Hill Country Courtship

Chapter Two

“The nerve of the man!” Maude seethed to Caroline, finding her on the veranda. “To imagine that this was an event where he could hire a—a nursemaid!” She stared back out over the green expanse of lawn, but she didn’t see him. Perhaps he stood speaking to one of the ladies out of sight, or perhaps he had taken his silly offer and left. Either way, she cared very little, except to hope that he had not spoiled the party for anyone other than her.

“As he put it, the last thing he was looking for was a wife—as if anyone would have him as her husband with an attitude like that! Can you imagine, he called the idea of finding someone to love and build a life with nothing more than ‘romantic claptrap’!”

“A companion,” Caroline corrected her. “Not a nursemaid. At least, that’s what you said he called the position. It’s honest work.”

“I don’t see the difference,” Maude snapped, then was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, Caroline dear, but there was something so high-handed about him that irritated me right down to the bone. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“No offense taken,” Caroline said cheerfully. “But perhaps you ought to consider his offer, Maude. Wouldn’t living out on a ranch be better than the boardinghouse? From the sound of it, you’d have only one cranky old person to live with, rather than all those complaining boarders with all their tobacco spitting and biscuit hogging. And perhaps Mr. MacLaren would be so grateful for your help with his mother that he might lose some of that high-handedness and realize what a treasure he has in you. He might be quite a pleasant man underneath that initial curtness.”

Maude stared at her friend. Of all the things Caroline Collier might have said, she hadn’t expected her to hint that MacLaren might decide to take a shine to her, after all.

“I don’t think Jonas MacLaren seemed like anything but a confirmed bachelor and dedicated misogynist—how’s that for a word?” she asked the former schoolmarm with a chuckle.

“Very good, Maude. You must have been reading the dictionary again,” Caroline teased. “If you’re that fixed against the man and his offer, then so be it. I can see that you won’t change your mind. But perhaps he’ll convince one of our newer members to take the job and whisk her off to his lair at Five Mile Hill Ranch, never to be seen again,” she said with a droll imitation of an evil cackle.

“And you must have been reading fairy tales,” Maude shot back. “In any case, I am not desiring to exchange my room at the boardinghouse for what might well be a worse existence. If Mr. MacLaren’s rude and dismissive manner wasn’t reason enough, the isolation of living out there would be. It’s so far away from everything I’m used to. I’ve only ever lived in town, you know. And out on the ranch, I’d never get to see any of you, or come to church...”

“Pshaw, you make it sound like it’s the end of the earth,” Caroline said.

“It’s ten miles if it’s an inch from here,” Maude argued. “Maybe farther. There’s no use arguing, Caroline, my mind’s made up.”

Caroline sighed. “All right, then. Forget I suggested it. Perhaps we should tell the fiddlers to start tuning up so our single Spinsters can invite the men inside. Too bad Mr. MacLaren left—there’d be another man to partner the ladies.”

Why did Caroline have to mention him again? Now Maude would be tormented with the image of Jonas MacLaren, his arm around her waist, gazing down at her through those intense hazel eyes as he swept her around the floor in a waltz...

But no, she refused to clutter her mind with such nonsense! She had no interest whatsoever in dancing with the man. And even if she did, he likely had no interest in “romantic claptrap” like dancing, either. Indeed, the rest of the evening—and, as far as she was concerned, the foreseeable future—would be far more pleasant without Jonas MacLaren.

* * *

Maude was startled out of her sleep later that evening by the pounding on the front door of the boardinghouse. Gracious, it’s got to be the middle of the night, she thought, as the remnants of her dream faded like smoke in a breeze. Didn’t the sign on the porch plainly state that new boarders must arrive by no later than eight at night?

But Mrs. Meyer was no stickler for rules when she had a vacancy. The boardinghouse provided her livelihood.

Still drowsy, Maude huddled under the quilt and heard rain drumming on the tin roof overhead. Then she heard Mrs. Meyer’s footsteps below and her sleepy voice calling out, “All right, I’m coming, I’m coming! Stop pounding or you’ll wake everyone in the place!”

