“You will take William with you…?”
“It’s the best way. You can’t look after him, Magpie! I can do it. I’ll take the buggy and that way the doctor will see him this evening. Tonight, Magpie! He could have medicines tonight! Please. This is the best way.” Now that she had decided, she was desperate to start. She thought of White Cloud-her denuded, too-still form. “It might be too late, otherwise,” she added. Magpie’s eyes widened with fear, and she blinked tears away.
“Please, take care of him. Please come back quickly,” the girl implored.
“I will! I’ll send the doctor to you at once. It will be fine, Magpie-truly it will,” Caroline said, the speeding of her heart making her voice tremble. She took Magpie’s hand and squeezed it hard.
She loaded her vanity case, the carrycot and a bag of William’s things into the buggy and drove it as quickly as she dared, steering the horse between thickets of brush as she had watched Hutch and Corin do. The North Canadian was low between its banks and cool droplets of water spun up from the wheels as they took the ford, stirring up the sweet, dank, mineral smell of the river bottom. Pausing to rest herself and the horse, Caroline lifted William into her arms. He was still hot and cried fitfully each time he woke, but now he was sleeping, and his face had settled into a calm slump that so reminded Caroline of how Corin’s face had looked when he’d slept in his chair that she caught her breath. Thinking again, even for a second, that this might be Corin’s child stole the air from her lungs. She sat down in the sand with William in her lap, and she studied him, running a finger from his hairline to his toes. Long toes, spaced widely apart, just like Corin’s. His hair was dark, but his skin was lighter than either Magpie’s or Joe’s. His eyes, although brown, had a greenish ring around the iris that lightened them. In the furrow of the tiny brow, and the pout of his lips above a tucked-in chin, Caroline thought she saw traces of her husband. She cradled the child to her chest and she wept. She wept for Corin’s betrayal, and for the loss of him, and for the perfect, agonizing feeling of holding his baby to her.
The doctor took one look at Caroline’s frantic face and the child in her arms and ushered her inside. He took William and examined him closely, quizzing Caroline about the symptoms the adults at the ranch were showing and how long the illness had been rife. He listened to the baby’s heart and breathing, and felt the heat glowing in the soft skin.
“I think he will be well. His fever is not too high as yet, and his heart is strong, so please, try not to worry too much. Are you staying in town tonight? Good. Keep him cool. The main thing is to bring his fever down as soon as possible. Cold wet cloths, changed regularly. Give him three drops of this on his tongue, with a teaspoon of water afterwards, every four hours. It’s an antipyretic-it will help break the fever. And if he will eat or drink, try to let him do so. I believe he will recover quickly. Don’t look so afraid! You brought him to me in time. But I must leave for the ranch, for if it goes unchecked this sickness could prove more serious. You will follow on tomorrow, so I can check the child again?” Caroline nodded. “Good. Rest, for both of you. And cold cloths for your child. Are there any others at the ranch as young as this, or any of great age?” The doctor asked as he ushered her from the room. Your child.
“There are no other children. White Cloud… she is advanced in years, although I cannot say how old she is,” she whispered. “But I think… I think she has died already,” she said, her throat constricting. The doctor shot her an incredulous glance.
“I must leave at once and travel through the night-I can hope to be there by sunrise. A fellow doctor can be found at this address-if William takes a turn for the worse, call upon him.” He handed Caroline a card, nodded briskly, and stalked from the room.
Caroline did not sleep. She fetched a basin of cold water from the hotel kitchens and laid damp cloths gently onto William’s skin, as instructed. She was loath to take her eyes from him, studying each line of his face, each hair on his head. She checked the clock obsessively, giving him his dose when four hours had passed. He woke up from time to time and studied her in return, grasping her finger in a strong grip that reassured her. By morning she was light-headed with fatigue, but William’s color was better, and his skin was cooler. He ate some rice pudding that the landlady had made for him, studying the women with a calm appraisal that made them smile. Caroline wrapped him in the crocheted blanket, laid him in the carrycot, put a pacifier into his chubby hands and gazed at him. He could be hers-the doctor had immediately thought so. He could be the child of a respectable white woman-nothing about his person marked him out as a Ponca. Indeed, he could have been hers, she thought. He should have been hers.
Caroline was reluctant to go back to the ranch. She should have left hours before, with the sunrise, but the thought of starting back made her so tired inside that she averted her eyes from the black buggy, parked outside in the yard, and from the corral where the buggy horse had spent the night, chewing hay and scratching its sweaty head against the fence. The doctor would see to the sick, and when Caroline returned she would have to give William back. She thought of White Cloud’s body, lying untended in the teepee. She thought of Magpie, helpless and sick. She thought of life, stretching on for year after empty year, and all of them without Corin. But when she looked at William she smiled and felt something swelling up inside her. Something that pushed the other thoughts aside and made it bearable to go on. She could not go back. It was a prospect as black and terrifying as the grave Hutch had cut into the grassland to take Corin’s coffin. She could not go back.
Across town, plumes of steam rose from the railway track. Caroline walked in that direction, her case in one hand, the carrycot in the other. The weight of these two items made her unsteady on her feet, but she moved purposefully, her mind now empty of thought, because her thoughts were too dark. The platform was wreathed in steam and the hot metal smell that had accompanied her to Woodward in the first place. But this immense, black locomotive was facing the other way. Northward, to Dodge City, Kansas City and beyond. Back the way she had come, away from the prairie that had torn out her heart.
“Look, William, look at the train!” she exclaimed, holding the baby up for his first sight of such a thing. William eyed it distrustfully, putting out a hand to grasp at a wisp of steam as it scrolled by. Then the guard’s whistle startled them both and the train exhaled a vast, ponderous cough of steam, its wheels easing into motion. A latecomer ran onto the platform, wrenched open a carriage door and leapt aboard, just as the train began to inch slowly along the platform.
“Come along, ma’am! Quickly now, or you’ll miss it!” the man smiled, holding out his hand to her. Caroline hesitated. Then she took the man’s hand.
Chapter 6
Meredith’s laughter was the rarest of things. Even at the summer ball, or at the dinner parties she sometimes hosted-where children were not allowed and we would creep from our beds to eavesdrop-I hardly ever heard it. She would just smile, and sometimes make a single, satisfied sound in the back of her throat when something pleased her. Like most little girls, laughter came as easily to me as breathing. I remember thinking it must be something that got used up as you got older, as if laughter was like a mass of colored ribbons, bundled up inside you, and once it had all spooled out, that was it.