Stands a Calder Man

by Janet Dailey

  Webb broke into a run, excitement and anxiety claiming him at the same moment. “Send someone for the doctor,” he ordered hurriedly. Simon had been at the ranch only yesterday to deliver a son to Ruth.

  “No need,” Abe puffed. “He was here, checking to see how Ruth and her baby were doin’. The doc’s up at The Homestead now.”

  When Webb burst into their bedroom, the pain of the last contraction was just passing. Lilli was breathing deeply and roughly, beads of perspiration collecting on her forehead and above her lips. When she saw the worried look in his rugged and earthy features, she smiled at him, her own unease slipping away.

  “You hadn’t better be having second thoughts about becoming a father,” she warned him as he took her hand and leaned close to the bed. “Because it’s too late for that.”

  “No. No second thoughts.” A half-smile came onto his mouth, gentling it. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, and Webb bent down to kiss her.

  “None of that.” Simon Bardolph interrupted the affectionate exchange and approached the bed. “Unless you plan on delivering this baby, I suggest you go downstairs and have yourself a drink, Webb.”

  “Later.” He didn’t take his eyes off Lilli, her dark hair spilling over the pillow her head was resting on, its red sheen subdued.

  “Now,” the doctor insisted and gestured toward the door. “Out. It’s going to be a while, so go pace the floor somewhere else. I don’t want you upsetting our little mother.”

  Webb reluctantly gave in to that argument, kissed her again, and left the room to wait downstairs in the den. He tried to stay calm, but he kept hearing little noises upstairs, sounds of movement and muffled cries. They worked on his nerves like a file. The sun was making a blazing descent below the horizon before he heard the squawl of an infant. He took the steps two at a time and knocked impatiently at the closed door. Simon opened it with a wiggling bundle in his arms.

  “Chase Calder, meet your father.” He passed the strapping baby boy into the crook of Webb’s arm.

  “Lilli?”

  “She’s fine.”

  And Webb looked at his newborn son for the first time, all red and wrinkled, a wet mass of dark hair on his head, and a perfectly formed fist flailing the air near his mouth. In a kind of daze, Webb walked to the bed. He could feel the tears glistening in his eyes as he looked at Lilli. Her dark hair was clinging damply to the sides of her face. She looked exhausted, yet remarkably happy.

  “The poor thing is as ugly as me.” Webb smiled.

  “And he’ll be as handsome as you are, too,” she murmured, a little weakly.

  Simon came to the bed, smiling at the three of them. “I think your son would like something to eat; then both of them need to rest.”

  Webb laid the baby in Lilli’s arms and left the room reluctantly for the second time.

  After adjusting the hood, Lilli tied it under her chin and glanced at Webb watching her so anxiously. Admittedly she was weak and sore, but certainly not the invalid that he considered her to be.

  “I’m ready. Shall we go?” She pulled on her gloves, feeling as bundled up as little Chase was in Webb’s arms.

  “I think you should stay here,” he said for the tenth time. “It’s too soon for you to be moving around. You should be in bed. It’s only been two days since the baby was born.”

  “Webb, you’re making it sound as if I’m embarking on some hazardous journey,” she reproached him with a hint of amusement. “I’m not going any farther than Ruth’s house. I assure you I’m strong enough to walk that far.”

  “But there’s no need. I can go.” The determined glint in her eye warned him that she had no intention of staying behind. Sighing his irritation, Webb put an arm around her waist and guided her to the front door.

  As much as he could, he used his body to shield her and their son from the sharp wind blowing from the north. It swept the dry ground in front of them, brushing up dust clouds to sting their eyes and irritate their lungs.

  Virg Haskell opened the door when they arrived at the Stanton house. Webb barely gave Lilli time to push back the hood of her cape before sitting her down in a chair. Little Chase whimpered in his arms, completely covered by the small baby quilt. Webb turned back the corner of the quilt and returned the sugar-tit to his son’s mouth to quiet him.

  “That’s a fine-looking son you have,” Virg Haskell said and glanced at the man and woman, trying to figure out why they had come.

  “How’s Ruth?” Lilli asked.

  “She and the little bucko are doing fine.” He smiled proudly.

