by Dale Cramer
Kyra slid a desk against the wall, and when she straightened up she pushed a wave of black hair out of her flushed face and spoke to Miriam in Spanish.
“Que pasa? I didn’t get a word of that.” Kyra had learned a little English from Miriam, but Rachel’s Dutch was beyond her.
Miriam repeated the news in Spanish, and Kyra’s eyes lit up. “A picnic! May I come, too? The mountains are beautiful in early summer. The flowers are all in bloom and I can show you which ones to dig up and bring back for the garden.”
“Oh, sí!” Rachel beamed, switching to Spanish. “Mamm will be thrilled. I’ll check with Dat, but I’m sure it’s all right.” Rachel bolted out the door as quickly as she had come in, leaving Miriam and Kyra shaking their heads and chuckling.
A week later the men hitched their draft horses to three heavy wagons, loaded up the axes and saws and log chains they would need and set out before dawn. Caleb took the lead wagon with Domingo. Ira Shrock and John Hershberger drove the second, and Micah Shrock sat in the third one, check lines in hand. Miriam was about to climb up onto the back of Caleb’s wagon when he pointed and told her to ride with Micah.
She stood there for a minute with her mouth hanging open, stunned. The last thing she wanted right now was to encourage Micah. Her father had never shown the slightest interest in her love life, and now he was playing matchmaker? Micah would think it was her idea. Given a choice, she would rather have ridden anywhere else. She started to argue, but Caleb turned his back before she could answer, so she did as she was told. Then, in the semidarkness, she spotted Kyra sitting in the back of Micah’s wagon with her two boys and several of the teenagers, so before she climbed aboard she caught Kyra’s eye and jerked a thumb toward the front seat. Kyra grinned and shook her head, but when Miriam’s eyes widened and her lips narrowed, Kyra relented and climbed up front. Miriam took the outside seat, keeping Kyra between her and Micah.
Rachel, Jake and Lovina brought up the rear in a hack carrying food and cooking utensils for the day. Miriam turned around and looked back at them as the team lurched forward. Even in the half-light she could see the mischievous grin on Lovina Hershberger’s face. At least now she knew who had put her father up to it. She pulled her coat tight about her and faced forward, her lips a tight line.
Micah talked the whole way, mostly about himself. He leaned around Kyra, grinning at Miriam, and prattled on about the farm he would one day have for himself in Paradise Valley. Occasionally she gave him a perfunctory nod and said, “I see,” but she didn’t even attempt to hold up her end of the conversation. Kyra sat between them trying to keep up, once in a while elbowing Miriam and biting back a knowing smile.
There was a chill in the mountain air even after the sun rose above the peaks. As their wagons climbed the narrow switchback trails they found the terrain as rugged and steep as Fuentes had predicted, but the views were spectacular. The deeper they drove into the mountains the taller and denser the forest grew, with snowcapped peaks looming in the blue distance.
Once, as they lumbered along the steep mountainside, Micah pointed out a grizzly on the opposite slope, nearly a mile away. Shambling into a little clearing, the bear raised her head and sniffed the air.
Kyra said something in Spanish, and Micah didn’t understand.
“She says the bear has cubs,” Miriam translated.
Micah squinted. “Her eyes are better than mine. I see the mother, but where are the cubs?”
Again Miriam translated, and Kyra answered. “Behind mama, in the trees. See—she smells the air to make sure they are safe.”
They watched for a moment, and sure enough, two fat cubs gamboled into the clearing to join their mother.
“How do you know she’s not sniffing for us?” Micah asked with a nervous chuckle.
Kyra shook her head. “She won’t come near the wagons, but I am happy she is on the other side of the valley. A mama bear with her niños can be a dangerous thing.”
Micah nodded thoughtfully. “Well, then I hope she stays over there. I got a shotgun under the seat in case I spot an easy deer, but I’m thinking a twelve gauge wouldn’t be much use against a bear.”
“No,” Kyra said. “It would only make her angry.”
High in the mountains the air was sharp and rich with the smell of the forest—damp earth and rotting leaves. When they found the place, the boys went into the woods above the road and set to work cutting large pines, stripping the limbs with axes and sawing logs into twenty-foot lengths with two-man crosscut saws. Always conscious of the land itself, they were careful not to clear-cut the plot, choosing trees some distance apart.
Caleb found a place where the logging road swung up against a little ledge. The draft horses dragged the logs down close to the road with chains, and using a system of planks and ropes and cant hooks and pinch bars the boys were able to roll them onto the wagons without too much difficulty. It was heavy work, but gratifying. Before noon they had one of the wagons loaded and tied down.
The girls built a cooking fire down near the wagons, and by lunchtime a large pot of bean soup was simmering over the coals. The men and boys sat shoulder to shoulder on a log and the girls served them, happy to do their part. It was the Amish way; girls were not expected to cut timber, and men did not cook or wash dishes. After everyone had been served the girls took seats on the hack to eat, and when everyone was through eating they gathered the bowls and spoons. A small cauldron of water hung over the fire, warming for the wash.
The boys wandered back up into the woods. The girls set the hot water on the tail of the hack and rounded up dishes while the three fathers sat by the fire to talk for a bit. Domingo, who at twenty-one did not consider himself one of the boys, stayed by the fire with the men. John Hershberger pulled out a pipe and packed it with tobacco from a drawstring pouch. It was an old homemade corncob pipe, worn smooth and brown about the bottom of the bowl, with an elderberry stem. He pulled a kitchen match from his pocket, struck it with a thumbnail, lit his pipe and flicked the spent match into the fire.
