Lament

1904

Caroline found herself outside, found herself soaked and shivering, without even realizing she had moved. Water ran into her eyes and through her hair and down the back of her cotton dress, and as the two horses trotted into the yard she splashed over to them from the house, caught the rank stink of hot, wet horse in her nostrils. She recognized Hutch and Joe, their hats pulled low over their faces, and as she drew breath to ask she saw the third rider, hanging bonelessly across the front of Hutch’s saddle; bare-headed, the rain streaming from bronze hair gone slick and dark.

“Corin?” she whispered, putting her hand out to shake him slightly. She could not see his face, could not make him look up at her. “Where’s his hat? He’ll get a chill!” she shouted at Hutch. She didn’t know her own voice; it was too high, too brittle.

“Mrs. Massey, come now, step aside. We have to get him inside the house. Quickly now!” Hutch told her sternly, trying to steer the horse around her.

“Where’s Strumpet? What happened to Corin—what’s wrong with him? Tell me!” she asked, frantic now. She knotted her fingers around the horse’s reins, pulled its head around, stopped it walking past with its precious cargo. Hutch said something terse, and Joe swung down from his horse, taking Caroline’s hands and freeing the reins. Joe shouted something, his voice loud and deep. Caroline paid no heed. More men arrived, to take the horses, to gather Corin up. Caroline stumbled behind them to the bottom step of the house; she fell, and could not rise again. She could not remember how to walk, how to make her legs bend or her feet rise or fall. Strong hands lifted her and even though they bore her in the direction she wanted to go, she fought them savagely, as if she could resist what was happening, and make it not so.

They laid Corin down on the bed. Caroline dried his hair carefully with a linen towel, peeled his wet shirt from his torso and pulled his sodden boots from his feet, splattering rainwater onto the floor. She fetched clean blankets and covered him thickly. His hands were like ice and she held them in her own, feeling the familiar calluses, trying to rub some warmth into them when she had none to give. She brought a bowl of the rabbit stew, steaming and fragrant, and set it by the bed.

“Won’t you have some? It will warm you,” she murmured to him.

“He was riding hard after a big dog coyote. It was the last one we were going after, since we’d seen the rain coming in. Strumpet—she always was the quickest. Fast on her feet too—and that’s not the same thing. She was nimble, that mare. Quick thinking. I never saw a horse and rider move so well together as Corin and that mare . . .” Hutch spoke in a low monotone; his eyes fixed on Corin and his hands working in circles, wringing and twisting and wringing again. Caroline hardly heard a word he said. “But then, with no warning she just went over. High in the air, heels right up over her head. Whatever she stepped in, and I think it was some sinking sand, she never saw it coming or she’d have avoided it for sure. Corin was thrown down hard and . . . and then Strumpet came down on top of him. It was so fast! Like God reached down and turned that poor horse over with a flick of his finger. Her two legs were broke in front. Joe shot her. He shot her and we had to leave her out there for the damned coyotes. That brave horse!” He broke off, tears coursing down his cheeks.

Caroline blinked. “Well,” she said eventually, slowly, like a drunken person. “You’ll have to go and fetch her back. Corin won’t have any horse but her.” Hutch looked at her in confusion. “Is the doctor here yet?” she asked, turning back to the bed. A dark water stain was ruining the silk squares of the quilt, seeping out around Corin. Patches of angry color bloomed beneath the skin of his chest and arms, like an ugly blush. His right shoulder sat at a wrong angle and his head lolled to the left, always to the left. Caroline slipped her hands beneath the blankets to see if he was warming up, but his flesh was cold and solid and wrong somehow. She lay her head close to his and refused to listen to the quiet, terrified corner of her mind that knew he was dead.

They buried Corin on his own land, at the top of a green rise some hundred and fifty feet from the house and a good distance from the sweet-water well. The parson came out from Woodward and tried to persuade Caroline that it would be more seemly for the burial to be in the churchyard in town, but since Caroline was too numb to answer him Hutch had the final say, and he insisted that Corin had wanted to be buried on the prairie. Angie Fosset and Magpie were responsible for Caroline’s attendance that day, and for lacing her into a borrowed black dress that was too big and hung from her thin frame in folds. They also found her a veiled hat with two long, black ostrich feathers that swept out behind her.

