Читать книгу Abbie's Child - Linda Castle - Страница 8

San Juan Mountains, Colorado

1882

Abigail clung to the sheer side of the mountain trail while another pain knifed through her taut belly. Carl was not even cold in his grave before the first agonizing contraction had gripped her. She sucked in gulps of pine-scented cold air and squeezed her eyes shut against the biting pain. When it began to ebb and flow away as the last half dozen before it, she pulled the threadbare plaid woolen shawl snug around her rounded belly and pushed forward. She rubbed her palms over her chilled arms, but felt no warmth from the action.

Night would begin to descend from the pristine snow-covered peaks to settle around her soon. She glanced at her narrow, stone-littered back trail and wondered if she had made a fatal mistake in trying to reach the closest mining camp of Guston. Carl’s and her claim had been more isolated than most—better he had said, in case they had a big strike. Now she bit her lip and wondered if she would reach the boomtown before their child was born. If the baby came on the mountain trail at night she knew full well how slim their chances of survival were. She had begged him to take her into Silverton before her pregnancy came to term, but he had laughed and assured her he was capable of birthing their child. So she was now alone, at the end of her pregnancy, and Carl would never see his baby born.

Fear spurred her forward. She doggedly placed one foot in front of the other and tried to ignore the growing terror in the mauve shadows darkening the treacherous path. She was determined that she and her baby would survive.

Abigail found herself thinking of her mother. Long-buried fears and old memories of loss returned to haunt her. She found herself suddenly terrified of dying in childbirth and leaving her child an orphan—as she and her siblings had been.

“Please don’t let me die like Ma,” she prayed softly. The image of her dying mother’s work-worn face, old too soon from bearing children only to see them die in infancy, swam before her eyes. Sweat beaded on her forehead in a clammy sheet as another contraction halted her progress. She sucked in air and placed both palms against the cool, jagged face of the mountain. Abigail leaned into the rock with the force of the pain. Sharp stones cut into her palms.

“Lord, please not here,” she moaned as the last tight ache in her abdomen began to recede. “My baby will not live if it is born here.” She heard the ragged edge of fear and defeat in her own words. The sound made her jerk up her head in shock. “It will survive. We will survive.” Her throat was stiff and tight with determination.

Abigail inhaled and forced herself forward along the precarious mountain trail toward the gold camp of Guston. She had made the trip with Carl before she got too large. She knew it was not too much farther away.

The intensity of her contractions escalated when she topped a small aspen-covered hill where snow still clung in deep hollows and dark, shadowed crevices. The high-pitched roof of a newly built church steeple loomed ahead. She had heard a tale, many months ago upon her arrival, of the Reverend Mr. Davis. Fresh from England, he was determined to bring salvation to the mineral-rich Babylon of Colorado. The Englishman had refused to give up, even when he had been rejected by both the residents of Red Mountain and Ironton. She had dismissed the story as so much folderol, yet the newly constructed spire soared before her, a solid testimony to his perseverance. Abigail prayed the little church would be the salvation of her unborn child.

She grated her teeth against a new onslaught of pain and waddled forward. Her eyes widened in astonishment when her water broke in a great warm gush between her legs. She hastened toward the narrow rough plank door. “I want to live and protect my baby. Please, God, don’t let my baby be an orphan.”

Abigail braced herself in the unpainted doorway just before another contraction began. She slapped her palms flat against the doorjamb and gripped the newly milled wood so hard her knuckles turned white. Suddenly, thank God, the door opened. Abigail found herself looking into a pair of pale blue eyes hooded by heavy brows the color of hard winter frost. The old fellow’s ruddy complexion and leathery skin marked him as a man who spent most of his time outdoors. He didn’t look much like her idea of how an English minister would look.

“Mr. Davis?” she questioned doubtfully between pains. Abigail had heard that the preacher was a much younger man. She doubted this was the Reverend Mr. Davis at all. Before she could form another question, though, she felt the muscles of her back pinch while the pain snaked around her abdomen.

She watched the old face screw into crinkles of confusion, then the next contraction closed around her belly and removed all questions from her mind. When she gasped and clung ever tighter to the door, his eyes dropped to her belly and understanding appeared to blast across his bewildered face.

Hands more rough and gnarled than mountain stone whisked her off her feet. A shabby booted foot deftly slammed the door behind them. One kerosene lamp drove back a little of the darkness inside the church. Abigail found herself laid on a church pew and her skirts being shoved up around her damp thighs. She cringed with embarrassment for half a heartbeat, but then another pain came and the urge to push wiped any such maidenly concerns from her mind.

“Please help my baby.” She clamped her teeth together with a painful click.

