An Outlaw in Wonderland

by Lori Austin

  Mrs. Lewis had been sneaking. But why?

  “I have as much right to be here as you.” The blonde jumped off the table, then lifted her chin. “More.”

  “What’d she say, Doc?”

  “None of your business!” Mrs. Lewis balled her fists and took a step in Sadie’s direction.

  Ethan took the older woman’s arm and led her into the waiting area. “Have you seen my wife?” he murmured. “I thought she might examine Mrs. Lewis.” Maybe Annabeth could figure out what was going on.

  Sadie choked, and Ethan pounded her on the back until she stopped. By the time she could breathe again, Mrs. Lewis had disappeared.

  “That woman didn’t make yer head ache with her yammerin’?” Sadie’s good eye narrowed on Ethan’s face.

  “No,” he said. Though there was something about Cora Lewis that made his brain itch. Especially after he’d examined her. “My wife—” he began.

  “Done gone to the Tarkenton place.”

  “Tarkenton,” he repeated. The name meant nothing to him.

  “That’s right.” Sadie snapped her fingers as if she’d forgotten, too. “They weren’t here in 1865.”

  She spoke as if it wasn’t 1865, and now his head did hurt. He reached to rub it.

  “Don’t do that.” She pulled his hand away from the pain. “Josie Tarkenton’s been in labor for two days.”

  Ethan started for the door. It wasn’t until he reached down to snatch a bag that wasn’t there that he heard what Sadie had said about his wife. “Annabeth went to help?”

  “Major took her in his buckboard.”

  Well, at least she hadn’t ridden, though a buckboard could be as jarring to a pregnant woman as the back of a horse, especially if it were being driven hell-bent like the one he’d heard earlier.

  “I’m gonna ride out.”

  “Missus won’t like that.” Ethan was already striding for the back door, which was closer to the stable. Sadie scurried after. “Marshal won’t neither.”

  “Who’s Marshal?” Ethan asked.

  “The lawman that done posted guards at yonder door.” Sadie grabbed his elbow, and Ethan paused, more out of respect than because she had enough strength to stop him. “Someone shot at ye, Doc. No one knows who or why.”

  Ethan didn’t either. Unless it had something to do with the war and his role in it. The thought, which should have made him stay where he was, instead made him even more desperate to follow his wife. “She needs me.”

  “She does,” Sadie agreed, still holding on to his elbow. “Ye aren’t gonna do her a damn bit of good dead.”

  Gently, Ethan removed himself from the woman’s grasp. “If Josie Tarkenton has been in labor that long, there’s a problem. I can’t just leave her there.”

  He wasn’t sure if he was talking about Josie or Beth or both. It didn’t really matter.

  Sadie’s hands fell to her sides. “Don’t say I didn’t warn ye. If ye get yerself dead, don’t come whinin’ to me.”

  Ethan’s lips twitched. “No, ma’am.”

  As Annabeth had taken his bag, Ethan needed to bring nothing to the Tarkentons’ but himself.

  He didn’t recognize the stable boy, though the fellow greeted Ethan with, “Hey, Doc!” and brought the correct horse without being told. He also knew the Tarkentons and was able to give Ethan directions, along with a curious frown that Ethan could not decipher.

  He was the recipient of many curious frowns, both on the way to the stable and on the way out of town. He wished he could recall what he’d done to deserve them.

  CHAPTER 18

  By the time Ethan reached the dugout that was the Tarkentons’ home, the sun had moved halfway to the horizon and the heat was intense. He allowed the horse to drink from a pathetic late-summer flow nearby. At least it was something; he’d seen creeks this small become nothing at this time of year.

  Ethan drank, too, splashed his face, dunked his hat beneath the surface—the brim scraped rocks—then set it on his head, letting the water trickle over him.

  The buckboard sat abandoned before the earthen home. The horses had been unhitched and stood with their heads down, clustered in the meager shade of one lonely tree.

  Ethan’s gaze returned to the open doorway. “Hello?”

