A question arose: keep the fire going or let it die? Charlotte chose to let it die. She picketed the horses closer in, washed up with water from the bucket, then cleaned the tin plate and put it aside. She prayed the wolves wouldn’t come because she had no defense. If it was an entire pack, she would never be able to shoot them all.
The night sky was filled with billions of stars. She’d seen these same stars so often from farther north, where the Family lived out in the nowhere, where her father would lie again alone in his narrow bed in his sturdy house. Holding that thought dear, she made up her own bed among the gnarled roots of the elm, using the mare’s saddle as a pillow with the old coat folded over it. Wrapped up in a blanket, her hand on one of the Colt revolvers, with the rifle beside her, she turned, hid her face in the soft velvet and cried until there were no tears left.
3
3
Charlotte woke with the sun. The horses were still there, the Colt, the rifle, the wagon. No one had stolen anything from her in the night and the wolves hadn’t come. Unfortunately, she was still in the same place, alone, an unrepentant criminal facing a decidedly unpleasant future, stopped in other people’s tracks in the middle of God knows where. Getting up required more exertion that she’d expected. She knew from experience however that structure aided living on the trail, routines repeated over and over, staying with whatever could possibly be familiar, in this way keeping down the anxiety, the inevitable fear.
Breakfast was familiar because she made it so, bacon and corn cakes. The horses were released from their pickets and hobbled so that they could wander farther afield without running off. The interior of the wagon loomed, a mountain of a task and every step of it tied to her father’s face, his hands, his well-meaning though sometimes misplaced goodness. But it needed to be done if any of the contents were to be of use to her, and certainly he had had her well being in mind with every item that he so hastily chose.