All the tiredness left Gracy as she scurried down the trail to the stable, Davy Eastlow leading his horse a few steps behind her, the sheriff watching from the doorway, shaking his head but making no move to stop her.
There was nothing like a child to be born on a night that was fresh with rain, stars shining now, to lift Gracy’s spirits. She would think about the Halleck baby later. Right now, a woman needed her. Gracy was lighthearted, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. She wondered how many more times she would feel this happiness. But she wouldn’t think about quitting now, not when there was a baby waiting to be born.
“You want to ride my horse?” Davy called. Without turning, Gracy waved him off. Stepping fast, she could walk to the stable in less time than it would take her to mount the horse and fasten her bag to the saddle. “Earl, I’ll be needing my buggy,” she called to the stable boy. She’d told him that hundreds of times, and the boy knew to hurry. He led Buddy out of the stall and hitched him to the buggy, then helped Gracy climb in. Davy tied his horse to the back of the vehicle and sat in the seat beside her, reaching for the reins. Gracy batted aside his hands and said she would drive. The horse wouldn’t respond to anyone but her, she said, which wasn’t altogether true. But they’d go faster, surer, if she handled the reins.
“We’re going to Mayflower Gulch,” he told her, and Gracy smiled to think there were two births in two days in the same part of the Tenmile. Maybe the two babies would grow up to be friends. Perhaps if this one was a girl, she might even marry the boy who was a single day older. Maybe she would be like Emma, knowing about herbs. The midwife could teach her healing, and one day she would follow in Gracy’s footsteps. The old woman smiled at the possibilities, then shook her head. What foolishness. She was getting soft. Still, they were nice thoughts.
“When did she start her labor?” Gracy asked. She wished she could remember Mrs. Boyce’s name.
“Esther,” Davy said, as if reading her mind. “Esther just said to get the Sagehen. I don’t know about such.”
Of course he didn’t, Gracy thought. An old bachelor like that. How would he know? Still, he lived with the Boyces.
Gracy remembered the scandal of it. Ben Boyce and Davy Eastlow were already in Swandyke when Gracy and Daniel moved there. The two men weren’t young then, maybe forty. They trapped in Mayflower Gulch, beaver and fox and weasel, built a cabin in an aspen grove, the trees so thick you could hardly walk through them. Gracy had stopped there once with Daniel, and had found it clean and neat as her pie safe. She hadn’t expected that from a pair of old bachelors. The two men had scurried around their cabin, proud to have guests. Ben had ground the beans for coffee, while Davy put on the water. Then they’d taken a black currant pie from the window, a pie still warm from the stove, and cut it into four pieces. Gathered the currants themselves, they’d said, and Gracy marveled that two bachelors would have the patience to pick enough tiny berries for a pie. It had been a good pie, too, as good as if Gracy had made it herself, and she had said so.
“It’s Davy does the cooking. See there, we got a cookstove,” Ben had said. “He keeps up the house, too. I tend the garden and hunt. We eat pretty good.”
When she left, Gracy had seen the garden, the lettuce, the rows of turnips and radishes. How did Ben keep the wild animals from the produce? she wondered. She was lucky if the deer and the rabbits left enough of her own garden behind for a meal or two.
“Those boys might as well be married,” Daniel had said.
“They get along better than most couples we know.” Gracy had agreed.
But then, last fall, Ben had come home with Esther, him old enough to be her father. There had been talk about where he’d gotten her. The postmaster said Ben had received an awful lot of letters from back East, and he reckoned Esther was a mail-order bride. Another speculated that Ben had gone to Denver and gotten drunk and woken up to find himself married. But most agreed Esther had worked in a dance hall over in Kokomo. Ben never said, nor Davy either. It was Daniel’s theory Ben had baited her with a fox skin red as the sunset, red as Davy’s hair, loaded her onto a sled warm with wolverine pelts and taken her to Mayflower Gulch.
