Charlotte gently nudged the mare aside, climbed up on the back and stuck her head in beneath the taut white canopy.  Her eyes grew wide, her mouth dropped open.  Samuel was the most orderly of men.  Everything in his daily existence had a place and a reason for being.  The inside of the wagon looked like a tornado had gone through.  Charlotte realized then how quickly he had moved, how much of the time allotted he had spent on this endeavor, how frightened and sad he must have been.  She would sort it all out, the clothes from the pots and pans, the blankets from the sacks of food, the folded up tent canvas from the amazing clutter of overturned books, hairbrushes, boots, a velvet coat she hadn’t worn in years.

Keep going, she told herself.  Don’t think about this now.  What she wanted most were the pickets, which she found with only a minimum amount of digging, and the guns within easy reach, carefully placed together on one side.  Thank you, she said silently.  If it had to be like this, thank you.

After checking that the rifle was loaded, she leaned it barrel down under the front seat of the wagon.  She untied the mare and picketed her so that she could graze, but not far.  Later she would lead them all down to the river and let them drink.

In this way, in the great silence, Charlotte kept herself busy, in motion with tasks to perform.  She did remember the Second Migration, when the Family had been run out of town because they were suspect, different, carried odd beliefs about which there were too many rumors to put down.  Though she had never seen a reason to put the rumors down.  The Family’s beliefs were odd and she was always in the middle of the conversation, her father being who he was, the First Elder, the fountainhead of those beliefs.  It was then, on that long journey, being in charge of her father’s wagon, that she had learned to manage, cope, improvise, find ways to make do with what they had.

As the afternoon faded, she found herself exhausted.  If she let go for even one fraction of a second, she knew she would break down, but the energy needed to hold on was becoming unbearable.  Eat, she told herself.  It was an answer, gave her something else to do.

She cleared a circle, outlined it with rocks, laid a fire with the wood she’d gathered and settled in for a meal of bacon and corncakes, sitting in the grass with her tin plate and fork, trying not to fall apart into a thousand pieces.  At dusk, she took the horses down to the river and filled a bucket of water for herself.  Swallows swooped overhead, seining insects from the air.  The river was unlovely, broad and slow, easy to ford, she supposed, but not promising for fish.