Powder River (2 page)

“Mrs. Dixon!” He jumped from the saddle and ran to her, kneeling at her side. “What happened?”

“Billy,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Thank God you're here. Get me inside. The baby is coming.”

The blood drained from the young half-breed's face until he was pale as a white man. “Oh, Mrs.,” he said. “Where is the doctor?”

“Gone to town. He won't be back till tomorrow night. Please, help me inside.”

He put his hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet. When she faltered after the first step, he picked her up as if she weighed no more than a box of groceries, carried her to the door, opening it with one hand, and into the bedroom where he put her gently on the rope bed. Harry, still in his chair and red faced with rage, was so surprised to see Billy carrying his mother he stopped his wailing.

“I'll go to the village for a woman,” Billy Sun said. “I'll be back in two hours, no more.”

Rose shook her head and gripped his hand. “No. I don't have even one hour.” She clenched her teeth; the pains were coming quicker now, and each was stronger than the one before. Things were happening much faster than they had with Harry. “Please, Billy, it's happening now. You must stay and help me.”

Billy saw the truth of her words with wide-eyed horror and muttered something under his breath in his Crow language.

“There's hot water on the stove,” Rose said. “Bring it in here with clean rags from the cupboard. You know where I keep them. Bring scissors also.” The Indian boy swallowed hard and nodded. “Then take Harry from his chair and tie him to a leg of the table, and tie him securely. We won't be able to watch him when it starts.”

Billy looked at Harry, then back at Rose. “Tie him to the table? He'll holler.”

“Don't argue—just do it!” Rose immediately regretted yelling at her savior. “I'm sorry, Billy. Yes, he'll complain but there's nothing for it. You might give him a cup of milk first, and another biscuit.”

Billy nodded and left the room, returning a minute later with rags and a basin of steaming water, which he set on the floor beside Rose's bed. She soaked a rag in the hot water and laid it across her stomach, feeling her muscles relax as the heat soaked in. The child inside her grew less restless, less sharp elbows and knees. “Let's have a bit of rest first, shall we?” Rose whispered.

She heard Billy go outside to take the coil of rope from his saddle, then Harry's wails as Billy Sun bound him to the table leg. “I'm sorry,” the Indian said. “Mother's orders.”

* * *

Soon the contractions were so close together they were almost constant. Rose fought to contain her fear. Billy sat beside her, holding her hand and occasionally wiping her sweaty forehead with a warm cloth.

Harry's cries grew weaker and weaker and finally stopped altogether. Rose was in too much pain to notice, but Billy discovered the boy had merely cried himself to sleep.

Time passed and it seemed Rose was no closer to birthing the child. Billy could see she was tiring; sometimes she appeared not to know where she was, or who was with her. She called out for her husband and for her mother. Once she spoke to a woman named Margaret.

Billy contemplated riding to his village for one of the grandmothers. He was not the right person for this; he should not be here. But he was all Rose had. He would not leave her.

“Mrs.,” he said during one of Rose's moments of clarity, “when the women in my village do this, they do it differently. Maybe you should try another way.”

Rose looked at him with sunken eyes. Her lips were pale and bloodless. “How do your women do it, Billy?” she said. “Tell me.”

Childbirth was a sacred event in Billy's village, secret to the women, but one he had surreptitiously viewed as a young boy. “First she drinks tea made with the powder of a snake's rattles,” he said. “When things start to happen she does this.” He walked to the wall and dropped to his knees, leaning his arms against the chinked logs for support. “At the same time a grandmother stands behind her, pressing so.” He put his hands on his lower back and moved them in a downward motion. “This brings the baby quick.”

Rose doubted she had the strength to get out of bed, but she knew she had to do something. To remain as she was would mean death, not only hers but the baby's. “Help me,” she said, raising her arms.

Billy took the gray wool blanket from Rose's bed and spread it on the floor by the wall. When he came for her she again marveled at the boy's strength, unexpected in one so slight. Bob watched from across the room, silent with his animal way of knowing.

“They start on their hands and knees,” Billy said after he lowered her to the ground. “Can you do that?”

She did as he suggested, letting her belly hang. Instantly, she felt a profound relief. Her aching back muscles released and at last she could fully breathe. She rocked side to side, front and back.

“Now, rise up and put your hands so.” Billy Sun demonstrated and Rose did as instructed. He began to massage her back as he had seen the grandmothers do, starting with the strong muscles beneath her shoulder blades, then moving to her spine, working with his thumbs on each vertebrae, separating one from the other, creating space, then working on the knotted muscles of her lower back, stroking and rubbing until he could feel them loosen.