There was talk about Davy, too, some saying he should move on, give the couple a chance. But the cabin was half his, the trapping, too. The men had been together too long to be separated. “She’ll be to hell and gone before she parts them,” Daniel had predicted. Others agreed. Give her a year, they said, maybe less. She wouldn’t last out the winter, snowed in with two old men, her young like she was, pretty as candlelight. She’d go back where she’d come from once the thaw came. But she hadn’t. Gracy had seen her in town and knew the reason. You couldn’t go back to a dance hall with a swollen belly like that.
“You’re the Sagehen,” Esther had said. “I’ll send for you when my time comes.”
“I ought to check you now, make sure everything’s all right,” Gracy had told her.
“That’s silly. What could be wrong? It’s only a baby.” She’d smiled the dreamy smile of first mothers. “I hope my time’s in midsummer when the flowers are blooming. If it’s a girl, I’ll name her Rose for the wild roses around the cabin. If it’s a boy, well, I guess he’ll have his father’s name. But I’m hoping for a girl. There’s already too many males in that place.” Gracy had met her in the mercantile where the girl was buying bullets. “Ben’s taught me to shoot,” she said in explanation. “He says I’m a natural-born at it, could shoot a wildcat through the eye.”
“It’s a skill to have,” Gracy replied.
“I help him trap,” she added, lowering her eyes as if she’d been caught bragging. “But I’d rather shoot an animal than trap it. Being caught in a trap’s a hard way to go. In a trap, you’d know you was dying, and you’d lie there thinking about it, watching your blood flow out. I wouldn’t want to go to my eternal jubilee that way.”
Now as Gracy sat beside Davy in the buggy, she asked about Esther. “Does she cook?” she asked.
“She’ll do,” Davy replied.
“She said she hunts.”
“She did, but it’s not a woman’s place. Ben takes care of the hunting.”
Gracy wondered what Esther did in that cabin all day long. “I expect she’s a breath of fresh air. When I met her in town once, she talked about the wild roses.”
Davy didn’t reply, and they rode in silence under the wet firs. Gracy could abide a silence, but she was curious. Of course, what was between the three of them wasn’t any of her business, but that didn’t stop her “She’s a pretty girl. Sweet, too, it seems. I met her only once, so I can’t say I know her.”
Davy turned to the side and looked at the night.
The moon was out, and Gracy was glad because that made it easier to see the trail. If Davy didn’t want to talk, that was all right with her.
“They say you murdered a baby,” he said abruptly, turning back to Gracy.
Gracy took a deep breath as the image of Josie’s baby came back to her. “Yes, they say that, but I didn’t kill the baby.” When Davy didn’t reply, Gracy added, “If it makes a difference, I’ll turn around. You can fetch the doctor.”
“I never had any use for doctors,” Davy said. “Besides, Esther don’t want him, says he thinks he’s too good for her, the way he looks down his nose at her, like she’s not worth a continental. He’s got no call to treat her like that. It ain’t his business where Esther come from…” Davy’s voice trailed off. “No, she won’t want him. She said to fetch you, even though I told her what’s said in town about you murdering a baby and all. I heard it this morning when I went to the mercantile to buy her a can of peaches. She had a craving for them. I didn’t know I’d be back in Swandyke so soon again. She’d said the baby weren’t due yet.”
Davy shut up then, as if he’d talked himself out. He didn’t speak again until he pointed to a turnoff and said, “Go left there and stop where the trail starts up. We’ll have to walk because there’s no room between the trees for the buggy. Esther wanted to make a road to the house, but me and Ben wouldn’t allow it. We don’t want company. It ain’t far now.” He got out of the buggy and untied his horse. Gracy took her bag and followed.
She saw the cabin in the moonlight shining through the aspen trunks that always reminded her of bones, smoke curling out of the chimney, as pretty a sight as any she ever saw. A smaller replica of the cabin, new-built, stood a few rods away. That must be where Davy lived now, Gracy thought. Of course, it wouldn’t be right, the three of them living in a one-room cabin. She wondered if Davy resented having to leave. But that wasn’t her business, either, and she put thoughts of the odd trio out of her mind as she scurried to the dwelling.
