Where Heaven Begins

by Rosanne Bittner

  His eyes shot open, and for an instant she caught a glimpse of the Clint Brady she’d met on the docks, angry, full of vengeance. He looked away then, saying nothing.

  “Clint, we might need you. You decide whether or not to help Summer. I can’t make you do it.” She hurried into the bedroom, where Summer sat partially sitting, grasping her belly and groaning.

  “It is coming fast…and now!” she lamented. “I can tell!”

  Peter looked at Elizabeth with a pleading look. “I don’t know what to do!”

  “Neither do I, but Clint said he helped deliver his son.”

  Peter glanced at the doorway, then back to Elizabeth. “This could be very hard on him, Elizabeth. It’s the loss of his son that has been the hardest for him to deal with. Anything that reminds him of it—”

  “I know. It’s his decision. I’ve told him so. Let’s just do what we can to keep Summer comfortable for now.”

  The next several minutes were agony, physically for Summer and emotionally for Peter and Elizabeth, who put aside her modesty for the more important job of trying to help deliver her precious niece or nephew while hoping both mother and child would be all right.

  God, why do You keep giving me such challenges? she secretly asked. Help me know what to do. Please make Clint get in here and help us!

  “Clint, the baby is coming!” she yelled then when she was sure she could see a head emerging.

  Summer screamed with the pain, and her whole body was drenched with sweat.

  Another push. The head came out, but the baby’s face was purple.

  “Clint!” Elizabeth yelled. “Something’s wrong!”

  “Clint, please!” Peter yelled. “Something is wrapped around its neck!”

  In the next second Clint was in the room. He walked around the other side of the bed and leaned closer. “Looks like the feeding cord! I saw a foal delivered this way once. It choked to death. Get a knife!”

  Peter ran out of the room, returning in seconds with a carving knife. Clint grabbed it and ordered Elizabeth to hold the lantern closer. He moved two fingers between the cord and the baby’s neck, then carefully slid the knife under the cord.

  Elizabeth held her breath as Clint deftly cut the cord and pulled it away from the baby. “Once the baby is out we have to cut the cord near the baby’s belly and tie it off with something. Get some sewing thread,” he ordered Elizabeth.

  To Elizabeth and Peter’s relief, the blue began to drain from the baby’s head, replaced by a pink hue.

  “Thank you, Clint,” Peter said, tears in his eyes.

  Elizabeth grabbed some thread from a sewing box, and in moments the baby was fully delivered. Clint cut the cord, and Elizabeth quickly tied thread around what was left of the cord still attached to the baby’s belly.

  “You just leave it attached and after a couple of weeks it falls off by itself,” Clint explained.

  If not for the seriousness of the situation, Elizabeth would have laughed over the clumsy efforts of the three of them. If she was lucky, she’d be delivering her own baby in another year or so…Clint’s baby. She could think of nothing more wonderful in spite of the pain she’d seen Summer suffer.

  The woman lay quieter now. “What is it?” she asked.

  Elizabeth quickly and instinctively dug membrane away from the baby’s nose and mouth and laid the child on a towel at the end of the bed. She looked up at Clint. “It’s a boy!” she said.

  “Make it cry,” Clint said.

  “What?”

  “He’s not breathing.” He picked the baby up by its feet and began lightly smacking his back. The baby spat and coughed and broke into a loud, healthy wail.

  Peter and Elizabeth both laughed and hugged each other.

  “It’s a boy!” Peter told Summer. “Sweet Jesus, it’s a boy!” He kissed Summer. “Thank you, darling! You’re the most beautiful woman in the whole world!”

  Clint laid the crying child on Summer’s chest and put the towel over him. He looked at Peter. “Massage her stomach and get the afterbirth. You’ll be able to tell when she’s rid of it. The doctor who tended to Jen after Ethan was born told me a woman could die of infection if you don’t get out all the afterbirth.” He turned to wash his hands with some of the hot water, then congratulated Peter. “I think it’s time I left the room. And by the way, your son won’t stop that howling until he’s had his first real food.”

