The Last Midwife: A Novel

by Sandra Dallas

  She’d had her chance to escape, too, Gracy remembered. John Miller had given her one, but she’d refused to take it. Even worse than being locked up, Gracy believed, was the idea that if she ran off, people would believe she was a murderer. That would kill her soul every bit as much as it would die in a prison cell. She stopped a moment in an aspen grove, putting her hand against a leaf that quaked in the breeze. By the time the aspen turned gold, the trial would be over. If she were found guilty, she’d never see the colors change, never see the way the fallen leaves formed a carpet as yellow as the sun.

  In a minute, Gracy nudged the horse along. She was in no hurry. She had a day to spend among the pines and the sage, but there was work to do. She rode to the edge of a meadow set among the high mountains and looked across it at a log cabin so low to the ground that she might have missed it if she hadn’t known where it was. Smoke came from the chimney, and washing was spread over the bushes. Still, the camp was desolate, set almost at timberline, with only stunted trees around it, and Gracy wondered what those two—those three now—would do when the snows came. It wasn’t much of a living up that high, Gracy thought, looking up at the saddle that connected two mountains. The boy worked a prospect, but judging from the sparseness of the cabin, he didn’t take out much gold. Maybe they’d move into town, but Gracy didn’t think so. Mountain-bred like they were, they’d feel closed in among other people, would sicken in the air thick with smelter smoke.

  She called “Hello, the house” as she came through the gulch and cut across the meadow, the horse Buckshot threading his way through the scrub.

  After a time when there was no movement, she hailed the house again, and the boy came out of the door, putting up his hand to shield his eyes, for Gracy was against the sun. Then he called, “Come out, come out. It’s the Sagehen’s come calling.” And in a minute, the girl emerged. They watched Gracy as she rode toward them, then stopped.

  “Alight,” the girl said, and Gracy dismounted, tying Buckshot to the hitching rail.

  “I’ve come to check on the baby,” she said. “Have you a name for him yet?”

  “Isaac,” the girl said. “Isaac’s the son of Abraham, so we didn’t have but one choice.” That was the first time Gracy knew the father’s name was Abraham.

  “And she’s Sarah,” the boy said. “Funniest thing in the world, ain’t it, me being Abraham and her Sarah.”

  “Like in the Bible,” Sarah said, as if Gracy didn’t already know.

  “It makes perfect sense, then, to name the boy for Abraham’s son,” Gracy said. “Does he thrive?”

  “Lively as a jackrabbit,” Abraham said.

  “He smiles,” Sarah said.

  Gracy smiled herself. Who was she to tell the mother that a baby that young only had gas bubbles?

  “We got coffee that ain’t been heated but twice before. Nice and thick it is, made just before my sister taken out for home. She came and stayed with me all this time,” the girl said. “We’d be honored if you’d have a cup.”

  And because Gracy knew it would be rude to refuse, she said, “I’d like that, if it wouldn’t rob you.”

  The boy opened the door, which was attached to the frame with leather hinges, and they went inside that dark place.

  “I take him outside when the sun’s not hot on him. I don’t want him to burn,” Sarah said. “Abe’s going to make a window, and next year, we’ll have real glass in it.”

  Gracy went to the rough cradle and lifted out the boy, while the parents watched with pride—and a little apprehension, for the Sagehen might say that something was wrong. But nothing appeared to be wrong, and Gracy rocked the baby back and forth in her arms, taking in his sweet smell, which brought to mind the Halleck baby and, long before him, Emma and Jeff. They had smelled as sweet. She removed the knitted blanket and examined the baby, wondering as she did whether Little Dickie Erickson would take a day to ride into the mountains to examine an infant he’d delivered. It would be his loss if he wouldn’t, for examining a baby you’d birthed, examining him when he was only weeks old and seeing him healthy and happy in the love of his parents, was one of the greatest joys Gracy knew.

  Sarah held out her arms for her baby, and Gracy gave him up reluctantly. She understood how the new mother’s arms ached to hold her son. When Jeff was little, Gracy had held him for hours at a time, studying the bright eyes and ears that stuck out like his father’s, not bearing to give him up, even to Daniel. She had waited so long for someone to replace Emma. She thought Jeff would die if he left her sight.