Davy was ahead of her and he flung open the door. “I brung the Sagehen,” he said. He stood in the doorway, staring at the bed, and Gracy had to shove past him to enter the room.
Esther lay on a quilt, her legs spread, while Ben stood at the end of the bed, his face red and wild. “It’s coming out. I’m not knowing what to do,” he said.
“That’s my job. Move aside,” Gracy told him, hurrying to the bed and setting her bag on the floor. She glanced down at Esther, then grinned. “Why, you hardly need me at all, Mrs. Boyce. That baby wouldn’t wait. It’s almost here.” She turned to the men. “Get me hot water fast so’s I can wash up first.”
Davy grabbed the teakettle off the cookstove and poured water into a basin, water so hot it almost took the skin off Gracy’s hands. She worked quickly, putting on her apron, washing her hands, then nudging Ben aside. “You’re doing a first-class job, Mrs. Boyce—Esther, is it? It’s almost over. Oh, yes, you’re doing finely. The baby’s halfway born. Now you push hard with the next pain.” Just in time, Gracy positioned herself to catch the baby, because in a moment, Esther groaned and pushed, and the baby fell into Gracy’s hands.
“A boy!” Ben said. “By Dan, Davy, she’s give us a boy.”
If she’d been paying closer attention, Gracy might have thought it odd that Ben would announce the baby’s sex to his partner instead of to his wife, but Gracy was too busy with the baby to notice. “You hold him,” she said, handing the infant to Ben. “I didn’t have time to get out my scissors.” She placed the baby in Ben’s hands while she opened her bag and took out the scissors, linen string, and clean cloths. Dipping the string in hot water first, she thought of the thread that had been around the Halleck baby’s neck. But she shook the thought out of her head and bound Esther’s son’s cord. She handed the silver stork scissors—the very scissors Nabby had left to her—to Ben and told him to cut. Fathers who cut a baby’s cord seemed to bond a little better with them.
Ben did as he was instructed, then grinned at Davy. “Lookit there. We got us a son.”
“He’s yours all right. Dark like you, and he’s got your ugly chin,” Davy said.
“I’d hoped he wouldn’t, but he does, don’t he?”
Gracy ignored the bantering as she turned to Esther. The baby had come so fast that she had barely looked at the woman. Now when she studied Esther’s body, the nightdress pulled up, Gracy frowned. She placed her hand on Esther’s belly and gasped.
At the sound, the two men glanced away from the baby. “What’s wrong?” Ben asked.
“There’s another’n in there. Mr. Boyce, your wife is going to have twins.”
“Another?” Ben asked, confused.
“Sometimes it happens.” Gracy turned to Esther. “Mrs. Boyce, you get yourself ready. There’s a second baby about to be born. It’ll be easier than the first.”
“I don’t want—” Esther started to say, but a pain seized her. And in a moment, a second boy emerged into Gracy’s hands. This one was smaller, lighter, with ears flat against his head and downy hair the color of fireweed—the color of Davy’s hair—and Gracy’s hands shook as she held the infant. She could almost always tell who the father was. It was an odd thing, but she knew the minute a baby was born if its father wasn’t the woman’s husband. She never let on, of course, never told. So there were fathers out there taking pride in children sired by other men. Knowing at the birth who had fathered a child was a skill Gracy sometimes wished she didn’t have, like now, although anybody could see who’d fathered this second boy. It was a rare thing, twins, each one sired by a different man. Gracy had read of it in a book, although she’d never seen it herself, not that she knew of, at any rate.
She stopped as she pondered what had taken place in that cabin, was still so long that Esther asked what was wrong. Nothing, Gracy told her. The baby was as healthy as the first one. She’d only gotten a tear in her eye and had to push it away. She started to hand the boy to Davy but stopped and told Ben to give his partner the first infant so that he could help her with this baby’s cord.
Ben didn’t say a word, just stared at the boy as he followed Gracy’s instructions. She had no time to study the men because there was the afterbirth to deal with. And she needed to examine Esther to see if she was all right. “Two boys. Two healthy boys,” Gracy told the new mother. She ordered the men to turn away while she helped Esther out of her nightdress and into a clean one, because the first was covered with blood. Then she remade the bed with a fresh quilt and helped Esther to lie down again.