  Since the incident at Sand Creek, when the Colorado militia had massacred a band of Cheyenne—the majority of whom were women and children—the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Sioux had been troublesome. Every white man in Kansas was understandably nervous.

  Ethan thought the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Sioux were understandably furious. Regardless, walking into someone’s home without warning was a good way to get shot, and Ethan had been shot enough for one week.

  A young man appeared in the opening. Ethan had never seen him before in his life.

  “Doc!” The boy’s mouth tilted into a tired smile. Apparently, the fellow had seen him. He beckoned.

  “My horse,” Ethan began.

  The man, Major Tarkenton, Ethan surmised, reached into the dugout and came out with his rifle. “I’ll take care of him. You go in.” As Ethan handed over the reins, the boy murmured, “She can’t bear much more of this.”

  The home had been dug out of a hill. The walls were earth, the ceiling, too. Ethan stepped inside, then stood, blinking, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the shadows. Dirt showered down, sprinkling over the black pools of blood like salt over soup.

  The woman lying atop the straw tick on the floor was so pale, her skin glowed even in the small amount of light that filtered through the door. Annabeth knelt between her feet. She glanced over her shoulder, and the flicker of the lamp across her face reminded him of another room—hot and dark—blood on the floor. On her hands. On his.

  “Too soon,” Annabeth gasped. “Help me.”

  “Ethan?”

  He shook off the strange sensation of the past and the present merging. He’d never seen Annabeth bleeding, crying as his own heart thundered until he thought it might burst free of his chest.

  “Help me,” she ordered.

  The pain in his head caused Ethan to stagger. He set his hand against the wall, ground his teeth, and refused to let it consume him. He focused on this room, this woman. The other one—

  “Later,” he murmured.

  “Now,” Annabeth snapped.

  “Yes.” Now was all that mattered. All he could allow to matter. Because then was kind of fuzzy.

  A bucket of water sat at Annabeth’s side. Ethan shoved his hands into it, relishing the familiar sting. “What’s wrong?”

  “She was pushing when I arrived. According to Major, she had been for quite a while.” Annabeth’s expression crumpled. “Poor thing.”

  “Let me look.”

  Annabeth moved aside; Ethan took her place, but he couldn’t see a thing in this light. He’d have to use his hands. He was glad the woman was unconscious. Most didn’t much care for an internal examination, especially in an area that probably felt as if it had been pounded from the inside with a hammer. He immediately discerned the source of the problem and sat back.

  “What?” Annabeth asked.

  “That’s not a head.”

  “Hell.”

  “I’m going to need more light.”

  “Out of candles; lantern’s dry.” Her lips tightened. “You think I’d work in these conditions if I didn’t have to? It’s too much like—” She broke off, and her shoulders slumped.

  For an instant he thought she remembered what he did, but that was impossible. The images of her ice white and gasping, tears on her cheeks, blood on his hands . . . they were merely a bad dream. They had to be. Annabeth was talking about the war. Or rather about—

  “Castle Thunder.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We never had enough light.”

  They’d never had enough anything. But it had been a prison.

  “Should we bring her outside?” Annabeth asked.

  Usually, inside was better than outside, less miasma blowing around. But in
here . . . Ethan frowned as more dirt rained onto the already blood-soaked straw. He shoved his arms beneath Josie’s shoulders, her knees, and rose.

  “Find something clean. Quilt, sheets, even fresh straw would be an improvement.” Ethan ducked into the sun as Annabeth ransacked the dugout.

  The buckboard still sat nearby, throwing a large shadow, which was exactly what Ethan was looking for. He knelt in its shade as Annabeth joined him with what appeared to be the newest item in the house—a basket quilt, all white except for the appliqués in several lively shades.

  The husband arrived, flushed and breathless. “What are you doing?”

  “The doctor brought her outside where the light is better,” Annabeth said. “All right?” She nodded until the young man nodded, too. “Can you fetch fresh water, please?”

  “What are you doing with that?” His gaze went to the quilt. “Her ma made it for our wedding. Took her the better part of a year. We’ve never even—” His voice broke. “We wanted to save it for a house that wasn’t dirt.”