  “He thrives indeed,” Gracy said, and the young couple relaxed.

  “I got a plenty of milk,” Sarah said. “I make sure to keep my hands out of cold water, but it’s hard, what with me having to haul the water from the creek.”

  Gracy smiled but didn’t reply. What did it matter if the girl believed her milk would dry up if she put her hands into cold water? It didn’t hurt, and maybe it kept the girl’s hands from being chapped.

  Abraham went to the fireplace and removed the coffeepot, pouring thick coffee into three cups. It was the last of the pot, and Gracy wished she had brought along a sack of coffee beans for the couple. They went outside and sat on stumps, Sarah shielding the baby from the sun, and drank their coffee from tin cups that were battered from use.

  “As good as I ever tasted,” Gracy said.

  “Better when it sits a day or two,” Abraham remarked.

  When she had drunk all of the black brew—there had been more in her cup than the other two, she noticed—Gracy rose and went to the horse and took down the burlap bag. “I brought you a little something for Isaac,” she said, taking out the quilt. “It’s not but a string quilt, but it will keep him warm and would please me if you’d use it.” She’d wished she had some of Jeff’s baby clothes, for likely the boy would need them in the winter cold. But she had given them away when they left Nevada.

  Sarah ran her hand over the bright colors and exclaimed at the fabrics, the fine stitching. “Why it’s new material,” she exclaimed. “I never had a quilt but what it was made of wore-out clothes.”

  “I brought your cloths back, too, washed them up. And here’s a little something else.” Gracy reached into the sack for the chokecherry jelly she’d made that summer.

  Abraham took the jar and held it up to the sun, which shone through the glass, lighting the jelly like a stained-glass window. He grinned at his wife and said, “We got chokecherries around here, but I forgot to buy sugar when I was to town, so we don’t have no jam or jelly.”

  Gracy took that to mean the two hadn’t the money for sugar, so she reached into the sack and took out the second jar, the one she’d intended to give to Esther Boyce. The Boyces could afford sugar, could afford it more than Gracy. “Why, lookit here. I believe I put in two jars,” she said.

  The boy and girl exchanged glances, and for a moment, Gracy was afraid she’d gone too far, that they would turn down the gift, thinking it was charity. The poorer mountain people were, the greater their pride. But the girl nodded, and Abraham said, “We thank you.”

  “Thanks to you,” Gracy told them. “I do like jelly-making, and I’ve done so much of it this year that we won’t eat it all up before next summer.”

  The three sat on their stumps without talking, the girl holding her hand over Issac’s face to keep out the sun, Gracy thinking she could stay there all day, but the sun was high, and she did not want the young couple to have to share their dinner with her. Besides, she had another stop to make, one that made her apprehensive. She did not know what she’d find at the Boyce cabin. So she rose at last and said she must be on her way.

  “You’re the second caller we’ve had this week,” Sarah said, as Gracy leaned over to smile at the baby. “The other’s Josie Halleck.”

  “Josie?” Gracy straightened up. “What in the world is she doing up here? It’s a long way from town.”

  “We’re not so far from the Holy Cross. Josie goes there with her father,
and when he’s underground, she walks over here, done it for a year or more. We used to talk, and I liked the company. Now Josie just sits and stares at Isaac. I almost fear she’ll snatch him away.”

  “She’s an odd one, but she’d never hurt Isaac,” Abraham added. “She never says a word, just sits and watches him. I expect one day she’ll have her own young’un.”

  Gracy stared at the boy for a minute, realizing he knew nothing about the murder of the Halleck baby, didn’t know there’d even been a baby. Maybe the couple wouldn’t have been so welcoming if they’d known Gracy was charged with killing the infant. “Women love babies,” she said at last.

  “For a time, Josie didn’t come around, and I thought she’d run off or maybe got married, even young as she is. But she’s back. I like her, but she makes me uneasy,” Sarah said.

  Gracy gave her a questioning look, and Sarah glanced at her husband, who was untying Buckshot. She lowered her voice. “Abe says he seen her at the Nugget, says she brushed up against him once, and it near scared him to death. He said he didn’t know what she was about, but I knowed.”

