She sat down with him at the table. As they ate, the talk switched to things needing to be done in the cave. Their meat supply called for at most only a couple more successful hunting trips, one being to replace the one he had just aborted because of the storm. He began to tell her what he had in mind to add to his supplies for any such trip, from now on. One would be a sort of homemade sleeping bag, rather than the blankets he usually rolled himself in. Two, he should put a series of blocks or handles on the side of the sledge that would allow him to lift it, even if loaded, while he was lying flat on the snow surface beside it.
Also, he wanted an extra-light emergency pack, in addition to the one he wore always on his back. Another one that would carry only some food and perhaps a few other necessary things. Just such a sudden storm as he had experienced could last up to two days, under the sledge and the snow. He ought to be prepared with adequate means to keep him warm and fed that long.
His curiosity over this glow of hers went unsatisfied all through dinner and until Merry had cleared the table, scraping what little was left to scrape off their dishes into the coals of the fire and putting the dishes themselves to soak in a warm pot of water.
Having done this last, she wiped her hands on one of the cloths from the ranch she had chosen and laundered to act as dish towels and turned from the fire to confront him, still in his chair.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said.
Jeebee’s heart skipped a beat. In spite of himself a feeling of alarm kindled inside him. What might be good news from Merry’s viewpoint might well contain the seeds of something that would mean trouble for them both, seeds she might not suspect were there. But he smiled up at her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m pregnant,” Merry almost sang.
“My God!”
Jeebee erupted from the chair. The glow had suddenly gone out of Merry. She stared at him grimly.
“What do you mean, ‘
“There’s no hospital! No doctors!” Jeebee said almost wildly. “We probably couldn’t even lay our hands on a nurse if we searched for miles around! All you’ll have is me, and I’m not worth a damn when it comes to something like having a baby!”
The breath went out of Merry in a long relieved sigh.
“So that’s it,” she said, in a calmer voice. She pushed him backward. “Sit down.”
Numbly, almost tripped up by the edge of his chair seat behind his knees, and under the impulse of Merry’s not inconsiderable strength, Jeebee sat down abruptly.
“Now,” said Merry, sitting down in his lap and speaking directly into his face from only about six inches away, “let me tell you a few things. First, I helped at a birthing the first year Dad had the wagon going on its route, five years ago. I was fourteen. Since then I’ve been at dozens. In fact, I deliberately asked about possible births at every place we stopped, asked if I couldn’t be useful so I could learn as much about what had to be done as possible. Lots of times there was at least a neighbor who was due to give birth, and Dad would hold the wagon there until I had a chance to be part of it. What do you think was one of the things on my list of recommendations to people I might have asked to hire me this winter, if I hadn’t found you? I’m the closest thing to a trained midwife that they’d be likely to find. Now, what do you think about that?”
“But I—” Jeebee began.
“But you, nothing!” said Merry. “Let me tell you as well that Dad not only waited for me when it was necessary so that I could be at a birthing and help and learn, he also got me three books as soon as he could find them, after that first birth I was at when I was fourteen. He came to me and shoved them into my hands. ‘
“Fine,” said Jeebee, “and believe me I’m going to learn every word you know. But it’s still not going to make me into the equivalent of a real doctor, or even a real nurse. What if something goes wrong?”
“Sweetheart,” said Merry, “nothing is going to go wrong. I’m young, I’m strong, my hips are wide. What with the cheese, the beans, and the rest of the food we’ve been able to put together, and the vitamin tablets, I’m going to have proper nutrition during the months I’m carrying the baby. Nothing is going to go wrong. Just remember that women were having babies, sometimes all by themselves out in the middle of nowhere or in some cave, thousands of years before there were doctors or nurses or midwives. Besides, it’s not something you can change your mind about now. The baby’s on the way and I’m going to have it. Also, it’s going to be the best, prettiest, strongest baby that ever was. So you might as well just get used to the fact.”
“I will,” Jeebee said somewhat feebly, “just give me a little time, will you? I hadn’t thought about anything like this at all.”
Merry kissed him and got up off his lap.
“No, I don’t suppose you have,” she said. “Well, you can sleep on it tonight. But I’m going to start teaching you the first few paragraphs of the first book tomorrow.”
“That’s fine,” said Jeebee. But his voice still sounded a little weak in his own ears.
She grinned at him, her fists on her hips.
“You’re scared,” she said.
“Damn right,” Jeebee answered.
CHAPTER 33
He remained scared. Meanwhile, the winter wore on, the temperature lowered, and the snow grew deeper, until at last the curve of icy temperatures turned upward, the snow cover gradually began to decrease again, and they moved at last into spring. Throughout all this time, there were no lack of problems and emergencies that for the moment had been able to shove Merry’s condition out of the immediate center of his mind.
But the moment any of these were past, it returned to center stage in his thoughts, as the Powder River Pass had both filled him with foreboding but drawn him toward it.
As soon as he was free to think of something other than immediate necessities, the fact of the approaching birth would come back to him, inescapable, ominous, beckoning.
Face it any way he might, it remained a certainty that he alone was the only person Merry would have to turn to for help when the hour came. He was far from confident about how much help he would be then, in that time in which the life of not only the child growing within her, but her own, would be at balance.
It was something he had never imagined having to face. He, Jeebee, with a critical responsibility for the safe birth of a child and its mother. Nor did it help that the child would be his own, and the mother of that child the one person he loved most on earth.
There was no way he could alter or control what would happen. He knew that; but knowing this did not change his feelings. He took his fears out in a savage attack on what would be needed when the time came. Even the temporary relief this work gave him had to come in the intervals between his normal duties of keeping them fed, housed, and protected.
Survival required that he keep up his hunts down on the flatlands. Half a dozen more times before spring came, he was caught by storms while he was down there. On five of these occasions he managed without trouble. He waited them out, warm enough—if not exactly comfortable—in his homemade sleeping bag, under the shelter of the sledge and the snow that quickly drifted over him.
But the sixth time, the storm lasted sixteen hours, and after the first ten switched direction a quarter of the way around the compass. So that from this new angle the wind blew clear the drift that had accumulated over him and the sledge.
He had to wrestle the sledge into a new position, with the numbingly cold wind and snow pushing against him as if the sledge were a wooden sail, fighting him every inch of the way.