  From the bedroom, Ruth called out, “Who is it, Virgil?”

  “It’s”—he half-turned his head to answer—“Miss Lilli and Webb . . . and their son.”

  There were sounds of movement from the bedroom. “I’ll be right out.”

  “Can I get you something?” Virgil offered uncertainly. Even though his wife had become very friendly with Lilli Calder, he doubted that this was a social call.

  Dissatisfied with the sugar-tit, the baby in Webb’s arms began fussing and waving angry fists in the air. “You’d better give him to me.” Lilli reached for her son.

  Webb gave him into her care before responding to Haskell’s inquiry. “No, nothing, thank you. Lilli and I are here to talk to you and your wife on another matter.”

  The bedroom door opened and Ruth emerged. It was obvious she had made a hurried attempt to make herself look presentable. A ribbon secured her blond hair in a long ponytail at the nape of her neck, and she was wearing a loose-fitting dress. She was stiff and a little unsteady on her feet, holding on to the doorway before coming the rest of the way into the room.

  “Lilli, you shouldn’t be up. You need to rest and get your strength back,” she murmured anxiously.

  “That’s what I tried to tell her,” Webb responded dryly. “But she insisted on coming.”

  “I’ve heard that Indian women have their babies and get right up and do their work,” Lilli said to dispute both of them, “I’m fine, really. Please, sit down, Ruth,” she urged. “Webb and I came because we have something to ask of you.”

  “What is it?” Ruth gingerly sat on a chair close to Lilli’s and gazed at the baby boy wrapped in the blanket quilt in Lilli’s arms. “He’s a beautiful baby.” There was a trace of envy in her voice.

  “He’s a very hungry baby.” Mixed in with the love in her expression, there was regret and a hint of guilt. She hesitantly looked at Ruth. “I don’t have enough milk for him. Simon fixed some special milk for him, but it didn’t agree with him. He said the best solution would be to find another woman willing to wet-nurse. Webb and I thought”—she paused to glance at her husband, standing beside her chair—“we’d ask you.”

  Ruth didn’t need time to consider the request, accepting it immediately. “Of course I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you.” Lilli bent her head to hide her trembling chin and blinked back the tears. Chase began crying again. She tenderly kissed his forehead, then handed him to Ruth, “It would probably be best if he stayed here at night.” It was the hardest thing Lilli had ever had to say. “I’ll have Webb bring his cradle and . . . everything.” Her voice broke.

  “Don’t worry, Lilli.” Ruth cuddled Webb’s son close to her breast and laid a reassuring hand on her friend’s arm. “I’ll take very good care of him, just as if he were my son.” It was the easiest promise in the world for her to make.

  Some kind of maternal alarm clock woke Ruth in the middle of the night for the two o’clock feeding. She picked up her noisy and impatient son and carried him into the living room to sit in the rocking chair. His blond hair was downy soft and curly, his blue eyes showing signs of remaining that color. His given name was Timothy Ely Haskell, but her husband had started referring to him as “my bucko” from the first day. It had seemed to fit him, so that Ruth now thought of him as Buck. She adored him in the special way a mother loves her child, smiling as he tugged fiercely on her nipple and p
ummeled her breast with his little fists.

  But, later, when little Chase Benteen Calder suckled at her milk-swollen breast, there were tears in her eyes. This was Webb’s son, different in size and coloring and temperament from her own. She had dreamed of this day—of holding his baby to her breast. It had come true, not exactly the way she had wanted it, but she was nursing his son.

  The stethoscope was captured by a small hand that immediately decided it was meant to be eaten. Simon Bardolph chuckled and pried the Calder baby’s fingers loose from the instrument. Innocent brown eyes looked at him boldly.

  “By the looks of you, Chase, you’ve already had enough to eat,” he declared.

  “He has grown, hasn’t he?” Lilli declared proudly as her nearly five-month-old son began jabbering. He was sitting up straight, firmly balanced, chubby but not fat.

  “He’s already trying to crawl, but he usually ends up scooting backward.”

  “He’ll figure it out soon enough; then you’ll probably wish he hadn’t,” Simon murmured dryly and closed his bag. “I haven’t seen two healthier babies than this one and little Buck in a long time.”

