The Rancher's Wife

“No!” Celia snapped. “You know she lives in Old Zeb’s mud hut. I don’t want white trash around me. Certainly not at a time like this. I want my mother and my aunts!”

“Elizabeth struck me as a good woman. She certainly isn’t white trash. And she’s a lot nearer than your mother and aunts.”

“Go away, Brice! Get out of my sight! I wish you were dead!” She screamed at him so hysterically a bead of spittle ran down her chin. She didn’t notice.

Brice left without a word.

Cal, his closest friend, had come in from the bunk house and was waiting downstairs in the back parlor. He was called Wandering Cal because of a cast in his right eye. Brice didn’t know his last name or where he came from, but they had been friends for years and Cal was his right-hand man on the ranch.

“She doing all right?” Cal asked. He was a man of few words.

“I don’t know. It’s too damned early for the baby to come. It’s too early!” He paced to the hearth, then to the window. “What if I lose them, Cal?”

“Probably won’t.” Cal sat by the fire and picked up a piece of kindling to whittle. He looked entirely out of place in Celia’s back parlor, even if it wasn’t as grand as the formal front one. Cal was more suited for the barn.

“I should have sent her back home when I saw she didn’t like it here. I kept thinking she would change her mind after a while. I was wrong.”

“Wives belong with their husbands.” Cal didn’t like Celia and never had. He had only come into the house to keep Brice company. Celia never allowed him, or any of the other hired hands, nearer than the back porch.

An agonized scream made Brice cross to the door, hesitate and go back to the window.

“Go to the barn,” Cal suggested. “I’ll come tell you when it’s over.”

“No, I have to stay here. If Celia can live through it, I can stand to listen.” But the next scream drained the blood from his face.

Cal looked up at the ceiling and paused in his whittling until the sound died away.

Brice started pacing again. He had to keep moving, even if he wasn’t going anywhere. Every sound from Celia’s bedroom tore at him.

The terrible wailing continued. Hours later Celia’s voice had grown hoarse. Brice went up the stairs and back into her room. She no longer looked like herself. Her skin was pasty-gray and her blond hair hung in damp strings about her face. Circles like dark bruises lay under her glassy eyes.

Consuela looked at him in fright. “The baby is not coming. It still does not show. I think it is turned sideways.”

There was no need for her to explain to Brice what this meant. He had seen enough calvings to know it couldn’t be born this way. “Can you turn it?”

Consuela shook her head. “Senora Graham will not let me try.”

Brice went closer to the bed. “We have to turn the baby, Celia.”

“No! I don’t want either of you to touch me!”

He sat beside her on the bed and held her arms gently but firmly. “You don’t have a choice in this. You’re getting too weak. Consuela, can you do it?”

“Sí,” she said reluctantly. She was clearly afraid of her mistress, but she prepared to turn the baby nonetheless.

Celia screamed as if she were dying, but Brice held her, speaking to her gently in spite of the names she was calling him.

Minutes later, Consuela went to the washbasin and washed her hands. Brice released Celia, who struck him repeatedly until he left the bed. “Well? Did it turn?”

Silently she shook her head.

“I’ll try.” He went back to Celia and tried to steel himself to her string of curses. A few minutes later he found a tiny foot, then another one. “I have him!” he said triumphantly. “Push, Celia!”

Soon the baby lay screaming on the bed, waving her fists in protest at being born. “It’s a girl, Celia!” he called out. “She’s so tiny!”

He finished tying off the cord and held her up so Celia could see her. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

“Ugly,” Celia croaked out. “She’s ugly!”

“No,” he said with a laugh as he went to sponge her clean at the washbasin. “She’s going to be a rare beauty someday! Celia?” The room was suddenly too quiet.

Consuela stopped cleaning Celia and stared at her face. Then she looked at Brice, her eyes filled with fear and dread.

“Celia?” he repeated. He wrapped the baby in the towel and went to his wife.

Celia’s eyes were fixed and growing dull. Her pale lips moved. Brice leaned closer to hear what she was saying.

“I hate you. And I hate your baby.” The last word was so broken as to be almost incoherent. A sigh of breath escaped from her lips and she didn’t draw another one.

“Celia!” Brice shouted. “Celia!”

Consuela eased away from the bed. “Señora Graham is dead. I see her spirit leaving!” The woman’s eyes were dilated with fear.

Brice stared at Celia’s body in disbelief. She couldn’t be dead! Sometimes women were in labor for days and lived. Celia bad only labored for a few hours. She was young!

Nevertheless, she was dead.

The funeral was simple. Cal and some of the other men built a coffin, and Brice, with Consuela’s help, laid Celia in it.

Numbly Brice decided to bury her a little distance from the house. He and Cal dug the grave.

Because no one was available to serve as the baby’s wet nurse, Consuela made a baby bottle from an empty whiskey bottle and diluted cow’s milk to a strength the baby could digest.

Brice went through the necessary motions of laying Celia to rest and caring for the baby, but part of his mind refused to accept the truth. They had no longer loved each other and Celia’s last words had been of her hatred for him, but he still felt a deep loss. Was part of it guilt? He had indirectly put her in mortal danger. She had never been robust and the pregnancy had been hard on her. And her heart had given out because it couldn’t stand up to the stress of hard labor. Still, she shouldn’t be dead. She was young. Brice spent the next few days in a fog.

When he woke up one morning to discover Consuela and her husband had left in the night, the strength of determination began to build in him. He had lost Celia. but he was not going to lose the baby as well!

From that moment on, Brice began to heal.

By now Elizabeth was becoming accustomed to the idea that Robert wasn’t coming home. At times this still terrified her because she had the rest of the winter to contend with alone. At others she was almost glad. With him gone there was no one to argue with or tell her she was wrong every time she opened her mouth. No one to chip at rocks while she did all the chores, no one to mess up the hut once she had everything in order.

She was beginning to realize how little Robert had done and was becoming resentful that she had allowed him to get away with it. If he came back, she vowed, it would be different. He would pull his own weight or leave.

Such thoughts sobered her. She had no way of enforcing them and, even if she did, why would she want this hovel to herself? If Robert wasn’t coming back, she would be smarter to go back to Hannibal, swallow her pride and return to her father’s house, begging his forgiveness. That alone was thought enough to make her know she would never return. There were worse situations than the one she was now in.

In the long days of solitude she taught herself to hunt. At first she missed everything she aimed at and got a bruised shoulder for her efforts. But gradually she started hitting the game more often than she missed and finally became a fairly good shot. The lack of money to buy more ammunition gave her incentive. She wasn’t sure what she would do once the bullets were gone. When the ground was clear of snow, she gathered hay and grass for the mule.

Elizabeth was good at making provisions last. She had learned it by necessity over the past seven years. She ate only what she really needed, and when she killed game, she didn’t waste any parts that could be boiled, dried or fried. She was even learning to tan hides so she could replace the soles of her shoes when they wore out. Little by little she had come to think of Robert as gone forever, and struggled to fill the void he left.