  She glanced at Gracy, who took her meaning and glanced at Abraham. “That one’s too smitten to look at another woman.”

  “Truly?”

  “You needn’t worry. Besides, I think Josie just wants a friend. She’s a lonely girl.”

  “I saw that myself.”

  As Abraham led Buckshot to Gracy, she peered again at Isaac, lifted her finger and let Isaac grasp it with his tiny hand. Gracy touched the soft skin on the infant’s arm and smiled at Sarah. “He is a gift of God,” she said, wishing she could say the same about the Halleck baby.

  * * *

  The day was a hot one, and the cool of the forest high above the side of the marshy gulch felt good after the heat of the meadow. Gracy, rocking back and forth on her horse, thought that it was God’s day, the air clean, the breeze lazy, the sky free of clouds. It would rain in the afternoon—it always did in the high country—but there would be places for her to wait out a storm. She would find a cabin or a rocky overhang and shelter herself until the sun came out, then ride home through trees shining with wetness. Like the rest of the landscape, the rain was harsh and cold, no gentle drops of water like in Arkansas. It was as if the sky wanted to rid itself of its moisture, and the rain fell thick and cold. Perhaps the rain would not start until going on evening when Gracy was home.

  Thinking of a storm, Gracy pushed her heels into Buckshot to hurry him along, but he was a lazy horse, and after a few quick steps, he slowed to a walk. She heard a rustling in the underbrush and glanced that way, thinking a fox might be there, but it could be a bear, too, and she should be vigilant. If she met with an accident, she might never be found in that remote mountainside. She could die there, her flesh eaten by scavengers, her bones scattered. She’d come across more than one human bone in her wanderings in the high country.

  And then Gracy remembered the accident, the way her buggy had hit the log that had been dragged across the road. If someone were out to harm her, he would have an easy job of it in the timber of the mountain. She turned to study the growth near her, trying to pinpoint the sound, but everything was still. And then there was a flash of red near a honeycombed snowdrift left over from winter. Gracy thought it might be a clump of Indian paintbrush, but it was too late for paintbrush to bloom. Perhaps she should dig her heels into Buckshot, force him to hurry, but she was not one to shirk danger. So she called, “Who’s there?”

  No one answered. There was a stillness, not even the chattering of birds. Then slowly, an arm in a red sleeve reached out, and Josie Halleck rose from behind the underbrush.

  “Josie! You startled me,” Gracy said.

  The girl didn’t reply, just stared at Gracy with eyes so dark they were almost black. She was such a pretty thing, and Gracy could see how men—boys, too—would be attracted to her, would want to protect her.

  Gracy didn’t care to scare the girl, who was jumpy as an antelope, so she didn’t dismount, only sat on the horse and waited. She was used to waiting. Waiting was part of being a midwife.

  The girl didn’t move, didn’t speak, only stood there staring at Gracy, her back as straight as a young aspen, ready to bound away. So Gracy slowly reached into her sack and brought out a round of bread. “I could share my dinner with you,” she said. “I’ve a piece of cheese, too.” She didn’t thrust the bread at the girl, only held it in her hand.

  Josie’s eyes shifted to the bread, and Gracy said, “I wish I had some raspberries. I haven’t seen any bushes up here. Maybe it’s too high for berries. Would you be knowing about that?”

  “It’s too late,” the girl said. She took the bread and sat down on a fallen log, and said, “Would you have some?” Asked it as formally as if they’d been sitting in the Halleck parlor.

  Gracy dismounted and handed the cheese to Josie.

  The two broke off chunks of bread and cheese, eating silently. Finally Gracy said, “I had a jar of jelly, but I gave it to Sarah and Abraham.”

  “The baby,” Josie said.

  “Yes, he’s a pretty baby, isn’t he?”

  Josie turned to Gracy, but her eyes didn’t focus. She seemed to be staring into the distance. “Our baby,” she said.

  Gracy had raised a piece of her bread to her mouth, but she slowly put it down. “What about your baby, Josie?”

  “He’s dead,” Josie said. She stood and walked to a lichened granite outcrop. “Dead. I saw it. I saw the string.” A sorrow as great as Gracy had ever seen came over Josie’s face.

