Page 84 of Caroline’s Compass

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.