Mr. Renz, the drummer from Kansas, had left just this morning, so there was an empty room, Maude knew—the one right next to hers. In a few minutes there’d be footsteps on the stairs, and she’d hear Mrs. Meyer’s muffled voice informing the new arrival of the house rules before she turned over the key and let them all get back to sleep.

But, instead of that, the next sound she heard was Mrs. Meyer’s running feet, followed by a pounding on her own door.

“Maude, Maude, get up, I need your help! There’s a woman here, and I think she’s about to give birth!”

Hoping she was still dreaming and there would be no one there when she got downstairs, Maude threw her wrapper on and trudged to the door, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles.

It was no dream. Mrs. Meyer stood there, wearing a threadbare, patched wrapper, her iron-gray hair in a thick braid down her back. Trembling, she clutched a candle in a tin holder. Her shakiness left a dancing shadow on the wall.

“Where is she?” Maude asked, for Mrs. Meyer was alone in the hall.

“Downstairs at the entrance,” the boardinghouse proprietress said in a hushed voice, jerking her head toward the stairs behind her. “She’s drenched—and bleeding, too, I think. She didn’t look strong enough to make it up the stairs, even with me to help her.”

Down the hall, a couple of the other inhabitants’ doors creaked opened and curious faces peeked out to see what all the fuss was about.

Mrs. Meyer seized on the closest one. “Delbert, come with me. There’s a girl downstairs about to have a baby. I need you to assist Maude to get the poor girl upstairs to the vacant room, then I want you to run for Doc Walker. I’ll get the bed ready. Hurry, now—she’s about ready to drop—”

Whether “drop” meant to deliver the baby or Mrs. Meyer thought the woman might collapse, Maude didn’t linger to clarify. Darting a glance at Delbert Perry, who looked thunderstruck at the older lady’s words, Maude dashed for the stairs.

The girl huddled in the circle of lamplight cast by the kerosene lamp Mrs. Meyer had left burning by the door, clutching an abdomen that looked impossibly large in such a small frame. In the flickering light she was waxy pale, slight in stature and possessed of a matted wild mane of a nondescript color. An irregular splotch of blood stained the floorboards beneath her battered short boots. Mrs. Meyer’s statement seemed correct in both interpretations. The baby was clearly coming—and soon—and the pregnant girl herself looked as if she might swoon from exhaustion at any moment.

“What’s your name? Is it your time? Is the baby coming?” Maude demanded as she skipped the last two steps and landed with a thud next to the girl.

“April Mae Horvath, and yeah, it’s comin’. I bin havin’ pains since early mornin’,” the skinny girl told Maude, then drew back her lips to let loose a scream as another pain seized her. The small pool of blood on the floor widened. “Is Felix here? This was where he told me he stayed when he came to Simpson Creek—he has t’be here, t’ help me...”

“Are you talking about Felix Renz, the drummer?”

The girl nodded emphatically, her eyes lit with a weary hope.

“No, he left this morning.”

The girl clutched Maude’s arm so tight it would undoubtedly leave a bruise, her eyes desperate. “But he cain’t be gone!” she cried. “I come fifty miles here to find him!” Big tears rolled down her pallid cheeks and trickled into the rain-drenched neck of her dress.

“Is he your husband? He never said—” But she’d given her name as Horvath, hadn’t she? So Renz hadn’t married this slip of a girl who now claimed him as the father of her soon-to-be-born child. Inwardly, Maude consigned the drummer to the nether regions for leaving this girl to whatever fate dealt out. But she couldn’t afford to spare more than a thought to him, wherever he may be. Her attention right now had to stay focused on the girl. His problem was now their problem, and she meant to deal with it as best she could.

Maude stopped talking and grabbed the laboring girl just as she sagged toward the floor in a faint.

“Delbert, help!” she yelled up to the town handyman, who still stood transfixed at the top of the stairs.

The four years since her father had been cut down on Main Street by raiding Comanches fell away as if no time had passed at all. She’d assisted her father at a score of deliveries. Admittedly, the situation had never before been quite so...fraught. But, still, she knew what needed to be done. “Get her arms,” she told Delbert, “and I’ll get her legs. Ella—” for her friend was awake now, too, and hanging over the railing above, watching with wide eyes “—as soon as we get past, you run down to the kitchen and set some water to boiling while Delbert goes to fetch the doctor.” Even as she rattled out the instructions, she said a prayer that Nolan Walker would be able to stanch the bleeding. From the pallor of the girl’s skin, she’d already lost way too much blood.