  “Thank you, Clint! Thank you!”

  “Looks like a fine, healthy baby,” Clint replied. He glanced at Elizabeth, and she saw the pain in his eyes. And there was something else there—the memory of what he’d lost because of men like Roland Fisher. “It’s time,” he told her.

  “Time for what?”

  “You know what.” He headed for the door.

  “Clint?”

  “I know where the man lives,” he said as he left the room. “I’m going to get this over with.”

  Panic filled Elizabeth as she looked at her brother for help.

  “Wash your hands and go with him,” Peter told her. “I can’t leave now!”

  Elizabeth quickly washed her hands and dashed out of the room.

  “Be careful!” Peter called out to her.

  Clint already had his gun strapped on and was reaching for his wolf-skin coat.

  “I’m going with you!” Elizabeth told him.

  “No, you’re not! It’s too dangerous!”

  “You can’t stop me!” she nearly screamed at him. She grabbed a long, woolen cape that belonged to Summer as Clint stormed out the door. Elizabeth hurried after him.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless those that Curse you…pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you…

  —St. Matthew 5:44

  “Clint, give the man a chance to defend himself!” Elizabeth yelled as she ran to keep up with him. “Let him tell his side of the story!”

  “He murdered an innocent man who had a wife and three children!”

  “You don’t know that for certain. Clint Brady, if you go over there and just shoot him I won’t marry you! I mean it! All men deserve a trial by jury and you know it. Roland Fisher has a wife and children, too. Don’t forget that!” She slipped and fell into the snow. “Oh, I could shoot you myself!” she blurted out as she straightened and brushed off her skirt.

  Clint finally slowed down and turned, letting her catch up.

  “Ethan Clint Brady, do you love me?”

  He just stared at her with those steely blue eyes.

  “Well? Do you?”

  “You don’t need to ask that.”

  “Then don’t do this!”

  “Why can’t you understand that I have to do this? If you love me, you won’t try to stop me!”

  Elizabeth wiped at angry tears. “Fine! Just give him a chance.”

  “I never said I wouldn’t.”

  “Those guns say different!”

  He rolled his eyes and grabbed her arm. “Come on. Just stay out of the way when we get there, understand? For all we know the man will try to shoot me before I open my mouth!”

  “I wouldn’t blame him, from the look in your eyes, and coming at him with a rifle and a six-gun!”

  “Yeah, well, it all comes with the territory.” He half dragged her along, his long strides too much for her.

  “Do you have to be in such an all-fired hurry? We’ve been here almost three weeks, and Peter said the man is still here, so a few extra minutes won’t make any difference.”

  He stopped again. “Lady, are you going to turn into a nag when we get married?”

  “If we get married—yes—if that’s what it takes to keep you on the straight and narrow.” Now she saw those blue eyes softening slightly. He actually grinned, but there was still a hardness about him that she hadn’t seen for a long time.

  “Well, then, I guess I’d better take that into consideration before legally putting a ring on your finger.” He literally jerked her cl
oser. “If I didn’t want you so bad, Miss Breckenridge, I’d smack you and tell you to go back home and get out of my life.”

  She held his gaze boldly. “Go ahead and try.”

  They stood there staring at each other until both broke into smiles. In the next instant he was kissing her, a long, hard kiss, as though to brand her. He pulled away and grabbed her hand, pulling her along with him again.

  Elizabeth was momentarily speechless. All she could do was pray that whatever happened next would bring Clint the answer he was looking for.

  They walked a good half mile, Clint splashing through puddles and mud, on over snow already flattened by people, sleds, horses and such.

  “How much farther?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Just up ahead. Peter said it’s a cabin with a horse shed right beside it that has a big set of antlers on the front of it. That must be it on the hill there to the right.”

  “Well, at least we’re out of town so no innocent people can get hurt if there is trouble.”

  He looked at her with a frown. “Oh, so now you admit there could be trouble not of my doing?”

