Death Rides the Night (15 page)

He jerked the door open and went in while Sam lunged toward the kitchen. The shade was drawn at the bedroom window, and Kitty's face stared up at him through the dimness from her pillow. She had a double fold of thick blanket clenched between her teeth and her pretty face was contorted with pain and with the fight she was making to stifle her screams.

Pat said, “Afternoon, Kitty.” He made his voice sound very cheerful. “Sam'll be ridin' for the doctor an' I'll stay an' sorta look after things here till they get back. Lucky I happened in,” he went on soothingly. “Handy to have an old married man around at a time like this.”

Kitty's eyes were big and round and staring. Her face was very white but she managed a ghastly smile and took the blanket from between her teeth long enough to say, “I'm sorry, Pat, but I can't stand it. I just can't. And I don't want to frighten Sam …”

“Shore you don't,” said Pat. “Try to hold out till he's where he can't hear you, then you can yell yore head off.” He reached his right hand around and pulled the .45 from its holster on his left hip. He broke it open and shook the heavy lead-nosed bullets from the cylinder and handed it to Kitty. “Take hold of that with both hands and squeeze it when the pains come. That's what Sally did an' it helped a lot. I'll get Sam headed for the doctor an' then you won't have nothin' to worry about.”

He turned and went out of the bedroom and to the lean-to kitchen. A fire was beginning to roar in the wood range, and Sam came trotting in panting under the weight of two buckets of water from the pump outside.

“Is Kitty … is she all right?” he demanded hoarsely.

Pat laughed with a lot more assurance than he actually felt. “Right as rain. That's enough water for now. I can fetch more one-handed if I need it. Throw a saddle on yore fastest hawse an' ride for town like you ain't never rode that express route before or maybe you'll be a papa 'fore you get back.”

Sam nodded wordlessly. He went out of the kitchen door as though propelled by a catapult.

Pat lifted an iron stove-lid and inspected the fire. He laid on a few more sticks of wood and partially closed the rear draft, then hunted around for Kitty's biggest dishpan. He put that on the stove and filled it from one of the buckets, and then set the other full bucket up beside it to heat also. He hesitated a moment, and then carried the empty bucket out to the hand pump and began to awkwardly refill it. He didn't have the faintest idea why it was so, but doctors and women always seemed to want huge quantities of hot water on the stove as an essential preparation for childbirth. It had been that way, he remembered, when Dock was born; and when it was all over most of the water was still on the stove and he never had been able to find out why they wanted it.

He had been bluffing Sam to keep up his courage when he pretended he knew all about the mystery of birth just because he was a father. Actually, there had been two neighbor women and Doctor Trimble to take care of Sally and he had spent three miserable hours out at the corral while it was happening. He didn't know any more about the process than a jack rabbit, but it would never do to let Sam or Kitty know that.

Sam went by him from the corral with a great thunder of hoofs while Pat pumped the bucket full. He was hunched low over the withers of his startled horse, swinging a quirt to get more speed out of him. Pat straightened up and grinned at the cloud of dust that quickly hid Sam from his eyes. Funny the way a man went sort of crazy when his wife was going to have a baby. The first one particularly. It didn't do any good to remind them it was happening all over the world to women all the time. A man always felt his first baby was different from all the others that had ever been born. And the tougher a man was, the more insensible to pain, the harder it seemed to be for him to stand seeing a woman being hurt.

Pat chuckled as he got that far in his ruminations, then he started guiltily as he remembered Kitty back there in the house alone trying to stifle her screams.

He picked up the full bucket of water and carried it back in the house, set it on the stove alongside the other bucket, and then tested the shallow pan of water with his finger. He nodded approvingly as he jerked his finger out. He thought that ought to be enough water for the borning of a dozen babies.

He went into Kitty's room and reported cheerfully, “Everything's under control, Ma'm. Sam's took off for the doctor like a scared rabbit and you can let go all you're a mind to now.”

