker record only after Rebecca pointed out that the Bell wagon did not belong in it.
“The company record, then,” Caroline said.
Rebecca took the pencil. “I will enter it. You have inspected one wheel twice already today.”
“That was before breakfast.”
“Wheels do not forget.”
Caroline surrendered the pencil. A month ago, handing over the entry would have felt like abandoning a duty. Now it felt like discovering she had two hands even when one of them belonged to her sister.
The younger girls had used the break to bring Thomas his noon food early. Martha carried bread and dried apples. Grace carried coffee. Lucy carried a spoon, though no part of the meal required one.
“For the medicine,” Lucy explained.
Thomas examined the empty spoon. “What medicine?”
“Whatever Martha gives you after you disobey.”
Martha set down the plate. “He has not disobeyed.”
“His face nearly did,” Caroline said.
Thomas looked injured in a region far above his ankle. “My face offered technically correct advice.”
Martha handed him the bread. “Eat before another part of you offers advice.”
“Which part is most troublesome?” Lucy asked.
Five answers arrived at once. Thomas listened to the accusations, then looked at Caroline. “Your family has achieved unusual agreement.”
“Do not encourage them.”
“I believe encouragement is no longer required.”
Grace handed him the coffee. “Then it may drink this as punishment.”
He tasted it and went still. Lydia, who had brewed the pot, watched from beside the wagon tongue. “Well?”
“It points north,” Thomas said carefully.
Caroline laughed before she could stop herself. Lydia informed him that coffee was not a compass. Thomas said the distinction had become uncertain. Even Rebecca smiled as she closed the grease pot.
Nathaniel called the company to readiness.
Water buckets disappeared into their places.
Mrs. Lawson gathered her two children from the grass and counted them aloud, then counted once more because the younger boy had moved during the first count.
Eleanor helped Samuel Turner back beneath his family canvas, where he could rest until his cough eased.
Caroline checked the order with Rebecca instead of checking Rebecca. The Lawson wagon would move before the Bells. The Averys would give both wagons room on the rise. Nathaniel accepted the change with a nod and carried it down the line.
Thomas tapped the route book against the Bell wagon's side. “Am I permitted one observation?”
“You have been making them since Missouri,” Caroline said.
“You asked Rebecca what she thought before deciding.”
“She knows the teams.”
“Yes.” He smiled. “That was the observation.”
The praise warmed her because it named something she had worked to change, not something Thomas wished to claim. Caroline touched the compass through her pocket, then left it there. The road ahead was visible. She did not need to open the case merely to prove she could find it.
When the company moved again, the Bell wheel made no sound.
Mr. Bell leaned out and called the silence suspicious.
The younger Mrs. Bell pulled him back with his coat before a branch could do it for her.
Rebecca took the lead wagon reins, Lydia brought the second wagon into line, and the twelve wagons climbed the rise without crowding one another.
Thomas, confined to the Bell wagon by his ankle, called for the route book.
Caroline brought it and found he had added her flood bearings beside his ridge measurements.
Two kinds of knowledge shared the same page.
She teased him about his handwriting. He said marriage would give her years to improve it.
Then Charlotte, walking beside the wagon, fell silent and looked toward the open ground ahead.
Charlotte walked beside the wagon for the first mile, one hand occasionally touching the cameo at her throat. At the noon halt, a solitary traveler approached from the west and asked permission to join the company as far as the fort.
He gave Nathaniel his name and said he had come from St. Joseph after wintering there.
Charlotte, who had been checking the company record, looked up sharply.
“What is it?” Caroline asked.
Charlotte waited until the man moved away. “Mr. Avery entered his name two weeks ago. He said then that the man had spent the winter at Council Bluffs.”
“Perhaps Avery was mistaken.”
“Perhaps.” Charlotte’s fingers closed around the cameo. Her expression said she did not believe in convenient errors.
Caroline glanced toward the traveler, then toward Eleanor and Nathaniel. There would be time to ask questions. Another problem, another choice, another person to understand.
But the weight no longer rested on one pair of shoulders.
Thomas called from the Bell wagon, “What bearing?”
Caroline opened her compass. Sunlight caught the crack, turning the scar into a bright line across the glass.
“West,” she called back.
The needle agreed, and the wagons moved on.