  “You will have some coffee and cake, won’t you?” she said and picked up the growing youngster, balancing him on her hip. “Webb should be back shortly. He had to go to the train station to pick up the senator. I know he’ll want to see you.”

  “Can’t.” Simon shrugged into his coat. “I have to get over to Kreuger’s place. Three of his children are sick. Looks like pneumonia.” He shook his head, unwillingly comparing the disparities between this household and the pitiful circumstances of the dryland family.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Lilli held Chase just a little tighter. As much as she disliked Franz Kreuger, she still felt sorry for his wife, Helga. “How is . . . his wife?”

  His glance skimmed her briefly, trying to decide if she really wanted to know. “I don’t think you’d recognize her.” He sighed. “I don’t think she eats. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the food goes to the children and her husband, and she eats whatever is left.”

  Lilli felt guilty at having so much, guilty because she hadn’t given a thought to the families she had lived among with Stefan. There had been a vague awareness that the drought and the grasshoppers had hurt a lot of families, but she hadn’t let her mind dwell on it. But the doctor’s remark reminded her of winters when she had been hungry, with little in the house to eat.

  “Simon, before you go, stop at the commissary and take a supply of food with you,” she urged. “If Kreuger asks you where you got it, tell him the church is distributing it. Take food for other needy families in the area, too.”

  He nodded briefly, a faint smile of understanding showing on his mouth. She knew most of those people and felt she owed them something, a brother’s keeper sort of thing. She began playing with the baby, and Simon let the subject end with her request.

  Senator Bulfert was a weekend guest at the ranch, stopping on his way to Helena. On this occasion, he was alone, unaccompanied by his aides. It seemed to change the tenor of the visit. The usually loquacious and loud politician appeared subdued and less talkative.

  At the conclusion of dinner, Webb noticed the senator reaching into his vest pocket, bulging with cigars. Aware that Lilli didn’t like the smell of cigar smoke, he suggested they adjourn to the den for coffee. Lilli excused herself from joining them to check on the baby.

  Webb poured a glass of whiskey for each of them and passed the florid-faced man one. There was a flash of the man’s professionally jovial smile as he lifted his glass in a silent toast.

  “Better enjoy this while you can,” he declared. “Those Temperance ladies are going to get their wish.” The senator breathed out a disgusted sound and stared at the whiskey he swirled in the glass. “All those saloons Carry Nation busted up in Butte. Thought that movement for Prohibition would end when she died. Hell! It turned her into a martyr.”

  “The Congress isn’t really going to outlaw liquor.” The proposition was too unrealistic.

  “It’s all part of this moral fervor that’s sweeping the country because of the war,” he grunted, then eyed Webb with a twinkling look. “I hope you got some friends in Canada to keep your cabinet stocked for personal use.”

  “I know a couple people.” Webb smiled. “We don’t sell as much cattle to the reservations up there as we used to, but we’ve still got connections.”

  “Good.” He sipped at the whiskey, then gave Webb a cigar and cut off the tip of one for himself. “Giles is dead.” The statement came with no advance warning.

  The match flame was halfway to his cigar. Webb stopped, taking the cigar from his mouth to stare at the politician. “Bull?” Disbelief ringed his voice. “When?”

  “Three months ago, before Christmas. Just found out about it myself.” He puffed on the cigar. “Never was the same after he came back. Started drinking heavy and stopped hanging around with the old crowd. That’s why it took so long to hear about it, I guess. He’d a made a good politician—a big, lumbering ox, but smart as a whip,” he concluded and swallowed another gulp of whiskey, as if in a silent toast to the man.

  Webb did the same and watched the flames crackling in the fireplace. Since his mother’s death, there had been no word from Bull. Now there wouldn’t be any.

  “What do you know about this attorney, Doyle Pettit?” With a narrowed look. Bulfert eyed Webb through the smoke of his cigar.

  Webb’s head came up, some instinct telling him this was the purpose behind the senator’s visit. “I’ve known Doyle all my life. He took over the TeePee Ranch when his father, Tom Pettit, died about ten years back, and he owns a couple businesses in town. Why?” He was scant with his information until he learned the reason for the question.