“Have you written to his people, Caroline?” Angie asked, pulling a brush through Caroline’s matted hair. “Sweetheart, have you written to his mama?” But Caroline did not answer her. She had no will left to draw breath, to form words. Angie shot Magpie a dark look, and took the Ponca girl aside for a whispered consultation that Caroline did not attempt to overhear. They led her up the rise to stand by the graveside as the parson read the sermon to a crowd of ranchers, neighbors and a good portion of the population of Woodward. The sky was tarnished. A warm wind shook the wreath of white roses on the coffin and carried a few sprinkled raindrops onto the congregation.

When the proper prayers were said and done, Hutch walked a few steps to stand at the head of the coffin. The mourners waited, eyes turned respectfully downward, and when Hutch did not speak they waited some more, glancing up at him from time to time. Even Caroline, eventually, raised her shrouded eyes to see what was happening. Then, at last, Hutch pulled in a long breath and spoke in a deep voice, soft and steady.

“The minister here has made a pretty speech, and I know he meant for it to be a comfort. And it may well be a comfort to some, to think of Corin Massey gone ahead of us into the kingdom of heaven. I daresay that, in time, I might be able to draw some comfort from that same thought. I hope he likes it there. I hope there are fine horses, and wide green spaces for him to ride. I hope the sky there is the color of a spring dawn over the prairie. But today . . .” he paused, his voice cracking. “Today I hope that God will forgive me if I object to him taking Corin from us so soon. Just for today, I think we can feel hard done by that our great friend has gone. For we will miss him sorely. I will miss him sorely. More than I can say. He was the best of us, and a fairer or a kinder man you could not hope to meet.” Hutch swallowed, two tears sliding down his cheeks. He wiped them away roughly with the back of his hand, then, clearing his throat, he began to sing:

“Where the dewdrops fall and the butterfly rests,

The wild rose blooms on the prairie’s crest,

Where the coyotes howl and the wind sports free,

They laid him there on the lone prairie.”

His song was as mournful as the empty wind and it blew right through Caroline. She felt as insubstantial as air, as intangible as the clouds above. Her eyes returned to the pale wooden casket. Nothing about it spoke of Corin, nothing about it reminded her of him. It was as if he had been wiped from the earth, she thought, and it seemed an impossible thing to have happened. She had no photographs, no portraits of him. Already his scent was fading from his pillow, from his clothes. Hutch, Joe, Jacob Fosset and three other men stepped either side of the coffin, gathered the ropes into their weathered hands and took the strain. The parson spoke again but Caroline turned and stumbled away down the hill, the folds of the borrowed dress trailing her like a dark echo of her wedding gown. She could not bear to see the weight on those ropes, the tension in those hands. She could not bear to picture what was weighing that coffin down; and the blackness of the open grave awaiting it appalled her.

“Don’t you leave her alone for a second. Not for a second, Maggie. She was lonely enough when Corin was alive, God help her,” Angie whispered to Magpie as she got ready to depart after the funeral. Caroline was standing right next to them, but Angie guessed that she did not care. Angie turned to her, put firm hands on her shoulders. “I’ll be back on Tuesday, Caroline,” she said, sadly, but as she opened the door Caroline found her voice at last.

“Don’t go!” she croaked. She could not bear to be left, could not bear the emptiness. The spaces inside the house were as terrifying as those outside it now. “Please . . . don’t go, Angie,” she said. Angie turned, her face twisted up with pity.

“Oh, Caroline!” she sighed, embracing her neighbor. “My heart is breaking for you, it truly is,” she said, and Caroline wept, her body sagging helplessly against Angie’s.

“I . . . I can’t bear it . . . I can’t bear it!” she cried, and her anguish seemed fit to pull her slowly to pieces. Magpie dropped her face into her hands and bowed her head in sorrow.

But Angie had to leave at some point—she had a family of her own to look after. Magpie was around as much as she could be. She slept on a folded blanket in the main room, with William beside her. His cries in the night woke Caroline in a panic because they were so loud and unfamiliar. She thought coyotes were inside the house, or that Corin was back and crying in pain. But once fully awake a persistent, dull lassitude returned to her. One night she peeked at Magpie through a crack in the door and watched the dark-skinned girl nurse the baby by candlelight, singing so softly that the sound might have been the breeze, or the blood moving in Caroline’s own ears. She felt the darkness at her back like a threat, like a ghoul she was too afraid to turn and see. The darkness of the empty bedroom, as empty now as everything else. The ache of missing Corin, as she lay in that dark bed, was like a knife lodged in her heart, slowly twisting. So she stayed at the crack in the door for a long time, clinging to the candlelight like a moth; and eventually Magpie stopped singing and changed her posture subtly, just enough to show that she felt herself watched.

