Paige examined the young woman. She'd lost a great deal of blood, and was already in shock. "We'll have to do an emergency hysterectomy," she decided.
For the remainder of the night, Paige and Myles fought for the young woman's life. With Myles assisting, Paige performed the operation as quickly and deftly as possible, and the bleeding was controlled, but it was evident almost from the beginning that Lucy had already lost far too much blood.
She died just after dawn.
Despondent, Paige and Myles helped Abigail clean up. They bathed the beautiful baby and gave her to the weeping young husband, and then Paige helped wash and prepare Lucy's body for burial.
Abigail promised to stay until the husband could find live in help, and when there was nothing more to be done, Myles and Paige left.
They bounced over the rough prairie in silence for some time, and then Myles said in a quiet tone, "If this happened in your time, what more could have been done to save her?"
"A blood transfusion." Paige's voice was angry, and she smashed her fist down on the seat of the buggy. "All she needed was a lousy blood transfusion."
The harnesses jingled, and around them birds sang and gophers squawked.
"Did you require this blood transfusion when your first child was born?" His tone was conversational, but Paige knew how important her answer would be.
"Yes. I did." She looked out over the prairie and swiped at the perspiration on her forehead. "But that doesn't mean I'll need one again this time." Her tone was belligerent, covering her fear. "You know as well as I do that one birth is never the same as the next."
"Whoa." Myles brought the team to a halt, secured the reins, and pulled her into his arms.
There was a charged silence, and then he said, "I can't perform a cesarean on you, Paige. I just can't do it. I haven't had any experience at it, and you know yourself it's risky for a doctor to treat someone he loves. Will you agree to go and have the child at a hospital in Toronto?"
She struggled out of his arms and gaped at him, horrified. "Are you out of your mind? Myles, you know as well as I do that I wouldn't trust anyone but you to do this operation. Hospitals in this day and age are primitive, you've said yourself there's a high rate of infection and infant death. I absolutely wouldn't go to one to have my baby." All of a sudden her face crumpled and all her brave defenses were gone.
"I'm so afraid," she wailed. "I remember the last time, and God, I'm so scared. I want this baby more than anything. Oh, Myles, I just can't stand to have this baby die too. I can't stand it, and I can't figure out what to do to keep it from happening."
Her voice rose in a primitive wail, and she clung to him and cried, openmouthed and gasping, her terror starkly evident. He'd known the answer for some time, although he hadn't allowed himself to put it into words until now.
He found his handkerchief and clumsily dabbed at her face. "You're going to have to try to go back, my love."
For a confused moment, she couldn't think what he meant, and she scowled at him through her tears.
His voice was quiet, maddeningly reasonable, but she could see the strain on his face.
"I'm convinced that if you stay here, one or both of you will die." He touched her flushed cheek with a finger, smoothing away her tears. "I'd rather lose you to that other world than watch you die here in mine, darling. I'm going to try to find a way to send you back to your other life, so you and our child have a chance."
"But—but I don't want to go." A lump of dread congealed in her throat. "I won't go. I want to stay here with you. I won't go, and that's all there is to it."
He buried his face in her hair, his eyes squeezed shut. "My stubborn, impossible wife, don't you think I want you here with me? Don't you think I'd give my own life if it meant you and our baby would live?" His voice was agonized. "I've thought and thought about it, and when that poor girl died back there, I made up my mind. This is the only way to save you and our baby."
The plan must have been brewing in his subconscious, because it was fully formed. "I'm going to see Lame Owl. I'll beg her to try to send you back. If she can, maybe there's a chance you and the child could return. After all, it happened once already, didn't it?" He tried for a smile and failed.
"Then you must come with me, Myles." Her chin was set, her eyes determined. "The only way I'll go is if you come along."
He'd given it some thought. "I'll try. I'll talk to Lame Owl, and I'll ask if it's possible. But either way, you have to go, Paige. With me or without me, you know it's our only chance."
