Page 58 of Caroline’s Compass

“You should stay with him.”

Eleanor looked across the trail. Nathaniel rode near the center of the line, his right arm still guarded but his color better than it had been the week before. “He can survive three hours without me.”

“The rear wagons need someone who understands spacing.”

“Rebecca understands it.”

“The flour—”

“Has already been counted twice.”

Caroline tightened her grip on the reins.

Eleanor's voice softened. “I will not take back the lead wagon merely to help you hide.”

“I am not hiding.”

“You reduced breakfast before checking the bacon.”

“We have sufficient bacon.”

“Exactly.”

Caroline glared at the oxen because glaring at Eleanor had never accomplished much.

Thomas spent the day well behind the Whitaker wagons. She saw him whenever the road curved: head bent over his notebook, stopping to mark a spring, speaking with Nathaniel, measuring the incline. He did not approach her.

Thomas's distance remained exact. He rode far enough from the lead wagon to honor the paused courtship and near enough to answer route questions. At a stony rise, he dismounted to guide the wheels and addressed Caroline as he did Nathaniel—clearly, briefly, without trying to force a personal conversation through shared work.

Caroline found the restraint both respectful and infuriating. She wanted proof that he regretted the rupture, then resented wanting it. When Thomas credited her bearing in the route record, she wondered whether professional fairness was affection. When he spoke to Rebecca about a harness line without looking toward Caroline, she wondered whether affection had already ended.

Eleanor refused to interpret him. “You asked him to give the courtship space.”

“I did not ask him to become a stranger.”

“Those are different instructions. Did you give both?”

Caroline had not. She disliked discovering that Thomas was not the only person who expected unspoken needs to be understood. The realization stayed with her into the evening.

At the afternoon halt, the company discovered that one of the water buckets had acquired a hole. Mr. Bell proposed pitch. Rebecca proposed a wooden plug. Lucy proposed holding a finger over it.

“For how many miles?” Caroline asked.

“We could take turns.”

Thomas, working at a careful distance from Caroline, measured the split and cut a tapered plug. Rebecca set it with the flat of a hammer. Water remained inside.

Mr. Bell filled the bucket and stared. “It is better than before.”

“Before, it had no hole,” Charlotte said.

“Before the hole.”

The repaired bucket became a test of Thomas and Caroline's paused courtship. They had to carry it together because the handle was loose. Neither wished to admit the task required two people. They walked from the creek in exact silence while water sloshed over both their shoes.

“Your side is lower,” Caroline said.

“The ground slopes.”