The heat of high summer was hardly worth fighting now. Caroline did as she was told, and ate as long as Magpie sat with her and forced her to. In the evening, Magpie spoke softly of unimportant things as she undressed Caroline and brushed out her hair, just as the maid Sara had once done. Caroline shut her eyes and thought back to that time, to the dark spell after her parents had died and how she had thought that she would never again feel as lost and sad as she did then. But this was worse; it was much, much worse.

“Do you remember the time my father took us to the circus, Sara?” she murmured, with the ghost of a smile.

“Who is Sara?” Magpie asked sharply. “I am Magpie, your friend, Mrs. Massey.”

Caroline opened her eyes and caught the Ponca girl’s gaze in the mirror.

“Yes, of course,” she said tonelessly, to hide the fact that for a moment she’d had no idea who or where she was.

As she went about the chores, Magpie took to putting William into Caroline’s lap. She did this particularly when Caroline had not spoken for several hours, or was not responding to questions, her face fixed and unchanging. The child, by then ten months old, soon began to wriggle and climb about her person, and she would be forced to take hold of him, steady him, and focus her attention on him.

“Sing to him, Mrs. Massey. Tell him the story of the Garden of Eda,” Magpie urged; and although Caroline could not find any stories or songs in her heart, she did find traces of a smile for the baby, and her hands woke up enough to tickle him, to hold and reposition him. She did not wince when her hair was pulled. William regarded her with his curious, velvet dark eyes and grinned wetly from time to time; and from time to time Caroline gathered him up and held him close, her eyes shut tight, as if drawing strength from his tiny body. Magpie hovered nearby when she did this, ready to take the child back when the embrace grew too much and made him cry.

Throughout the summer, Caroline spent long hours sitting out on the porch, tapping the runner of Corin’s rocking chair with her toe and then shutting her eyes, listening to the sound it made as it creaked to and fro, to and fro. She tried not to think. She tried to not wonder how things might have been if she had not blamed the coyotes for her fears in the night. She tried not to wonder how things might have been if she had not had that nightmare, if she had not been afraid of the wild, if she had been a stronger person; a better, more adaptable person. A braver one. Any other kind of person than the kind that sent a husband out to die chasing wild dogs. She wept without realizing it, and went about with her face encrusted with salt. And she had no child of his to keep and raise and speak to with quiet sorrow of how bronze and gold and glorious its father had been. Not even this trace of him was left to comfort her. She stared into the wide, far horizon and let herself be afraid of it. All day she sat, and was afraid. It was the only way she knew to punish herself, and she felt that abject misery was no worse than she deserved.

Some weeks later, Hutch came into the house with a respectful knock. Had Caroline not been so remote, so inward facing since Corin’s death, she would have noticed the man’s suffering, and that he avoided her, shouldering the blame for Corin’s accident upon himself. He was thinner because he could not bring himself to eat. The accident had cut him too deeply. The lines on his face seemed deeper, although he could not yet be thirty-five. Guilt weighed heavy upon him and grief was ageing him, stamping its mark on him, just as it was on Caroline, but she did not have it in her to offer comfort. Not even to Hutch. She made coffee for him and noticed, solemnly and without satisfaction, that she had finally brewed a good strong cup, not weak, not bitter, not burnt. She pictured Corin sipping it, pictured the smile that would have spread over his face, the way he would have complimented her on it—slipping an arm around her waist, planting a kiss on her face. Sweetheart, that’s the best coffee I ever tasted! Even her smallest triumphs had made him proud. Thoughts like this made her sway. Thoughts like this knocked her legs out from under her.

“Mrs. Massey, you know I hate to bother you, but there are things that require your attention,” Hutch said, taking a cup from her. With a slight wave of her hand, Caroline invited him to sit, but although Hutch turned to look at the proffered chair, he remained standing.

“What things?” she asked.