Usually when there were twins, Gracy tied a string around the wrist of the first one to show who was older, but there was no need for that here. “There now,” she said. “I expect you want to hold your boys.” She took the red-haired baby from Ben and handed him to Esther, then gave her the darker infant. “I think you’ll have milk enough for two, but if you don’t, just send Davy to tell me. There’s a woman in Swandyke had a stillbirth, and likely she’d make a wet nurse.” It wouldn’t matter to Esther that the woman wasn’t married, Gracy thought, or that she’d worked at the Red Swan on Turnbull Mountain. That would be the least of Esther’s problems.
Esther took the two babies, one in each arm, and cooed to them. If anything seemed strange, she didn’t remark on it. “This one,” she said, nodding at the red-haired infant, “he’s named for you—Benjamin. We’ll call him Benny.” She smiled at her husband. “The other…”
Gracy held her breath. Surely she wouldn’t name the other boy for Davy.
“His name is Thomas. That’s my brother’s name. Tommy. I always favored it.”
Gracy sighed a breath of relief when the second child was named, then busied herself with applying the bellybands and cleaning up. She wrapped the afterbirth in newspaper from her bag and handed the package to Davy with instructions to bury it under one of the wild roses Esther loved. “Do it now,” she said, nodding at the door, and Davy went out. After the door closed, Gracy turned to the stove, and taking out a tin of catnip tea, she made a cup for Esther, adding a little sugar. The tea would help bring on the new mother’s milk, and she’d need plenty of it with two babies. Things were already tangled enough without bringing in a wet nurse. When the tea was made, Gracy set it on the bureau beside the bed.
The cabin was warm, well chinked, which was a good thing for the babies, what with summer on the downside. On the dresser were stacks of baby clothes, flannel diapers. A cradle made from pinewood, sanded and burnished until it was the color and sheen of honey, was beside the bed. They’d need a second cradle, but for now, both babies could fit into one. Gracy opened the safe to find it filled with food, two loaves of bread resting on a towel. Esther must have baked it the night before, maybe when she couldn’t sleep. Or perhaps Davy had made the bread.
The baby—the first one, anyway—had been anticipated, planned for, loved, Gracy thought. Now what? What did that red-haired baby mean? What had happened between the two men and the woman, and what would happen now? Would Davy move out, maybe take the second boy with him? Perhaps Esther would leave, threatened and forced out by her husband. Blood, like water, boiled too quick at timberline. But where could a dance hall girl with two babies go? Or perhaps the three adults would go on as before, pretending that nothing had happened, that both of the babies were Ben’s. Not many people made it to the trappers’ cabin, so perhaps no one would suspect the babies had been fathered by two different men. Maybe the red hair would turn dark. Sure, and maybe next year the sun would melt the snow before June, Gracy thought.
Well, what was to be was up to the three of them. Gracy couldn’t do anything about it except worry and keep her mouth shut, and she knew how to do both. She finished her work and packed the soiled nightdress along with her own apron in her bag. If Davy did the washing, he wouldn’t want to scrub out the childbirth. Gracy would bring the laundered items with her when she returned. “I’ll be back,” she said, “I want to make sure everything is all right.” But how could it be all right?
Neither Esther nor Ben seemed aware that Gracy was leaving. She went to the bed and gazed at the infants, both mewling, curling their little hands around Esther’s fingers. Gracy smoothed the red down on Ben’s head, hair thin as frog’s hair, then picked up her bag and went through the door, shutting it quickly to keep out the cold air. Davy was sitting on the bench outside when she emerged. He rose, saying he’d see Gracy to her buggy. She nodded, wondering if he did not want to go inside and face Ben.
“Do you need me to take you home?” he asked.
