Mittie McCauley came every day, bringing soup, a loaf of bread, a bit of cobbler made with the last of the raspberries on Potato Mountain. At first, Daniel growled. After all, he could take care of his wife. But the young woman brightened Gracy’s day, and besides, Mittie’s offerings varied Daniel’s cooking, giving them something to eat besides fried meat and potatoes. For this, Gracy was thankful.
Mittie did more than bring food. She washed out the rags Gracy had used birthing the twins in Mayflower Gulch and spread them over bushes in the sun to dry, mended Gracy’s dress, which had been torn in the fall from the carriage, tidied the cabin. Perhaps best of all, she brought Gracy scraps of fabric in her favorite blue, and the two sat in the sun piecing.
Mittie herself was like a bit of sunshine. Gracy remembered the first time the girl had come to the cabin, five, maybe six years before. Gracy had looked out the window and seen her staring at the house. She was slight but wiry, with sun-bleached hair and sunburned skin. She reached down and picked up a tin can that had fallen onto the trail and pitched it on top of the pile.
The girl looked determined. She stood for a minute or two, staring at the house, her hands at her sides. She took a few steps, then stopped as she continued to stare. Then, determined, she walked to the cabin, straightened her back, and knocked. When Gracy opened the door, the girl said in a rush of breath, “I need your help.” And then she seemed to wilt, as if the words had taken all her strength. She clamped her mouth shut and seemed about to turn tail and run off.
Women had come to Gracy before like this, had stood on her doorstep, mute as moles, thinking she could guess what they wanted, and sometimes she did. She stepped aside and gestured for Mittie to enter the cabin, knowing it wouldn’t do to prod. The girl would tell her in time or she’d make some excuse for calling, maybe say she’d come for the borrow of a spool of thread, and then leave without ever revealing what she wanted.
After a time, when her visitor didn’t mouth a word, Gracy said, “I recollect you now. You’re Mittie McCauley, aren’t you?”
The girl was startled. “How’d you know?”
“I remember you from the church quilting. You took stitches as small as mustard seeds.”
The girl smiled her pride. “I am vain about my quilting.”
“You have good reason to be.”
Mittie didn’t respond, and Gracy waited until Mittie said again, “I need your help.” She twisted her hands and opened her mouth, but no more words came out.
So Gracy at last asked, “You’re having a baby, and you don’t want it?”
Ever since Gracy had become a midwife, women had approached her and asked how to get rid of babies growing inside them. Gracy always listened. She offered comfort, told each woman that another baby wasn’t so bad or that the young man who’d gotten her pregnant was ripe for marriage and all she had to do was tell him her condition. Gracy didn’t judge, because she knew a woman had her reasons for not wanting a baby. She might have too many to care for already or was sick and thought another might kill her, and without her, what would become of the little ones? There were those who hadn’t any husbands, who’d been sweet-talked into lying with a miner or a traveling man who wouldn’t own up to being the father. Unmarried, pregnant, a girl might be disowned by her family and thrown out with no place to go except to one of the whorehouses. There were indeed reasons not to have a baby, and Gracy had heard them all. She didn’t want to abort the babies, not with instruments anyway; it went against her nature. But she was always sympathetic. If the women were insistent on ending their pregnancies, Gracy usually sent them to the woman doctor in Central City, the one who advertised her specialty was treating women who were “irregular.”
Some of the women were too poor to afford a real doctor, however. Or they couldn’t get away to Central, for their husbands or families didn’t know about the babies, and what excuse could a woman use to disappear for a day? So Gracy gave them lady’s mantle or squaw vine, which were recommended to bring on a woman’s monthly, but the herbs mostly didn’t work.