“Well, with Mr. Massey . . . gone, you’re the owner of this ranch now. I know that may sound alarming, but it needn’t be. I don’t want you to worry about a thing. I’ll stay here and run it for you. I know the workings of it more than well enough, and I’ve been here long enough to call this my home. Your husband trusted me with his business concerns, and I hope you can too. But there are things I can’t do, and one of those things is pay the hands and riders their wages.”

“Pay them? But . . . I haven’t got any money,” Caroline frowned.

“Not here, perhaps. Corin always drew the wages every couple of months from his bank in Woodward, and I can’t see that there’ll be any trouble in you doing the same.”

“You . . . want me to go to Woodward? I can’t,” she refused, as completely as if he’d asked her to go to the moon.

“I’ll drive you. We can stay one night only if that’s what you want; or you can go visiting some of the ladies while we’re there. I think . . .” Hutch paused, turning the cup around in his hands. “I think you need to go to Woodward, ma’am. I think you need to see some people. I think you need to get some air into your lungs. And if we don’t pay them, those boys’ll go elsewhere. They’re good and loyal, but they’ve had no money for two months now, and that’s just not right. And I can’t run the ranch without them.” Finally, he sipped the coffee, and his look of surprise at its rich flavor did not go unnoticed. Caroline imagined the trip to Woodward, and a great weariness came over her. She rocked back on her heels and fought to keep her balance, grasping the back of a chair for support.

“All right then, if it’s the only way. Corin . . . Corin would have wanted the ranch to carry on.”

“That he would, Mrs. Massey,” Hutch agreed. He paused, and lowered his head sadly. “Your husband was a good man and no mistake. The best I ever knew. And this place was his pride and joy, so I reckon we owe it to him to keep it running, to make it bigger and better than ever,” he said, looking up to hear Caroline echo the sentiment, but she was gazing out of the window and hardly heard him. “This is damn good coffee, pardon my language, Mrs. Massey,” Hutch told her, draining the cup. Caroline glanced at him and gave a small nod of agreement.

She forgot her parasol and felt the sun burning her skin as soon as they set out for Woodward. With her eyes screwed up against the light, she thought of the lines that would take root in her face, and found that she didn’t care. The wind was blowing, hot and dry, and a pall of dust sat around Woodward. Sharp grains got into Caroline’s unblinking eyes, so that as they travelled down Main Street her face streamed with tears. She rubbed at it roughly, pushing hard with her fingers, feeling the odd solidity of her eyeballs behind the lids.

“Stop now. Stop it,” Hutch told her softly. He wet his handkerchief with water from his flask and held her hands still in one of his while he wiped the sand from her face. “There,” he said quietly. “That’s better. I reckon your poor eyes have shed enough tears of late to last a lifetime.” The hand holding hers relaxed its grip, but did not relinquish them completely, and, tenderly, he brushed a final grain of sand from her cheek with his thumb.

“Is this the place?” she asked dully. They had pulled up outside Gerlach’s Bank, a large building with a grand, handsome sign.

“This is it. Do you want me to come in with you?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

Inside the building it was quiet and cool, and Caroline’s boots sounded loudly on the wooden floor as she entered. She approached the neat young clerk and saw him recoil from the disarray of her face and clothes and hair. A long-case clock ticked ponderously against the wall, a sound Caroline hadn’t heard since leaving New York. She looked at the gleaming clock, very similar to one that had stood in Bathilda’s hallway, and it seemed an object from another world.

“May I help you, madam?” he asked.

“I would like to make a withdrawal,” she said, realizing that she had no idea how this would be achieved, having never made such a request before.

“Do you have an account with Gerlach’s, madam?” the clerk asked, making this prospect seem unlikely. Caroline looked at the precise trim of his moustache, and his immaculate suit and collar. His expression was haughty, she thought, for a boy who worked in a bank. She drew herself up and fixed him with a steady gaze.

“I believe my husband has kept an account here for many years. I am Mrs. Corin Massey.” At this an older man appeared behind the young clerk and smiled kindly at her.

“Mrs. Massey, do come and sit down. My name is Thomas Berringer. I’ve been expecting you. Everything has been put in order and you may of course have access to your late husband’s account. May I bring you a glass of water?” Mr Berringer ushered her into a seat and waved a hand at the clerk for the water to be brought.