Gracy laughed. “I guess I see better in the dark than a raccoon. I know this trail. I’ll find my way.” But maybe she should ask him to take her home. Perhaps she should get Davy away from the cabin for a time, give Ben a chance to love both babies? Davy’s being there would complicate things. But then it already had. The three would have to face their situation, and perhaps it would be better if they did so right off. If Davy was going to leave, he ought to go now, find another cabin and set his traps before winter came on. But would he go? After all, both men had adjusted to Esther. Perhaps they could adjust to the idea of one of those babies being fathered by Davy. Maybe there’d been an arrangement. Gracy knew strange things happened in a lonely mining camp. She didn’t judge.
“I best go in. Somebody’ll have to fix supper. There’s been so much bother, I ain’t had time to think about it,” Davy said.
“Bother” wasn’t the way Gracy would put childbirth. Still she said, “Isn’t she the lucky one! Most fathers—most men, that is—they aren’t a hand at cooking. Expect their wife to climb off a childbed and fix the victuals. But Esther can sit there like the Queen of Turkey with you to do the cooking.” She leaned forward and said, “She ought to stay in bed ten days after giving birth to two. Feed her beef tea if you can get it.”
Davy nodded.
“My, isn’t she the lucky one with two men to take care of her,” Gracy said again, although she wasn’t sure there was much luck around that place.
Davy didn’t reply, just handed Gracy into the buggy. He reached into his pocket and took out a gold coin.
Gracy protested the pay was too much.
“I guess you get double for birthing two babies,” he told her.
“It’s only a little more work than one.”
“We’re obliged,” he said as he untied the reins from an aspen tree. He stared at the leather straps for a long time. “I guess folks will talk, won’t they?”
“They won’t hear anything from me. That red-haired baby isn’t any of my business.” There, she’d said it out loud.
“There’ll be others that’ll think it’s their business.” He handed the reins to Gracy. “You know, Esther said she had a sister with red hair.”
Gracy stared at Davy for a moment. “I was thinking someone in the family might.” And then she muttered to herself, “Well, God!”
* * *
The sky had clouded over, blocking out the stars and the moon now, and the night was black as a grave, Gracy realized with a sudden shudder. Usually, she liked the night, the dark enfolding her like a quilt. The horse knew the way home, and she could drowse a little if she wanted to. But the births at the trappers’ cabin weighed on her mind. She remembered another time she had birthed twins, a boy and a girl. Both were healthy, but when Gracy went back to check on them a few days later, the girl was dead. “I’m glad,” the mother told Gracy. “I got five others, and I can’t take care of them and two babies besides. My husband says best the boy lives, because a girl ain’t worth much.” Gracy had pondered whether the mother had killed her own child. Or maybe the father had done it. The mother had gotten pregnant again not long after that. She’d asked Gracy to perform an abortion, but Gracy, knowing how weak the woman was, said it might kill her and refused. Later, the woman stumbled over a cliff and died anyway. An accident, her husband said, but Gracy wasn’t so sure. The man disappeared, and the children went to an orphan home. And Gracy had asked herself if the risk from an abortion had been worth the certainty of death from a fall?
Now, thinking of both women who’d borne twins, Gracy was uneasy. The blackness didn’t help. The pine trees were dark shapes dripping with rain, hiding wild animals. She wished she could have brought Sandy with her, but he was with Daniel. The dog generally stayed behind anyway, because Gracy never knew how long she’d be gone and she didn’t want to worry about feeding him.
Gracy roused herself. She was not easily frightened. She’d driven through dark nights before, and in blizzards to boot. This evening was summer cool but warm enough so that she was comfortable wrapped in a cloak and the quilt she kept in the buggy. It was the not knowing that bothered her, not knowing what had gone on in that cabin and what would happen now, she told herself. Should she do something? Tell the sheriff? But what was there to tell? And what could he do anyway? It wasn’t a crime to have babies by two different men. A sin, maybe, but not a crime, and sin was commonplace in a mining town. Besides, maybe Esther really did have a red-haired sister. But even so, Gracy was sure Davy had sired one of the babies. She could tell.