  Annabeth spread the quilt on the ground. “It’s good that you saved it. There’s nothing more important than having a place for your child to be born.”

  Major’s mouth opened; Annabeth gestured sharply to Ethan, and he set the woman on top, settling the issue.

  “The water?” she repeated, her tone brooking no argument. Major set his rifle against the dirt wall, grabbed a second bucket from inside, and trotted toward the creek.

  “We’d best do whatever you plan before he gets back,” she murmured.

  In Ethan’s experience, fathers were the most squeamish during childbirth. Which was why they were usually relegated to the other side of a door. When there was one.

  The woman moaned; her eyelids fluttered. “We should do it before she comes back,” Ethan said.

  Concern flickered in Annabeth’s eyes. “Do you know what to do?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “There weren’t a lot of babies born at Chimborazo.”

  “Nor any at Castle Thunder. But I—”

  He paused as another flicker of a past that couldn’t be filtered through his mind. A cabin on the prairie—a snow-covered Kansas prairie from what he could see through the window. A woman he didn’t recognize crying, bleeding, pushing to no avail.

  Ethan shook his head. The vision was merely another dream. It was summer. They’d just arrived. He’d never delivered a baby in Kansas, especially in the winter. Though he had done so elsewhere.

  “I assisted at plenty of births while I apprenticed with Dr. Brookstone.”

  Though Pennsylvania did not resemble Kansas, that had to be where the memory came from. Ethan did not have the time right now, nor the inclination, considering the way his head throbbed, to ferret out where, why, or how he knew what to do. He needed to do it.

  “Hold her,” he ordered.

  Josie’s eyelids fluttered. “Maj—” she mumbled. Her hands, though weak, reached for those of her husband, but they fell back to the quilt before she was able to lift them very far.

  “I should have brought something for the pain,” Annabeth said.

  Ethan reached into his pocket and pulled out the half-empty laudanum bottle. His wife’s expression brightened. “You think of everything.”

  When Ethan had put the bottles in his pants, he’d known nothing of Josie Tarkenton. He’d done so without thought, as if the act were familiar, one he’d done a hundred times before. Another behavior he didn’t know the why of.

  Annabeth lifted the woman’s head. “Just a few sips.” Josie swallowed, and her eyes closed.

  Ethan glanced toward the creek and Major Tarkenton. “Rinse that bucket!” he called. “At least twenty times.”

  Major, who’d been poised to return, turned back and knelt again on the bank. Ethan lifted his gaze to his wife’s. “Hold her.” Annabeth bore down on Josie’s shoulders. “Not like that. Under the arms, so she doesn’t slide toward me.”

  Annabeth’s mouth tilted down; her forehead creased, but she didn’t ask what he planned to do; she just did as she’d been told.

  Ethan followed the memory that wasn’t with hands that seemed to know well what to do. He inserted two fingers on each side, slid them past the baby’s buttocks—round and smooth like a baby’s head, easily mistakable to anyone who had not felt the same before—then hooked them around the hips. His biceps flexed; his legs tensed as his toes dug into the dirt. The woman’s eyes snapped open; she drew a long, deep breath and screamed.

  Ethan had heard worse—both in the war, in prison, and . . .

  For an instant the world went blurry. Day became night. This woman became another. He was dizzy, nauseated, but he continued to pull. Hesitation only prolonged the pain.

  The mother screamed one last time, then went silent as her child burst into the world. The infant was silent; then suddenly he screamed.

  “Josie?” Annabeth slapped the woman’s cheeks lightly as her husband scrambled up the riverbank and hurried toward them.

  Ethan continued to work, dealing with all that had to be dealt with after a birth. His patient’s chest still rose and fell. She’d fainted. He didn’t blame her.

  Ethan rose, holding the squalling child in front of him. His eyes met Annabeth’s. Her face was so pale, the slash of blood across her cheek looked like a wound. The world shimmied again as the past merged with the present.

  A bloody child in his hands. Annabeth as white as the moon through the window. Fear and confusion, panic and pain.