  “I didn’t say it wouldn’t be of your doing. If you didn’t go after him at all we wouldn’t have to worry about it, would we?”

  Clint frowned before walking a little farther with her, until they were within a few yards of Roland Fisher’s cabin. He pulled Elizabeth over to a broken-down wagon. “Stay here, understand? Don’t you dare come out until I tell you to.”

  With a sigh of disgust, Elizabeth ducked behind the wagon. “If you say so.”

  Clint started out again.

  “Clint, be careful!”

  “Always am,” he answered as he kept walking.

  Elizabeth peered over the top of the wagon. “God, don’t let anything bad happen,” she whispered, blinking back tears so she could see better.

  Clint approached the cabin, rifle in hand. Just then a man wearing a fur-lined jacket appeared from the horse shed. Clint stopped.

  “Roland Fisher?” Clint shouted.

  The man ducked back inside the horse shed, and Clint went to the ground. A shot rang out, and Clint cried out, shaking his head. He’d been hit! He leveled his rifle then and fired back. Almost instantly they heard a child’s scream, followed by crying.

  “Clint! Are you all right?” Elizabeth screamed.

  “Creased my head!” he yelled back. “Stay down!”

  He took aim again.

  “Wait!” Fisher shouted, running out of the shed with his hands raised. “Don’t shoot! My little boy is hurt!” He sounded ready to cry. “Please! Let me tend to him! He’s only two years old!”

  “Stay right there!” Clint ordered, getting to his feet and keeping his rifle leveled. “You Roland Fisher?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t do what they say I did! I swear I didn’t!”

  Elizabeth ran from behind the wagon, as a woman and two other children came out of Fisher’s cabin. The short, round woman also looked Indian, and terror shone in her dark eyes.

  “Roland!” the woman screamed. “What’s happening?”

  Clint walked up closer to Fisher and made him open his coat. Clint felt for other weapons. He stepped back again. “Why in hell did you shoot at me?”

  Hearing her little son’s scream, Fisher’s wife ran to the horse shed to tend to her son. “I heard a rumor you were here but sick. I’ve heard of you! You’ve killed many men! I was afraid you would not wait to let me tell you what really happened!”

  “So, you know about the robbery and killing!”

  “Yes! But it wasn’t me! Please, let me tend to my little boy, and then I will explain!”

  Fisher, a round-faced man with dark skin and a mustache, looked pleadingly at Elizabeth, who stepped up to Clint to see blood pouring from a crease across the right side of his head.

  “Clint, let’s see what’s wrong with the man’s son.”

  “He shot him, that’s what’s wrong with him!” Roland lamented. “I heard you were a killer of men, but not of little boys!” The man turned away and ran to the horse shed.

  Clint looked at Elizabeth, and she saw the horror in his eyes. “Is that what you’ve become, Clint? You’ve gone after men because of your own little boy’s death. Has that brought you so low as to kill a little boy yourself?”

  His jaw flexed in what Elizabeth suspected was a surge of emotional turmoil. He handed her his rifle and wiped blood away from his right eye. “Hang on to that.” He walked to the shed then, and Elizabeth followed to see Fisher’s wife bending over an adorable, dark-skinned, round-faced little boy who was crying in her arms. The woman sat rocking her son and carrying on in her native tongue.

  Fisher knelt in front of her.

  “We have to get him into the cabin,” he told his wife.

  Mrs. Fisher looked up at Clint with terror in her eyes, tears streaming down her pudgy cheeks. “Please! You have done enough. My husband is not guilty! Just let us take Toby inside and get him some help!”

  “I might be able to help him myself,” Clint answered, his voice strained. Blood still streamed down the side of his face from his own wound.

  So much blood, Elizabeth thought. So much violence. Please, Lord, let this end for once and for all!

  Fisher’s other two children, a little girl who looked perhaps four years old, and another boy of about six or seven ran into the shed to see what was happening. Both of them cried at the sight of their wounded little brother.

  “Let’s get your little boy inside,” Clint told Fisher.

