Calder Pride (15 page)

After a time the men began wandering back to the picket line, their noon meal eaten, their coffee drunk, and their cigarettes smoked. Cat lingered, taking advantage of every minute of respite she could. Across the way, her father rose somewhat stiffly from his campstool and headed toward the picket area. Cat noticed the way he favored his right leg, and guessed his hip was bothering him again.

When he drew level with her, he paused, studying her with probing eyes. “Are you going back out?”

She nodded. “In a minute. After I make a nature call.”

“I’ll be heading back to The Homestead around five o’clock. You can ride with me,” he told her, then his gaze sliced to Culley. “We’ll be cutting out your cattle.”

A small movement of his head was Culley’s only acknowledgment. After her father moved out of sight, Culley pushed away from the trailer and murmured to Cat, “I’d better be getting my horse.”

He sloped off, disappearing behind one of the stock trailers where he had left his horse tied. With his departure, Cat summoned the energy and got to her feet, automatically pressing a hand against the nagging pain in her lower back. She carried her plate and coffee cup over to the wreck pan, then went behind the stock trailer, letting its bulk screen her and afford some privacy while she relieved herself.

She had barely taken two steps toward the picket line when the first sharp and twisting pain sliced through her, driving Cat to her knees, stealing both her breath and her voice. She grabbed one of the stock trailer slats and hung on, stunned by the powerful force of the contraction. Her mind kept saying the baby wasn’t due for another week, but her body told her differently.

After an eternity of seconds, the pain subsided, leaving her shaken and gulping in air. With one hand on her belly, Cat pulled herself upright and stood for a minute, fighting through the initial waves of panic to gather her composure, organize her thoughts.

A little laugh slipped from her, partly from fear and partly from joy. She was going to have her baby.

Our baby,
a voice corrected as a face swam in her mind’s eye, gray eyes shining above high, hard cheekbones.

Cat shook away the image, blocking it out as she had done hundreds of times in the last months. “
My
baby. This is
my
son.” Her hand moved protectively over her stomach, asserting possession.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, mentally adjusting to the idea that the baby was coming now, not next week. She felt no compunction to hurry, to sound the alarm, confident she had plenty of time and more concerned that she appear calm and poised when she faced the others, especially the ranch hands.

She thought through the steps she needed to take—send Tucker out to the herd to inform her father, drive back to the house and pick up her bag, phone Dr. Dan—and the second pain stabbed through her, impossibly stronger than the last, drawing an involuntary cry of surprise and agony from her before Cat could bite it off.

This was too soon. There was supposed to be more time between contractions. Even as some rational part of her mind registered those thoughts, she felt the wet gush of her water breaking. Dear God, the baby was coming
now
!

Still caught in the throes of the contraction and struggling to breathe through it, she heard hoofbeats pound out the familiar cadence of a trotting horse. Someone called her name, but she couldn’t respond,
not with this knife blade brutally twisting inside her womb.

She clutched at the side of the trailer, half-doubled over with the pain, teeth clenched, grinding. An uncertain hand touched her.

Through half-closed eyes, Cat saw a pair of worn and dusty boots, then her uncle’s thin and worried face peering at her from beneath his hat brim.

“Cat, what’s wrong? Is it—” He broke off the question, a kind of panic and frozen helplessness in his eyes.

She nodded, the pain beginning to dull now, at last allowing her to focus on something else. “Get Jessy,” she said, panting, aware it was no longer her father she needed; it was a woman. “Quick!”

White-faced, Culley needed no second urging. He bolted from her and sprang into the saddle, sawing at the reins to wheel his horse away from the trailer before sinking in the spurs. The startled gelding leaped into a gallop. Continually jabbed by spurs and lashed by the reins, the horse never slackened its headlong place.

Heads turned as Culley charged the herd, but he took no notice, his eyes frantically searching and locating the distinctive tawny yellow of Jessy’s hair. He rode straight to her, mindless of the cattle scattering before him and the curses of the riders trying to hold them.