The wind blew through the pines, making a soft moaning noise that Gracy always found comforting, only now it added to her anxiety. Then came a rustling that made her start. A deer or an elk in the wet leaves, she told herself. But there were bears, too, and mountain lions. After the old doctor died, Gracy had been called to attend a man who’d been attacked by a lion, the side of his face scratched to the bone, one eye gone, his chest tore up, his arms and legs broken. It had been a horrible sight, and Gracy felt it was a blessing he’d died. She shivered to think a lion could be stalking her, that she might be laid out on the trail, bleeding and broken, maybe dead without a chance to say good-bye to Daniel. He wouldn’t be able to go on without her. Gracy’s thoughts were always of Daniel, even years before, when he’d broken her heart.
The horse caught the scent of something and picked up speed, running nervously, and Gracy had to hold him back with the reins. Gracy felt an evil about that didn’t have to do with the folks in Mayflower Gulch. Perhaps she should go back and ask Davy to take her home. But how would she explain herself? They would think her a silly old woman. Besides, how could she go back? There was no place on that narrow trail to turn a buggy. She’d have to walk, and that would make it mighty easy for a lion. Gracy tried to laugh at herself, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t help the feeling that something was out there, something ominous.
She wasn’t a timid woman, but she had had those feelings before. Nabby had told her to trust them because they came with the gift of healing. She had had a premonition once in Arkansas about a baby Nabby had delivered. Gracy had helped with the birth, and it had gone fine. The baby was healthy, and so was the mother. But after the two midwives left, something gnawed at Gracy. She couldn’t sleep that night, and the next day she told Nabby she had had a presentiment. So the two returned to find the woman in agony from puerperal fever. They stayed with her for a week, placing cold cloths on her head and a flannel bag of hops soaked in hot vinegar on her abdomen, mustard poultices on her feet and thighs. “You saved her life. If we’d come back even half a day later, we’d have lost her,” Nabby told Gracy after the fever lifted. “You have a gift.”
There were other times Gracy had had presentiments, like that night in Virginia City. She had tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t. It had been too strong.
Gracy was sure the feeling now had nothing to do with the two babies. It was about her. She was in danger. She reached behind the seat and took out the pistol she kept there. It was loaded, and she knew how to shoot. She stared into the darkness ahead of her, thinking it must be a panther, because they were more stealthful than bears. She wouldn’t hear it until it sprang onto a horse—or onto her. Gracy shivered to think of the animal’s claws raking into her back, his teeth sinking into her neck. She shook her head. She no longer held the reins to keep the horse back but urged him on. She wished she had left the whip in its socket, not because she wanted to use it on Buddy but as protection. But she never whipped a horse and had left the whip behind.
Perhaps the force she felt was a man. Gracy hadn’t never been afraid of the miners. They knew the Sagehen, knew her because she had attended their wives and sometimes even nursed them. No one in Swandyke would hurt her. Still, there were men who were not quite right in the head, who would rape, even murder a woman alone.
She urged the horse on, slapping the reins on his back. He was old and did not move fast, but he picked up the pace, as if he, too, sensed danger. She wished the clouds would lift, that the moon would light the way, but the moon was covered, and the trail was black. She thought about the road now, whether there were ruts and rocks. She hadn’t paid attention when she’d ridden with Davy Eastlow to the cabin.
Then far off in the distance, she saw a light like a lantern, and another and knew that Swandyke lay just ahead. She let up on the reins and sank back into the seat. The fear had been for nothing. She had indeed been foolish.
Just then the horse stumbled, and the buggy hit a log that lay across the road, a log that hadn’t been there when she had passed through on her way to Mayflower Gulch. Gracy grasped onto the side of the buggy, but she was too late, and the vehicle swerved and went up on one wheel. Gracy flew out of the buggy, and her head hit the log. She rolled off the road and sank into unconsciousness, her last thoughts of Jeff, the infant she had warmed with her love from the moment of his birth. And of Daniel—of Daniel in his youth, Daniel strong and handsome as a racehorse.
Buddy ran on, the buggy bouncing behind him, leaving Gracy a dark shape in the dirt, as still as the night around her.