A few women were so desperate they threatened to kill themselves. Those were the ones who troubled Gracy the most, the ones who were on her heart, even years later. It wasn’t right, Gracy taking a baby like that, she who had lost so many herself. But it wasn’t right, either, to risk the life of a mother too run-down to care for the children she already had or destroy the future of a young girl barely past puberty who’d fallen for a sweet talker. One or two times, Gracy suspected, the baby had come about because a father had lain with his own daughter. Those were the ones Gracy ached over, the ones that made her wonder if God intended His gift to her to be used for death as well as life. She never talked to Daniel about what she did, never talked to anybody. After all, it was against the law for a midwife to take an unborn baby. But the law didn’t care about women the way Gracy did.
Sometimes she felt the Lord didn’t care, either, else why would He make childbirth such a danger to women. Why did He let women die when He could have told Gracy how to save them? Why did He seem to let his wrath settle on her when a mother or a baby died?
Mittie stared at Gracy a long time, then shook her head. “Oh, no, ma’am.” She put her hands over her mouth. “Is that what you’re thinking, that I want to get rid of a baby?”
Gracy waited.
“I would never do that. Ever. I’d rather die than kill a precious baby. I came to see you for the opposite reason.”
Gracy frowned, not understanding, and Mittie said in a rush, “I want a baby in the worst way. I’ve tried and tried, tried for eight years, and I’m barren as a molly mule.” The girl let out her breath and hugged herself. She was too embarrassed to look at Gracy, and she used her foot to worry a tin can lid nailed over a knothole in the floor.
“Oh, my dear,” Gracy said, and reached for the girl’s hands. “I know the sorrow, know it myself.”
“But you’ve got a son.”
“Yes, and it took a long time before he came to me. I lost so many before him.” She wished Mittie could know the joy she’d had when Jeff smiled at her the first time, a toothless, wet grin, or came running into the cabin to tell her about his first day of school. He brought her the earliest columbine each spring, and together, they would smooth it flat and press it in the Bible. Even when Jeff was older, his face would light up when he came through the door and saw his mother.
Mittie looked up, and Gracy could see her visitor was beyond girlhood, with worry wrinkles around her eyes. “Can you help me? You see, I got a good husband, but he’s about fed up with me,” Mittie said. “I worry he’ll taken out on me. He wants a son something fierce. What if he leaves me for somebody who can give him one? Then what would I do?”
“Have you ever conceived?” Gracy asked.
The girl looked embarrassed. “No, ma’am.”
“Then maybe the fault is his.”
Mittie’s mouth dropped open. “How could that be? He’s a man.”
“It happens.”
“Well, I never heard such a thing, and Henry—he’s my husband—he’d tell me I was crazy to say such.” She smiled a little. “He’s a big old fellow and likes his time in bed. The very idea!”
Gracy nodded. She knew men believed they could not be at fault, but if a wife never even got pregnant, it was possible her husband was the reason. Gracy knew of too many times when a woman was “barren” with her first husband but fecund with her second.
Mittie leaned forward and said earnestly, “You’re the Sagehen. You know all about babies. I thought you’d give me something so’s I could have one. Ain’t there some way? Ain’t there?” She thought a moment. “Do you think somebody put a spell on me?”
Gracy had grown up with spells and incantations. She didn’t really believe in superstitions, although she didn’t run afoul of them, especially the ones about quilting. She never started a quilt on a Friday, just as Granny Nabby warned her, for a woman who did so wouldn’t live to finish it. She always wrapped a quilt around herself when it was finished, for good luck. And there was a time she’d been pleased when she broke her needle while quilting with her friends, because it meant she would have the next baby.
But she did not believe that burning flowers brought death or that a wedding after sundown meant the couple would be unhappy. And she especially did not believe that one person could cast a spell on another.
Still, she knew others accepted such things, and Nabby had explained that it was enough just to believe. A woman who was sure a cat walking across her sickbed meant death, might just give up. A man who woke up with the moon shining in his face could make himself turn crazy. It wasn’t that the superstitions were true, it was that the mind could make them so. You couldn’t just dismiss them. You had to give a cure. So Nabby once told a girl who believed she had boils because she’d been bewitched to burn a hair of the woman who’d put a spell on her, at midnight in the dark of the moon, and the boils would go away. And they had. When Gracy asked how Nabby had known the antidote, Nabby said she hadn’t but had made it up on the spot. So Gracy took such beliefs seriously.
