Three steps led down into the dugout, and they dropped into a soft, warm darkness lit by a kerosene lamp that battled against the gloom outside and in. There was a strong smell, made up of smoke from the stove, animal hides, and herbs that Caroline could not identify. The blood thumped at her temples as she felt all eyes turn to her-Magpie’s, White Cloud’s, and those of Joe’s sister, Annie. Joe himself stayed outside and disappeared into the rain. Magpie’s face was slick with sweat, her eyes wide and fearful. The other women’s expressions were cautious; not unfriendly, but reserved.
“Joe… said I should come. He said you had… had… asked for me to come?” Caroline stammered. Magpie nodded and smiled slightly before her body convulsed, and she ground her teeth together, an expression that made her look savage. “What should I do? I don’t know what I should do!” Caroline quailed. White Cloud said something rapid in the Ponca language and handed Caroline a small wooden pail, filled with rainwater, and a clean cloth. The old woman motioned dipping the cloth into the water, and then pressed her hand against her forehead, gesturing to Magpie. Caroline nodded and knelt beside the laboring girl, wiping her drenched face with the cool water, afraid, as she performed this intimate duty, that the girl would somehow see into her troubled heart.
In the semidark, White Cloud began to sing a soft monotonous song that lulled them all; lulled Caroline so that she had no idea how much time was passing, whether hours or minutes or days. The words were blurred and dry, and the song sounded to Caroline’s ears like the long, drawn-out rush of the warm prairie wind, lonely and reverent. As regularly as waves on the shore, Magpie heaved against the pain inside her, screwing up her eyes and bearing her teeth. She looked as feral as a cat, but she did not cry out. On and on these waves came, as the darkness deepened outside; and on and on White Cloud sang, mixing up a pungent drink that she gave to Magpie gradually, a spoonful at a time. Then, with a low sound in her throat like a strangled growl, Magpie’s baby arrived into Annie’s waiting hands, and White Cloud broke off her song with a sharp cry of joy, her wizened face breaking into a wide grin, and then into laughter. Caroline smiled with relief, but as Annie passed the wriggling, whimpering baby boy to its mother, she felt a splinter pierce her heart and lodge there. Tears sprang to her eyes and she looked away to hide them, seeing, in a dark corner of the dugout, a pair of spurs on leather thongs. A pair Corin had been looking for and had asked if she had seen about the place. She stared at them, and the splinter wormed its way ever deeper.
Two months later, the baby was chubby and delightful. He was named, in the Ponca tongue, first born son; but called by his parents and so everybody else, William. He rode around the ranch in a sling on Magpie’s back, gazing out at the world with an expression of mild astonishment in his round eyes. And he slept there in a crumpled little heap, dribbling down his chin, not stirring as Magpie returned to work in the main house, her body not at all fatigued by the child. The cold, like the heat, seemed to have little effect on the girl’s spirits. She appeared at the house swathed in her thick, brightly patterned blanket, her cheeks burnished dark red by the wind and her eyes as bright as jet beads.
And although it hurt her to hold William, Caroline often asked to do so. Like exploring a wound, or pressing a bruise. She cradled him in the crook of her arm and rocked him gently. He was a good-natured baby and did not cry for strangers. He had an array of fledgling facial expressions that melted her heart and eased the splinter from it. A tiny frown of puzzlement at the noises she made; the sagging of his mouth and eyes as sleep took hold; wide-eyed wonder when she showed him her peacock-feather fan. But the pain of handing him back to his proud mother was a little stronger each time, the hurt a little worse; and the only thing harder than this was watching Corin play with the baby, when he came in from working. His brown hands looked impossibly large around the tiny child’s body, and he grinned foolishly when he managed, by tickling and mugging, to make William smile. Each time he succeeded in this endeavour he glanced at his wife, to share it with her, but Caroline found it hard to find the smile she knew he wanted. Seeing him love this child, this child that was not hers, was almost more than she could bear.
There was to be no christening for William, which surprised Caroline, even though it made sense. She fretted briefly about the danger to the child’s soul, but Magpie only laughed when she tentatively suggested that it wouldn’t hurt him to go through the ceremony, just in case.
“Our ancestors are watching him, Mrs. Massey. You don’t have to worry,” she smiled.
Awkwardly, Caroline dropped the subject. But she suggested that they hold a welcoming lunch for him instead, and Magpie agreed to this. Caroline sent out some invitations, but only Angie Fosset was willing to celebrate the birth of an Indian baby, and she turned up on her tall horse with the saddlebags full of cast-off baby smocks and napkins.
“I’m stopping at three, so I’ve no need of these any more,” she told Magpie. Caroline had sent Hutch into Woodward the week before to collect the gifts she had ordered for William from Corin and herself. Magpie accepted each present with increasing embarrassment, and the atmosphere over the party grew awkward.
“Mrs. Massey… this is too much,” Magpie told her, her eyes troubled. Annie and White Cloud exchanged a look that Caroline could not read.
“Oh, my goodness, what lovely things!” Angie exclaimed.
“Well,” Caroline smiled, feeling suddenly exposed. “A lovely little boy should have lovely things,” she said, but felt that they could all see into her heart-that these were gifts she had wanted to give her own baby, not Magpie’s. She turned to William in his carrier to hide her dismay, stroking one finger down his crumpled, sleeping face. But this was worse. Her cheeks flared red and her breath caught in her chest. “Who’d like some cake?” she asked tightly; getting up and fleeing into the kitchen.
Caroline’s second winter on the prairie was harder than the first. The four walls of the house became her gaol, trapping her with Magpie and William-two constant reminders of how she failed, day after day. For if Magpie’s return to work, her cheery demeanor and the ease with which she coped proved anything to Caroline, it was that she would never belong on the prairie like the Ponca girl did. She would never get on as well, never thrive, never settle, never put down roots here, but remain blown about the surface like tumble weed. She found it harder and harder to talk to Magpie, to sing and tell stories as they’d used to. The words stuck in her throat and she feared that even genuine expressions of admiration for Magpie, for William, would come out tainted with the grief she felt, and would sound insincere.
When Hutch came to the house for coffee he would push her gently to speak her mind, to come out riding again, to do anything but stay cooped up inside the house. Caroline assured him, absently, that she was fine, and all was well; and the foreman had no choice but to drift away again, a thoughtful look in his eye. When the confinement got unbearable, and Caroline did gather her courage and venture outside, the wind hit her skin like knives, and the sky rained terror down upon her and, once chilled, it took hours for her to get warm again, however close to the stove she huddled. As she broke the ice on the water cistern one morning and felt the splashes on her hands burning coldly, she remembered the warm water of the pool where they had swum on their honeymoon; and she gazed down into the dark depths of the tank, rooted to the spot by sadness.