"If you can't come, then make her promise to bring me back here." She couldn't control the note of hysteria in her voice.
This time he smiled at her, a sad smile that tore at her heart. "You have my word on that."
"It didn't sound to me as if Lame Owl had exactly perfected the technique." Ashamed of her earlier weakness, Paige tried for a shaky grin that didn't quite work. "You might just get stuck with delivering your kid after all, Doctor."
His eyes were haunted. "If that happens, then we'll have to make the best of it."
She fingered the locket at her throat, Madeleine's locket.
"God's will," she whispered. "Madeleine would say everything is just God's will. Do you believe that, Myles?"
Myles was silent.
Now and Then: Chapter Twenty-Two
Lame Owl stared out over the valley, her obsidian eyes buried in a network of wrinkles, her hands folded in her lap.
Myles sat beside her on the grass, and sweat trickled uncomfortably down his back and under his arms as he fought against the sense of desperation that consumed him. He had to find a way to break through her silence. They'd been sitting here for more than an hour, and so far Lame Owl hadn't responded to one thing he'd said.
Difficult as it was for him to do, he'd bared his soul to the old woman, telling her about the war in the south, of coming back and finding his old way of life forever lost, all the people he loved dead or, like his mother, damaged beyond repair. He told her about Beth and the baby, and even though the words cut like glass, he'd described the way they'd died even as he'd fought to save them.
He told her about the love he'd found with Paige, the dreams he had for the child Paige was carrying, the problems surrounding its birth. He might as well have confided in a rock. Lame Owl sat silent and unmoved by his monologue.
Without so much as flickering an eyelash, the old woman made it plain that he was intruding, and he knew he was. He'd come to her even though she wanted nothing to do with him.
He had to come up with something to bargain with, he told himself, something he could give back to Lame Owl in exchange for her help. Indians were great traders. There had to be something she needed, something he could exchange.
The answer came to him. It was dangerous, but it looked as though nothing else was going to work.
"Lame Owl, your grandsons are being held in the Battleford jail, charged with murder."
Finally the old woman turned her head and looked at him. She stared at him for a long time before she began to speak in a slow, measured voice, spraying spittle from her toothless mouth.
"My grandsons are being punished, and yet the English soldiers who murdered Tahnancoa's husband go free. My granddaughter's spirit is sick because her husband's own people deny the truth and blame Indians for what white men did."
Myles nodded, acknowledging the truth of what she said.
"Our race is disappearing. Already many tribes are no more." The old voice was filled with suffering. "The white man brought us diseases we knew nothing of, they killed our buffalo for sport instead of meat, they have made us captive in our own land. My people are sick, and hungry, and cold. Our hunting grounds are no more. No one listens when we speak. Your mounted men did not listen to Tahnancoa, just as no one listens when my grandsons say they are not murderers, that they protected their village when the English general crept up on us in the night and fired his cannons at our tipis."
"What you say is tr
ue, and it makes me ashamed for my people," he admitted. "As for Tahnancoa, I believe what she says. Dennis Quinlan was my friend, Lame Owl, and if I could find and punish the men who killed him, I would." Myles' voice was grim. "But those cowardly men are far away now, gone with the army that brought them here." He paused a moment and added in a deliberate tone, "I can't do anything about Dennis's murder, but I might be able to help your grandsons."
"They have been sentenced to hang."
Myles chose his words with care. "Perhaps they will have a chance to escape before that happens."
She gave him a questioning look, and he met her old eyes squarely.
"I can promise nothing, Lame Owl. I can only try. I will need your help."
She nodded once, and turned again to the view of the valley. After several moments, she said, "It is the same with me. I can promise nothing, but if you can free my grandsons, in turn I will try to open the gates and send your woman walking between the worlds."
He took a deep breath and let it out again. "Can you send me with her?"