The child, freed from its muscular prison, finally began to descend. Within a few minutes, a boy, tiny and blue in color, with the umbilicus wrapped around his neck, lay upon the blanket. Billy picked him up, unwound the bloody cord, and gave the babe a sound slap on the back. The baby gasped and released a small mewling cry, no louder than that of a kitten.

“Is he all right?” Rose said, still on her knees, leaning against the wall for support. “Is he breathing?”

“Yes, he is breathing.” Billy wrapped the baby in a fresh blanket. “Here, see for yourself.” He offered the child to Rose, who made no move to take him.

“Something is happening,” she said, and now everything made sense. Another baby was coming. Rose bore down and the child, a girl, emerged. After a moment of stunned silence, she unleashed an indignant howl. She was bigger by several pounds than her brother and a healthy pink in color. Billy Sun wrapped the babies in soft cotton blankets and laid them on the bed, then turned his attention to their mother.

Rose had collapsed, hot blood flowing from her, surging with each beat of her heart and spreading over the blanket and onto the floor. Though only semiconscious, she understood something was wrong, that there had been some kind of rupture, and one look at Billy's face confirmed her fears. One of her body's life-giving rivers had been breached. Maybe Daniel could have saved her, but she thought not. She had come to the end of herself, and sooner than she expected.

Rose was no longer in pain, and for this at least she was grateful. She was not afraid but felt a deep disappointment and a profound sadness for the people, Harry and these two tiny infants, should they survive, whom she would leave behind. She would be missed, she knew that. Daniel should marry again—she wanted him to—but only to a good woman who would be kind to her children. If only she had thought to tell him so . . .

As Billy carried her to the bed she experienced a strange heightening of her senses. She saw each fiber of his red and black plaid shirt, smelled the earthy but pleasant scent of his skin, heard her blood dripping onto the puncheon floor. He put Rose on the bed and placed the swaddled twins beside her, one on each side. Harry, still bound to the table leg like a sailor tied to the mast, was awake now and was calling for her.

Rose, too weak to speak, looked at Billy who understood she wanted to see her firstborn one last time. He hurried to the front room and freed the squalling boy, but by the time they returned, his mother was gone.

Daniel Dixon returned at sundown with two horses tied to the rear of his wagon. All day he'd been looking forward to showing Rose the fine, matched pair, but his excitement evaporated when he saw Nelson Story's buggy tied to the rail. The busy cattleman wouldn't come unannounced unless something was wrong. Dixon waited until Story and his wife came out of the house, holding hands. Dixon could see the news on Story's somber face and in Ellen's red, swollen eyes. Rose was dead. When he climbed down from the bench, Dixon's legs buckled and he fell to his knees in the dirt.

Later, he stood before his wife's body lying on the bed they had shared. Her skin was white, and when he touched her face it was cold. Could this lifeless apparition really be Rose? he thought, his beautiful, laughing Rose? Dixon did not speak to her, and he did not cry. He felt nothing at all, other than a mild, unformed curiosity about the distant sound of infants crying.

Story entered the dark room and stood at Dixon's side. “I'm sorry, Daniel,” he said. “Rose was a fine woman. None better. When Billy came for us, I couldn't hardly believe it. Didn't want to believe it.” He folded his thick arms across his chest. “Yes, it's a hard thing, and I grieve for you, but you got three little children counting on you now. Those twins, they aren't strong, especially the boy. He don't weigh much as a five-pound bag of coffee. The girl's bigger, but they're going to need care. You got to think about that.”

Dixon gave no sign of hearing. He was trying to understand what he had done to bring this curse down on the women who were unfortunate enough to love him. For the second time in his thirty years, he found himself a widower. He had killed his first wife, Laura, and their daughter, Mary, by afflicting them with a disease he brought home from the war. Their deaths could have been avoided—he was a physician, he knew what to do—but he was too selfish and in too much of a hurry to take the proper precautions. Now Rose was gone, and her death, too, he should have prevented.

“I suspected she might be carrying two,” he said, more to himself than to Story. “She was too big, I saw that, and twins most always come early. I shouldn't have left her alone, but I wanted those horses.”

“Don't blame yourself, man,” Story said. “There's no call for—”

Dixon did not let him finish. “Get those horses out of my sight or I'll kill them, I swear it. Take them back to Burgess tonight.”

“I will, Dan, I will.” Story reached out and touched his friend's arm, unnerved by his strangeness and talk of killing. “Just calm down, for God's sake.”

All through the night Dixon sat by the bed, holding Rose's hand, showing no interest in the twins or even Harry. For two days he remained at her side, not eating and not sleeping. At the funeral he was stone faced and dry eyed. Ellen Story stayed on at the ranch for the next week to care for the children and keep house, but even her kind ministrations and attempts to reach him failed. Dixon sank deeper into his solitary darkness.