“Culley, what the hell are you doing—” Jessy took one look at his white and wild face and her anger vanished. She knew. “It’s Cat.”

His head jerked in a nod, his horse wheeling and turning beneath him. “The baby’s coming. You got to help her.”

Although Jessy didn’t share his degree of alarm, she did recognize that action needed to be taken. Standing in her stirrups, she waved and shouted to her father-in-law, “It’s Cat. She’s started.”

He lifted a hand in acknowledgment. She saw Ty was with him. As one, the two men turned their horses toward the noon camp. Jessy did the same, letting her mount break into a gallop to keep up with O’Rourke.

All four riders converged on the camp about the same time. Culley led them behind the stock trailer where he had left Cat. She was sitting on the ground, half-propped against a tire, her body arching in agony, a fist jammed in her mouth to choke back a scream, her legs spraddled, and her face contorted with pain, sweat plastering loose strands of hair to her face.

Jessy peeled out of the saddle and threw the reins at Culley. “Take the horses and get them out of here.” She hurried to Cat’s side, kneeling down and taking hold of her hand, wincing a little as Cat’s fingers instantly dug into it. “Easy now,” she murmured. “Remember to breathe.”

Cat threw her a grateful look, a glimmer of fear mixing with the pain in her green eyes. Chase saw it as he awkwardly knelt beside her, overriding the protest of his stiffened joints.

“Damn it. Cat, why didn’t you listen to me? I told you a roundup was no place for you.” Irritation and concern warred as he watched the look of pain slowly diminish and her teeth loosen their grip on the fist in her mouth, her muscles relaxing.

“That was a dandy.” Cat blew out a breath and gave him a weak smile.

Chase was unimpressed by her show of bravery. “Come on. Let’s get you in the truck and to the hospital. Ty, give me a hand.” He tunneled an arm under her to help her to her feet.

“It’s no use.” Cat shook her head, a smile still edging the corners of her mouth. “Your grandson isn’t going to wait for a hospital.”

“Are you sure?” Jessy studied her closely.

“Oh, I am very sure,” Cat said with a decisive nod of her chin. “The contractions are coming much too fast. This little guy is in a big hurry.” She stroked a hand over her stomach.

“Then we’ll get you to the house,” Chase replied, not to be put off.

“We won’t make it, Dad. And I’m not going to have my son born in the cab of a pickup somewhere between here and there.” On that, Cat was adamant.

“I’ll be damned if he’s going to be born out here,” he snapped.

A breathless little laugh bubbled from her, a mix of anxiety and humor. “Don’t you see, Dad? This is good. This is perfect—your grandson born out here, underneath a Calder sky.”

“She’s out of her head,” he muttered to Jessy. “The baby isn’t going to come that fast.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when another contraction ripped through her, arching her like a bow and making a believer out of Chase.

Grabbing onto the side of the trailer, Chase hauled himself upright and started barking orders. “O’Rourke, tell Tucker to put water on to boil, and we’ll need whatever he has in the way of towels or cloths. And tell him they damned well better be clean. While you’re at it, grab some blankets and bedrolls. Ty, get on the radio and call Amy Trumbo. Tell her to get here as fast as she can. We may need her. If not, the baby will. Then come over to the cookshack and give me a hand with the table Tucker uses for the washbasins. We’ll need to rig up some sort of shade, too.”

After he left and the pain subsided, Cat sagged back against the tire again, the contractions sapping her strength, each time leaving her feeling a little more weak, a little more exhausted. Compassion was in Jessy’s eyes as she smoothed away the damp strands of hair from Cat’s face.

“Scared?” she asked.

“A little.” Cat didn’t mind admitting that to Jessy.

“So am I,” Jessy replied. “I have handled the birthing of hundreds of calves in my time, but this will be my first baby.”

Cat smiled at that, as she was meant to do, and worked to regulate her breathing. “Mine, too.”