When it came to how much money should be withdrawn, Caroline realized that she had no idea. No idea how much a rider or a ranch hand should be paid, how much was owing, or even how many young men there were to be paid. She withdrew half of the available funds, and although Mr Berringer looked surprised, he filled out the necessary forms and passed them to her to sign without comment. The date he had written at the top gave Caroline a small jolt.

“It’s my birthday,” she said dully. “I’m twenty-one today.”

“Well, now.” Mr Berringer smiled, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Many happy returns of the day, Mrs. Massey.”

The resulting packet of bank notes was thick and heavy. Caroline weighed it in her hand, unsure of where to stow it. Seeing her predicament, Mr Berringer again beckoned to the clerk, and a cloth bag was found to conceal the money from prying eyes. Outside, Caroline stood on the raised sidewalk and gazed at all the people and horses and buggies. She had once felt so at home amidst people. Now she felt at home nowhere, she realized. Now was her chance to visit the town’s stores, to buy books or foodstuffs or clothes, but she could not think of anything she wanted. Seeing a haberdashery, she bought a soft, white crocheted blanket for William, and an open carrycot made of close-woven straw.

“It’ll be cooler in this heat than that leather papoose carrier he has currently,” she explained to Hutch.

“That’s mighty kind of you, Caroline. I’m sure Maggie will be very pleased,” Hutch nodded, stowing the gifts beneath the seat of the buggy. A long while later, too late for her to comment, Caroline realized that Hutch, for the first time, had called her by her Christian name.

They stayed just one night, in the same hotel where they had stayed the night of the gala. Caroline asked for the same room, but it was occupied. She had wanted to be in a place where Corin had been, like a pilgrim visiting a shrine. As if the place would remember Corin, as if his essence would still be felt there. She watched from the window for a long time as the sun went down, painting the town in lavish shades of pink and gold. She watched the people who passed, and listened to snatches of their conversation, bubbles of their laughter, and she tried to remember what it had been like to be one of them. As dark was falling she saw Hutch go out, with his hair combed flat and a clean shirt on. He sauntered away along Main Street, and Caroline watched until she lost sight of him amidst the jumble of people.

The men were paid, and the wad of banknotes thinned by barely a third. Caroline returned the remainder to the cloth bag and put it into her vanity case. Her hand brushed something soft and she drew it out. It was her blue velvet jewelry fold, with her mother’s emeralds and some other fine pieces inside. She unrolled it and looked at the bright stones, thinking of the last time she had worn them, the night she had first met Corin. When had she thought she would wear them out here? They looked ridiculous in the simple bedroom. Like glossy hothouse blooms in a field of wheat. She held them up against her skin and looked in the mirror. How different she looked now! So gaunt, so tanned; her nose a swathe of freckles, her hair dull and untidy. She looked like a lady’s maid trying on her mistress’s jewels, and she realized that she might never wear them again. They had no place on the prairie. She rolled them away and put them back in the case. Then, without thinking, she packed away some other things too—some clean undergarments and blouses; a nightdress with long sleeves too warm for the summer; some hair combs and face powder. She closed the lid and fastened the clasps tightly, wondering where on earth she thought she could go.

Late in August the ranch grew quiet. Hutch, Joe and several of the other men had gone out onto the grass with near a thousand head of cattle, for the final weeks of fattening up before the animals would be loaded onto trains and shipped north, to the meat markets of the eastern states. Many of those men who remained on the ranch were laid low with an illness that passed quickly from person to person, consigning them to their beds with a debilitating fever and tremors. Sitting on the porch early one morning, thinking of nothing and feeling nothing inside, Caroline saw Annie, Joe’s sister, ride out of the ranch on Magpie’s gray pony. She headed east, urging the pony into a brisk canter. The Ponca woman’s face, as she passed, was set into deep lines of disquiet. Caroline watched until she was out of sight; then she thought for a while and realized that she had not seen Magpie since the previous afternoon. She stood and walked slowly across the yard.

The dugout was hot and rancid. Magpie lay still on the bed and William mumbled and grizzled to himself in the straw carrycot Caroline had bought for him. There was an unmistakable smell of ammonia and feces coming from the baby, and a rank, metallic smell behind it which instinctively made Caroline afraid. With her heart beating fast, she knelt beside Magpie and shook her gently. The girl’s face was deep red and dry. When she opened her eyes they had an odd, dull gleam and Caroline drew back slightly, frightened.

