Sweet Mountain Magic

by Rosanne Bittner

  She didn’t say anything for several long seconds. “Then there was another man—or other men. A husband. Maybe customers. Maybe men raped me.”

  He felt her panic building. “Stop it, Mary,” he said sternly. “You stop it right now.”

  “Sage, I think I’m pregnant,” she wailed.

  A chill swept through him. Pregnant! It must be his! But if it was, and they found out she had a husband…

  “Mary, are you sure?”

  “I…I don’t know how I remember about those things. I just know I’m supposed to have…have a time of month. I haven’t had one since I’ve been with you, have I?”

  He closed his eyes, struggling with a thousand thoughts. “No.”

  “It could be anybody’s!”

  “Mary, calm down. It could easily be mine. That first time I found you, hell, it could have just been the right time, that’s all.” How could he tell her she was right? It could be anybody’s! It could even belong to Terrence Lowe or Johnny White! He struggled with his own jealousy. Bastards! All of them! All the men who had ever touched her should die!

  “Mary, if you are pregnant, then you have to be calm and take care of yourself. How far along would you be?”

  She clung to him. “I don’t know. How long have we…been together?”

  “I’m not sure. About four months, I guess.” He pulled away, giving her a smile. “That’s it! See? It must be mine. If you were any farther along than that, you’d be starting to have a belly on you, and you don’t have one at all. So it can’t belong to somebody you might have been with before me, you see?” To hell with Lowe and White. He would not burden her with that. He would consider it his, which it most likely was anyway.

  “Do you really think so, Sage? I want so much for it to be yours.”

  “Sure it’s mine. There’s no other way to look at it.” He smoothed back some hair from her face and smiled. “Damn! Sage MacKenzie’s woman is having a baby! I can’t believe I’ll have a kid of my own!”

  “You really wouldn’t mind?” she asked through tears.

  “’Course I wouldn’t mind. I took a woman, and now I’ll have a son, or a little daughter. By God, come spring I’d better be deciding how I’ll take care of my family.” He lost his smile then. “When would you have it?”

  “I don’t know. Mid-summer, I guess.”

  “I’ve got to get you someplace where there would be a doctor. I don’t know anything about having babies. You’re so young and small—”

  “Sage, having babies comes naturally to women.”

  “I know. But out here…out here…Damn!”

  He pulled her close again.

  “Sage, I’ll be all right.” She put a hand on her belly. What was this great sorrow she felt for the life in her womb? Why did she already seem to know how it felt to be a mother? Why did she long for this child to get born so she could hold it and nurse it? There was something terribly sad in her past. It was as though the baby inside of her had something to do with it.

  Sage couldn’t bring himself to consider the effects this could have on her past. She was right. What if she had a husband someplace? She would go home to him carrying another man’s child in her arms. He couldn’t blame the other man, if there was one—had no right hating him or being jealous of him. But it would be a sad and traumatic situation, nonetheless.

  “We won’t think about anything now but keeping you well and strong and having that baby,” he told her reassuringly. “It’s mine, Mary. I know it in my bones. It’s mine and that’s that. We’ll keep right on taking a day at a time.”

  She didn’t reply. A baby. This certainly complicated their already hopeless situation. But she wanted it. That was all she knew. It was Sage’s baby and she wanted it and would love it.

  Sage kicked at the pile of wood to loosen it from the frozen snow that made some of the logs stick together. He wondered how long it was going to take the stuff to melt come spring, now worried about getting Mary someplace where there might be a doctor. Laramie was probably the only place with even a remote chance of having someone who knew anything about babies. But it would be risky just making the trip there. It was quite possible he would have to resort to the help of Indian women. Maybe he would come upon Red Dog before leaving these mountains. Red Dog’s woman would know what to do.

  It gave him nightmares to think of Mary’s having the baby alone. It had been a month since she had told him, and the baby was beginning to show now, bringing home the reality that what was inside her belly must someday come out. What on earth was he going to do if that happened before he could find help?