But before Gracy could answer the girl, however, Mittie said, “I guess I don’t believe there’s any spell on me. Who would do such a thing? I ain’t got any enemies, and Henry, why, he’s just a big old bear everybody loves.”
“So you want—”
“I want a herb, a potion, something that’ll get me with child,” Mittie interrupted. “Ain’t you got something?”
Gracy sighed. That was it, of course. The girl wanted some magic concoction. Gracy was a believer in herbs. Black pepper sped up labor, and sometimes wild yam prevented conception, although not often enough. Hot ginger brought on menstruation.
But first, she would talk to the girl, ask her if there were other problems. She led Mittie to Daniel’s chair and told her to sit. Then she took her own place and leaned forward, her hands grasping Mittie’s. “Sometimes the act isn’t done right,” she began.
Mittie stared at Gracy, confused at first. When she understood, she glanced away, her face red. “It’s not worth talking about.”
“Yes, if you truly want a baby, it is.” Gracy paused. “There’s the makings for coffee if you’d like a cup. I already built a fire. It’s no trouble to heat the water and grind the beans.”
“No, thanks to you. I had my coffee already this morning.”
“Tea, then?”
Mittie shook her head.
“So be it.” Gracy squeezed the girl’s hands and said, “There’s men that practice what’s called withdrawal. Now mostly that’s done to keep from having a baby, but sometimes men have other reasons.” A wife had once told Gracy that her husband did that for fear she’d rob him of his strength. “Do you understand what I’m asking you?”
Mittie nodded and squirmed in her seat. “That ain’t the problem. We’re fine that way.”
“And you don’t wash yourself right off?”
“I lie there still as a log so’s all that will go up into my womb.” Mittie was so embarrassed that she hunched up her shoulders and stared over Gracy’s head, not looking her in the face.
“I had to ask,” Gracy said. “You see, there’s some with strange notions, and seeing as I don’t know you … how would I know…” Her voice trailed off as she smiled at Mittie.
“I guess you do have to ask, but me and Henry, we’re all right that way. It’s just something in me that won’t get a baby started, and I heard about you…” Mittie looked Gracy in the face.
“Have you tried raspberry tea?” Gracy asked.
“I’ve drunk so much raspberry tea my skin almost turned red. Ain’t there something else?”
Gracy nodded. She went to the pie safe and took out red clover and explained to the girl how to take it.
And so Mittie had taken it for weeks, months even, but the red clover hadn’t caused her to conceive. Later on Gracy gave her alfalfa and then nettles, but they didn’t work, either. Over the years, each time either one of them heard of a remedy, Mittie would try it, but nothing caused the young woman to conceive. Eventually, Gracy talked to her about adoption. There were so many babies and young children who needed homes. But Mittie was adamant. “I want my own baby. I couldn’t never love somebody else’s like my own.”
Gracy had come to love the young woman, had thought Emma would have grown up to be like her, and indeed, at times, the two were almost like mother and daughter. They shared a fondness for quilting and Bible reading, and Gracy had hoped the girl might learn about the herbs, about midwifery, although she wasn’t sure Mittie was bent that way. Gracy grieved for Mittie’s plight, just as she had once grieved over her own.
Now, the two sat outdoors a few days after Gracy’s accident, stitching in sunlight that sifted through the jack pines. “I believe I have my strength back, although my leg still bothers me. It wasn’t broke, only twisted, and I limp a bit,” Gracy observed. “I’m lucky there weren’t any babies born this week. But I expect the Richards girl will deliver anytime. I best be ready.”
“She gave birth yesterday,” Mittie said, then looked away as if she shouldn’t have blurted out the news that way. She paused as she placed one quilt piece on top of another, not looking at Gracy.
