With Hoops of Steel

by Florence Finch Kelly

Presently mighty pains began to rack her body. She groaned and clenched her fists until the blood stained her palms. But still she hurried on, urging herself with thoughts of her journey’s end, which began to loom distant and impossible through the haze of her suffering. The road wound over the rounded foothills, across the crest of one, down the hillside, and over another, and another, and another, until Amada thought their end would never come. She longed to lie down there in the dusty road and give herself up to the agony that held her body in its grip. But she so feared that she might yield to the temptation, and never rise again, that she ran down the hills and hurried her aching feet up the slopes until she panted for breath. An awful fear had come to terrify her soul. In its absorbing clutch she scarcely thought again of her wish to reach the railroad, and the love letter that had brought her comfort and sustained her strength was almost forgotten. If she should die there alone, with no priest to listen to the story of the sins that oppressed her soul, to give her the sacrament and whisper the holy names in her ear—ah, she could not—any suffering could be endured better than so terrible a fate. So she gathered up her strength and strove to force a little more speed into her aching, blistered feet and to endure the pains that gripped and racked her body, hoping only that she might reach the town and find the priest before the end should come.

At last the gray, rolling waves of the foothills smoothed themselves out and gently merged into the plain that rose from the valley below. So near seemed the houses and the long streets of the town, with the yellow cottonwoods flaming through its heart, that Amada felt encouraged. She hurried limping down the road, her black dress gray with dust, her mantilla pulled awry, her eyes wide with the terror that filled her soul, and her face tense and drawn with the pain that tortured her body.

She reached the edge of the town and saw people in the houses along the street. But she met none and she could not make up her mind to stop long enough to turn aside to one of the houses and ask the way to the priest’s dwelling. Presently she saw two children come hand in hand through a gateway. One of them, a tiny boy with flaxen curls about his neck and a thin white face, put his hands on the shoulders of his baby girl companion and kissed the face she lifted to his. As she went away she turned and threw kisses to him and he waved his hand to her and called out “bye-bye, bye-bye.”

Amada staggered against the fence and stood there resting a moment while she smiled at the pretty scene, notwithstanding her suffering and anxiety. When the child turned back into the yard she moved away from the fence and tried to go on. But her knees trembled and gave way, a cry of pain broke from her lips, and she fell upon the sidewalk. For woman’s greatest extremity was upon her and she could go no farther.

Marguerite Delarue stood upon the veranda steps smiling fondly upon little Paul as he came up the walk. She had noticed the strange young Mexican woman leaning against the fence, and when Amada fell she ran down to the gate to see if the stranger were ill. The look of awful agony in Amada’s face and eyes frightened her, and quickly calling the maid, the two women took her into the house and put her to bed. Then Marguerite sent in all haste for the physician, and herself removed the dusty shoes and stockings, bathed the swollen, blistered feet, took off the dust-filled garments and clothed the suffering girl in one of her own night robes.

All night long the physician worked, his face anxious and troubled, and in the early morning he gave up hope. For Amada lay in a stupor from which he thought there was no probability she would ever rouse. Suddenly she moaned, stretched out her hands and called, “My baby! Where is my baby?”

Marguerite knelt beside her and tried to tell her that the little one had never breathed, and Amada flung herself upon the girl’s neck and gave herself up to such transports of grief that the physician sat down in dumb, amazed helplessness, sure that immediate collapse would cut short her cries of woe.

“But you can’t tell a blessed thing about these Greasers,” he said afterward to Marguerite. “I was sure she was going to die, and I reckon she would if she had not done the very thing that I thought would be certain to finish her anyway. Maybe I’ll learn sometime that these Mexican women have got to let out their emotions or they would die of suppressed volcanoes.”

When Marguerite had sympathized with and soothed and comforted her accidental guest Amada asked if she would send for the padre.