“I'm not sure he even knows I'm here,” Ellen told her husband and Billy Sun. The three stood beside Rose's enemy stove, speaking in lowered voices. “He never says a word. And those poor, poor babies, why, the boy especially is just barely hanging on. The doctor can't even care for himself, let alone those children. What are we going to do about this, Nelson?” To her sorrow, Ellen Story had no children of her own at home, having endured the death of an infant daughter the previous winter. “I can't stay here forever.”

“Hell if I know.” Story pulled on his beard. “He won't talk to me, either. What do you think, Billy? How do the Crow handle such matters?”

Billy said, “My uncle's wife bore a dead child four days ago. Her breasts are full with no child to take from them. I know her well, and she would be pleased to mother these children. She is a good woman.”

Story and his wife exchanged glances. The idea of a white child nursing at the breast of an Indian woman was troubling, but what choice did they have?

“The girl might make it on the cow's milk I've been giving them,” Ellen said, “but the boy is failing. Nelson, we must try this.”

Story continued to pull on his chin whiskers. “Maybe so, but I won't send those babies off to the Crow village. No disrespect to you or your people, Billy, but your uncle's wife must come here. Ellen and I will take Harry home with us, and the dog, too. Old Bob's been looking peaky since Rose passed over.”

Billy put on his coat and black felt hat. “I'll bring her this evening.”

* * *

And so the Crow woman Biiwihitche came to live in the Dixon home. The stillbirth of her own child pained her deeply, beyond what was deemed normal by her kinsmen, and Billy Sun's uncle had grown impatient with her. He was pleased when his nephew appeared with his offer, which Biiwihitche was quick to accept.

When Billy and Biiwihitche returned to the ranch, Story's wagon was gone. Inside the silent house, Dixon sat at the table, his head in his hands. He was unshaven, and his unwashed hair hung into his eyes. Alarmed by the quiet, Billy went to Harry's crib, where he had left the twins some hours before, and found them awake, looking up at him. Billy thought they were like Indian babies, who learned early on that silence often meant survival. The girl, he noticed, had covered her brother's tiny hand with her own.

Billy looked around the room. Ellen had removed the blood-soaked mattress from the rope bed and replaced it with a fresh one. She had also sanded the stained floor clean, or clean as it would ever be. The house seemed profoundly empty. Billy had always understood that Rose was the heart and soul of this family; he felt her vitality and had been more than a little in love with her. He grieved for himself but even more for these lost white people whose center part was now gone.

“What are their names?” Biiwihitche stood behind him. He had not heard her enter the room. Though a solid, stocky woman, she moved on cat's paws.

“They do not have names,” he said. They spoke in the Crow language.

“Then I will call them Curtain Boy and Spring Girl.” These twins from Crow folklore were ripped from their mother's womb by an evil relative and grew to have magical powers. Without another word, Biiwihitche took them up, one baby in each arm, and carried them across the room to sit on the floor by the window, facing the wall. In less than a minute, Billy heard the wet, snorty sounds of babies feeding.

Maybe it was this that finally stirred Dixon from his torpor. He rose from his chair and walked toward the bedroom, stopping in the doorway. Only when he saw him standing did Billy realize how reduced the doctor was. His eyes were like two burned holes in a blanket, and there were shadows below his cheekbones.

“Who is that?” he said, gesturing toward the Indian woman on the floor. These were the first words he had spoken in days, and his voice was hoarse.

“She is from my village. Her name is Biiwihitche, which in our language means Woman who Swims Good. We call her Biwi. She has come to care for your children.”

Two spots of color appeared on Dixon's ashen cheeks. Without disturbing the babies, Biwi turned to look at him. There was no mistaking the anger and disgust on Dixon's face and Billy, alarmed, placed himself between them. The doctor was not himself.

“Biwi's baby was born dead,” he said, “and your children are in need. They are very small, especially the boy. Even with her help, they may not live.”

Dixon stepped forward until he and Billy were inches apart. Dixon was a head taller and, even in his emaciated condition, fifty pounds heavier, but the Indian boy did not flinch. Whatever came, he would do anything he had to do to protect Biwi.

The sounds of feeding had slowly subsided. Dixon looked over Billy's shoulder to see Biwi raise the girl to her shoulder to coax forth a burp. After doing the same to the boy, she carried the drowsing babies to Harry's crib and placed them on their backs, side by side, covered by the same blanket.

“Do Nelson and Ellen Story know of this?” Dixon said.

Billy nodded. “Yes.”

Dixon lowered his head and covered his eyes with his hands. After a few moments of silence he said, “She can sleep in here with the babies. I'll stay in the barn.” He took a blanket from the cedar chest and left the cabin, closing the door firmly behind him.