A Path Worth Taking

by Mariella Starr

  Garret was watching out the small windows. “Here they come.”

  Jasper dashed out the door and handed off the hot pot to Abram, who lumbered toward Lettie’s cabin. Jasper returned with Jeb on his heels and Beth went to work on them with her broom. “If it gets any worse, maybe we should all bunk in the main house again.”

  “We’ll wait and see how bad it gets,” Garret agreed. “We’ve already got guide ropes strung to the barns, and the chickens are boarded into their coop.”

  “I didn’t even get out to see baby Lily Mae today,” Beth complained.

  “I told you to stay inside,” Garret said in a warning voice. “If this storm keeps up, don’t worry, we will all be bunking down in the same house.”

  Three days of blizzard-strength winds piled the snow waist deep, and Garret did move everyone into their house. No one seemed to mind, as there was strength in numbers. They were a tight group of friends and co-workers. When the men were not fighting the elements to make sure the herd was safe, they were inside discussing plans for spring although the elusive season was still five months away. Ranchers and farmers endured winter considering it a compulsory passage of time to wile away until they could get on with the real work to be done.

  The snowstorm passed and was then followed by another and another. In the aftermath, they still needed to care for the animals and chop the never-ending supply of firewood. Then a spring-like spell hit the area, and the ground turned to mud.

  It was so warm the men worried about the meat cache. They chopped blocks of thick ice from the melting creek, lined the meat cache with the ice, and covered it with sawdust to keep the ice from melting and the meat cold. The warm temperatures only lasted a few days, though.

  Beth was beginning to waddle. Her fears were returning although she tried to keep them from Garret so he would not worry. Lettie saw no reason to worry, so Beth fortified herself with the trust she put in her friend who had already delivered two healthy babies.

  ***

  On a rare day with a clear blue sky, an old friend showed up on their doorstep.

  Garret greeted James Sumners with a hearty welcome. “How have you been doing and how is your wife?”

  “I’ve been doing well and so is my wife. I’ve been promoted to the Chief Agent in the San Francisco office of the Pinkerton Detective Agency,” James said proudly. “I left Magnolia home in the care of her mother. I had unfinished business here in Denver.”

  “What kind of unfinished business?”

  “I wanted to thank you,” James Sumners said quite seriously. “Because of the return of those treasury plates, I got a raise and a major promotion. It was a career boost I sorely needed. I was hesitant to mail this to you since so much could have gone wrong. Mail comes up missing all the time.”

  He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Garret. “This is the reward for the missing plates.”

  Garret opened the envelope and his eyes almost bugged out. He handed it to Beth whose knees buckled and she had to sit down.

  “This is a reward?” she squeaked. “This is enough to support us for the rest of our lives!”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money,” James Sumners agreed. “However, if those plates had gotten into the wrong hands, millions of bills could have been issued outside the authority of the Treasury Department. In a worse case scenario, a mass printing from those plates could have devalued the dollar and destabilized our entire monetary system. The Chief of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, George B. McCartee, signed the check. It will be honored in any bank and has a letter attached verifying the legality of it signed by Schuyler Colfax, the Vice President of the United States. I was sent to thank you for your service to your country.”

  “We almost threw them away,” Beth whispered in horror.

  James Sumners laughed. “As a temporary representative of the Department of the Treasury, you have my genuine thanks for not throwing them away.”

  Garret offered James a bed for the night, which he eagerly accepted.

  In the darkness of their room, he and Beth whispered to each other.

  “We have to share the money with Jasper,” Beth declared.

  “Agreed,” Garret responded.

  “Is he old enough to manage the responsibility of so much money?”

  “I don’t know if I’m old enough,” Garret whispered in a hushed voice. “It also raises another question. Denver is a corrupt town. How can we trust a bank there not to cheat us out of it?”

  “Why don’t you ask James in the morning? He seems to be a knowledgeable man on such things.”

