Connie felt all her wind wrapped tight in her throat behind her tongue. She said, “I can’t, Leah. I promised Norman. I can’t do it.”

“Ask you something. Who’s having this baby? Norman? Or me?”

“I know that. I just can’t do it.”

“Whyever not?”

“I said, I promised Norman.”

Leah spat air.

“Even I was to, time I got up there and found her and got back down with her, Norman and the Doctor would be back long since. There’s no point.”

“I thought about that. What horse’d Norman take?”

“Well he took Tommy. Tommy on the cart. Only thing would go through the mud.”

“It’s simple then. Put the bridle on Pete and use a set of lead ropes for reins and ride the booger up there and carry Marthe back down here.”

“Pete? Pete don’t ride.”

“Girl, Pete rides like he was born to it. You get out those clothes and dress up warm, get on a pair of Norman’s wool trousers and belt em up tight and cuff em high and you’ll ride like angels.”

“You’ve rode that horse?”

“Rode him all around the place summertimes. With just a looped rope around his lower jaw.”

“I won’t. I won’t do it.”

“Course you will. It’s me lying here with the baby asking. Course you will.”

“No.”

“Yes. Oh, yes you will.”

And as the ice from the river it all broke free of Connie, she feeling it on her tongue as it spilled, hating it and loving it all at once. “What do you want with that dirty old woman? Old hag, wood’s whore, all grimed up and greasy and smelling like skunk long dead or something dug up out the ground? Old bitch lying up there spewing out her get like a wild creature, like an animal. Christ you got no idea. Things I heard about her. Came down out of Quebec all on her own no more than thirteen and already more willing than the men she serviced. Dirty woman. Dirty stinking bitch of a whore. Why you think she knows so much about the ins and outs of babies? How many maybe you think she’s carried? Just those odd half-dozen boys in and out of the woods? What about those others? What about the times she rid herself of them? And how about those other girls, those girls in trouble, mostly French girls, some not, would come miles to find her? Go up the mountain with trouble in their bellies, come down with trouble in their hearts. You know about all that? Anybody told you this about your great friend? I guess not. I guess not Norman. I guess not herself. I guess not one solid soul before me.”

“You surely hate those Canadians, don’t you?”

“I don’t hate a living person but for one. But those people make a choice, they have the choice, they sink to one end and stay there. Like creatures they live. Like dirt their minds work. I can’t change that. I can’t change that.”