The old woman put down her needle. “She didn’t call for me? She must have thought I was too ill, but I could have gone to her. Richards women have an easy time of it.”
Mittie turned her head to stare at a squirrel that was hollering.
“Did her sisters help with the birthing?”
Mittie looked directly at Gracy then. “She sent for Little Dickie.”
“Dr. Erickson? Rebecca Richards told me she’d as soon give birth by herself as have him do it.”
“She must have thought you were too poorly to come.”
Gracy glanced at the quilting in her lap. “Or she thought I might harm the baby. Is that it?” Gracy looked squarely at Mittie. They were not women to hide a truth, to sugarcoat and coddle and put a better face on a thing than it deserved. “What are they saying about me, Mittie?”
The young woman put down her own sewing, smoothing it with her fingers. She took her time, glancing down the trail as if she’d heard footsteps. Then she looked at Gracy. “There’s some that say you done it.”
“I know that. There’s been talk at the saloon. Daniel told me.”
“I mean among the women.”
“Edna Halleck?”
“I haven’t heard her say it, haven’t seen her in fact, but it might be that’s where it started. At the mercantile, there was some saying they wouldn’t trust you. Effie Ring said she’d always suspicioned you after she lost her girl last year.”
Gracy thought that over. Effie Ring’s baby had come too soon, and thank the Lord, because the poor thing had been born with deformed arms. Effie had begged Gracy not to tell anyone, even her husband, and she hadn’t—hadn’t breathed a word. She’d buried the infant behind the Ring cabin, buried it under the columbine. Effie had blamed herself, said she was a sinner because she’d lusted after a miner at the Tiger, although the two had never done anything more than kiss. Gracy had replied that sinning had not a thing to do with it. The Lord didn’t punish women by hurting their babies. Besides, what was wrong with admiring a figure as handsome as a fireman and doing a little flirting?
Gracy was aware, however, that knowing a secret could create an enemy. She hadn’t thought Effie would turn against her, but maybe the woman regretted that Gracy knew so much. Perhaps Gracy shouldn’t have been surprised. “Are there others?” she asked Mittie.
“Coy Chaney’s wife.”
“That one’s to be expected.”
“Maybe one or two more.”
Gracy didn’t ask their names. She sat for a long time, her sewing in her lap. It hadn’t been a week since the Halleck baby was murdered, and yet some already had found her guilty, blamed her for the sorrow that made her ache as much as it did Josie Halleck. “I’ve been thinking it might be time to give up my work.” There, she’d said it out loud.
Startled, Mittie raised her hands to her face. “Not deliver babies? Why, you’re the best there is. The only one there is. You’re the last midwife. What would women do without you?”
“There’s the doctor.”
“I wouldn’t let him deliver my baby. I wouldn’t at all.”
“I’ve already been thinking about calling it deep enough,” Gracy said. She didn’t tell the girl the real reason, that she could no longer take the burden on her heart of the hardships, the deaths of women and children that were part of childbirth. Instead, she said, “With Daniel not working in the winters, he’s home by himself and lonesome. I got to think about him.”
“Does he want you to quit?”
Gracy shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t told him. I’ve only been thinking about it. But maybe it’s not for me to decide. Maybe nobody’ll want me after this.”
“I’ll want you.”
Gracy almost said it wasn’t likely Mittie would ever have need of her that way, but such a remark would have been cruel. Gracy only smiled and said, “I wouldn’t quit you.”
* * *
“What are they saying about me in town?” Gracy asked Daniel that night after supper. The two sat in their chairs facing the fireplace, the cabin lit only by the dying fire and the glow of a kerosene lamp.
He shrugged. “Oh, you know how folks love to gossip. Men’s as bad as women. I wouldn’t put much worry into what a drunk miner or two says.”
“The women are talking, too. Mittie told me.”
Daniel pounded his fist on the arm of his chair. “She shouldn’t have.”
“Yes, she should. I need to know.”
“Then you ought to know that mostly, folks don’t believe you killed that baby, despite what Jonas Halleck says.”