Once they’d helped April Mae into the bed whose covers Mrs. Meyer had hastily pulled down, and Delbert had dashed out into the downpour in the direction of the doctor’s house, Maude and Mrs. Meyer assisted the girl out of her blood-drenched dress and into one of Maude’s clean nightgowns. Every three minutes or so they had to stop what they were doing while April Mae shrieked her way through a contraction.

“April Mae, don’t scream!” Maude ordered her. “Breathe with the pain, don’t hold your breath. You’re just making it harder for that baby to come. Watch me, next time it starts, and I’ll show you—”

“Ain’t F-Felix h-here?” April Mae panted, ignoring her, while Maude grimly shoved dry towels under her to replace the blood-soaked ones she’d just pulled out. “He said he always stays here, when he...comes to sell his wares in San Saba County... You got to find him, lady,” she said to Maude, watery blue eyes pleading.

“I’m Maude,” Maude told her, realizing she hadn’t introduced herself during all the ruckus. “We’ll find him,” she promised, though she had no idea where the drummer had been heading. And when they did find him, she was going to give him two black eyes before she’d let him see his baby, she vowed. “But first we’ve got to help you give birth to his son or daughter. How old are you, April Mae? Where are your parents?” And why did they give you two months as a name?

“Fifteen last week,” the girl told her with a wan attempt at a smile. “And they’re back in Vic—” Her words broke off as another contraction seized her in a merciless grip. Maude tried to help her breathe through it—to demonstrate the technique that would help with the pain—but April Mae was too frightened and pain stricken to pay her much mind.

After an endless minute, the contraction passed, and April Mae continued what she’d been about to say. “Don’t bother writin’ them—they disowned me after they figured out I was gonna be a mother and that Felix wasn’t likely to come back. I’ve been living on what I could beg or steal ever since I set out for Simpson Creek...”

Maude mentally consigned the parents to the same place she’d wished Felix Renz. How could parents abandon a daughter who needed help, no matter what she had done? And only just fifteen, at that. That meant she’d been nothing more than fourteen when that wretched drummer had taken advantage of her innocence. Still just a child, without the wisdom or understanding to avoid falling for the wiles of a charming man.

Just then Ella arrived with a pot of steaming water. “I boiled a knife in the water, Maude, in case you have to cut the cord. Good thing you told me about that time you helped your papa deliver those twins, or I wouldn’t have known you’d need one.”

“Good girl,” Maude praised her friend with an appreciative look. She hoped Ella wouldn’t be too frightened to get married after tonight, knowing childbearing would likely be part of her lot.

But where in the world could the doctor be? If he didn’t arrive soon, he might miss the main event entirely. She’d just seen a hint of fuzzy hair while checking the laboring girl’s progress during the last contraction, so delivery was imminent. She was going to have to handle the delivery herself, Maude figured.

Both women started as the door banged open below.

“I cain’t get the doctor!” Delbert bellowed up the stairs. “He’s away fer th’ night, his wife said, at someone’s deathbed out on a ranch. But she says she’s comin’ t’help just as soon as she can take her young’un to the preacher’s wife!”

This might well turn into a deathbed, as well—a double one of both mother and baby, Maude thought grimly, as blood continued to stain the sheet crimson beneath April Mae. She’d be glad of Sarah Walker’s help, if she came in time, but while Sarah had assisted her husband, just as Maude used to assist her father, there was a limit to what either of them could do. While they’d both helped deliver babies in the past, she doubted Sarah knew any better than Maude herself how to stop the bleeding that was draining away April Mae’s life.

“Did you hear me, Miss Maude?” Delbert called again. “I said Doc Walker ain’t comin’! You want me to ride t’San Saba for their sawbones?”

April Mae’s eyes had grown even more frightened at what Delbert had yelled up the stairs, and her cheeks grew paler, if that was possible. Her breathing came in panted, ragged gasps.