  Fisher, also crying now, took the boy from his wife and lifted him. “I am sorry, Amanda,” the man told his wife. “I should not have shot first.”

  Mrs. Fisher looked at Clint. “Blame the bounty hunter!” she seethed through her own tears. She grabbed her other two children and shoved them ahead of her, hurrying after her husband.

  Elizabeth felt sick inside for the way she knew Clint had to feel right now. Her feelings were verified when he turned and jerked the rifle out of her hands. To her amazement he retracted it several times to spit out the remaining bullets, then took the rifle by the barrel end and swung it hard, smashing it against the corner post of the horse shed. The rifle broke in half.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

  —St. John 13:34

  Elizabeth said nothing as she followed Clint into Fisher’s house. She knew she didn’t need to say anything. What had just happened said it all. Inside the cabin, the still-screaming little boy lay on the kitchen table, stripped to his waist. His parents were bent over him, trying to stop heavy bleeding at the boy’s left side near his waist line.

  “Let me have a look,” Clint asked Fisher.

  “Don’t touch him!” Mrs. Fisher screamed at Clint. “Child killer!”

  Clint shoved Fisher aside and bent over the child, and Mrs. Fisher tried to grab the baby away.

  “Let me look at him!” Clint growled at her. “I know how to treat bullet wounds.”

  Mrs. Fisher put a hand to her mouth and backed away, pulling her other children with her.

  Clint ordered Fisher to get some whiskey. “It’s just a flesh wound,” he told the man. “The way he’s screaming, he’s sure not hurt bad. He’s just scared.”

  “What would you know about little children?” Mrs. Fisher spat at him.

  Clint seemed to wilt. He grabbed the little boy and pulled him into his arms. “More than you think,” he told the baby’s mother. He picked up what looked like a clean towel nearby and pressed it to the little boy’s side, then carried him to a rocker and sat down with him.

  With his left arm around the child’s waist, he held the towel against the boy’s wound with his left hand. He moved his right arm around the baby’s back and held him close so that the child cried against his neck. Clint began rocking and talking soothingly to him.

  “It’s okay,” he told the bab
y. “Everything will be okay. Nobody is going to hurt you. Never again. Never again.” He kissed the boy’s straight hair, stunning everyone else in the room.

  Frowning, Fisher looked at Elizabeth.

  “He lost a little boy of his own to murderers,” she told the man, struggling against tears that were a mixture of remorse and relief. “He was the same age as your son.” She looked at the baby’s mother. “Mrs. Fisher, Clint would never deliberately harm a child. I know that he’s truly sorry.”

  The woman walked closer to her husband and took his arm. “Who are you?” she asked Elizabeth.

  “My name is Elizabeth Breckenridge. I traveled here with Clint to find my brother, Peter. He’s the preacher at—”

  “We know who Peter is,” Fisher broke in, studying Elizabeth with a frown. “You do not look like the type of woman who would travel with a bounty hunter.”

  Elizabeth took a handkerchief from a pocket of her skirt and wiped her eyes. “Mr. Brady was every bit a gentleman all the way here. In fact, we’re going to be married. What happened here…it’s a long story, Mr. Fisher, but it…had to happen.” She looked at Fisher pleadingly. “You should know that before we came in here Clint smashed his rifle in half. I think he’s done with the life he’s been leading the past four years. I hope that when your little boy is better you’ll let us visit…let us explain.”

  Little Toby actually stopped crying and fell asleep against Clint’s chest. Clint wiped at his own silent tears. “Tell me your side of what happened, Fisher,” he spoke up, his voice sounding like that of a tired, beaten man.

  Still frowning with a mixture of curiosity and disbelief, Fisher walked over and took a chair near Clint. Elizabeth dared to move an arm around his wife, who broke down and actually hugged her. “I thought he’d killed my baby,” she wept.

  Elizabeth looked past her at Clint and saw deep remorse in those blue eyes that minutes earlier had been so full of the old, angry Clint. She led Mrs. Fisher to another chair, then went to stand behind Clint while Roland Fisher gave his side of the story.