“Magpie, are you sick? Where has Annie gone?” she asked hurriedly.

“I am sick. White Cloud too. Her medicines have not cured us,” Magpie whispered. There was a wooden cup by the bed and Caroline picked it up. There was some concoction within, which smelt sharp and vinegary. She held it up to Magpie but the girl turned her head away weakly. “No more of that stuff. No more of it,” she whispered.

“If you have a fever, you have to drink something,” Caroline said. “I’ll get some water. You have to get up, Magpie. William’s dirty . . .”

“I cannot get up. I cannot change him,” Magpie replied, sounding so unhappy that Caroline faltered. “You must do it. Please.”

“But I don’t know how!” Caroline said. “Magpie, why didn’t you send word to me that you were sick?” she asked. Magpie gazed at her, and she read the answer there. Because none of them had thought she would be any help. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’ll clean him. I’ll fetch you water,” she said, wiping her face. The smell of the sick girl and her soiled baby was nauseating, and a rush of dizziness assailed her. But she moved with a purpose, grabbing a pail and heading over to the cistern. “Where’s White Cloud? Where’s Annie gone?” she asked again, from the doorway.

“White Cloud is sick too. She is in the teepee, resting. Annie has gone east, to our peoples’ lands on the Arkansas River . . . she goes to fetch medicine . . .”

“The Arkansas River? That’s nigh on two hundred miles! It will take her days and days!” Caroline cried.

Magpie just looked at her, her face slack with exhaustion and despair. “Please, clean William,” she said again.

Caroline fetched a pail of water and a ladle. It took all of her strength to lift Magpie’s head and shoulders so that the girl could drink, but Magpie could only manage tiny sips and found it hard to swallow.

“Please drink some more,” Caroline begged, but Magpie did not reply, lying back on her fetid bedding, her eyes closing. Searching the dugout, Caroline found clean napkins and a towel. She took William out of the carrycot and went outside with him. The filth she found when she undressed the baby made her gag, and she threw the rags onto the coals of the dying cook fire. The water was cold and William began to cry as she dunked him into the pail, swilling the congealed mess from his backside. His cries were weak though, his voice a little hoarse, and he seemed to tire himself out with it, falling into a kind of doze as Caroline finished bathing him and positioned a new napkin between his legs as best she could. Sitting on the ground, she lay him along her thighs and was stroking his arms, entranced, when she realized how warm he was and how flushed his cheeks had grown. She put her fingers to her own forehead to check, and the difference was unmistakable. Hurriedly, she gathered him up and went back into the dugout.

“Magpie . . . William’s very hot. I think he has a fever too,” she said, bringing the baby to the bedside for Magpie to see. The Ponca girl’s eyes filled with tears.

“I don’t know how to help him. Please . . . he will get sick too. You must take him . . . take him to the house! Clean him, feed him. Please!” she said weakly.

“I have cleaned him, see? He will be fine . . . you’ll both be fine, Magpie,” Caroline declared.

“White Cloud . . .” Magpie murmured indistinctly. Caroline lay William back in his cot and went over to the teepee. She hesitated outside, afraid to go any further. She thought of White Cloud’s iron gaze, her alien voice raised in song.

“White Cloud? May I come in?” she called tentatively, but there came no reply. Breathing fast, Caroline lifted the tent flap and went inside. White Cloud lay crumpled on the ground like so many old rags. Her gray hair was slick with sweat, matted to her scalp. With her bright eyes closed she was just an elderly lady, small and weak, and Caroline felt ashamed for fearing her. “White Cloud?” she whispered, kneeling beside her and shaking her as she had done Magpie. But White Cloud did not stir. She would not wake. Her skin radiated heat and her breathing was fast and shallow. Caroline had no idea what to do. She went back outside and then faltered, standing alone with her hands shaking, surrounded by people who suddenly had need of her help.

At Magpie’s insistence, Caroline took William back to the house with her. He was fast asleep, his fist wedged into his mouth. She put him in the coolest, shadiest spot she could find and began to explore the kitchen cupboards, looking for food she could take over to Magpie. Steeling herself, she went over to the bunkhouses and found three of the beds occupied. The stricken riders murmured in helpless embarrassment when she entered, assuring her that they were quite well even though they were too weak to rise. Caroline fetched pails of water and made each of them drink, before leaving a further cup of water beside each man’s bed. She had been hoping to find somebody able to ride to town and fetch the doctor, but there was no way any of those remaining could do so. The thought made panic close her throat. She went back to the house and began to make a soup from dried beans and the carcass of a chicken Magpie had roasted two days before. She also fetched a pumpkin up from the root cellar and cooked it up into a mash for William.