Kitty was writhing on the bed underneath a thin coverlet in rigid agony. Her bare arms were flung up over her head and one hand gripped the barrel of his .45 while the other convulsively clutched the butt of the weapon. She had the double thickness of blanket clamped between her teeth and her breathing was loud and agonized.

Pat shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and looked the other way. He was terribly embarrassed but he didn't want Kitty to know it. He wondered if the baby was already being born, and what he was going to do about it. He had attended the births of lots of calves and colts on the ranch, but he reckoned this was sort of different from that.

The convulsion passed and the rigidity went out of Kitty's body. She turned her head to look at him, drawing in deep sobbing breaths while sweat streamed down her white face. Her eyes were enormous and the intensity of her gaze frightened him.

“Did you say Sam had gone?” she asked weakly.

Pat nodded and cleared his throat. “Nothin' to worry about with me on the job. I got scads of water heatin' on the stove, an' …” He vainly tried to think of something else that should be done, but that was as far as his sketchy knowledge went. “You go right ahead an' yell whenever you feel like it. Don't mind me. Why, I recollect when Sally was this way John Boyd heard her over to his ranch.”

Kitty smiled and said, “I'm all right now. The pains come and go, you know.”

Pat didn't know, but he nodded wisely. “Shore. You just lay quiet and rest yoreself.”

“I wish you'd lift the shade, Pat.”

He went to the window and lifted the shade. It was sundown and the first coolness of evening crept through the open window. When he turned back he saw Kitty regarding him fixedly. Her eyes were luminous and grave. “You've been hurt, haven't you?”

“Just a mite.” Pat glanced down at his shoulder. “Not much more'n a scratch.”

“Ezra did it to you.” Kitty's voice was a low, flat monotone. “And he's killed some other people, hasn't he? I heard Oscar telling Sam and then I heard you and Sam talking.”

“You heard wrong,” Pat told her. “Ezra ain't done nothing wrong. There's some bad mix-up, that's all.”

Kitty moved her head restlessly on the pillow. It seemed to Pat that her eyes were becoming glassy. “I heard it all. I didn't tell Sam because I knew he didn't want me to be worried. If I die you'll take care of Sam, won't you?”

“You ain't going to die,” said Pat angrily. He leaned over the bed and put his calloused hand on her hot, moist forehead with what he hoped was a professional touch. “You've got a mite of fever, that's all.”

“But you will, won't you? If I do.” Kitty caught his wrist with fingers that were as strong as steel. “And don't let him blame himself. I want him to know, Pat, that I don't care.” Her voice strengthened fiercely. “I want him to know I'd do it all over again for the happiness he's given me. The only real happiness I've ever known, Pat. Tell him that. Promise me you will. Let him know that I don't mind. Only … I hope I can give him a son. That's all I'm praying for. And I want him to name it Sammy.”

“Hush that kinda talk.” Pat was sweating as profusely as Kitty now. He tried to pull his wrist away from her fingers but she ching to him with desperate strength. Her face was serene now, and a sweet smile curved her lips.

“I hope it'll be over by the time Sam gets back. Don't let him grieve for me. And I'm so sorry about Ezra.”

“I better see to the fire,” Pat said hastily. He pried her fingers loose from his wrist and went into the kitchen. He poked up the fire and put on more wood. The water in the dishpan was already boiling.

Why did women have to think about dying at a time like this? It was crazy. Other women didn't die. Kitty was young and strong. Not so terribly young, of course, but she was plenty healthy. As long as there was enough hot water, why should she think she was going to die?

Pat wondered if he ought to bring in another bucket just in case. He looked around for one but couldn't find it. Kitty began screaming in the bedroom. The agony pulsed out between her lips rhythmically. Now that Sam was gone she wasn't trying to stifle the sound. Pat thought that was probably a good thing. Sweat poured from his face as he searched around for a bucket.

When he couldn't find one, he got a couple of iron pots and put them on the back of the stove. He filled them with warm water from one of the buckets and took it out and pumped it full again with his good arm. He brought it back and wished he could think of something else to do. The top of the stove was completely covered with containers of hot water and he guessed that was all any man could do.