  “You saw the baby being murdered?” Gracy asked. She went to the girl and held out her hand. “Who put the string around his neck?”

  Josie shook her head, as if to shake away a vision. Then she turned to Gracy. Her eyes grew wide, and there was horror in them. “Oh, you!” she said. “You tried to help. But you didn’t.” She turned and rushed back into the woods toward the Holy Cross and disappeared.

  Fourteen

  Gracy waited for several minutes, hoping the girl would return. She called softly, “Josie. I want to talk to you about your baby.” Her whisper did not go much beyond the pine trees in front of her. Each time she heard a noise, she turned, hoping Josie had come back. But the noise was only the breeze in the firs or a squirrel moving through the fallen pine needles. As hard as she looked, Gracy saw no sign of Josie’s red dress.

  She knew the girl was out there somewhere, hiding, her spirit empty, her arms aching to hold her baby. Gracy waited a long time for the girl before giving up. She could not call up Josie any more than she could summon a mountain jay. She would have to wait until the girl approached her again, and perhaps she never would.

  Buckshot had been grazing, and now the old woman mounted the horse and kicked him into a walk, then into a trot. She had a mile to go to the Boyce cabin, and she had dawdled, first to sit in the sun with Sarah and Isaac and then again waiting for Josie. She thought for a moment of going home and visiting the Boyces another day, but there was a woman in Swandyke whose baby was due, one who had made it clear she still wanted the midwife to deliver it. Gracy had taken a chance being away for one day. She wouldn’t risk another. And the Denver lawyer, Ted Coombs, had sent word he would be coming up. If Gracy didn’t see the Boyce boys that afternoon, she might not be able to return for a long time, maybe never if a jury found her guilty.

  The sun was on the down side of the sky, and except for the little bread and cheese that she had shared with Josie, Gracy had eaten nothing since breakfast. The berry bushes along the trail had long since given up their fruit to the birds and wild animals, and the few remaining were dry and juiceless. But what did it matter? That day would not be the first time she had gone hungry. Rarely during a labor did anyone in a house think to offer a bite to eat to the midwife.

  Both families—the young couple and the Boyces—lived in Mayflower Gulch, but a rock slide had split the gulch in half, and Gracy had to climb the mountain to reach the other side
. She prodded the horse up to timberline just below the hump, where the air was thin, the sun hot as a blacksmith’s fire, where she could see as far as tomorrow. The wind sent up snowsmoke in the north-side mountain bowls of snow rills. Gracy looked at the scraggle of wind-whipped trees at timberline, at the damp places that were the streamheads of rivers below. She hurried the horse, thinking that Buddy and the buggy went faster than Buckshot, but they could not have made it through the trees or up to the timberline. She glanced at the sky, mindful of the clouds that had begun to gather over the range. With luck, she would be at the Boyce cabin before the rain came. She hurried the horse along, stopping only to let him drink the snowmelt of an alpine stream, drinking herself because the day was warm. She thought to pluck a bouquet of mountain marigolds from the sponge of the marsh to take to Esther Boyce. Their petals were as white as the patches of snow, their centers gold like mill tailings, but their stems were hollow as drinking straws, and without water, they would wither in minutes. Still, with two babies to care for, Esther likely hadn’t time for flower picking, and most men didn’t think of such things. So Gracy dismounted and broke off some stems of wild daisies.

  She pushed ahead, riding through the gulch again. She had not gone to the Boyce cabin this way before, but she knew trail signs, and at last, she came across the familiar path that led to the Boyce clearing.

  Only then did Gracy remember that her accident in the buggy had taken place on her way home from the birth of the Boyce twins, and it occurred to her that the two men might have had something to do with the log that had been felled across the road. But as soon as the thought came into her mind, she dismissed it. The men had been with her throughout the birth and after, and besides, what reason would they have for hurting her?

  More troubling was Gracy’s concern about what had happened in the trappers’ cabin since the babies were born. Surely Ben realized that he had not fathered the second son. Had he beaten Davy for it, perhaps killed him? Gracy had not seen the men since the day the babies were born, and she had not heard that Davy had taken out, so likely he was still there. But after what was so apparent, how could the two men remain partners? Gracy dreaded the mood that must hang over that home.