  Garret lit a candle. He moved a ladder to the loft and carried the envelope to the second floor. He went back to bed, then got out of bed, climbed the ladder, retrieved the envelope and moved it to a dresser drawer, and then to a trunk. A few minutes later, he was standing in the middle of the room seeming quite dazed.

  “What is it?” Beth demanded in a whisper.

  “What if the cabin catches on fire?”

  “Then we’ll have a whole lot more problems than worrying about an envelope! Put it in a drawer and forget about it for the night!”

  Easily said Garret thought, staying awake most of the night, worrying. He had barely shut his eyes when he heard someone rustling around in the kitchen. He glanced at Beth sleeping peacefully and slipped from their bed.

  James Sumners was feeding the stove with lengths of wood and setting the coffee pot on the stove. He glanced over his shoulder when his host came into the room. “You said to make myself at home, and I took you up on your offer.”

  “Good, because my coffee generally tastes like it was brewed over buffalo chips.” Garret pushed aside a crock to reveal a Tenley Tea tin and opened it to show James the cookies stashed inside. He put the tin on the table. “My wife thinks I don’t know about her hidden stash.”

  James Sumners smiled. “Magnolia has a sweet tooth, too. What’s worrying you?”

  Garret grimaced. “The money or maybe what to do with it. Denver is the nearest town, except I don’t trust a single banker there. If I can’t get the check cashed or draw on the money, what good does it do us?”

  James poured steaming coffee into their cups as he studied the problem. “I haven’t had a lot of dealings with the businessmen in Denver. Do you have a desperate need for the funds?”

  “No, but as it stands, the check is a worthless piece of paper.”

  “I understand. If you could get to the First National Bank of Cheyenne, I know the banker there, Mr. Leon Barker. I served with his son during the war,” James explained. “He’s as honest as any man comes.”

  Garret shook his head. “Beth is too close to her time for me to go on such a trip. It would take several weeks to get there.”

  James smiled. “You don’t have to cash the bank voucher immediately. There’s a big race between the Kansas Pacific and the Denver Pacific to see which company can reach Cheyenne first. It’s going to come to a head this summer. When those lines are completed, it will open a rail link to the Transcontinental Railroad. Denver is ripe for change, and it will come quickly. I’ve seen it happening all across the country. I’ll stop by and talk to Leon Barker to tell him to expect you sometime in the spring or summer. I’ll explain everything to him, and he will be able to make arrangements to secure the funds.”

  “I would appreciate it,” Garret said, offering his hand.

  James Sumners left the next morning.

  With the reward situation temporarily resolved, Garret and Beth settled down. Their lives were in a holding pattern while they anxiously waited for the winter months to pass and their child to arrive.

  Even heavy with child or tendering care to young children, a woman’s work was never done. Beth and Lettie still had to cook three meals a day for four men, take care of the laundry, and keep their homes clean. Lettie took on most of the harder work of the laundry, as Beth had done for her in her last few months. She tried to take on most of the cooking
too, appropriating the larger kitchen stove in the bigger house.

  Beth dragged the rocking chair from the living room into the kitchen and sat down closer to the warmth of the stove. She picked up a basket and pulled out a tiny baby gown she had hand sewn.

  “You’re nesting,” Lettie observed, taking a pan of cornbread out of the oven.

  “What does that mean?”

  Lettie smiled. “It won’t be long. You’re getting ready to have the baby.”

  “I think it’s stuck,” Beth said plaintively. “Maybe I didn’t do the count correctly.

  Lettie took the sewing basket and moved it aside. She laid her hands on Beth’s extended belly and moved them from place to place. “It won’t be long,” she repeated.

  ***

  Beth lay in bed, flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. She could no longer get up without help. She was unable to see her feet, and she needed help putting on her shoes and getting dressed. She was big and ugly, and her husband did not want her anymore. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “What’s this?” Garret asked, turning to face his wife and wipe away her tears.

  “I’m fat and ugly,” Beth sniffed. “You don’t want to touch me anymore.”

