“You must ’tend to her, Doc,” said I.  “I’ll guarantee you your pay.”

“Very well, Jake.  Of course you would—­of course, of course,” said he.  “But between you and me there wouldn’t be any trouble about pay.  Old friends, you know; old friends.  Favors in the past.  You’ve done things for me—­my wife, too.  Fellow travelers, you know.  Never call on us for anything and be refused.  Be out to-morrow.  Ought to have a woman here when I go.  Probably be milk for the child when it needs it; but needs woman.  Can get you a mover’s wife’s sister—­widow—­experienced with her own.  Want her?  Bring her out for you—­bring her out to-morrow.  Eh?”

I told him to bring the widow out, and was greatly relieved.  I went to Magnus’s cabin that night to sleep, leaving Mrs. Bliven with Rowena.  I hoped I might not have to see Rowena before she went away; for the very thought of seeing the girl with the child embarrassed me; but on the third day the widow—­they afterward moved on to the Fort Dodge country—­came to me, and standing afar off as if I was infected with something malignant, told me that Mrs. Vandemark wanted to see me.

“She ain’t Mrs. Vandemark,” I corrected.  “Her name is Rowena Fewkes.”

“I make it a habit,” said the widow, whose name was Mrs. Williams, “to speak in the present tense.”

Whatever she may have meant was a problem to me; but I went in.  Rowena lay in my bed, and beside her was a little bundle wrapped in a blanket made of one of my flannel sheets.  The women were making free of my property as a matter of course.

“What are you goin’ to do with me, Jake?” she asked again, looking up at me pleadingly.

“I’m goin’ to keep you here till you’re able to do for yourself,” I said.  “Time enough to think of that after a while.”

She took my hand and pressed it, and turned her face to the pillow.  Pretty soon she turned the blanket back, and there lay the baby, red and ugly and wrinkled.

“Ain’t he purty?” said she, her face glowing with love.  “Oh, Jake, I thank God I didn’t find the pond before you found me.  I didn’t know very well what I was doin’.  I’ll have something to love an’ work fur, now.  I wonder if they’ll let me be a good womern.  I will be, in spite of hell an’ high water—­f’r his sake, Jake.”

4

As I lay in Magnus’s bed that night, I could see no way out for her.  She could get work, I knew, for there was always work for a woman in our pioneer houses.  The hired girl who went from place to place could find employment most of the time; but the baby would be an incumbrance.  It would be a thing that the eye of censure could not ignore, like the scarlet “A” on the breast of the girl in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story.  I could not foresee how the thing would work out, and lay awake pondering on it until after midnight, and I had hardly fallen asleep, it seemed to me, when the door was opened, and in came Magnus.  He had finished his job and come back.