In the night William woke her up with thin cries of distress and she rose, holding him to stop his crying with comforting words and kisses. She laid him back down as he went back to sleep, then sat on the edge of the bed and cried quietly to herself, because it was all she had ever wanted to have a baby sleeping next to the bed, and to comfort it and love it. But this child was not hers, and Corin was not lying beside her, and this tiny taste of what should have happened, of how things should have been, was so bitter and sweet.

By morning, there was no denying that William had caught the fever as well. He slept too much, he was hot, and was groggy and limp when he woke. Caroline went over to the bunkhouses with the soup she had made, and then to the dugout to Magpie, pausing outside the teepee. She knew she should go in and try to wake White Cloud again, try to make her drink some water. But fear gripped her, a new and horrible fear born of instinct rather than conscious thought. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck as she forced herself to lift the tent flap. White Cloud had not moved. She did not move. Not at all. Not even her chest, with the rise and fall of breathing. Caroline dropped the tent flap and backed away hurriedly, horror squeezing her insides, shaking her from head to foot. Breathing fast, she went down into the dugout.

Magpie was weaker, and harder to wake. The whites of her eyes looked grey, and her skin was even hotter. Caroline washed her face with a wet cloth, and ladled more water through her cracked lips.

“How is William? Is he sick?” Magpie whispered.

“He . . .” Caroline faltered, unwilling to speak the truth. “He has a fever. He is quiet, this morning,” she said gravely. Fear lit a dull light in Magpie’s eyes.

“And White Cloud?” she asked. Caroline looked away, busying her hands with the cloth, the water pail, the ladle.

“She is sleeping,” she said shortly. When she looked up Magpie was watching her, and she could not hold the girl’s gaze.

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help myself or White Cloud,” Magpie whispered, despairingly. “We must hope for Annie to come back soon, and to bring medicine.”

“That will take far too long!” Caroline said desperately. “Somebody will have to go! You can’t wait for Annie!” She stood up, pacing the dugout. “I’ll go,” she said in the end. “I’m well enough. I’ll go, and . . . I’ll take William with me. The doctor can see to him straight away and then come back with me and look after you and everybody else. It’s the best way.”

“You will take William with you . . . ?”

“It’s the best way. You can’t look after him, Magpie! I can do it. I’ll take the buggy and that way the doctor will see him this evening. Tonight, Magpie! He could have medicines tonight! Please. This is the best way.” Now that she had decided, she was desperate to start. She thought of White Cloud—her denuded, too-still form. “It might be too late, otherwise,” she added. Magpie’s eyes widened with fear, and she blinked tears away.

“Please, take care of him. Please come back quickly,” the girl implored.

“I will! I’ll send the doctor to you at once. It will be fine, Magpie—truly it will,” Caroline said, the speeding of her heart making her voice tremble. She took Magpie’s hand and squeezed it hard.

She loaded her vanity case, the carrycot and a bag of William’s things into the buggy and drove it as quickly as she dared, steering the horse between thickets of brush as she had watched Hutch and Corin do. The North Canadian was low between its banks and cool droplets of water spun up from the wheels as they took the ford, stirring up the sweet, dank, mineral smell of the river bottom. Pausing to rest herself and the horse, Caroline lifted William into her arms. He was still hot and cried fitfully each time he woke, but now he was sleeping, and his face had settled into a calm slump that so reminded Caroline of how Corin’s face had looked when he’d slept in his chair that she caught her breath. Thinking again, even for a second, that this might be Corin’s child stole the air from her lungs. She sat down in the sand with William in her lap, and she studied him, running a finger from his hairline to his toes. Long toes, spaced widely apart, just like Corin’s. His hair was dark, but his skin was lighter than either Magpie’s or Joe’s. His eyes, although brown, had a greenish ring around the iris that lightened them. In the furrow of the tiny brow, and the pout of his lips above a tucked-in chin, Caroline thought she saw traces of her husband. She cradled the child to her chest and she wept. She wept for Corin’s betrayal, and for the loss of him, and for the perfect, agonizing feeling of holding his baby to her.

