“Edmund, would you like more butter?” asked Betsy. It isn’t everyday that Dr. Edmund Allen gets fresh churned butter, but he didn’t feel like eating any more of his supper after Betsy told him that she was carrying his child. He declined the offer and looked down at his plate of pork stew and corn bread. He chewed every piece of meat with slow deliberation and sopped up his plate as if he wanted to erase any trace of himself ever being there. But at night in bed he treated her just the same as he always did.

In the morning when he grabbed his hat and oiled canvas bag filled with herbs, ointments and bloodletting lancets he reassured her that he’d be the doctor who would deliver the baby

in nine months time and not to worry. He promised her that he would be back before the baby was due, and to ease her mind of doubt and fear, he told her that if he did get that job with the new logging camp he would send for her and they would marry as soon as he got his first paycheck.

He gave the usual early morning thank you for a nice meal and warm bed kiss good-bye. With his arms still tight around her, she studied his face and waited, expecting something more like a promise, but his hands just fell away and she turned from him and said, “I’ll miss you.”

He never once looked back at her as she stood leaning on the porch. She watched until his horse turned a corner on the trail and became hidden by trees. When he knew she couldn’t see him any longer he let out a sigh of relief.

He has delivered many a baby in his territory before, but having a woman in his settlement pregnant with his child, well, that’s a first and he knows now to be more careful. He isn’t worried for Betsy. She doesn’t have her own kin close by and goes to the general store just once or twice a season, so no one can talk. She can always say that the father of her child is coming back or is dead. He isn’t sure if he’ll claim the child or walk away, but no one would believe it was his if he denies it.

He begins to whistle to the rhythm of his horse’s hooves and feels lucky that the baby is due in November and he can always send a message later saying that the snow was too high and he had gotten caught in a storm. He is happy that at a hundred miles away her farm is the farthest and she lives on an

unmarked trail. If he did get that job with the logging camp, and even though it wouldn’t be true, he would tell her that they didn’t allow wives.

Betsy has been his favorite for a while now, but there are others that he likes almost as much and most of them don’t expect that they’ll marry or maybe he has promised them and he has long forgotten and they are just waiting for the day. He’ll surely miss her winter bed that has always been the warmest. She keeps the grate full of burning coal in the fireplace whenever he visits and uses that long handled bed warmer between the sheets. She always makes sure that her well water is safe to drink and gives him meat with all of his meals.

She once nursed him back to health that one time when he caught the fever. She was the only one he had thought of when he was stricken. He had gone to her to be in her familiar warm bed. But now, since his health has returned, he doesn’t think much about how she helped him and questions why he thought that being with her was so important in the first place.

The months pass and he forgot on purpose to go back to her and visited others like Abby, Aurora and Lisbeth. He didn’t miss her much this time, but something made him think of her. It was an accident near the stagecoach station on Timber Mountain that he thought of her again. The driver had been waiting to board passengers and his team of four horses had taken fright and bolted down a winding pass. The stagecoach slid on its side into the mountain. It took the entire voluntary fire department, a company of eight, to lift the coach upright. Underneath, everyone could see that the man’s hand was crushed, crumpled like a wad of wet paper.

He had to amputate the driver’s arm below the elbow and a woman held the man’s head in her lap throughout the night and poured whisky down his throat until morning. She never cried. She told the man, “Everything will be alright,” and the sound of it was lighter than a “have a fine day” salutation and held no gloom or foreboding for the future. She never let his mind go to worry. If she shed a tear it never touched his face, but you could tell that she was like a dam holding back a river.

And this made him think of Betsy again. He realized that she had never sent for him and the baby had been born without his medical assistance. He wondered if she had a baby boy or girl. He was hoping for a boy and he thought, “If it’s a boy, I’ll marry her,” and he decided to go see her straightaway

His horse took the same route to her house that he has taken many times before and they found the unmarked trail but now it seemed wider and not hidden as it had been in the past.

He could see her sweeping out the porch but before he could call out to her, she turned and he glanced at her face before she went back inside, and saw that it wasn’t her. It was an older woman. He recognized Mrs. McWooten, the general store shopkeeper’s wife.

He wonders why the shopkeeper’s wife was cleaning Betsy’s house. He dismounts and walks slowly up to the porch and knocks on the door.

The screen door yawns open.

“Oh Doc Allen, do come in,” says Mrs. McWooten.

As Edmund enters he looks around the room, that he knows so well, for a sign that a baby has arrived. There isn’t a cradle or a rattle or a tiny blanket anywhere.

“Howdy Doc Allen, it’s nice to see you again in these here parts,” says Josiah. The shopkeeper is leaning next to Betsy’s slant top desk and looks up briefly from the figures he is scribbling on a notepad while his missus continues to sweep the floor.

“It’s nice to be back, Josiah.” Edmund tips his hat and says, “And it’s always nice to see you ma’am.”

Josiah says, “Are you looking for Betsy?

“I was wondering about her all alone on this farm,” says Edmund.

“She isn’t here any more,” says Josiah and continues, “She left just a fortnight ago. A cattle rancher swept her off her feet and married her right here before they left. He’s got a ranch down in the central coast of California. They were in such a rush she didn’t have time so we’re packing everything and sending it down for her.

The doctor is stunned and wants to know what has become of his baby. Confused and angry, Edmund speaks like a doctor giving a diagnosis, “I hear that Betsy had a child and I’m surprised no one called me to deliver the baby.”

Mrs. McWooten stops sweeping and Josiah looks up and says, “Betsy never had a baby.”

“But she was with child wasn’t she? Wasn’t she due in November?” asks Edmund.

“No new baby in these here parts. If anyone was going to have a baby we would have known,” says Josiah.

“Oh, well I must be mistaken,” says Edmund stumbling for words. He isn’t able to think up a good enough excuse to leave.

Josiah and his wife stop and stare at the doctor.

Almost as a whisper the doctor repeats, “Oh, yes, I was mistaken.”

Josiah looks straight into Doc Allen’s eyes and says, “We won’t be needing you coming around here no more. We’re getting a new doctor who will live here in town.”

Edmund tips his hat and as he leaves Mrs. McWooten quickly whisks the broom around his feet as if trying to shoo away a rat and as he tumbles Josiah kicks him hard out of the doorway and he lands in the mud.

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