The old man looked at her with compassion and embarrassment flooding his face. Then he bowed his head. She felt her drenched pantalets being torn from her body. Another pain knifed through her lower back and down her groin. Then there was a warm bulk between her thighs. One last instinctual need to push surged through her, then she slumped back. By the time she raised up on her elbows, the old man was swathing something in his coat and bustling from beside the pew. He disappeared through a narrow door on the far side of the dimly lit room.

Abigail sighed and fell back on the hard, splintery surface in total exhaustion. A wave of contentment folded over her.

Lars looked at the tiny motionless babe wrapped in his coat and felt a lump in his throat. There could be no just reason why fate had capriciously sent two pregnant women to the unfinished church this cold spring day.

He tore off a piece of cloth from his only good shirt and wrapped the lifeless child in it. The woman out there would need an explanation, but how could he provide her with one? He was tongue-tied enough when talking about the weather, or the rising price of supplies at the mercantile. How could he find the proper words to tell the woman her baby daughter was dead? There was no way he could explain to her what had transpired. How could he tell the woman her child died without taking its first breath? He cursed himself silently for being so ill equipped to handle this tragedy, while he prayed for a miracle to save them all.

The lusty wail of a healthy, hungry infant sounded in the silent church. Lars snapped his head around and stared at the crying child in the small wooden box. The poor tyke had been no sooner born than he had become an orphan. He pondered the situation and shook his head at the irony of it all.

A babe without a mother and a mother without a child.

Lars cast a sad glance over the dead woman’s body. She lay where she had breathed her last, on the plank of a half-finished church pew. He started to cover her pale bluish face with a blanket when something around her neck caught his eye. He slid his fingers under a slender gold chain and pulled it from her bodice. A strange symbol, like a Chinese dragon rearing on its hind legs, gleamed on the heavy circle of gold.

The woman in the other room called out for her child. Lars shook his head in sadness. The first poor woman had died without even uttering her own name. Now he had no hope of finding the orphaned boy-child’s next of kin. Lars bad no idea what her name was or where she came from.

The baby began to squall in earnest. The sound of the agitated mother’s voice, calling for her dead baby, sent a shiver climbing up Lars’s spine. He had to do something.

He closed his eyes and dropped to his knees beside the lifeless woman to say a prayer for her soul. Lars climbed slowly to his feet and shoved the gold necklace deep inside his trouser pocket. He took one last look at the stillborn baby and the dead woman, then he made a bold, desperate decision.

Lars picked up the robust orphan and wrapped him in the blanket he’d found earlier. He knew what he was doing was not right—but what other chance did the child have in a country full of men searching for gold and silver? There was no other choice to be made.

Abigail looked up in relief when the old man approached her. He had his eyes downcast, so she couldn’t read the expression in them, but he handled her newborn child as if it were the most fragile and precious thing in the world.

“My baby? Is it all right?” She raised up on her elbows and looked expectantly at the old man’s face.

Without a word he thrust the wiggling bundle toward her. She took the squirming baby with trembling hands and pulled back the blanket to take her first look at her babe.

“It’s a boy,” he said gruffly.

Hot, salty tears of bittersweet joy welled in her eyes. Carl would never know he had a fine, healthy son to carry on his name.

“Matthew. I’m going to call him Matthew,” she said softly as she traced a circle on his downy pink cheek with her index finger. A thick, soft cap of pale brown hair lay in curls around his head.

“Hello, Matthew Cooprel. Welcome to the world.”

When he puckered his rose-petal lips and unsquinted his eyes to stare up at her, she saw they were the color of a mountain sky. She hugged him close and uttered a prayer of thanks for a healthy baby to love and nurture. She vowed that nothing would ever come between her and this precious child.

Lars felt a sharp pang of guilt each time the woman cooed to the newborn boy. She was so pleased and happy that tears ran in small rivulets down her cheeks. The baby pursed his lips and stared at the woman with blue-eyed contentment. Lars swallowed the lump growing in his throat. The die was cast. Maybe what he was doing wasn’t right, but it was the only thing Lars could think of. This little boy deserved a chance, and God in his infinite wisdom had given him one. Lars would simply have to learn to live with the feeling that he had done something dishonest.

While he stared at the woman, another worry gripped him. Who was she? Why was she alone on the mountain? He sighed and realized that he would need to stick around and make certain the woman and the baby were provided for. Lars vowed that the first child he had ever birthed, as long as the boy was in Colorado, would grow up hale and healthy. Perhaps this would assuage a small portion of the guilt already nipping at the corners of his mind.

Lars wondered how he would be able to persuade the lady to allow a perfect stranger to become part of their lives. Whatever it took, he was obligated by guilt and responsibility—he had to do it.