The doctor took one look at Caroline’s frantic face and the child in her arms and ushered her inside. He took William and examined him closely, quizzing Caroline about the symptoms the adults at the ranch were showing and how long the illness had been rife. He listened to the baby’s heart and breathing, and felt the heat glowing in the soft skin.

“I think he will be well. His fever is not too high as yet, and his heart is strong, so please, try not to worry too much. Are you staying in town tonight? Good. Keep him cool. The main thing is to bring his fever down as soon as possible. Cold wet cloths, changed regularly. Give him three drops of this on his tongue, with a teaspoon of water afterwards, every four hours. It’s an antipyretic—it will help break the fever. And if he will eat or drink, try to let him do so. I believe he will recover quickly. Don’t look so afraid! You brought him to me in time. But I must leave for the ranch, for if it goes unchecked this sickness could prove more serious. You will follow on tomorrow, so I can check the child again?” Caroline nodded. “Good. Rest, for both of you. And cold cloths for your child. Are there any others at the ranch as young as this, or any of great age?” The doctor asked as he ushered her from the room. Your child.

“There are no other children. White Cloud . . . she is advanced in years, although I cannot say how old she is,” she whispered. “But I think . . . I think she has died already,” she said, her throat constricting. The doctor shot her an incredulous glance.

“I must leave at once and travel through the night—I can hope to be there by sunrise. A fellow doctor can be found at this address—if William takes a turn for the worse, call upon him.” He handed Caroline a card, nodded briskly, and stalked from the room.

Caroline did not sleep. She fetched a basin of cold water from the hotel kitchens and laid damp cloths gently onto William’s skin, as instructed. She was loath to take her eyes from him, studying each line of his face, each hair on his head. She checked the clock obsessively, giving him his dose when four hours had passed. He woke up from time to time and studied her in return, grasping her finger in a strong grip that reassured her. By morning she was light-headed with fatigue, but William’s color was better, and his skin was cooler. He ate some rice pudding that the landlady had made for him, studying the women with a calm appraisal that made them smile. Caroline wrapped him in the crocheted blanket, laid him in the carrycot, put a pacifier into his chubby hands and gazed at him. He could be hers—the doctor had immediately thought so. He could be the child of a respectable white woman—nothing about his person marked him out as a Ponca. Indeed, he could have been hers, she thought. He should have been hers.

Caroline was reluctant to go back to the ranch. She should have left hours before, with the sunrise, but the thought of starting back made her so tired inside that she averted her eyes from the black buggy, parked outside in the yard, and from the corral where the buggy horse had spent the night, chewing hay and scratching its sweaty head against the fence. The doctor would see to the sick, and when Caroline returned she would have to give William back. She thought of White Cloud’s body, lying untended in the teepee. She thought of Magpie, helpless and sick. She thought of life, stretching on for year after empty year, and all of them without Corin. But when she looked at William she smiled and felt something swelling up inside her. Something that pushed the other thoughts aside and made it bearable to go on. She could not go back. It was a prospect as black and terrifying as the grave Hutch had cut into the grassland to take Corin’s coffin. She could not go back.

Across town, plumes of steam rose from the railway track. Caroline walked in that direction, her case in one hand, the carrycot in the other. The weight of these two items made her unsteady on her feet, but she moved purposefully, her mind now empty of thought, because her thoughts were too dark. The platform was wreathed in steam and the hot metal smell that had accompanied her to Woodward in the first place. But this immense, black locomotive was facing the other way. Northward, to Dodge City, Kansas City and beyond. Back the way she had come, away from the prairie that had torn out her heart.

“Look, William, look at the train!” she exclaimed, holding the baby up for his first sight of such a thing. William eyed it distrustfully, putting out a hand to grasp at a wisp of steam as it scrolled by. Then the guard’s whistle startled them both and the train exhaled a vast, ponderous cough of steam, its wheels easing into motion. A latecomer ran onto the platform, wrenched open a carriage door and leapt aboard, just as the train began to inch slowly along the platform.

“Come along, ma’am! Quickly now, or you’ll miss it!” the man smiled, holding out his hand to her. Caroline hesitated. Then she took the man’s hand.