“Does anybody think he did it?”
Daniel pondered that. He leaned forward in his chair and began to unlace his boots. “There’s aplenty that don’t like Halleck, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to speak against him. You remember when he accused me of high-grading? Quite a few came to the house to tell me they knew I didn’t do it, but I don’t recollect anybody saying it in public. There’s not many would want to bring down the wrath of Jonas Halleck.”
“Worse than the wrath of God,” Gracy said.
Daniel pulled off his boots and stretched out in the chair. “Truth of it is, Gracy, and I know you want it told to you straight, I haven’t heard a soul say Mr. Halleck did it—except for John Miller. And that’s a strange thing, because John’s doing everything he can to find evidence against you.”
“That’s his job.”
“Well, it’s a mighty poor job if it means trying to put you in jail. After all you done for him!” Daniel reached for a tin of paste and a rag and started oiling a boot.
“Time for you to get new boots. You’ve worn those since we came here.” Gracy picked up the second boot and began rubbing the oil in with her fingers. “I’d rather have John Miller gathering evidence instead of somebody who doesn’t know me. At least he’ll be fair. It’s worrisome that Jonas Halleck might be trying to get some of his people to talk against me.” She got up and went to the pie safe for a rag, then sat down again and began to polish the boot. “Like I said, some of the women have already turned on me.”
“And after all you’ve done for them, too!” Daniel set down the boot, disgusted, and looked at Gracy.
“Oh, there were always a few who didn’t like me, but it seems there’s more of them than I knew. Mittie thinks Edna Halleck might be behind it. I’m not so sure. She’s a good woman. Maybe Mr. Halleck put her up to it.”
“I sure wish Jeff would come home. Maybe he could help.”
Gracy stared at her husband. “Jeff?” She wanted her son close, all right, had wanted it every day since he’d left out. He always managed to make her smile, to feel whole, despite her sorrows. Still, maybe it was best he was away. She didn’t want him caught up in her troubles.
“Might be he will.”
Gracy jumped at the sound of another voice that came through the open doorway, and Daniel said, “God, hell! Who’s there?”
“It’s only John Miller,” the sheriff replied, stepping into the room.
“How long have you been standing there listening in?” Daniel asked.
“Just a minute.”
“Well, I hope it was long enough for you to hear me say I thought you weren’t much of a man, trying to find evidence against Gracy like you’re doing.”
“What do you think a sheriff’s supposed to do? I got to get the evidence against Gracy if it’s there. That’s what I’m paid to do.”
“That’s what Gracy says, but that don’t hardly make it right.”
“You’d rather one of Mr. Halleck’s men handled it? That’s who’d be appointed sheriff if I left. You know I’d quit if it would help Gracy, but I’m helping her more by being sheriff.”
Gracy put her hand on Daniel’s arm to still him, then said to John, “There’s coffee, fresh made an hour ago.”
“Save it for breakfast.”
Daniel didn’t rise, didn’t offer John his hand. Instead, he gave the sheriff a surly look and asked, “What are you doing here, trying to find more lies about Gracy?”
The sheriff regarded him a moment, then reached out his hand to the dog and let Sandy sniff it.
“Dog doesn’t know the difference between friend and foe,” Daniel said.
“You’re the sorriest old leather belly I ever met up with. You don’t know when a man’s come to help. It’s a wonder Gracy puts up with you.”
Picking up the coffeepot, Gracy went to the fireplace and set it in the coals. “I guess I could stand a little coffee myself. I’ll get a cup out for you in case you change your mind, John. Daniel?”
Her husband grunted, which Gracy decided was a yes.
“How can you help when you’re trying to turn up something bad about Gracy?” Daniel asked. He picked up a sack of tobacco and pinched enough for his pipe before he held out the bag to John, who shook his head.
