Chapter Thirty-Five
By the time Adam arrived at the Ponderosa, his jacket was soaked from a sudden cold downpour. It would soon change to snow, and the water on the ground would freeze.
"Pa! Hoss!" Adam yelled before he'd even opened the door.
As Ben rounded the corner of his desk, Hoss came running down the stairs.
"Adam, you're covered in ice," Ben said as he took Adam's coat by the collar and started to pull it off.
Shrugging, Adam stepped away. "Pa, I can't stay. Hoss, I'm here to see if Annie can come to the house. Shiloh's in labor."
Adam saw Annie at the foot of the stairs and hurried over to her. "Annie, Shiloh's in labor."
"For how long?" she asked.
Adam's brows furrowed as he thought. "Well, I don't know. She says she's not in labor, but she's been walking around holding her back, and just before I left, she said she was uncomfortable."
Annie smiled. "You know how this goes. And so does she," she said, walking away. "If she says she's not in labor, she probably isn't. She's most likely just sore because she was on her feet all day."
"Annie, can you just come check her?" asked Adam.
"Adam, I can't leave Elsa. First, it's too soon, and second, I can't take her out in this weather."
Taking a deep, calming breath, Adam said, "You're right. You're right. I sent Shorty for Mala and Jeffery." He nodded as if to strengthen his resolve. "She'll be…fine."
Shiloh sat in the kitchen eating hot bread with butter at the small table. Even though she had buttered her second piece, she laid it down on her plate and stared at it. After one piece, she felt as if she was going to pop.
Then she heard the faintest whinny. "Adam?" she asked herself. "He couldn't have gotten back so quickly." She pushed herself up from the table and looked out through the glass of the kitchen door. At first, she didn't see the horse as outside, there was a virtual white-out, but then she realized it was a black horse when it came closer to the house. Snatching open the door, she stepped out under the overhang of the porch and looked carefully. "Sampson, what are you doing out?"
Rushing back into the kitchen, she went around to the foyer, pulled a wrap over her head and shoulders and stepped out onto the porch again. "Shorty!" When there was no response, she called again, "Shorty!"
She let out a heavy sigh and turned back inside for her boots and Adam's poncho. Once she had them on, she went back to the kitchen for some carrots, then walked back out into the icy snow. "Sampson," she called.
The horse whinnied and reared.
She moved the wrap off her head, then blew that high, sharp whistle of hers. It seemed to calm the horse, and tentatively, he walked to her and was rewarded with a carrot.
Sampson was a seasoned horse and knew her hand signals well. She walked toward the barn, being careful not to slip in the snow. The horse dutifully followed her. Once inside, she led him into a stall that had a half-door as the rope they used for their own horses wouldn't hold him. She filled the feed box with hay and left him to munch.
Just as she was opening the door to the barn to leave, she felt a different sort of discomfort. When it passed, she looked out toward the house. As she looked out, the house seemed much farther away than it really was. She'd considered waiting until Adam returned, but resolved to get to the house and up to their bedroom just in case this was more than an uncomfortable feeling. Based on her two prior births, she knew she still had plenty of time.
Halfway to the house, Shiloh wrapped her arms around her stomach and bent over in pain.
Adam rode as fast as he dared back to the Lake House. When he arrived, he tied Sport to the hitching post at the front of the house and went inside to check on Shiloh before taking Sport to the barn.
He peeled off his snow-stiff jacket and hung it on the back of one of the dining room chairs on his way into the kitchen. There was a piece of buttered bread on a plate, but Shiloh wasn't there. "Shiloh!" he yelled, hurrying out of the kitchen. Before he'd gotten to the stairs, he yelled again, and then again at the top of the stairs. He didn't find her in the bedroom, nor was she in either of the boy's rooms.
Amalee, Angeline and all the women had come out into the hall.
"Adam, what's wrong?" asked Angeline.
"Shiloh's not in the house," he said as he purposefully strode past them and back down the stairs. He stopped and looked back up. "Amalee, would you check the summerhouse out back?"
Amalee scurried off for her robe and was soon on her way down the stairs.