She snorted and shook her head, and his hopes plummeted. "No. Only one may go, and you are a man. It is a woman's ceremony, and only women may walk between the worlds."
"Then can you bring her back again to me?"
She shrugged. "I can try. Who knows if the Great Spirit will allow it?"
It was less than he'd hoped for, but it was all there was. Only one question remained. "When, Lame Owl?" There wasn't much time. It was already August, and the baby was due in another six weeks. If it came early ...
She shrugged again. "When the time is right." She shot him a challenging look. "When my grandsons are once again free. It must be before the frost, though. I will let you know."
"And—and when could you bring her back?"
She shrugged. "In spring, maybe. When the sun again warms the earth and the grasses grow."
A whole winter to get through before he'd even know if he'd ever see her, or his child. An eternity of waiting.
Myles thanked her and walked down the hill and into the village. He had one more thing to do, and he hoped for Paige's sake he'd be successful.
He searched for Tahnancoa, and finally found her down at the stream, kneeling beside it, washing clothes. A cradle holding a fat cheeked, black haired baby with astonishing crystal blue eyes was propped up against a willow close beside her.
Myles knew Tahnancoa had heard him approach, yet she didn't look up or acknowledge his presence. She went on sloshing baby clothes up and down in the clear water, rinsing soap from them.
He smiled and clucked to the baby, and was rewarded with a beaming smile.
"Dennis would be so proud of this fine son, Tahny," Myles said quietly. "I see he's inherited his father's blue eyes and your dark hair. He's part of each of you, isn't he? Half and half?"
She'd stopped scrubbing at the wet clothing, and although she didn't look up, Myles could see the way her lips quivered, the silver tears that began trickling down her cheeks when he mentioned Dennis. He hated hurting her, but he couldn't see any other way to break through the barrier she'd erected.
"Tahny, this beautiful baby is half Indian, half white." He put all the intensity of his feelings into his plea. "You can't change that. He's somehow going to have to learn to live in both worlds, and it'll be tough for him if you go on hating everyone with a white face, because he'll soon figure out that's half of what he is too. Do you want him to think there's part of him that isn't pleasing to you, Tahny?"
He waited. When she didn't respond he sighed and added, "Paige and I are your friends, Tahny. Let us help you, let us help your son learn that there's good as well as bad among his father's people."
The baby made soft, cooing sounds, turning his head to look as a butterfly floated past.
"What's his name, Tahnancoa?"
"Dennis," she responded in a whisper. "He will earn his Indian name as he grows. For now, he is named only for his father." She crumpled all of a sudden, covering her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook with sobs. "Myles Baldwin, sometimes I think I cannot go on without him."
Myles put an arm around her shoulders and dug a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.
When the worst of the tears were over, he talked to her, telling her of Paige's pregnancy and of how much she missed Tahnancoa and longed to see her baby.
"Bring her here," Tahny said at last. "Tell her—" Her voice caught. "Tell her how happy I am about your child. Tell her she is my friend, and I miss her too."
Myles gave Paige Tahny's message, but he didn't mention the bargain he'd made with Lame Owl. He simply told her that Lame Owl had agreed to attempt the ceremony. Immediately, he set about fulfilling his part of the agreement.
Myles understood all too well that the penalty for helping the Indian prisoners escape would be severe if he were caught. He'd be court martialed, and probably sentenced to die by firing squad. The part that bothered him the most was that his failure would endanger Paige and his child.
He put the consequences firmly out of his mind as he studied the guard's routines and made his plans.
As the fort's doctor, he was responsible for the prisoners' health, and it wasn't difficult to spirit away the spare key to the cell door where the Indians were imprisoned. Making a wax impression and painstakingly filing an exact match took much longer.
The execution was scheduled for Friday afternoon. On Wednesday, Lame Owl visited her grandsons and slipped them the key Myles had given her. She also relayed his instructions as to when it was to be used.