The pulsations of pain continued to come from Kitty's bedroom though they were less shrill now as though she were getting hold of herself again.

He tiptoed guiltily across the kitchen and opened a covered door to a shelf where Sam always kept a bottle of whisky. The pint bottle on the shelf was almost full.

Pat lifted it down and worried the cork out with his teeth. He tilted it up and let the whisky gurgle down his throat.

Kitty's screams had now faded away to a soft moaning. Pat stood with the bottle in his hand and listened intently. It seemed to him like the Lord could have worked out a better way of bringing babies into the world if He had tried very hard.

He put the whisky bottle up to his mouth again.

A wild, delirious scream rang out from Kitty's room. It was different from her other screams. It held more of hysteria and fright than of pain. She cried out, “No, no,” and it was as though she was speaking to someone.

Pat dropped the whisky bottle onto the kitchen floor and lunged through the living room.

His hand instinctively went to his gun when he saw Kitty sitting upright in bed pointing a trembling finger at a man who was climbing through the open window into her room.

The man was Ezra. He was naked to the waist, and his face and torso were streaming with blood. His single eye gleamed madly and his mouth was wide open, emitting laborious wheezes.

Kitty was hysterical with fright, shrinking back away from him, and Pat's only thought was for her.

He ran toward the window shouting at Ezra to go back, and his gun was in his hand.

Ezra didn't seem to hear him, or he paid no heed. He pulled himself over the low window ledge and dropped on the floor on all fours like an animal.

Pat acted instinctively and without planning it out. He only knew he had to do something fast to reassure Kitty.

He swung his .45 in a short vicious arc and brought it down on the top of Ezra's head. It thudded dully against the red matted hair, and Ezra collapsed on the floor in an inert mass.

Pat turned and grabbed Kitty and forced her to lie down. “It's all right, Kitty,” he kept saying over and over again. “It's all right now. He won't bother you.”

14

Kitty Sloan sank back onto the bed sobbing weakly. Pat drew the covers up around her and hovered over her anxiously for a moment to be sure she had completely recovered from the awful fright brought on by Ezra's sudden appearance at her window. “Just take it easy, Kitty,” he kept reassuring her. “Lie back an' take it easy. Don't worry about nothing. I'll stay right here and there can't be nothing happen to you.”

“Ezra's face,” she moaned. “That look in his eye when he started through the window. He's stark crazy, Pat. I thought about those other people he's killed. I didn't know where you were. I didn't know if you could get here in time.” She drew in a great shuddering breath and twisted her head to look up into Pat's face. “Is he … did you …?”

“I knocked him out cold,” Pat told her grimly. “I couldn't think what else to do, with you so scared of him an' all. Not that I believe any of them things against Ezra,” he went on with his face hardening. “I just couldn't stand to see you bein' scared at a time like this.”

“But he
is
crazy, Pat. He must be. Didn't you see the terrible look on his face?”

Pat shook his head stubbornly. “Funny things are happening,” he admitted. “Things we don't know nothin' about. But nothin' could ever make me believe Ezra meant you any harm when he climbed in the window. Seemed to me like he maybe wasn't thinking just straight, but that's all.”

He leaned down by the side of the bed to examine the inert hulk of bloodied flesh lying there.

Ezra's single eye was closed and he was breathing slowly but regularly. Pat felt over the top of his head with practiced fingertips and observed with satisfaction that the barrel of his gun hadn't dented Ezra's hard skull. The big man's face was battered, and there were bruises and abrasions all down his shoulders and back. None of the wounds appeared serious, but it was evident he had lost a lot of blood.

Pat couldn't figure out what had caused all the small wounds. He looked like he had been fighting an army that had attacked him with knives and clubs. He wondered how Ezra had got there. He hadn't heard any horse approaching. He went to the window and peered out, and was more puzzled than ever. There wasn't any saddled horse outside. It looked like Ezra had just sort of materialized out of nothing.

He frowned sharply as he leaned out the window. His ears caught a distant rumbling that was like the faraway roll of thunder. But it couldn't be thunder. The evening sky was clear of clouds.