  Then and now broke apart, revealing every difference. The sun not the moon. Squirming and squalling instead of lying ever so still.

  This child was breathing.

  Theirs never had.

  “I . . . uh . . .” Ethan stared at the baby. A boy.

  Yes, it had been.

  He staggered, and Annabeth leaped to her feet, snatching the child before Ethan dropped him.

  “Sit,” she ordered, and he did, sinking into the dirt as if his legs had been kicked aside.

  Major, who’d been standing as though frozen, staring at his wife, uncertain what to do, set the bucket down, sloshing quite a bit over the side in his haste.

  “Kiss your wife,” Annabeth ordered.

  The man complied. When Annabeth used that tone, pretty much everyone did.

  Ethan couldn’t look away from the woman on the ground. What was it about her, about this, that made him shove his hand into his pocket, finger the bottle he found there, fight the urge to take it out and drink every last drop?

  Fingers snapped in front of his nose. He lifted his gaze. Reddish brown streaks marred his wife’s face. Just like last time.

  The hair on Ethan’s neck, his arms lifted as if a breeze had trilled across his skin. But the single tree in the yard remained still. Not wind. Merely the whisper of a ghost.

  “Is he . . . ours?” Ethan asked.

  Annabeth bobbled the baby. Ethan reached out to catch him, but she gathered the boy against her, as if she didn’t want Ethan to touch him. Was she afraid that he’d . . . what?

  Bury this child as he’d buried the last?

  The chill wind that wasn’t blew over him again. His gaze flicked to his wife’s stomach, but it was hidden by the baby and the ruined, bloody folds of a very ugly dress.

  “You need to make sure Josie’s all right,” Annabeth said. “Deliver the afterbirth; if she’s—”

  “I know what to do,” he interrupted. Although ever since he’d held that baby in his hands, his mind hadn’t felt like his own.

  She peered at him for several seconds—seeking, searching—then nodded and disappeared into the dugout. An instant later, she marched out with a basket of clothes, diapers, and blankets. As she passed, she dropped his bag at his side.

  Considering the trauma, Josie wasn’t bleeding too badly. If she avoided childbed fever, the most common cause of death after birth, she’d be fine. She had a better chance of this since Annabeth had done her best to keep everything
clean, but Lord only knew what had been going on in the two days before his wife had arrived.

  Feeling steadier, saner after completing the familiar tasks of bathing and stitching, Ethan climbed to his feet. The cries of the baby sliced along his skin like a January wind. Those cries shouldn’t bother him; they sounded healthy. Still, he wanted to turn away, to run away. Instead, he approached the creek. His wife had washed the boy and laid him atop a fresh blanket beneath the sun.

  “Poor little fellow,” she cooed, diapering his bruised behind. His back legs lifted toward his ears even after she gently pressed them down.

  In contrast to most, this child’s head wasn’t misshapen; his face wasn’t red or blotchy. All the pressure of the birth had been applied to the opposite end.

  Annabeth finished swaddling the child, then carried him to his mother. Ethan followed, feeling a little lost. What day was it? Hell, what year was it?

  Annabeth set the baby in Josie’s waiting arms. In seconds, he nursed loudly. His wife turned her face, blinking as if the sun were far too bright. She snatched up dirty cloths with fingers that trembled.

  Ethan took a step toward her, planning to tell her that everything would be all right, that this would not happen to her, but even if it did, he would be there; he would save them both.

  The sudden pain behind his eyes made him curse. It wasn’t until he saw his wife’s face that he realized he’d cursed in Gaelic, like his da. Though why she would appear so worried, almost terrified, at hearing that, he had no idea. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t cursed in Gaelic before.

  “Mo mhíle stór,” he murmured, reaching out. She stepped back just as Major stood.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “And you, too, Missus.”

  Annabeth didn’t respond, staring at Ethan with wide eyes. They needed to talk. Alone. But first . . .

  “Everything that comes into contact with your wife and child must be as clean as possible,” Ethan instructed. “Any sign of a fever, fetch me right away. Do you have any alcohol?”