“First off, I brought the name of that lawyer fellow I told you about, Gracy—Ted Coombs. I already sent him a copy of what I turned up. I copied out the coroner’s report for him, and I haven’t even give it to the prosecutor yet. I thought I’d let you have first crack so you’d know what you’re up against, although I expect it’s against the law for me to do. It puts a hard point on it, me being sheriff and trying to help a friend, too.” He stared at Daniel, who dropped his eyes. “Dan, you know I’d do anything in the world to save Gracy,” he said.
“I know,” Daniel said softly, filling his pipe, then lighting it.
“What did you turn up?” Gracy asked. She used the hem of her apron to lift the coffeepot out of the fireplace, then poured the black brew into three cups. “I should have made fresh. You deserve it,” she said, handing a cup and saucer to John. He poured the coffee into the saucer to cool, which made Gracy wonder why she’d heated it in the first place.
“There are folks saying bad things about you. I won’t deny it. You want me to tell you or not?”
Gracy sat down in her chair and took Daniel’s hand, then nodded. “We’ve been talking about that.”
“The way I see it, there ain’t much hard evidence. What it boils down to is your word against Jonas Halleck’s. He’s not liked much, but folks respect him for being rich and smart, and plenty will believe him. He said he was there when you done it. He didn’t see you tie a string around the baby’s neck, but he said you were the last person to tend that baby before he picked it up dead. Couldn’t nobody else have done it but you. That’s what he says.”
Gracy nodded. She knew all that.
“You believe that, John?” Daniel asked.
“I’ve told you what I believe, but it don’t matter. It’s what a jury’ll believe, and you’ll likely get a miner or two from the Holy Cross on it if you’re not careful. Not many folks would want to call Jonas Halleck a liar. He’s too powerful.”
“I checked that baby over before I laid him in his cradle, and he was sleeping when I left. That’s the God’s truth.” Gracy remembered how she had held the baby tight against her chest before she set him in the tiny bed, then had let her hand linger on his cheek, reluctant to turn away, not knowing if she would ever touch him again.
“I know that,” John told her.
“What else do you have?”
There was the testimony Coy Chaney and Little Dickie Erickson would give, he said, but Gracy already knew about that. Then John cleared his throat. “This will surprise you, Gracy. Georgia Simmons and Pearlie Evans both say they suspected you of killing their infants.”
If the charges surprised Gracy, she didn’t show it, not at first. She thought that over for a long time, before she replied, “Georgia’s husband works at the Cross. Pearlie wanted me to give her something…” Gracy didn’t finish, because she didn’t talk about the women who had come to her to terminate their pregnancies. Pearlie Evans had asked Gracy to perform an abortion because she’d gotten pregnant one summer when her husband was away prospecting. Pearlie was sickly, and Gracy had told her the abortion might kill her. The woman had been as mad as a yellow jacket and swore Gracy hadn’t the right to say no. The baby had come early, and nobody was the wiser. Gracy thought Pearlie had gotten over her anger. Now it was clear she hadn’t.
“There’s men, too,” John said. He picked up the saucer and held it to his mouth. “I don’t put much store in what most say, seeing as how they work at the Cross. But Boston Chowder don’t work there, and he says you got a temper that beats all.”
At that, Gracy chuckled. He had indeed seen her temper, seen it when Gracy told him he’d have to keep away from his wife for six weeks after she gave birth. The man’s name was Barton Crowder, but he was so mad at Gracy that he’d spit out a mouthful of milk punch, and Gracy had said it looked like Boston chowder. The story had stuck, and so had the name. She should have had better sense.
“Can those men testify? What they say doesn’t have anything to do with the Halleck baby,” Daniel asked.
“No, it don’t, and I believe they can’t be called. What they talked about doesn’t have a bearing, as they say, on the case against Gracy. Still, it depends on the judge. You better hope you get a judge who isn’t in debt to Jonas Halleck.” John slurped the rest of his coffee and rose. “That offer’s still open, Gracy.”
Daniel frowned. “What offer’s that?”
“One I wouldn’t take,” Gracy replied, and then thought she might have been wise to consider it.