Adam went back out the front door and yelled, "Shiloh!" It was difficult to hear anything with wind whipping the snow and ice. He stopped at the bottom of the front steps to listen. "Shiloh!"
An icy chill shot down his back when he heard a faint cry that set his feet moving at a run toward the barn before the thought had completely formed. He spotted what looked like a pile of wet blankets not ten feet away from the barn. When he lifted her into his arms, she was completely limp, but before he'd gotten her back to the house, she drew her knees as far as they'd go into her chest and cried out.
He didn't stop to close the front door, but rather ran into the house, up the stairs, and into their bedroom.
Angeline followed him, took one look at Shiloh and said, "I'll prepare a hot bath. Get her out of those clothes and make sure she stays warm."
As Adam removed her frozen stiff, muddy nightclothes, he asked quietly, "What were you thinking?"
"Sampson," she whispered. "He was loose here at the house, and I couldn't find anyone, so I took him to the barn."
"He'd have been all right until I got back," Adam said softly as he peeled off her gown.
Her lips folded and began to quiver. "I thought I was all right. I wasn't hurting. I didn't feel anything until I was on my way back to the house."
"We'll talk about it later. Right now, we need to get you cleaned up and in bed." Adam lifted her in his arms and carried her to the washroom where Angeline had just finished drawing a hot, shallow bath.
"Shiloh, listen to me," she said. "Has your water broken?"
Shiloh folded her lips and nodded.
"Adam, stand her in the tub and hold her up while I bathe her."
By the time Mala arrived, Shiloh was clean and lying naked on her side on a pallet on the floor.
A fire was roaring in the fireplace, and a chair was in place for Adam, who was absent, having taken care of the horses before he moved Aaron into Abel's room with Amalee supervising their play. Once back in the bedroom, he knelt down on the pallet and rubbed Shiloh's back.
Mala had already started steeping the herbs she'd received from Hop Sing, so at the moment, there was nothing to do but wait.
Shiloh was chillingly quiet.
Adam knew she was hurting based on how her entire body tensed when she drew up into a ball, then relaxed. He also knew that her pains were coming closer and closer. She was spending more time in a ball. "Mala, is it time to get her up?"
Mala coaxed Shiloh to her back and checked. "My goodness, Mr. Adam. This chil's a comin' quick. Let's git her up."
It turned out that Adam wasn't needed. Once Shiloh was in a squatting position, she bore down, following Mala's instructions to breathe and push again and again. The only sound Shiloh made besides her quick, heavy breaths was a long groan the last time she pushed, and it was only then that she fell back against Adam's waiting hands.
Cheron had been right. Aaron received a little sister as his last first birthday present.
Ben had come to the Lake House shortly after Adam had rushed away from the main house. He was sitting quietly in the sitting room, reading a book, when Angeline came downstairs carrying a wash pan filled with towels covered in remnants of the birth.
Turning in the chair, he asked, "Any news yet?"
Angeline smiled. "You have another granddaughter, Mr. Cartwright."
Ben quickly stood, asking nervously, "I didn't hear anything. How is she? How's Shiloh?"
"Both are fine. The baby is small, but she has a healthy set of lungs…just a very quiet cry."
With his hands shoved in his pockets, Ben smiled. "Three grandson's and two granddaughters. And all healthy," he said with a grin and a short laugh.
"I'll tell them you're waiting," Angeline said as she continued to the kitchen to deposit her load, and then climbed back up the stairs.
By the time Angeline arrived back in the bedroom, Mala had just helped Shiloh into bed. "You din't take much time at all," she said. "Just a couple o' hours."
"Mala, is she all right?" asked Shiloh quietly.
"She perfect, chil'."
Adam walked back and forth across the room, holding his daughter. His wide grin never faded as he looked down at the small baby. "Mala, is she too small?"
"Too small!" chided Mala. "Her mama small. Small mama's tend to have small babies." Turning back to Shiloh's widened eyes, she whispered. "The chil' is fine, Miss Shiloh. You don' need to worry, but you do need to rest. Sleep until the baby asks for her mama."
Shiloh didn't argue. Though this labor didn't seem as long or hard as the first two, she was awfully tired. She closed her eyes and was instantly asleep.
