might make a difference. Bob might see it, think it was theirs. It might startle him into life again.
It was unnatural, she knew, for a mother to leave her child a day after it was born. Of course, children were endless work. They came when you didn't want them and had needs you didn't always want to meet. Worst of all, they died no matter how much you loved them-the death of her own had frozen the hope inside her harder than the wintry ground. Her hopes had frozen hard and she vowed to keep it that way, and yet she hadn't: the hopes thawed. She had hopes for her girls, and might even come to have them for the baby at her bosom, child of another mother. Weak as it was, and slim though its chances, she liked holding the child to her. I stole you, she thought. I got you and I didn't even have to go through the pain. Your mother's a fool not to want you, but she's smart to realize you wouldn't have much of a chance with her and those buffalo hunters.
It wasn't smartness, though, she thought-the woman just didn't care.
She looked down at Bob and saw that the baby had made no difference. He lay as he had, nothing left to him but need. Suddenly Clara felt angry that the man had been fool enough to think he could break that mare, when both she and Cholo had warned him to leave her alone. It made her angry at herself, to have lived so long with a horse trader who had no more savvy than that.
Yet there he was, his eyes staring upward, as helpless as the baby. She put the child down again and fed Bob soup until her wrist got tired from holding his head. Then she lay Bob's head back on his pillow, and ate the rest of the chicken soup herself.
76.
BIG ZWEY WAS WORRIED that Elmira had left the baby. When she came out to the wagon, she didn't have it. 'Hitch the team and let's go,' she said, and that was all she said. He did it, but he felt confused.
'Ain't we gonna take the baby?' he asked shyly, just before they left.
Elmira didn't answer. She had no breath to answer with, she was so tired. Walking downstairs and out to the wagon had taken all her strength. Zwey had to lift her into the wagon, at that, and she sat propped against the buffalo skins, too tired even to care about the smell. She was so tired that she felt like she wasn't there. She couldn't even tell Zwey to start-Luke had to do it.
'Let's go, Zwey,' he said. 'She don't want the baby.'
Zwey started the wagon, and they were soon out of sight of the house, but he was bothered. He kept looking back at Ellie, propped against the buffalo skins, her eyes wide open. Why didn't she want her baby? It was a puzzle. He had never understood the whole business, but he knew mothers took care of babies, just as husbands took care of wives. In his eyes he had married Ellie, and he intended to take good care of her. He felt he was her husband. They had come all that way together in the wagon. Luke had tried to marry her too, but Zwey had soon stopped that, and Luke had been behaving a lot better since.
Luke had tied his horse beside the wagon, and he rode on the wagon seat beside Zwey, who kept looking around to see if Ellie was asleep. She wasn't moving, but her eyes were still wide open.
'What are you looking at?' Luke asked.
'I wisht she'd brought the baby,' Zwey said. 'I always wanted us to have one.'
The way he said it struck Luke as curious. It was almost as if Zwey thought the baby was his.
'Why would you care? It ain't yours,' Luke said, to scotch that suspicion. Even if Zwey had got up his nerve to approach Ellie, which he doubted, they hadn't been on the road long enough to make a baby.
'We're married,' Zwey answered. 'I guess it's ours.'
A suspicion dawned on Luke which was even more curious-the suspicion that Zwey didn't even understand about men and women. They had spent days around the buffalo herds when the bulls and cows were mating, and yet Zwey had evidently never connected such goings-on with humans. Luke remembered that Zwey never went with whores. He mainly just watched the wagon when the other hunters went to town. Zwey had always been considered the dumbest of the dumb, but Luke knew that none of the hunters had suspected him of being that dumb. That much dumbness was hard to believe-Luke wanted to make sure he hadn't misunderstood.
'Now, wait a minute, Zwey,' he said. 'Why do you think that baby was yours?'
Zwey was silent a long time. Luke was smiling, as he did when he wanted to make fun of him. It didn't ordinarily much bother him that Luke made fun of him, but he didn't want him to make fun about the baby. He didn't want Luke to talk about it. It was painful enough that she had had it and then gone off and left it. He decided not to answer.
'What's the matter with you, Zwey?' Luke said. 'You and Ellie ain't really married. You ain't married to somebody just because she comes on a trip with you.'
Zwey began to feel very sad-it might be true, what Luke said. Yet he liked to think that he and Ellie were married.
'Well, we are,' he said finally.
Luke began to laugh. He turned to Ellie, who was still sitting with her back against the skins.
'He thinks that baby's his,' Luke said. 'He really thinks it's his. I guess he thinks all he had to do was look at you to make it happen.'
Then Luke laughed a long time. Zwey felt sad, but he didn't say any more. Luke could always find something to laugh at him about.
Elmira began to feel cold. She started to shiver and reached for the pile of blankets in the wagon, but she was too weak even to untangle the blankets.
'Help me, boys,' she said. 'I'm real cold.'
Zwey immediately handed the reins to Luke and went back to help cover her up. It was a warm night, but Ellie was still shivering. He put the blankets on her, but she didn't stop shivering. On the wagon Seat, Luke would laugh from time to time when he thought of Zwey's baby. Before they had gone five miles, Ellie was delirious. She huddled in the blankets, talking to herself, mostly about the man called Dee Boot. Her look was so wild that Zwey became frightened. Once his hand happened to brush her and her skin was as hot as if the sun were burning down on her.
'Luke, she's got a fever,' Zwey said.
'I ain't a doctor,' Luke said. 'We shouldn't have left that house.'
Zwey bathed her face with water, but it was like putting water on a stove, she was so hot. Zwey didn't know what to do. A person so hot could die. He had seen much death, and very often it came with fever. He didn't understand why she had had the baby if it was only going to make her so sick. While he was bathing her face, she sat up straight and looked at him, her eyes wide.
'Dee, is that you?' she asked. 'Where have you been?' Then she fell back against the skins.
Luke drove as fast as he could, but it was still a long road. The sky was light in the east when they finally found a wagon track and pulled into Ogallala.
The town was not large-just a long street of saloons and stores, and a few shacks on the slope north of the Platte. One of the saloons was still open. Three cowboys were lounging around outside, getting ready to mount up and go back to work. The two who were soberest were laughing at the third because he was so drunk he was trying to mount his horse from the wrong side.
'Hell, Joe's fixing to get on backwards,' one said. They were not much interested in the fact that a wagon had pulled up. The drunk cowboy slipped and fell in the street. The other cowboys found that hilarious, one laughing so hard that he had to go over by the saloon and vomit.
'Where's the doctor live?' Luke asked the soberest cowboy. 'We got a sick woman here.'
At that the cowboys all stopped and stared. All they could see was Ellie's hair. The rest of her was covered with blankets.
'Where'd she come from?' one asked.
'Arkansas,' Luke said. 'Where's the doctor?'
Ellie had dropped into a fevered doze. She opened her eyes and saw the buildings. It must be the town where Dee was. She began tO. shove off the blankets.
'Do you know Dee Boot?' she asked the cowboys. 'I come to find Dee Boot.'
The cowboys stared at her as if they hadn't heard. Her hair was long and tangled, and she was wearing a