  “When you thought about turning your life around, Sage MacKenzie, you sure as hell did a good job of it,” he mumbled to himself. He picked up an armful of wood and kicked on the door. Mary opened it and let him inside. “The sun’s out,” he told her. “But there’s sure no sign of melting.”

  She closed the door and he walked the wood over to the corner, where he dropped it. “Half this damned wood is stuck together,” he told her. “I’ll have to break it apart so it dries faster.”

  “I just took out some corn bread,” she told him.

  He breathed deeply. “I thought I smelled something good, woman.” He rubbed his stomach. “Only thing is, I’m gonna be so fat come spring, I won’t be able to budge from this cabin.”

  “Oh, Sage, you look wonderful. You’re too tall and muscular to get fat.”

  “Anybody can get fat. Look at you.”

  She smiled and blushed. “I have a whole different reason.”

  He laughed lightly and picked up one of the longer logs, using it to hit the frozen logs.

  The blow startled her, and a sudden chill moved down Mary’s spine. On the second blow she forgot about the bread and found herself staring at Sage’s movements, her ears suddenly ringing, panic gripping her chest, the room moving, changing. Over and over Sage hit the pile of logs with the bigger log, bashing them, swinging the log, hitting the others apart—only he was no longer holding a log. He was holding a baby!

  Was it she who was screaming and grabbing at him? “Stop! Stop it! You’re killing my baby,” she raged. “No! No! No!” Oh, the awful memory of it! Now it all came as she watched him smash the log into the other logs. Blood! Blood everywhere!

  “Mary, what is it?” The voice came from somewhere in the distance. Someone was grabbing her arms.

  “My baby! My baby! Please don’t kill my baby!”

  “Mary, it’s all right. It’s just me, Sage. It’s just a piece of wood.”

  She pulled away from someone, stumbling around the room, her mind swirling with the memory as it suddenly flooded back in all its hideous reality. “Rafe! My God, Rafe! Help me! Help me!”

  “Mary, stop it! You’ll lose the baby if you keep this up!”

  Someone was holding her, shaking her, but she couldn’t stop screaming, couldn’t stop the urge to tear at her hair, to fight and kick. She had to get to her battered and bleeding baby, yet she knew it was too late. Her little girl’s head was smashed into nothingness. Her baby! Her precious baby! Her husband lay dead with an arrow in his back. And the Comanche were carrying her away. She fought and screamed wildly until finally Sage hit her. The sharp blow to her face stunned her, forcing her to realize where she was, who was holding her.

  “I’m sorry, Mary,” he almost groaned. I didn’t want to hit you. I didn’t know how to make you stop.”

  Her breathing was in great gasps as she raised violet eyes to meet Sage MacKenzie’s look of sorrow. He still kept a firm grip on her arms. “What is it, Mary? What do you remember?”

  All of it! All of it had come back to her in sudden, sickening reality, so that she bent over and vomited.

  “My God,” Sage muttered, hurrying to get a towel. He put an arm around her from the side and gently washed her face. “You’ve got to lie down, Mary. I’m here, you hear me? Sage is here and it’s gonna be okay.”

  “My baby,” she sobbed. “They killed her.
They killed her.”

  “Come on. Lie down and I’ll clean up. Here.” He led her to the bedrolls and she curled up into them, sobbing with such agony that he felt like someone was cutting out his heart. Baby! She had already had a baby then. That meant a husband. Hadn’t she muttered something about his being killed? He hurriedly cleaned up the mess, carrying the soiled rags outside then coming in and washing his hands. He took a tin can down from over the fireplace where they kept peppermint candy Sax had brought, something they saved for very special occasions. It would probably taste good to her sour mouth, he reasoned. He took it to her, kneeling beside her and forcing her to sit up. She was like a rag doll, suddenly pitifully weak and spent.

