by Gordon Ryan
She saw her lying a few feet away, sprawled in an awkward position, with blood running from her scalp, down over her face. Katrina crawled painfully to Teresa’s side, and cradling the bleeding woman’s head in her lap, she began to rock back and forth, crying uncontrollably.
Hurting and shaken, Katrina didn’t know what to do. The sound of gunfire continued to ring out, and she feared for a time they might be hit by stray bullets. They were lying, however, in the bottom of a little gully, which afforded some shelter, but Teresa obviously needed help.
How long they remained there, listening to the sound of the gun battle, Katrina did not know. She lost consciousness and slept through the rest of the afternoon, finally reviving as evening approached and Teresa began groaning. Random gunfire could still be heard from the direction of the village, although from their position in the gully, Katrina could not see the buildings or any of the actual fighting.
Darkness slowly enveloped their sanctuary and Katrina could tell that Teresa was in pain. She groaned more loudly and almost continuously. Regaining consciousness, Teresa struggled to speak and finally said in a weak voice, “The baby comes.”
“Oh, please, no!” Katrina cried. “We must have help,” she said, looking around.
“No time,” Teresa said.
Through the night, the only light was the distant glow of the fires that were consuming the village. In the darkness of the ravine, Katrina worked to help Teresa deliver her baby, praying constantly as she did so. Ever since she discovered Harold’s duplicity, she had neglected her prayers, feeling somehow unworthy to ask for help, but her supplications to Father in Heaven this night were born of fear and desperation, and she plead for help and for Teresa to survive her ordeal. In spite of the desperate situation she and Teresa were in, Katrina was somewhat comforted and knew what to do.
By the time it began to get light, Katrina knew that the baby boy she had wrapped in his mother’s torn petticoat, if he survived, would never know the loving and caring mother who had given him life—a woman Katrina had come to love in spite of their duplicate roles in Harold Stromberg’s life. During the brief period they had been allowed to share knowledge of their respective positions, Teresa and Katrina, while not in agreement with the practice, nevertheless had come to understand how two women could love each other and, indeed, the man also to whom they were jointly married.
Teresa’s breathing grew more shallow during the pre-dawn hours, and finally, as it began to grow light, the exhausted woman surrendered her spirit. But before succumbing to her injuries and the strain of childbirth, Teresa Cardenas Stromberg whispered a single request and received a promise from Katrina.
Coming out of hiding after sunrise, two men from the Mormon colony found Katrina and Teresa’s baby in the gully. The mob of angry villagers was gone, their bloody work done.
“Sister Stromberg?” one of the men asked, climbing out of the wagon bed where he had been riding and approaching the scene.
“Yes,” Katrina answered. “I have a baby here, too,” she said.
“You’d better come with us, Sister Stromberg. We must get away from this place before the Mexicans come back.”
“Where’s Harold?” she asked.
Ignoring the question, the man took the baby from Katrina and handed it to the wife of the driver of the wagon. Then he helped Katrina to her feet. “We can’t leave Teresa,” she said.
The man looked at Teresa, lying crumpled and silent in the brush. “She’s with God now, Sister Stromberg. We can’t help her.”
Moving quickly, he helped Katrina into the back of his wagon then scrambled in himself as the wagon moved ahead. He took the baby from the woman on the seat of the buckboard and handed it back to Katrina, who sat numbly, holding the crying baby and staring to the rear, watching as the site where Teresa’s broken body lay, receded into the distance. In a few minutes the wagon moved over the hill and out of site of the grisly scene.
“Harold?” she asked again.
“I’m sorry, Sister Stromberg, Harold’s dead. And so is his father. Eight of our men are dead, and two sisters.”
Without a word, Katrina faced backward, jolting along in the wagon bed, too numb and exhausted to cry, watching the smoke from the ruins of New Hope rising through the early morning mist. As the wagon slowly creaked its way north, away from the massacre in and around the village, Katrina dozed, and the baby slept too, oblivious to the carnage that had surrounded his entrance into the world.
The sight of a small group of Mexican horsemen riding toward the wagon late that afternoon, filled their hearts with dread. Surrounding the wagon, the riders roughly dragged the two Mormon men to the ground and at gun point took them off into the scrub brush. In a moment, two shots rang out and the woman in the front of the buggy emitted a scream.
One of the Mexican riders spurred his horse toward the back of the wagon where Katrina sat, holding the baby tightly against her chest, her head lowered in fear. The man sat his horse in silence, looking down into the wagon, waiting until Katrina finally looked up at him. With the sun behind him, she saw him in silhouette, his face only a shadow under his sombrero. Without sound or apparent compassion, he gestured for her to get out of the wagon. Holding the baby and climbing down, she looked up fearfully at the man and saw the stern and angry face of Miguel Antonio Cardenas. When the two other Mexican riders emerged from the bushes, Miguel motioned for one of them to climb up and drive the wagon with the remaining Mormon woman.
“Mount the horse,” he said to Katrina as the wagon drove off with the second Mexican rider following.
With great difficulty, holding the baby in the crook of her arm, Katrina mounted the horse left by the Mexican rider. Miguel rode slowly in the opposite direction of the wagon, clearly expecting Katrina to follow.
“Where are we going?” Katrina called after him.
“To hell,” Miguel responded . . .
. . . continue the saga of the Callahans in Book Two, Conflict
Table of Contents
Destiny - The Callahans #1
Midpoint