Chapter 2 - THE CHILD BORN BEFORE DAWN
“I am going back for my son.”
Garrett Dawson heard the promise through Clara’s chattering teeth.
He believed her.
That was the problem.
Because the woman in his arms was half-frozen, barefoot, and close enough to giving birth that every few minutes her entire body locked against his chest.
“You’re going nowhere tonight,” he said.
Clara’s eyes opened.
“You promised.”
“I promised you decide.”
“You’re already deciding.”
“I’m deciding you don’t die before you get the chance.”
Even through the cold, anger flashed in her face.
Good.
Anger meant she still had strength.
Garrett shifted her against him and looked toward Smoke.
Riding with her in the saddle was impossible.
Walking would take too long.
His ranch was less than two miles east if he cut across Miller Ridge.
He wrapped Clara tighter in his coat.
“I’m putting you on Smoke. I’ll walk.”
“I can ride.”
“You can barely breathe.”
“I can ride.”
Another contraction hit.
Clara cried out and doubled around her belly.
Garrett’s stomach turned.
He had attended calves.
Foals.
Once helped a neighboring woman’s husband boil water while the midwife worked.
That did not make him qualified for whatever was coming.
The storm had other opinions.
He got Clara onto the saddle.
She gripped the horn.
Garrett took Smoke’s reins and started through the snow.
Every hundred yards he looked back.
“Stay with me.”
“I’m not dying.”
“That sounded less convincing than you think.”
“I have two children.”
The sentence came through clenched teeth.
“I’m not dying.”
Garrett kept walking.
The Dawson ranch appeared through the storm like something rising from the ground.
Low timber house.
Barn.
Windmill turning uselessly in the gale.
Garrett shouted before they reached the porch.
“Ruth!”
The door opened.
His housekeeper, Ruth Bell, stood framed in lamplight.
She was sixty, widowed, and unimpressed by almost everything.
Her eyes moved from Garrett to Clara.
Then to Clara’s belly.
“Oh, Lord.”
“Helpful,” Garrett muttered.
Ruth came down the steps.
“How close?”
Clara answered herself.
“Very.”
Ruth took one look at her.
“Not making Silver Creek.”
Garrett’s jaw tightened.
“There’s a midwife north of—”
“In this storm?”
Ruth shook her head.
“Baby’s coming here.”
Clara grabbed Garrett’s sleeve.
“My son.”
“I know.”
“No.”
Her nails dug through his shirt.
“You don’t understand. Warren gets angry.”
Garrett’s eyes darkened.
“At a four-year-old?”
“He’ll punish Eli because I ran.”
“You didn’t run.”
Clara looked toward the storm.
“I left.”
“To stay alive.”
“He won’t care.”
Garrett had spent years learning how to keep his temper controlled.
Cattle responded badly to anger.
So did horses.
Men were different.
Men sometimes deserved it.
He looked at Ruth.
“Get her inside.”
Clara resisted.
“Garrett.”
“I’m going.”
Her eyes widened.
“What?”
“To the Caldwells.”
“No.”
Now it was her turn to stop him.
“They’ll shoot you.”
“Maybe.”
“They have three hired men staying there because of the winter herds.”
“Then I won’t walk through the front gate asking politely.”
Ruth snapped:
“Nobody’s doing anything until this baby is born.”
Garrett looked at her.
Ruth looked back.
He lost.
Clara nearly smiled.
Then another contraction stole it.
Ruth took charge.
Warm blankets.
Water.
A bedroom near the kitchen.
Garrett was ordered outside.
He stood in the hallway listening to Clara breathe through pain.
He hated every sound.
Too many memories lived in rooms with women suffering.
Sarah.
Seven years earlier.
Fever.
His daughter Rose coughing beside her.
The doctor arriving one day too late.
Garrett had buried both beneath a cottonwood on the hill.
After that he stopped entering that room.
Stopped speaking their names unless forced.
He worked instead.
Work did not die.
Work did not beg you to stay when you could do nothing.
Then Clara screamed.
Garrett’s hand clenched against the wall.
Ruth appeared briefly.
“She needs something to bite.”
Garrett handed over a folded leather strap from his tack bag.
Ruth stared.
“That all you’ve got?”
“It’s clean.”
“Men.”
She disappeared again.
An hour passed.
Then two.
The storm deepened.
Garrett sat on the floor outside the room.
At some point Clara called:
“Garrett?”
He was standing before he realized he had moved.
Ruth opened the door enough to look at him.
“She wants you.”
He stepped inside.
Clara lay propped against pillows, hair plastered to her face, cheeks flushed from effort.
She looked furious.
Terrified.
Alive.
“What?”
She reached for his hand.
He gave it.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
He sat beside her.
“But you’ve been telling the blizzard what it can’t have for six hours.”
Her fingers tightened around his.
“I’m scared.”
The honesty nearly undid him.
Garrett looked at her.
“So am I.”
Clara blinked.
Most men she knew would have lied.
Garrett didn’t.
Ruth said from the foot of the bed:
“Next one, Clara.”
The contraction came.
Clara screamed.
Garrett let her crush his hand.
“Again,” Ruth said.
Clara shook her head.
“I can’t.”
Garrett leaned close.
“Eli.”
Her eyes opened.
“That boy is waiting for you.”
Something changed in her face.
Garrett continued.
“And this baby is trying to get here.”
She sobbed.
“So bring her.”
Clara pushed.
Once.
Twice.
Then the room filled with a new sound.
Small.
Angry.
Alive.
A baby cried.
Clara collapsed backward.
Garrett stopped breathing.
Ruth lifted a tiny girl into the lamplight.
“Well.”
She smiled.
“Miss Clara, you’ve got yourself a daughter.”
Clara began crying.
Not quietly.