  “Here, Mary. Take a bit of this peppermint.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Come on. Take a little. You’ll feel better. Get that bad taste out of your mouth. You suck on that a minute and we’ll just sit here. I’ll hold you, and when you’re ready to tell me what you remember, you tell me. It’s gonna be all right.”

  She took a bite, amazed at how utterly weak she was. She held it under her tongue as the awful sobs returned. How could she ever stop crying, now that she remembered? How could she ever get over the horrible ugliness of it all? How could she ever face her family, or live without her baby and Rafe?

  Rafe! She did have a husband! But now she had Sage. If Rafe was dead, at least she had Sage now. God had brought her this man who would be her strength and comfort now that she finally had regained her memory. But how she wished she never had remembered at all!

  Sage moved behind her, pulling her against him and between his legs, her back to him. He held her tightly and rocked her, smoothing his hand through her hair and kissing the top of her head. “Tell me, Mary. Tell me what you remember. Get it all out.”

  How strange that it was all there in front of her now, as though it had never left her. How strange the small things that made a mind snap into focus.

  “The wood,” she muttered. “You…hitting the wood. I could see it so clearly. My…baby. The Comanche. My husband dead—an arrow in his back. Poor Rafe! He tried to defend me, but there were too many. We went for a…a buggy ride. We thought it was safe. And then…they came. They killed Rafe, and they…tore my baby from my arms. She was only…two months old. They held her by the ankles…and swung her into a tree…over and over and over…laughing at my screams.”

  She turned and curled up more tightly against him. “Then they took me away with them, one of them carrying my baby along by the ankles like a little dead rabbit. After a while…they just threw her against a rock and we all kept riding. I had to leave my baby behind…her head all smashed and bloody. I…didn’t care what they did to me…if only they had let her and Rafe live. After that…it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. They stripped me…and took me…over and over…and all I could think of was Rafe and my baby.”

  The pitiful sobbing returned, and Sage fought his own rage at what she had been through. No wonder she had been afraid of Red Dog. Something deep in her mind had told her all Indians were bad.

  “God, I’m sorry, Mary. I have no idea what to say, what to do, except to love you.”

  She cried for several minutes before she could go on. “It was spring…such a pretty day,” she told him. “But there were no pretty days after that. I remember…being dragged…from camp to camp…used by the different warriors to suit their needs. Then a white man came along…with a wagon full of whiskey. He was…big…and smelly.” She covered her face with her hands, pressing tightly against him. “They sold me to him,” she whimpered, “for some whiskey. I don’t even…remember what happened after that…until you found me. God only knows…what he did to me…what he let others do to me.”

  “You can’t torture yourself with the thought, Mary. The only thing that matters is it was all against your will. You aren’t to blame for any of it, so it doesn’t matter. And now I’m here and I love you. It’s gonna be all right now.”

  She suddenly pushed away from him. “No! No! You lied to me! You lied to me! I remember now!” She crawled away from him, bending over and grasping her stomach.

  “Mary, what is it? What did I lie to you about?”

  “Those men! Those men! Those men who came to the cabin!” With every word she pounded viciously on her stomach until he came over and grabbed her arms.

  “Mary, stop it! You’ll lose the baby!”

  “I want to! It’s not yours! It’s not yours! It’s a filthy bastard! Those two men! They raped me! They raped me! It’s one of theirs and I don’t want it.” The words were screamed and she was fighting him again. “I don’t want their dirty bastard! He can’t take the place of my baby. He won’t be pure like my Elizabeth!”

  He wrestled her to the bedrolls, hanging on to her and keeping his weight on her so she couldn’t move.

  “I had to lie to you,” he growled. “I didn’t know how to tell you, Mary. I didn’t want you to suffer anymore. And you don’t know for sure! You don’t know!”

  “Get off! Get off me!”

  “No! Not till you calm down.”

  She strained against him violently, until the gripping cramp engulfed her and made her gasp. Sage felt her stiffen, and she stopped screaming and fighting. He cautiously eased his grip on her and rose up.