“I think it’s time we got some of these clothes off and saw how you’re doing. What d’you say we start with the boots?”

As she started to move away, Cat clutched at her arm. “First you have to get me a rope or a piggin’ string, something I can bite on to keep from screaming.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Cat.” Jessy frowned at the request, her voice sharp with disapproval. “You go right ahead and do all the screaming, yelling, and cussing you want.”

“No!” Temper blazed in her eyes, along with a wildness, and her grip tightened on Jessy’s arm. “I am not going to scream with all these men to hear me. I am not!”

“That’s crazy,” Jessy declared in exasperation. “Over half of all the men here are married with children running around. They’ve heard their wives in labor.”

“But I’m not them,” Cat replied forcefully. “If you aren’t going to find me something, I’ll do it myself.”

When she started to clamber to her feet, Jessy pushed her back against the tire and pulled a large bandanna from her jacket pocket.

“Here, tie some knots in this and use it. At least it’s clean, which is more than can be said for a rope or a piggin’ string.”

Twenty minutes later, a pickup roared toward the noon camp, bouncing along the tracks of pressed-
down grass made earlier by the trucks hauling the stock trailers to the site. The ranch nurse, Amy Trumbo, was behind the wheel. She would later explain that four-year-old Buddy Martin had come down with the measles. She had been on her way to the north camp to check on him when the call came over the radio about Cat.

By the time Amy arrived, they had rigged up a makeshift tent, using blankets for side screens and stretching a piece of canvas over it for a roof, anchoring one side to the stock trailer and the other to a pair of tent poles. Jessy had washed the table down with a bottle of alcohol from Tucker’s first-aid kit, and Cat had forsaken her plaid shirt and maternity denims in favor of one of Tucker’s clean white shirts, size extra-large, which hung almost to her knees. An extra set of clean dishcloths from the cookshack covered the bedroll that had been called into use as a mattress, and two more bedrolls served as propping pillows. It was a considerably more sterile environment than Amy had expected under the circumstances.

She shooed Ty out, telling him, “Your turn will come when Jessy has hers. If we need you, we’ll holler.” She glanced at Chase and saw that he wasn’t about to leave his daughter’s side. She said nothing and set about examining Cat.

When she finished, she raised an eyebrow. “I was going to suggest taking you to the Goodmans’ house, but you’re right. I don’t think you would make it. It won’t be long now.”

“I hope not,” Cat murmured, already drenched with sweat.

Amy laughed. “Consider yourself lucky, girl. I was fourteen hours in labor with my first one, and seventeen with my second—and last—baby.”

At the moment, that was an ordeal Cat didn’t want to even think about. Her own was enough as another
contraction bore down on her, spiraling through her insides with white-hot savagery. Her teeth sank into the cloth knots. Wadded and saliva-wet material clogged her mouth, smothering the groaning cry the pain ripped from her throat. She grabbed hold of her father’s hand and squeezed with all her might.

Away from the birthing site, Culley hovered in the shadowed edges next to the cookshack, his gaze glued to the trailer area while he chewed on the already raw cuticle of a thumbnail. The second shift of riders were in camp, finishing up their noon meal in a rare silence, their glances straying constantly to the trailer.

When Ty came around from behind the trailer and paused to light a cigarette, Art Trumbo grinned knowingly. “Amy chased you out, didn’t she? She was quick enough to tell me how useless I was in the delivery room when our kids were born,” he remarked, then asked with studied casualness. “How’s your sister doin’?”

“Fine.” Ty took another quick puff on his cigarette and struck out toward the cookshack. “Did you boys leave any coffee in the pot?”

“There should be a cup or two,” Art told him, then tossed another knowing grin to the others. “Now the three p’s begin.”

“The three p’s?” one of the bachelors questioned.

“Yeah, puffin’, pacin’, and pourin’,” Art explained. “When you aren’t pacing back and forth puffing on a cigarette, you’re pouring yourself another cup of coffee.”

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.