A Breathless Chase of Punishment – Extended Epilogue

---

OFFER: A BRAND NEW SERIES AND 2 FREEBIES FOR YOU!

Grab my new series, "Blood and Honor in the Wild West", and get 2 FREE novels as a gift! Have a look here!

---

Sarah’s body was cramping, sweat pouring down her brow. Doc Alberts hovered over her, dabbing her forehead, brushing the blonde hair from her face. “Doin’ all right?”

Sarah wanted to be brave but the pain was too great, her belly twisting and threatening to burst.

But worse was the disappointment, the certainty of what was to come. She’d come so far, almost to the complete nine months. It had given her and Harland good reason to be hopeful, especially after the previous loss. That had only been after a few months, and the closer they came to term, the more both thought they’d have a successful birth.

Martha Bows sat nearby, serving as the doctor’s wet nurse, assistant, anything she could do. The woman had become dear to Sarah, a loving mother-in-law as much as she was a doting mother to her children. Martha was just as sweet to Sarah as she was to Brooke.

But Sarah felt certain she’d be saying goodbye to them both, and to her beloved Harland. He’d rescued her, he’d brought tender love back to her life. He’d nurtured and protected her and allowed her to rediscover her inner strength, her essential womanhood so many men had tried to destroy.

And she lay there in the doc’s office, body wrenching and her muscles contracting as all hell seemed to be breaking loose inside her.

Sarah was failing him, she knew that. He’d given her new life, and all she wanted since then was to give him the same: children, the family he deserved, a continuation of his fine, strong line. But Sarah felt she wasn’t up to it, that she’d had her chance to be the woman who would be worthy of him… and she was failing.

She’d pay for that failure with her life, Sarah felt certain. And though she would rather have lived a long and lovely life with Harland, she knew it was natural that she perish and allow him to replace her, to find a woman whose loins who hadn’t been so badly treated.

Sarah knew that was the cause of it, her treatment at the hands of those terrible men. Most were dead, many by her hand or Harland’s or even his brothers’. She’d tried to put it aside, to overcome it, to leave it behind her. But it seemed and felt obvious that her past wouldn’t let her escape, it wouldn’t let her out.

She would never escape those catacombs, Sarah realized that then. She’d only imagined being rescued, had earned only a temporary reprieve. But the catacombs were pulling her back even then, back to the chambers of the tortured souls that will forever howl in those echoing tunnels. Sarah never could have escaped without Harland, and she knew laying on that bed that she’d failed to earn her escape. There could only be one punishment: to be returned there forever, for all eternity.

But she couldn’t go without saying goodbye.

“Bring him in,” Sarah said, wincing with pain, jaws clenching. It was a fine child inside her, suitable for a man like Harland. She had failed the child, too—a son, to her near-certainty. “Get my husband.”

“Lay still,” Martha said, “save your strength!”

“For what?” A long, still silence passed.

“For the child!” Sarah knew then that she’d never meet her own son, if it was lucky enough to survive, itself. No, Sarah’s inner voice told her, he’ll survive! He’s strong, like his father and uncles, he’ll prevail. If it takes my life to make that happen, the—

Pain wracked Sarah’s body again, jaw clenching and spine arching. “Get him, for the love of God, please!”

Martha said, “It’ll be the death of you!”

“Doesn’t… doesn’t matter now,” Sarah said, panting, “I… I need to see him… one last… one last time…” The lump in Sarah’s throat stopped her words and threated to stop up her breath as well, her body wrenching in a long, painful cramp. Above her, Martha looked at the doctor, then turned to cross out of the office. “Hurry, please… hurry!”

*

Harland stood out in front of the doc’s office. He’d been too worried, too intense, his infamous temper making it better that he remain out of his wife’s proximity. The way things were going, his tension was only going to increase her stress, and that could make the difference between life and death for mother and child alike.

But the hours weren’t doing much to relax him. The twins remained by his side, sharing worried glances that Harland could hardly ignore. He knew they intended to support him, to soothe him, but they also had to know what was at stake, whose lives were on the line, and what seemed increasingly likely to happen.

“Something’s wrong,” Harland said, “it’s taking too long! There’s a problem!”

“The doc’s got it handled,” Blu said, “and Mother’s in there, too.”

“What can they do, what can anybody do?” Harland could hardly resist the rise of that temperament inside him, a beast he could often not control. “This is my wife, boys, the woman I love—the only woman I’ll ever love!”

“We know it, Harland,” Jesse said, “and she’s a fine woman, strong; she’ll pull through.” But Blu’s hanging head told a different, and more truthful tale. “Brother, did she fail you back in that colony?”