  “I’m…losing it,” she sobbed, unimaginable sorrow in her violet eyes. “I’m losing it, and I don’t even care.”

  His eyes widened with horror. What was she saying! She grasped her stomach and curled up.

  “Mary?”

  “It’s…God’s will,” she sobbed. “It’s…evil. It’s part of those evil men. Let it die, Sage. Let it…die.”

  He sat there feeling helpless. What did she mean? He started to cover her, and that was when he saw the blood on one leg of her bloomers where her dress had fallen away in her struggle.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. She was bleeding heavily. What in God’s name did a man do for a woman’s bleeding? What happened when a woman lost a baby? Was she going to die? He quickly began undressing her. “Don’t you die on me, Mary. Don’t you die, you hear? I love you. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Just don’t die.”

  He quickly got her clothes off. “Doesn’t…matter,” she mumbled. “Can’t…love me now. All those…men.”

  “The hell with that,” he told her sternly. “Wasn’t any of it your fault. I love you, and you’re going to be all right now. We’ll get married, and we’ll have more babies—our babies. Won’t be any doubt whose they are, Mary. And we’ll be happy. You’ll see.”

  He quickly packed her with towels, not knowing what else to do, feeling helpless against all the blood. He covered her, his chest tightening when she curled up and screamed with the pain. There was no time now to find out more about where she had come from, or to contemplate what they should do next. She was losing the baby. There would be time later for emotional healing, for deciding what to do next, if she lived at all.

  Sage well knew the dangers of such things happening to a woman with no medical help. Many such women and their babies had been buried along the trail to Oregon when he had scouted for wagon trains.

  He sat beside her feeling helpless and alone. If he didn’t lose her to death, he might lose her anyway—to that world from which she had come. She could not be the same Mary now. Everything would be changed for both of them. He had known this would happen, and he realized what a fool he had been to hope it all could stay the same forever. Nothing stayed the same forever. Nothing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The rest of the day and into the night Mary remained in agony, her pain only making the memories more horrible, stretching the ugliness and humiliation out of proportion so that between the pains of losing the baby, she only lay sobbing and near hysteria.

  Sage had no idea how to console her, what to say to her. She wouldn’t talk about any of it. There were still many questions to be answered, and he hoped that once she was over the pain of losing the baby
she would be able to calm down and talk.

  She cursed the life that was forcing its way out of her now, swearing it could only be the seed of one of those two men who had raped her. And she cursed Sage for not telling her. She wept over memories she would not share with him, sobbed that she was dirty and used and worthless.

  Sage had never known such fear. He could fight a grizzly, take down any man, find his way around this wild land. But he had no idea what to do for such a distraught woman, nor how to handle a miscarriage, especially the bleeding, which by the middle of the night had become heavy. Mary’s hysteria had worn her down, and then the heavy bleeding had begun. Now she lay quiet, and pale, so pale.

  “Mary?” Sage leaned over her, touching a white cheek. Deep circles were showing under her eyes. “Mary, you gotta hang on now, just like I did for you, remember? Remember when you thought I was dying?”

  She was dying now, he was sure. If he didn’t find some way to stop the bleeding, there would be no saving her. Hours earlier she had expelled what apparently had been a piece of life. With shaking hands Sage had wrapped it in a piece of rawhide. He would bury it somehow, in spite of all the snow. It was only fitting. After all, that bit of life could have been from his own seed.

  It gave him the strangest feeling of loss. Never before had he realized how fulfilling it might be to have a son of his own. Never before had he actually felt the emotion of wanting a child, or the realization of what it would be like to lose one. And this one was his. It was the only way he could look at it. He was certain, without any proof. He simply knew it.

  But he also knew that Mary believed otherwise. And now that the memories had returned, making her want to live would be a tremendous battle. Surely she felt herself worthless, her life pointless. Surely she wanted to die. She believed her real husband was dead, and she had seen her little baby girl brutally murdered. Without husband and baby, and with the memories of being abused by so many men, surely such a well-bred, proper lady would think her life over.