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.”