Page 83 of Caroline’s Compass

Eleanor watched from Nathaniel's horse. “Do you need me?”

The old answer rose automatically. Caroline swallowed it. “Not for the wagons. Mrs. Turner wants to ask about Samuel's cough.”

Eleanor smiled and rode toward the Turner family. No one had been displaced. The work had simply found the person best able to do it.

The first halt came beside a long rise where the grass offered the teams better grazing than the rocky ground beneath the wheels suggested. Caroline called twenty minutes. Mr. Hall said twenty minutes was not a halt but an insult delivered while standing still. Rebecca told him he could complain while watering his oxen.

Caroline moved down the company with the record tucked beneath her arm. At the fourth wagon she heard a dry chirp at every turn of the left rear wheel. The sound stopped when the wagon stopped, which caused Mr. Bell to declare the matter cured.

“It will begin again when the wheel does,” Caroline said.

“Then we should avoid alarming it.”

Rebecca crouched beside the hub and touched two fingers to the axle end. “Grease is thin. No heat yet.”

Caroline looked toward the Bell wagon. Thomas had shifted high enough among the blankets to see over the sideboard. He held the route book on his good knee and wore the expression of a man prepared to be useful from an inconvenient distance.

“Do not get down,” Caroline called.

“I have not moved.”

“Your face was moving toward advice.”

“A serious condition,” Mr. Bell said. “Runs in surveyors.”

Thomas raised his voice. “Check the retaining pin before adding grease. The clay may have worked beneath the washer.”

Rebecca drew the pin and found a ridge of dried mud exactly where he had predicted. She scraped it clean with the back of her knife while Caroline fetched the grease pot. Mr. Bell watched them work and announced that he had intended to inspect the pin as soon as someone identified it.

“You have owned this wagon for nine years,” Mrs. Bell said.

“And it has possessed the pin for all nine without introducing us.”

Caroline greased the axle while Rebecca reset the washer and pin. When they rolled the wagon forward, the chirp was gone. She entered the repair in the Whitaker record only after Rebecca pointed out that the Bell wagon did not belong in it.

“The company record, then,” Caroline said.

Rebecca took the pencil. “I will enter it. You have inspected one wheel twice already today.”

“That was before breakfast.”

“Wheels do not forget.”

Caroline surrendered the pencil. A month ago, handing over the entry would have felt like abandoning a duty. Now it felt like discovering she had two hands even when one of them belonged to her sister.

The younger girls had used the break to bring Thomas his noon food early. Martha carried bread and dried apples. Grace carried coffee. Lucy carried a spoon, though no part of the meal required one.

“For the medicine,” Lucy explained.

Thomas examined the empty spoon. “What medicine?”

“Whatever Martha gives you after you disobey.”

Martha set down the plate. “He has not disobeyed.”

“His face nearly did,” Caroline said.

Thomas looked injured in a region far above his ankle. “My face offered technically correct advice.”