  “Stop being silly,” Garret said, pulling her to him and spooning into her. He spread his hands wide over her large belly. “I love you, and I think you’re beautiful.”

  “I’m as big as a buffalo!”

  He gave her fanny a light smack. “Stop it. You are beautiful.”

  “Oh!” Beth squeaked.

  Garret leaped from the bed. “What?”

  Beth was blinking and holding herself. “I don’t know. Oh!”

  “I’ll get Lettie.” He scrambled from the bed.

  “No. It isn’t time,” Beth said as she smiled. “It was a bigger kick than usual.”

  She rolled over and Garret slowly slid in behind her although he was watching her closely. Beth let him snuggle against her. She knew something was happening, but she also knew it would be a while. She had heard first babies came early, but that old wives’ tale had flown out of the coop since she was almost two weeks past the date she had expected to deliver her baby.

  Lettie said Beth was having a girl. She had hung Beth’s wedding band from a piece of thread and dangled it over her stomach. Lettie said if the ring swung back and forth, she was carrying a girl. If the ring moved in a circle, it was a boy. Beth’s ring had swung back and forth, but she had not told Garret. Like most men, she thought he was hoping for a son. Beth had no desire to disappoint her husband needlessly, especially since she was not sure she believed in Lettie’s method of determining the baby’s gender.

  There were no more pains, but Beth stayed in bed a little later than usual. She felt really good except for a constant dull ache in her lower back.

  It began snowing again in the afternoon and by dinner time there was about half a foot on the ground.

  “It’s looking like another big one,” Jeb informed them as he came in slapping snow off his trousers with his hat.

  “I’m going down to the cellar and bring in more potatoes,” Lettie said, throwing a shawl around her shoulders and braving the cold outside.

  She returned a few minutes later, and Jeb raced across the porch toward her.

  “What is it?”

  “She sprung a leak,” Jeb exclaimed. “I think it means the baby’s coming. I’m gonna find Garret.”

  Lettie opened the door to see Beth trying to mop the floor by wiping it with a cloth under her feet.

  “My water broke,” Beth stated bluntly.

  “You had best head into the bedroom,” Lettie ordered. “I’ll clean this real quick and be with you in a minute.”

  Beth nodded and waddled into the other room.

  Garret came racing inside, and Lettie held up her hand. “No sense in you going in there. This is woman’s work.”

  “How long will it be?”

  “It’s Miss Beth’s first, so it might take a while,” Lettie said. “You go finish whatever needs doing. I’ll be with her.”

  “I do have chores to finish before the storm hits full force,” Garret said. “I won’t be more than a half-hour. Are you sure she’ll be all right?”

  “I’m sure,” Lettie assured him.

  Garret tied down the last gate as the gale force winds tossed him around. He had sent the other men ahead and told them to go to the bunkhouse first to get whatever they needed because they would be staying in the house until the storm was over. It only made sense to stick together instead of burning wood in three separate stoves to keep warm. The men still ate at their table, anyway. He knew Lettie was spending most of her time in the house to keep an eye on Beth. In turn, his wife was getting hands-on training on how to care for a baby and a toddler with Lily and Virgie to care for.

  Bracing himself against the cold, Garret left the protection of the barn and made his way to the house. Although the distance was less than fifty feet, he was about frozen when he opened his door. The blast of heat felt good. As the snow melted from his eyelashes, he saw all three of his men standing around in the kitchen looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  “What? Oh, God!” he burst through the empty living room and into his bedroom. He stopped in his tracks as Beth was gritting her teeth, bearing down with a determination he had never seen in his wife’s face. To his amazement, Garret watched his child slide out of his wife and into the world. The red-faced bloodied little human was thrashing its arms and legs and squalling.

  Lettie turned around, frowned, and snapped. “Close the door! You don’t want those others seeing Miss Beth like this!”