“Tell Delbert we heard him, so he can stop bellowing. There’s no time to fetch the Saba doctor,” Maude told Mrs. Meyer, who stood at the door as if guarding it from the other inhabitants—though she doubted any of the other boardinghouse residents would try to enter. This room was the last place any normal man would wish to be.

Maude gently took hold of the girl’s chin and directed it so that April Mae looked at no one but her. “Don’t you worry, April Mae,” she said steadily. “I’m the daughter of a doctor and I’ve assisted at dozens of deliveries so I know exactly what to do.” It wasn’t quite a lie, but it was certainly an exaggeration. “The doctor’s wife is coming to help, and she, too, has assisted at births. And she’s a mother herself,” she added, praying Sarah would hurry. Sarah wouldn’t be able to run, for she was just about to give birth again herself.

Lord, we could use Your help here, she prayed, and then April Mae’s hand tightened around her wrist.

“It’s coming!” she cried.

And it was. After another fierce, long contraction, April Mae’s baby girl slid into the world, screaming at the indignity of it all, with a thatch of black hair as thick as her drummer father’s.

By the time Sarah Walker arrived half an hour later, breathing hard and rubbing her distended abdomen, they had the squalling baby wiped off and wrapped up warmly, and she had taken her first suckle from her mother. April Mae had fallen asleep with a weary smile on her face after telling Maude the baby’s name was Hannah.

Mrs. Meyer had gone downstairs to make coffee, which Maude sorely needed. April Mae well deserved the rest she was taking, but Maude had resolved to stay awake until she was assured that all was well with mother and child.

“I see you’ve taken care of everything,” Sarah said to Maude. “See, you didn’t need me after all. How is she?”

Maude motioned for Sarah to leave the room with her. “We’ll be right back, Ella.”

Her friend looked up from where she sat holding the sleeping baby and nodded. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“I’m worried about her, Sarah. She lost too much blood. Did you see how pale she was?”

Sarah nodded, her face solemn. “Did you check her abdomen?”

Maude knew she referred to whether or not the womb had firmed up again after the delivery. The difference could be felt through the skin. If it hadn’t, April Mae might continue to bleed. “It’s still softer than I’d like, but I kneaded it.” Both women knew rubbing the area firmly could make the womb tighten up and stop the bleeding.

“You’ll have to keep checking every so often. Why don’t we pray, and enlist the help of the Great Physician?” Sarah suggested, holding out her hands to Maude, and together they stood in the shadowy hallway, as Sarah began, “Lord, we come to You in great need of Your healing touch for April Mae Horvath...”

* * *

“So yer trip inta town was an utter failure, Jonas?” Coira MacLaren inquired from her rocking chair near the fire. Her brogue was as thick as a stack of Scottish oatcakes, as if she’d just disembarked the ship that had carried her and Jonas from Scotland this month rather than six years ago. Though her son sat behind her, not wanting to be so close to the heat, she didn’t turn to aim her disapproval. She knew quite well the power of her spiteful words. Whether she faced him or not, she could be certain they would hit the mark. They always did.

Still, Jonas was glad she couldn’t see his involuntary stiffening. “I didn’t find anyone looking for work whom I thought suitable to see to tend you, Mother, but I wouldn’t call the trip a total waste of time,” he said, keeping his tone calm. “I had a pleasant meal.” One free of your carping. He wasn’t about to tell her he’d attended the barbecue put on by the Simpson Creek Spinsters’ Club or she’d be on him again about marrying and producing a bairn or two before she died.

Before he’d gone into town, he’d been vague about the details of his intended trip, only implying that he’d be in a position to speak to several females about becoming his mother’s companion.

“Whatever you ate, ’twas nothing you couldn’t have gotten from Senora Morales without wasting precious coin,” his mother grumbled. “But I warn you, Jonas, the time will come, and soon, when that poor overworked woman will refuse to do all the cooking and cleaning and tending of your old mother, and then she’ll quit altogether. Then where will you be? It’s not as if you could do all of that extra work and still tend your ranch, could you? You didn’t speak to a single lass about hiring on here?”

An image of Maude Harkey’s riot of red curls and eyes the hue of spring bluebonnets swam into his head. “Aye, I did speak to one, but she didn’t want the job,” he said, and hoped his mother would leave it at that.