A dose of ipecac in the food the kitchen sent over for the guard and his prisoners' supper on Thursday night caused diarrhea and vomiting, and as he'd planned, Myles was called to treat the problem.
He knew the Indians hadn't eaten the drugged food, but they were doing a fine acting job, holding their stomachs and moaning.
He dispensed a tonic all around, making certain the guard's portion contained a strong sleeping powder. He'd told Lame Owl to have horses waiting at the back of the stockade at midnight. Scaling the wall would be child's play for the agile young men, and Myles had instructed them as to the timing of the sentry's rounds and the exact spot where it was safest to climb the wall.
Myles went home that evening a little later than usual.
He made love to Paige gently, holding her close until she was deeply asleep. Then he got up and went outside, every nerve tense, his muscles aching from the strain of waiting for the alarm to be sounded from the fort.
Would there be time for the Indians to get clean away? As the huge summer moon inched its way across the sky, Myles counted the minutes, and then the hours. Silence reigned, and gradually, he relaxed.
It was nearly dawn before the commotion began, and he smiled grimly, knowing the escape had been successful. Lame Owl's grandsons had been gone for hours by now.
He went back to bed.
The next morning, the fort was buzzing with the news.
It had been four in the morning before the guard awoke enough to discover his prisoners gone and sound the alarm, and by then it was far too late to catch them, although patrols were dispatched and the best scouts employed to track the prisoners.
Myles went immediately to the inspector and explained that the guard and prisoners had been ill the previous night, and that because of the tonic he'd given out, it was probable that the young guard had slept more deeply than he should have done.
Myles apologized and insisted that if there was blame for the escape, he should share in it. He'd used a new sleeping powder, he explained, more potent than he'd realized.
"Asleep or not, it's a mystery how those savages ever got out of their cell," the inspector grumbled. "The chain was in place and the padlock still locked, but the cell was empty. It's enough to make a man believe in sorcery," he grumbled.
The guard was let off with a light reprimand, and the escape remained a mystery.
The days that followed were bittersweet. Myles knew the s
ummons would come soon from Lame Owl, and he spent every moment he could with Paige.
Hand in hand, they walked their favorite paths beside the river, watching summer fade into fall. The baby in Paige's womb was growing larger day by day, and they laughed together at how big and active it was. Myles insisted it was a girl, but Paige said she knew it was a boy.
They talked endlessly about names, settling on Alexander for a boy, and Emily for a girl.
Late at night, wakeful beside his sleeping wife, Myles would place his palms on the mound of her stomach and feel his baby kick and turn inside her, and the tears he ruthlessly suppressed in the daylight trickled down his cheeks and soaked the pillowslip.
One morning he hitched up the buggy and they drove out to visit Clara and Theo, taking along a load of household goods they felt the Fletchers might need.
Myles knew their friends were living in what had been their barn, the only building on the farm that hadn't been burned by marauding Indians during the rebellion. Most of the Fletchers' possessions had been either burned or stolen, and with the two extra children to provide for, Myles and Paige were concerned about how they were managing.
They drove into the yard early in the morning, and Danny came hurtling out of a shed where he was helping Theo milk the cow.
"It's Doc." His brown eyes were huge and sparkling with excitement as he came racing over to the buggy, hollering, "Hey, Theo, come quick, Doc's here." He barely drew a breath. "Hey, Doc, guess what? Our cat had kittens last night, four of 'em. Theo says each of us kids can have one of our own, to keep. I'll show you mine. Theo says mine's the only boy cat, he says I need a boy cat 'cause him and me are outnumbered by girls in this fam'ly."
Myles laughed, helping Paige carefully down from the buggy and then ruffling the boy's sandy hair. He introduced Paige, and Danny smiled up at her shyly, his freckled countenance open and happy.
Myles looked at the boy, remembering bodies in another farmyard, a small girl screaming for her dead mother, a frightened little boy doing his best to pretend he was brave. It was wonderful to see Danny this way.
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 33