“No,” Harland said, “that’s true.”

“What I know of her,” Jesse went on, “of these three years since, I can tell you that she is as strong as any woman. If anybody can make it through this, she can.”

Blu added, “And the child, she’s absolutely ripe with that child; he or she will come through it, Brother.”

Harland’s blood ran cold. “No, boys, no… I… I’ve earned this.”

Blu repeated, “Earned it? Nonsense!”

“Certainly, it is! You rescued the woman from those caves, and many others, ridding the Ozarks from Doc Daniels once and for all! You’ve earned accolades and Hosannas in the highest! Brother, you’re taking this too much to heart.”

“How can I not? I stand here, helpless. I could kill ten men with my bare hands, but… I can do nothing for those who matter most, my wife and child. I’m helpless as a little bunny, while that terrible dark rider takes his due. He was always riding with me, since before my time under Jackson. He always knew he’d take from me what he took from all men and women. But I hoped it would be me… and only me.”

“Harland—”

“But that smiling skeleton has other plans… it’s too perfect, too cruel.” Blu and Jesse shared another glance, an ominous silence surrounding them.

Their mother stepped out, grabbing all three men’s attentions. They spun as one to her, and Harland knew the sad expression on her face. “Harland,” was all she said, all she seemed to have the strength to ask. Martha didn’t have to say any more. He walked quickly past her and into the doctor’s office, Blu and Jesse gathering around her.

He knew the grim expression on the doc’s aging face, already gray and colorless. He didn’t care for the old man’s prognosis. Harland endured a bolt of sad shock to see his beloved bride, laying on her back on that bed, sweating and trembling. He sank to her side and took her hand, holding it in both of his own.

“My love,” Harland said.

“My love,” she answered him with a sad smile.

Harland couldn’t control his tears, something he was wholly unfamiliar with doing. “C’mon, baby, you can do this…”

“It hurts,” Sarah whined, and her voice caused pain in Harland’s own hard, her cramped brow making his own brow cramp. “It hurts so… so much…”

“I know, baby, I know… it’s not easy.”

Sarah nodded, looking Harland over. “I’ll try, Harland, I’ll try for you… the way you tried for me, when you hardly… hardly even knew me.”

“That’s not true, Sarah. I loved you then, just as I love you today, as I’ll always love you!”

Sarah smiled, her cheeks glistening with tears and sweat. “I let you down, Harland—”

“No, not for an instant, not for a single second did you—”

“Shshshsh,” Sarah said, “save your strength.” Harland couldn’t speak, his emotion so great in his body and mind, stopping up his throat, his brain, his eyes and ears and nose. “I… I’ll give you your son, Harland, I… I promise I won’t fail you.”

Harland glanced at the doctor, who seemed like the specter of death itself.

Sarah clutched his hands tighter, urgency racing through her tissues and into his. “It’s a boy, Harland, I know it is, I can feel it… and I’ll deliver him to you, I promise I will, just as you delivered me from that terrible place.”

“Shshsh, my angel, please!”

“No, listen to me, Harland, listen… you… you have to find another wife, you have to find a woman to raise our child.”

“No, Sarah, you’ll raise him, and the many others!”

“Brooke, your mother—they still mourn your poor brother, whom I’ve never even met. Well, I suppose… I… I’ll be meeting him soon enough.”

“No, you won’t, damnit!”

Sarah nodded, already able to envision the younger man. “Any… any messages?”

Harland crackled out a hideous sob. “Yes, yes… you tell him to send you back! You tell him you don’t belong there, not yet! You tell him and the Lord Almighty that you have to come back down here, to raise your children and love your husband and live your life! Your place is here now, Sarah, I won’t hear of anything else!”

*

Martha stood with her sons at the front door of the doctor’s office. They entered slowly, with reverent silence. It was a tragic sight to see great Harland Bows bend helplessly over his lady love, the woman whom God had surely intended for him just as he was the man intended for her. Both had struggled and fought, hard and brave, and had saved so many others. It seemed wrong in every way for one to lose the other, or for either of them to be lost. All of Jefferson City would be the poorer for loss, all of the nation as well though it would never know it.

Because her death would also deny the country of the most promising line. True, Harland could find another, though he’d never be happy with anyone but Sarah. Martha knew it and she knew that everybody else in that room knew it, too. Even when he did, there wouldn’t be that chemistry between any other two, and the children they would have created would have led the state and the nation into a new era. With every year, the country became more sophisticated; more dangerous in some ways and safer in others, but harder to grapple with in any case. The nation needed leaders like the next generation of Bows men and women, and Sarah had been meant to play a part in that grand design.