  Garret shoved the door closed and crossed the room. He was powerless to take his eyes from his wife and child. Lettie took care of the cord and quickly wrapped the newborn in a cloth. She handed the baby to Garret and tossed a blanket over his wife so she could finish what needed to be done.

  Garret’s eyes never left the face of the screaming baby. “What is it?”

  “A girl,” Beth said as he lowered the bundle for her to see and put the baby in her arms.

  “Georgia Corrine Wakefield,” Garret said smiling. “After your mother and mine.”

  “Maybe next time we’ll get the John William after our fathers,” Beth said.

  “I’m happy with what we got, honey,” Garret said. “We have a beautiful little girl, just like her momma.”

  “Are you disappointed it wasn’t a boy?”

  “No. I wanted a healthy baby, and we got it. She is all right, isn’t she?”

  Lettie took the baby from Beth.

  “From the sounds of this one, she’s healthy and hungry. Why don’t you go tell the men you have a daughter? I’ll take care of what needs to be done in here.

  Beth nodded when Garret appeared reluctant to leave. “Go, we have a few things we need to do, yet. We’ll call you in a few minutes.”

  He nodded and left reluctantly. A few seconds later, the women could hear hollering and congratulations even through the thick bedroom door.

  “Anybody would think he did something worthwhile,” Lettie grumbled as she unwrapped the baby and began to wash it.

  “He had a little bit to do with it,” Beth teased her best friend.

  “Only a little bit?”

  Beth blushed and laughed. “Not that kind of little bit. He has far more than a little bit.” She laughed again and blushed even more.

  “Have you been in labor all day?” Lettie asked.

  “I didn’t think I was,” Beth said honestly. “My lower back was hurting, but I wasn’t having pains.”

  “You were having lower back contractions,” Lettie said, shaking her head. “You should have said something.”

  “I’m all right,” Beth said beaming. She touched her baby girl’s little fingers and toes and traced a delicate finger across her nose. “She is beautiful and perfect.”

  “So she is,” Lettie agreed.

  “Our little girls will grow up togethe
r and play together. I want them to be friends like us. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Lettie?”

  “Only seven miles separates our place from yours. Abram showed me on the land map he brought home when he filed for the homestead. Our girls are gonna be friends. We’ll see to it.”

  While the storm raged outside on the Colorado plains, it was warm and safe inside the Wakefield home. Garret left his men in the kitchen to join his wife. He carried the rocking chair into the bedroom, sat down, and watched his wife sleeping. When Lettie tiptoed in, he motioned for her to go, Beth was resting. When the baby made a mewing sound, Garret gently picked up the swaddled bundle and laid it in the crook of his arm. Tiny fingers wrapped around one of his rough fingers and he marveled how a person could be so tiny and so perfect.

  “I will love you forever, little one,” he whispered. “Lots of people think making a baby isn’t so hard, but we’ve been waiting for you for a while. Georgia Corrine, you are our first little miracle. We’ll love you and take care of you for the rest of your life. We’ll make your life a good one. You have my promise on it. Between your momma and me, we’ll do our very best at loving and taking care of you.”

  Beth was lying in bed listening. She had awakened to her husband’s voice thinking he was speaking to her. He wasn’t, and she listened as he spoke to his newborn daughter. Any worries that her husband might have preferred a boy vanished as she heard his whispered words of love to his daughter.

  “Georgia Corrine,” Beth said, opening her eyes fully. “You listen to your daddy. He’s a man who keeps his word. He is also a man full of love. You never have to doubt he loves you. He loves me, and my heart grows fuller every day because of it.”

  Epilogue

  Garret stopped to wrap a shawl around his wife’s shoulders before picking up two valises. He looked around for Jasper and saw him already carrying the two remaining valises toward the passenger train car. They had boarded the train in Denver with two valises and now were returning with four, in addition to two larger pieces of luggage already stowed in the baggage car. He suspected the heaviest one was full of gifts for their friends at home. They were returning from Cheyenne, Wyoming, where they had gone to take care of delayed business.