“Just one? You’d said you’d be able to speak to several,” Coira MacLaren snapped.

His mother’s health wasn’t robust, but there was nothing wrong with her memory, unfortunately. Her mind was sharp as a dirk and her tongue just as cutting. He’d learned to cope by pretending nothing she said affected him, or sometimes, when his temper was truly frayed, by responding in kind, but it didn’t make him feel better to do so.

“There were, but I thought the one I spoke to was the best candidate.” He couldn’t say why he thought so, other than the air of competence Maude Harkey wore like a shield—and the firmness of her resolve that made him believe she might be a match for even his mother’s cantankerousness. It certainly wasn’t that he was attracted to her for his own sake. No, he was done with all that.

“Did you think to be a miser and offer her less than the thirty dollars a month we agreed upon?” his mother asked, suspicion threaded through her voice like the tightest-woven wool tartan.

It was ironic that she accused him of miserliness—normally it was his mother who took Scottish frugality to the extreme.

“No.” He hadn’t even gotten to the subject of wages, as he recalled. As soon as Maude Harkey learned what he was asking, she’d refused to consider his proposition outright. Now he wished he had gone ahead and taken the time to meet some of the other young ladies at the barbecue. He shouldn’t have let the redheaded Miss Harkey blind him to the possible suitability of the others. As he’d said, it wasn’t as if he was seeking a wife.

“Well, you’d best be searching for some way to convince a woman to come out here,” his mother continued. “I’ve no time for your nonsense or your dillydallying.”

Jonas gritted his teeth and forced himself not to respond. After all, his mother wasn’t entirely wrong. He did need to find her a companion as soon as possible. He resolved that he would make another trip into town, as soon as he could find the time to get away from the ranch.

And this time, he wouldn’t leave until he’d found a woman who’d say yes.

Chapter Three

After their middle-of-the-night ordeal, Maude slept right through Sunday breakfast. When she finally awoke, she felt a pleasant sense of accomplishment. Despite April Mae’s sudden and entirely unexpected appearance on their doorstep, they had helped her deliver a beautiful, healthy baby. Maude’s father would have been proud.

She couldn’t help grinning. There was a baby in the boardinghouse, a pink innocent creature all fresh and new, with that incomparable baby smell. Soon they’d have to do what they could to track down tiny Hannah’s errant father and insist he do right by April Mae and their child, but for now, Maude could enjoy the presence of an infant in her dreary life for her to care for.

Excited about the prospect of holding tiny Hannah, Maude dressed, washed her hands with water from the ewer, dried them on a towel and left her room. She’d go to church, then on to Ella’s café and help her friend there for awhile, but she couldn’t resist taking a few minutes to cuddle the baby first and see if the new mother was resting all right.

She found Mrs. Meyer had beaten her to it. The old woman was sitting in the rocking chair in April Mae’s room, humming, little Hannah in her arms. An old wooden cradle sat on the floor between the bed and the rocking chair. Mrs. Meyer must have brought it down from the attic, Maude thought. Had it been from that long-ago time when the proprietress had been a young mother? How nice that it was getting used again.

April Mae’s eyes were closed, but she opened them at the creaking of the opening door. Her gaze darted first to the infant, then, satisfied, to Maude.

“How are you feeling?”

“Tired. Sore...but ain’t she purty?” April Mae said, smiling at her child, her eyes bright with pride.

Mrs. Meyer rose and handed Maude the baby. “I’d better go start workin’ on dinner—noon’ll be here before we know it,” she said, and left.

“She’s perfect,” Maude agreed, even as she took note of the purple shadows under April Mae’s eyes. Her face was slightly swollen from the exertion she’d gone through the night before, but Maude told herself not to jump to conclusions that anything was amiss. All women looked like that after delivering a baby, more or less. “Is she nursing all right?”

“She’s getting the hang of it,” April Mae said, still smiling, but her eyelids flickered drowsily.

“It’s all right to go back to sleep,” Maude assured her. “You need to rest up after the wonderful job you did last night, bringing Hannah into the world. I’ll just sit and hold her for a few minutes, then put her in the cradle when I have to leave. Will you be able to get her if she wakes?”