Someone who’s gone.  “Maybe in the future we’ll try practicing with it.  Right now everything goes under the bed and stays there.”  That would be all she’d need, for Mrs. Hutchinson to find out there was an arsenal in the room.

Suddenly the bugle sounded and there was a commotion in the courtyard.

“What in the name of heaven is that?”

“Retreat and roll call,” Brewster said.

“Do you know everything?”

“I try to,” he said earnestly.  “They play taps later on and that’s my favorite part.”

“It’s sad,” Ada said.  “But it’s my favorite part too.”

Charlotte realized she needed to put her arms around them all the time.

27

“And this is reveille, I’ll bet,” Charlotte said, suddenly awake.  At least there was daylight coming through the window, much better than the predawn wake-up call of the wagon train.   She’d ended up sleeping with Grace, whose blue eyes were now staring straight into hers.

“Where are your things?” she asked at breakfast.  The rooms were completely devoid of personal objects.

“What things?” Ada said.

“Your belongings.  Your clothes.”

“They’re in the wagon,” Brewster said, but his voice was quiet.

Charlotte had to work through what this might mean, that the wagon was still intact, here somehow, with possessions left in it that maybe they hadn’t touched.

“It’s outside next to the abandoned ones,” Ada said.

“You haven’t taken anything out of it?  But why?”

“Maybe we wouldn’t be staying,” she said softly.

“I know it might be hard to go in there.  Everything will be hard for a long time, count on it.  But we can go get your belongings because we are staying, that’s a given.  If you really want to know, Mrs. Hutchinson insists on it.”

“That part’s not so hard anymore.  We’ve been in there lots.”

Charlotte found their meager cache of clothes and Jeremy’s boots which he hadn’t worn in months.  Ada opened a chest to show her the carefully folded Sunday clothes, the ones meant to be saved until they’d reached Oregon Territory.

“We kept Ma and Pa’s clothes.  But we gave away Alice’s.  It seemed better like that.”

Charlotte glanced up at Ada questioningly.  Then she knew.  Alice was the baby.

“Are there books you want?”

“We only had what you gave us and we had to throw them out.  Most of the food got thrown out, but you can go through and see what’s left that you could use.”

Charlotte retrieved a pepper-wrapped ham, dried apples, lard, a jar of honey.  Lamp oil.  Candles.  She quickly wore down, going through another woman’s possessions, someone who would never need them again.

<>

They hung up their clothes on the hooks that lined the walls and each slid their one pair of boots under the beds.  Charlotte considered that it wasn’t home, but it could become a home.