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There were a few smiles and, here and there, a nod of agreement, then a tense silence again settled over the camp, all ears tuned to the muffled sounds coming from behind the trailer. A rider reined in his horse close to camp, asked the status, and received a shrug for an answer. He carried it back to the herd.
“I thought there was supposed to be a lot of yellin’.” Nineteen-year-old Perry Summers glanced uncertainly at the older married riders.
“Usually is.” Art Trumbo nodded.
“I hope to tell you.” Tiny Yates rose to his feet, shaking the dregs from his coffee cup. “When Buddy was born, Pammie yelled and screamed and cussed me eight ways to Sunday the whole time. Why, she called me names I never knew she knew. Somewhere she come up with a whole new vocabulary when little Ellen was born. And her screams gained a couple octaves.”
“Sure is quiet,” Perry murmured in a worried way.
Ty echoed that sentiment. The difference was he knew the effort his sister was making to throttle any outcries. He had seen her face twisted white with agony, seen the knotted bandanna her teeth ground against and the way her head thrashed from side to side. He had seen it, and he cursed her for it. But that was Cat—always dramatic. She had changed in a lot of ways these last few months, but not in that.
Irritated and more worried about his sister than he cared to admit, Ty took a long drag on his cigarette, eyes squinting against the smoke. Soundlessly O’Rourke appeared beside him, a forefinger crossing over the chewed and bloody base of his thumb.
“Cat ain’t gonna die, is she?” Anxiety riddled his voice.
“Of course not,” Ty snapped with impatience, the question grating nerves that were already raw.
But his answer didn’t ease any of Culley’s fears. “They’d tell us if anything was going wrong, wouldn’t they? They’d let us know?”
Ty wasn’t sure about that, and it showed in his eyes.
Suddenly there was a new tenor to the murmurs coming from behind the trailer, a note of urgency entering them. Everyone in camp caught it and went instantly still, gripped by a tension they couldn’t have explained.
The full-blown wail of a baby broke it, drawing smiles that were quickly hidden by hurriedly adopted expressions of nonchalance. Art Trumbo tugged on his gloves and proclaimed to no one in particular, “My Amy knows about as much as any doctor does.”
“When do you figure Grandpa Calder’s gonna be passing out the cigars?” Tiny Yates wanted to know.
None of their talk was of any interest to Culley. He moved away, taking a circuitous route around the motorized chuckwagon toward the makeshift tent behind the stock trailer. The bawling infant may have reassured the others, but he had only one concern, and that was Cat.
Moments earlier, Cat had been certain she hadn’t an ounce of strength left in her body. But her baby’s strident cries brought a fresh surge of energy to her. She pushed onto her elbows, eager to see her child, impatient to hold this wondrous squalling
miracle that was her son.
“Would you just look at how long his arms and legs are,” Cat marveled softly as the baby waved and kicked and stretched, fending off Amy’s efforts to bundle his newly washed body in a towel.
“He’s gangly as a colt,” Jessy agreed and readjusted the bedrolls behind Cat, propping her in a half-sitting position.
With both arms, Cat took the swaddled infant from Amy and gathered him to her. He stopped crying at once and looked directly at her with round and darkly blue eyes. She gazed at the reddened face, the wet mop of glistening black hair.
“You are so beautiful,” Cat whispered, completely losing her heart to him.
A shaft of sunlight fell across the baby’s face, the brightness startling both of them. Cat quickly shielded his eyes from the glare of it and looked up. Culley stared at her, one hand still holding aside the draped blanket. She saw the deepening look of worry in his eyes, and guessed that she looked a sight, with her hair all wild and disheveled, still damp with sweat. But she was beyond caring about her appearance; her cup was too full with the joy she felt over her beautiful new son.
“Uncle Culley, come see my baby,” Cat invited.
He hesitated, then moved closer, his gaze never ceasing its study of her. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yes,” she replied with unmistakable fervor, glancing up at him, green eyes shining.
Culley looked at the delicate pallor of her skin, the smile on her lips, and the radiance of her face. When he had first seen her, so ghostly pale with her hair all snarled in clumps, he had thought she was at death’s door. Now she reminded him of the picture of the Madonna in his mother’s Bible.
“Isn’t he beautiful, Uncle Culley?” She gazed adoringly at the bundle in her arms.
In his thinking, babies were something women were to fuss over, not men. But he peered dutifully at the infant. “Kinda red, isn’t he?”
She laughed softly. “All babies are when they’re first born.”
“Oh.” He searched for something good to say. “He don’t look like a Calder.”