  “I had a look at the property rolls a couple of weeks ago. He’s got title to, or claim to, nearly three-quarters of a million acres.”

  The size of Pettit’s holdings surprised Webb, but he didn’t show it. He finished lighting his cigar with a new match, shook out the flame, and tossed the dead match into the fireplace. Doyle had amassed a lot of land very quietly—through the bank he owned, obviously, buying up the claims of homesteaders who had given up. He remembered Doyle’s land scheme of buy and sell, buy and sell.

  He looked at the map on the wall. Doyle Pettit. That fun-loving, always smiling boyhood friend who laughed and rarely fought. He’d always been something of a show-off, buying the first automobile in the area and wearing spiffy clothes, free with his money, buying drinks for his friends and quick to loan a ten-spot to a hard-up man. Doyle had always managed to become the center of attention. Quietly, so quietly, he had obtained control of nearly three-quarters of a million acres—almost the size of the Triple C.

  The man had always been something of a peacemaker, never liking arguments or hard feelings. He rode the fence, never taking sides. The ranchers regarded him as Tom Pettit’s son, one of them, and the drylanders looked on him as their friend.

  The longer Webb looked at the map, the more uneasy he felt. It made no sense to think Doyle’s massive land acquisitions were a threat. They’d known each other too many years. They hadn’t always been close, but Doyle just wasn’t the kind to move against another man. That wasn’t his way. Yet Webb was bothered by the discovery of how big Doyle had grown in such a short period of time.

  But his comment to the politician revealed he’d known of it. “When this boom started, Pettit began speculating in land,” he admitted.

  “If this drought keeps up”—a wryness touched the expression on the senator’s face—“he’s going to find out he owns land in a dozen other states. The wind’s blowing away what he’s got here.”

  Webb’s mouth twitched in silent and bitter agreement. Inwardly he was thinking, Thank God for the grass that covered Calder land and held the soil together.

  The heavy buffalo robe was bunched around his chin, warming the air Simon breathed, his head bobbing in sleep. His black medical
bag sat on the floorboards of the buggy near his feet, with the buffalo robe draped over it as well. Even though automobiles were a faster form of transportation, Simon Bardolph preferred his horse and buggy. It might be slower, but there were fewer breakdowns; it could travel cross-country over terrain an auto couldn’t traverse; and if Simon fell asleep, as he usually did, he could be sure of the horse staying on the road and not crashing into some ditch.

  The ewe-necked gelding stopped in front of the shanty where a small light glowed in the window. It turned its head and whickered quietly at the man sleeping in the buggy. The sound stirred no response. With almost a disgusted snort, the horse laid back its ears and launched a kick at the buggy, jolting its owner awake.

  Simon opened his eyes with a frowning reluctance and looked around for a blank minute before recognizing Kreuger’s place. He pushed aside the buffalo robe and shivered at the early-evening coldness. A horse blanket was stowed in the rear of the buggy. He shook it out and draped it over the gelding, tossed some grain into a nose bag, and slipped the bit out of its mouth before putting the grain bag on. After the horse was taken care of, he lifted his black satchel out of the buggy and walked to the shanty.

  Franz Kreuger opened the door when Simon knocked. The smell of sickness was in the small and drafty shack. Simon supposed he would never get used to the odor. The cloth curtain that usually partitioned off the sleeping quarters had been removed to let the heat from the cookstove reach to the farthest corner where the bunks were stacked.

  Simon had called on the family too many times to waste his energy exchanging pleasantries with Franz Kreuger, because the gesture wouldn’t be returned. As he shrugged out of his coat, he looked over at the two older children lying in their parents’ bed, and his third patient in a lower bunk. A gaunt and hollow-eyed Helga Kreuger was sitting on the edge of the bunk, attempting to spoon broth into the slack mouth of her son.

  As he approached the bunk with his bag in hand, the woman was forced to suspend the feeding by a coughing spasm that had a distinct, consumptive sound to it. It sharpened his gaze, sweeping the woman in a cursory examination. She was wasted and had thin, dark circles under her eyes. The hardship in her life had aged her until she looked old enough to be the grandmother of these children. Simon didn’t like the sound of that hacking cough. After he had checked the youngsters’ conditions, he intended to examine their mother.