“Yeah, he’s my little angel all right, and don’t he just know it!”
“And the girls too… you must be so proud of…” Caroline said, but she could not keep her voice steady and had to stop.
“Hey there, now-stop that! This here is a celebration of the new year, and all the wonderful new things it’s going to bring. You hear me?” Angie said, significantly. “It’s going to happen for you. You just have to be patient. You hear?” Caroline nodded, and wished she could feel as sure as Angie sounded.
“Mrs. Massey? Will you dance with a rough rider like myself?” Hutch asked, appearing beside them.
“Of course!” Caroline smiled, hastily blotting her eyes with her fingertips. The band played one tune into the next without pause, and Hutch led her in a swaying dance that was almost a waltz, but not quite so. The room was a blur of smiling faces, some of them none too clean, and Caroline remembered the Montgomery’s ball, still not yet a year gone but seeming to belong to another lifetime altogether. She had come such a long way, she told herself. It was no wonder that she did not yet find herself feeling at home.
“Is everything all right, Mrs. Massey?” Hutch asked, seriously.
“Yes, of course! Why wouldn’t it be?” she said, too brightly, her voice thin.
“No reason,” Hutch shrugged. He was wearing his best shirt, and she noticed that the top button was hanging by a thread. She made a mental note to add it to the pile of mending back at the ranch. “Are you ready for another riding lesson, yet? You did great, that first time we tried it, but I never saw you go back for another try.”
“No, well… I’m not sure I’m the world’s most naturally gifted horsewoman. And besides, now the weather’s turned so cold I would surely freeze if I tried it!” she said.
“There are some people that take naturally to it, that’s for sure, and others that don’t. But I’ve seen those that once struggled get to grips with it in the end, with practice. But you have to be willing to get back on the horse, Mrs. Massey. You do have to get back on the horse,” Hutch said, intensely, and she was no longer sure that he was talking about riding.
“I…” she started, but could not think what to say. She looked down at her feet and saw how dusty her shoes were, and found her eyes swimming with tears.
“You’re going to be just fine,” Hutch said, his voice so low that she hardly heard him.
“Hutchinson, I’m cutting in! That’s my wife you’re cradling and she’s by far the handsomest girl in the room,” Corin announced, taking Caroline’s hands and spinning her into his embrace. His eyes were alight with happiness, cheeks flushed from sipping whisky and dancing, and he looked glorious, so glorious that Caroline laughed and threw her arms around his neck.
“Happy new year, my darling,” she whispered into his ear, letting her lips brush lightly against his neck, so that he held her tighter still.
In February snow fell deeply, lying in thick drifts and making the world too bright to look upon. Caroline stared at the featureless scene beyond the window in wonder, and stayed close to the stove as much as she could, her hands curled inside the fingerless mittens that Ponca had given her, which kept as much of her skin covered as possible while still allowing her to do the mending. Her chilled fingers fumbled the needle and dropped it often.
“Now you are glad to have them,” Magpie said, nodding at the thick mittens. “When White Cloud gave them to you, I saw in your face you thought you would never need them!” she smiled.
“I should have paid her double,” Caroline agreed, at which Magpie frowned slightly.
“Will you tell a story, while I do this work?” Magpie requested. She was kneeling at the wash tub, rubbing the stains out of Corin’s work wear on a ridged wooden washboard.
“What kind of story?”
“It doesn’t matter. A story of your people,” Magpie shrugged. So Caroline, unsure who her people were, told her the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and of the treacherous serpent, the delicious apple, and the subsequent fall from grace. She put down her sewing as she reached the finale, describing their sudden shame at their nakedness, and the scramble to find something with which to cover themselves. Magpie chuckled, which made her cheeks even rounder and her eyes sparkle.
“This is a good story, Mrs. Massey-a missionary man told this same story to my father once, and do you know what my father said?”
“What did he say?”
“He said this is typical of a white woman! An Indian woman would have picked up a stick and killed the snake and all would have been well in the garden!” she laughed. Caroline, stung for a moment by the implied criticism, soon found herself smiling, and then catching the girl’s infectious laughter.
“That’s probably about right,” she conceded, and they were still laughing when Corin came in, brushing the snow from his shoulders. He looked at Caroline, sitting by the stove with her sewing to one side, and at Magpie on her knees by the tub, and he frowned. “Corin? What’s wrong?” Caroline asked; but he shook his head and came over to the stove to warm himself.
Later, as they were eating supper, Corin spoke his mind.
“When I came home today, I… I didn’t like what I saw, Caroline,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her heart high in her throat.
“You just sitting there, keeping warm, when Maggie was working so hard-”
“It wasn’t like that! I was working at the mending! Ask Magpie… I just stopped to tell her the story of Adam and Eve…” Caroline trailed off, unhappily.
“I know you’re used to having servants, Caroline, but Maggie is no servant. I meant for her to help you in the house, of course, but she does not have time to do everything here. She has her own home to tend to, and soon she won’t be able to do as much. You need to help her more, love,” he finished gently. He broke a piece of bread from the loaf and crumbled it distractedly between his fingers.
“She does help me! I mean, I help her too-we share the work! What do you mean, soon she won’t be able to do as much? Why won’t she?”
“Sweetheart,” Corin looked up at her through his rough golden brows. “Maggie’s pregnant, Caroline. She and Joe are going to have a baby. Their first.” He looked away again, his face somber, and in that expression Caroline read an accusation. Tears sprang to her eyes and she was choked with an emotion a little like ire, a little like grief, a little like guilt. An insufferable mixture of the three that burned in her gut and made a roaring noise in her ears. She clattered up from the table, ran to the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
In a light buggy, harnessed to a bay horse with a high, proud head carriage, the journey to Woodward could be made in a day, with a dawn start and a break to rest and water the horse at noon time. Most of the ranch hands and riders accompanied them on horseback, including Joe and Magpie. Caroline watched the Indian girl, who rode a wiry gray pony, and wondered how she could have failed to spot the telltale swell at her middle, the slight deference in her movements.
“Is it wise for Magpie to ride in her condition?” Caroline whispered to Corin, although there was little chance of being heard above the thudding of hooves, the wind and the creak and whirr of the buggy wheels.
“I said the very same thing to Joe,” Corin smiled. “He just laughed at me.” He shrugged. “I guess Ponca women are a bit tougher than white women.” A few tiny flecks of rain blew out of the sky. Caroline made no reply to Corin’s remark, but she felt the sting of it. The implication she heard, whether he had intended it or not, was that she was weak and that she was failing here in the West, as a woman and as a wife.