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out crooked, she
threw up her hands and skedadelled. He couldn’t afford a doctor, so
he come lookin’ fer me.”
    “What happened then?”
    “He drove me to his shack. The poor girl, not
twenty, was near death. The babe was big and comin’ out posterior.
Elsie could’ve turned it easy, I figure, or pulled it out by hand,
but she was too drunk to do anythin’ sensible.”
    “Jesus!”
    While Dora was the strongest and most stoic
person Cobb knew, male or female, on rare occasions she let her
feelings show. A single plump tear slid down her right cheek. “I
couldn’t save the babe, but the mother survived. Barely.”
    Cobb patted a pocket in search of his
tobacco. “You said there was two.”
    “That’s right. I didn’t tell you, but last
week I went up near Irishtown and found a woman bleedin’ to death.
Elsie’d been tendin’ her and fell asleep beside her. The husband
threw her out and come fer me. The lass may’ve bled to death
anyway, at least Dr. Smollett thought so when he come later.”
    “Both mother and babe died?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you think Elsie might’ve been
responsible?”
    Dora reached over and grasped Cobb’s hand.
“Mister Cobb, that woman’s gotta be stopped.”
    “But how c’n I – ”
    “I want you to go inta Irishtown, find her,
and warn her off. Tell her you’ll toss her inta jail if she don’t
give up bein’ a midwife.”
    Cobb found his tobacco but couldn’t remember
where he left his pipe. “All right, then, I’ll do it. But just fer
you. I’ll haveta take Wilkie with me ‘cause it’s gettin’ too
dangerous fer a patrolman to go into that rat’s nest alone. But
I’ll find her and put the fear of the Lord into her.”
    Dora smiled through her tears. “Fear of Cobb
will do,” she said.
    ***
    Cobb never got a chance to warn Elsie Trigger off.
About eleven o’clock that night, both Cobb and Dora were awakened
by a frantic pounding on the front door. Delia and Fabian were so
used to this phenomenon that they seldom were disturbed. But Dora
would waken instantly, as she used to when her own babies would
call out to her in the dark. And Dora’s near three-hundred pounds
rolling over in bed invariably woke up her husband. As soon as Cobb
felt Dora abandon their warm cocoon, however, he would slump back
into it and, seconds later, would be snoring anew. It was the only
way he could cope with her unpredictable comings and goings, and
not be perpetually sleep-deprived.
    He was just drifting back off this night when
he felt her fingers poking him awake.
    “I gotta go off with the lad at the door,”
she whispered.
    “Why are you tellin’ me , then?” Cobb
complained.
    “’Cause it may be about Mrs. Trigger
again.”
    Cobb sat up, blinking in the moonlight.
“What’s she done now?”
    “Maybe nothin’, but the lad lives next door
to the girl in trouble and was sent here by her father to fetch me.
It’s up north, past Brock Street. I told him I don’t go outta town,
but the lad says they’re desperate fer a midwife.”
    “And that’s Elsie’s territory, ain’t it?”
    “Uh huh. The lad says it’s past Spadina.
There’s a bunch of houses near the mill up there. Where the
mill-hands live.”
    “I don’t want you goin’ on yer own away up
there.”
    “I know, but the lad said he was sent
specially to fetch me , not Mrs. Trigger. The father told him
Mrs. Trigger was unavailable. Drunk, I reckon. So I’ll haveta
go.”
    Cobb grunted his assent. “The lad’s got a
buggy?” he said.
    “Borrowed from the mill. We’ll get there
pretty quick. And I ain’t worried. Nobody’s ever bothered a midwife
in this town. At least not yet.”
    “Did the lad say who the girl was?”
    “Daughter of a mill-hand, one Thomas Thurgood
– name of Betsy.”
     
     

THREE

    They drove at a brisk trot west along King Street,
Dora and the twelve-year-old messenger. Fortunately a near full
moon provided sufficient light for them to keep to the middle of
the wide,