Garrett turned away.
Some moments felt too private to witness.
Then Clara whispered:
“Let me see her.”
Ruth wrapped the baby and placed her against Clara’s chest.
The infant rooted blindly.
Clara touched one tiny cheek.
“Hello.”
Garrett looked back.
Something inside him broke.
Not painfully.
Worse.
Softly.
He remembered Rose.
The way Sarah had held her.
The way hope once made a room dangerous.
Clara noticed his face.
“You can go.”
“No.”
He swallowed.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
Garrett almost laughed.
“Neither are you.”
Ruth began cleaning the room.
“What’s her name?”
Clara looked down.
“I don’t know.”
“Henry pick one?”
Clara’s expression changed.
“No.”
She looked at Garrett.
“He wanted another boy.”
Garrett’s jaw hardened.
Ruth muttered something under her breath.
Clara stared at her daughter.
Then whispered:
“Hope.”
Garrett felt the name.
“Hope Holbrook?”
Clara shook her head.
“Hope Caldwell.”
Her voice became complicated.
“Henry was still her father.”
Whatever else he had been.
Whatever his family had become.
Garrett respected the answer.
By dawn, the storm had weakened.
Clara slept.
Hope slept beside her in a wooden cradle Ruth found in storage.
Garrett saddled Smoke.
Ruth met him in the kitchen.
“You’re going.”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“No.”
He loaded his rifle.
“Sheriff first.”
“Good.”
Ruth crossed her arms.
“You thinking straight?”
Garrett looked toward the bedroom.
“Straight enough.”
Ruth studied him.
“You cannot save every woman because Sarah died.”
His face closed.
“This isn’t about Sarah.”
“Everything you refuse to say her name around is about Sarah.”
Garrett looked at her.
“Warren Caldwell kept a four-year-old behind a bolted door after throwing his laboring mother into a blizzard.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what this is about.”
Ruth nodded.
“Then bring the boy home.”
Garrett rode toward Silver Creek.
The sheriff’s office sat beside the telegraph station.
Sheriff Owen Mercer was already there.
Garrett told him everything.
Mercer listened.
Then frowned.
“Problem.”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Margaret Caldwell came in before the storm.”
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“She filed papers claiming Clara was unstable.”
Garrett’s jaw tightened.
“What papers?”
“Emergency guardianship request over Eli.”
“On what grounds?”
“She says Clara threatened to take the boy and disappear.”
Garrett laughed without humor.
“She threw Clara into a storm.”
“I believe you.”
“Then come with me.”
Mercer hesitated.
“That’s the other problem.”
“What?”
“Caldwell’s lawyer rode in from Denver last week.”
“So?”
“He brought a will.”
Garrett stared.
“Henry’s?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Mercer looked uncomfortable.
“It names Margaret guardian of Eli if Clara is found unfit.”
Garrett went still.
“Found by who?”
“That’s the part I don’t like.”
Mercer pulled a copy from his desk.
A clause had been added by hand.
Witnessed.
Signed.
It claimed Henry believed Clara suffered “periods of instability” and that his mother should control the boy’s upbringing and inheritance.
Garrett read the signature.
Something felt wrong.
He had known Henry Caldwell.
Not well.
But enough.
Henry signed cattle receipts with a peculiar hooked H.
This H was straight.
Garrett looked at Mercer.
“This signature’s wrong.”
Mercer’s eyes narrowed.
“You sure?”
“I bought stock from him twice.”
Garrett handed the paper back.
“And if they forged a dead man’s will, Eli isn’t the only thing they’re hiding.”
They rode toward the Caldwell farm with two deputies.
By the time they reached the property, the sun was beginning to push weakly through the clouds.
The farmhouse door opened.
Margaret stood there.
Black dress.
Perfect posture.
No surprise.
“Sheriff.”
Mercer dismounted.
“We’re here for Eli.”
Her expression did not change.
“The boy is under my protection.”
Garrett stepped down.
“From his mother?”
Margaret looked at him.
“Dawson.”
“You know me.”
“Everyone knows the widower who decided grief made him holy.”
Mercer lifted a hand.
“Enough.”
Margaret smiled faintly.
“You’re too late anyway.”
Garrett’s stomach dropped.
“Where is he?”
She looked toward the road.
“Gone.”
Garrett took one step forward.
Mercer stopped him.
“Gone where?”
Margaret answered calmly:
“Denver.”
“With who?”
“My son Warren.”
Garrett’s blood went cold.
“When?”
“An hour ago.”
“Why?”
“To protect him from a woman willing to abandon him in a storm.”
Garrett’s voice dropped.
“She crawled through snow barefoot because you locked him away.”
Margaret’s smile disappeared.
“That is her story.”
Garrett looked toward the road.
Fresh wagon tracks were already filling with snow.
An hour’s head start.
Maybe more.
Mercer cursed.
Then Margaret added:
“Tell Clara something for me.”
Garrett turned.
“She gave birth to another Caldwell child last night, didn’t she?”
He said nothing.
Margaret knew.
Too fast.
Her expression sharpened.
“If it’s a girl, she’s irrelevant.”
Garrett went completely still.
“What did you say?”
Margaret looked almost pleased.
“Henry’s estate passes through the male line.”
Eli.
That was why they kept him.
Not grief.
Not love.
Inheritance.
Garrett understood.
Then Margaret delivered the part she thought would end him.
“By noon tomorrow, Warren will have Eli across the state line.”
Garrett looked at Sheriff Mercer.
Mercer was already mounting.
Garrett pulled himself into Smoke’s saddle.
The storm had nearly taken Clara.
The Caldwells had taken Eli.
Now Garrett Dawson turned his horse toward Denver.
May you like
And this time, he was not riding toward a scream.
He was riding toward a war.