God seemed to have other plans.

Martha felt as if she were looking at the last moments of her husband Harold’s death some years before. She’d been sitting by his side, his tearful farewell breaking her heart just as it was breaking there and then. She could still remember the feel of his hand, the look on his face, the regret in his cramped brow to have to leave her and the boys behind. Harold had begged her for forgiveness without needing it, just as poor Sarah had no need of it. But Martha knew the feeling. She knew that she would one day have to beg forgiveness, that she would someday have to leave her sons behind just as their father did.

But Martha knew they knew it, too. None of them or anyone were truly long for the world. All would have to say goodbye to the others. And the pain it brought seemed never to change, ever crisp in the heart and soul of those forced to carry it. Martha wished she could take the pain upon herself, that she could die in Sarah’s place and leave the young couple together as it could and should be.

Do it, Lord, Martha prayed, don’t let me survive the girl, and certainly not the child! It’s not right, there is no justice or reason in it!

Over Harland’s shoulder, the doctor was muttering heated instructions. Harland did as he was told, and Martha answered the doctor’s plea. She arrived to stand by his side at the feet of Sarah’s splayed legs, a blanket draped over her.

“Push, Sarah, push!”

“I can’t! I caaaannn’t!”

The doctor said to Martha and Harland, “Hold her down.” They did, Martha able to feel the pain in her own body as the doctor reached all the way into her and felt around. “The umbilical chord is wrapped around the child’s neck.”

“Save my baby,” Sarah shouted, “spare him and I’ll go!”

Harland said, “You’re not going anywhere, I insist upon that!”

But Martha knew Harland had little say, that life and death and fate would hold sway over them all, as they always did.

Sarah screamed out, body writhing on the doc’s bed as Harland and Martha held her down. Martha sobbed as she pinned the poor girl to the mattress, knowing the pain of childbirth herself, though nothing like that. She could see Harland enduring a sympathetic kind of pain that she’d never seen, proving their link and the perfection of their union.

With another anguished cry from the beleaguered mother, the doc pulled their child from her, bathed in slime and blood, bright red and squinting in the new light. The doc raised the baby up by its ankles and slapped it on the bottom, the infant crying its first few breaths of life.

How appropriate, Martha couldn’t help but think, how terribly appropriate.

The doc wrapped the child in a swaddling cloth and handed it to his exhausted mother, for what seemed certain to be the last time.

“My love,” Harland said through his tears.

Sarah’s smile was fading fast. “My… my… love …”

*

“What shall we say, then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” Pastor Johanssen read from the bible opened in front of him. The congregation looked on, solemnly silent in Jefferson City’s only church. “God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

Harland turned to look at his mother, his brothers, Brooke and other friends who came to pay their respects. They were there for love, for community and family, and Harland couldn’t help be grateful for their reunion after that terrible fight in the criminal colony. He didn’t have much in the world, but he still had his family, and that meant almost everything.

“Know ye not,” the plump pastor went on, “that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?”

Harland held his child, the little boy Sarah had promised him. His eyes rang with a depth he knew, he saw much of his father in those blue eyes and black hair, much of his late kid brother, Dale. The boy wiggled in his grip, oblivious to the horrors of the world, of the price of life and of death.

“Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of life.”

The boy would be named Dale, after their lost brother, the uncle the boy would never know. But he would hear tales of the tragically lost young man, sacrificed to the Ozarks for no good cause.

“For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.”

Harland and his twin brothers shared a glance, silently reassuring each other that their fraternity was strong, that nothing would come between them again. Having survived the colony, they’d remained bound together as never before, and nothing would ever change that.

“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.”

Martha looked on, too, sniffling into her handkerchief from the front pew of the church.

“Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more,” the pastor recited, “death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.”

Harland looked into Sarah’s eyes, standing pretty in front of him at that baptismal font. Her survival had been miraculous, making the holy sacrament of the boy’s baptism all the sweeter and more blessed.

The pastor led them through the holy rites—the liturgy of the word, the celebration of the sacrament, the renunciation of sin and profession of faith—before the holy water was crossed over the baby boy’s head, anointing him in the church.

But more than that, he was declared the heir apparent of a strong new offshoot of a great tree of life. The Bows name was already well-known, and young Dale and his brothers and sisters and cousins, his children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews would carry it into the future, a bright future for the greatest country the modern world would ever know: the United States of America.

Readers who read this book also liked

---

OFFER: A BRAND NEW SERIES AND 2 FREEBIES FOR YOU!

Grab my new series, "Blood and Honor in the Wild West", and get 2 FREE novels as a gift! Have a look here!

---