“Those boys are sure eager to work,” he said, glancing up the hill where the boys had gone.
Ira frowned. “They work hard, all right,” he growled, “when they work. But that Micah likes to play too much. I bet he’s got them all wrestling yet. That one’s like a little boy sometimes—too much energy and not enough sense.”
Miriam shot a brief I-told-you-so glance at Rachel when she overheard this from Ira—Micah’s own father supporting her feelings about him. The sound of laughter came from the woods above them, but no ringing of axes. Maybe Ira was right.
Ever the peacemaker, Hershberger gazed thoughtfully at the distant peaks and changed the subject.
“It sure is nice up here,” he said, drawing on his pipe. “Not like I thought Mexico would be. Beautiful country, and downright peaceful—so far. The only bandits I seen yet are the ones you brought home with you from Arteaga, Caleb. You think mebbe things are settling down a little bit?”
Caleb shrugged. “They come and go. Sometimes we don’t see any for a month or two, and then there will be two or three bands in one week.”
Domingo grinned at this.
Hershberger squinted over his pipe, smiling. “Was ist es, Domingo? What do you know that we don’t?”
“Rumors, that’s all,” Domingo answered, using High German. “They say there is trouble brewing in the west and many have gone there. The Revolution did not solve all our problems, Herr Hershberger. In Mexico there is always trouble somewhere—federales and mercenaries moving this way or that. Right now they are busy elsewhere. They will be back.”
Chapter 6
When they finished washing dishes Miriam and the other girls went up into the woods with shovels and burlap sacks, looking for flowers, herbs and roots. Kyra and her two boys led the way, and Miriam’s dog tagged along, scouting the undergrowth for anything worth chasing.
Miriam envied Kyra just a little—her peasant blouse and colorful embroidered ski
rt. She always wore her hair down, long and wavy, framing dark flashing eyes that were enough to cause envy all by themselves, even without the flower in her hair. Though Miriam was quite content with her modest Amish appearance, she sometimes felt a tiny sting of envy over Kyra’s freedom to put her beauty on display. People often said Miriam and Kyra looked like sisters, and it always gave her a little burst of guilty pride.
The slope was steep but the going fairly easy in the deep shade of the high canopy, where tall pines and massive oaks created a kind of cathedral aura and kept the undergrowth down. Still, patches of sunlight dappled the ground here and there, and the forest floor was dotted with all kinds of wildflowers.
Beside a boulder Miriam found a cluster of large blooms with brown and yellow striped petals. She called Kyra over.
“Tiger flowers,” Kyra said. “They will do well in your garden, or in a window box.”
Miriam dug them up and stuffed them into a sack. It was only the beginning. Kyra found all sorts of different flowers, and she named every one of them. In a little sunlit meadow she found mounds of dahlias, and in the shade along a trail, banks of pink and white impatiens. There were even orchids clinging to the sides of the trees, like red spiky crowns bursting from a nest of green fronds.
Kyra stopped at a small pine with lush green vines wrapped all around its base.
“Moonflower,” she said. “These are lovely on a fence in the evening.”
“But there are no blooms,” Rachel said.
Kyra laughed. “Not now. They come out when the sun goes down. That’s why it is called moonflower. You’ll see. In the evening it comes alive with big white flowers and the fragrance is wonderful. The ancient Nahua used moonflower vines for all sorts of things, even to make rubber balls for ulama, a game like football. Some people make a kind of hair tonic from it.”
She knew the names of all the plants, and their uses. They spent two hours prying plants from the ground with shovels, bagging ornamentals and native cures for all kinds of ailments from rheumatism to skin rashes. Kyra knew which plants were good for headaches, stomach cramps, beestings, nausea, even a small weedy-looking thing whose roots she said could be boiled to make a tonic for the common cold. Miriam was about to pull up a pretty little green vine when one of Kyra’s boys shoved her away and sent her tumbling.
“No, teacher,” he said, shaking his head, eyes wide.
Miriam looked up in surprise to find Kyra laughing. “Juan is right—you mustn’t touch that one. It is like poison ivy, only a hundred times worse.” Then, still giggling, she leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Especially for a man. It does things to a man that we must not speak about.”
“We need to hurry,” Caleb said, tying down the second load. “It gets dark quick in the mountains.” The sun was dropping toward the peaks in the west, and he figured there were maybe three hours of daylight left. Ira took a team of draft horses and drew the loaded wagon up out of the way to make room. Caleb took another team and was maneuvering the last wagon into place when John called out to him.
Four Mexicans on horseback plodded slowly around the bend from behind them. They were dressed in layers of coarse cotton with short-waisted jackets in place of the normal peasant’s poncho, and they were bristling with guns and bandoliers. Their heads drooped, sleeping in the saddle, and even the horses’ heads hung low as they ambled along.
Caleb’s heart stopped and the color drained from his face. The lead horse was a big bicolor Appaloosa, the front half liver-colored, the back half white with leopard spots.
El Pantera.
As they neared the last wagon one of the Belgians snuffled. All four of the bandits looked up at once, saw the wagons and the three men sitting on them. Their pace did not change, but they didn’t take their eyes off the Amishmen as they approached and slowly scraped by the line of wagons on the narrow road, occasionally glancing up into the woods. There was no sound from the woods at the moment, but anyone could see that this was a logging operation. The bandits would know there were other men up in the forest, but it wasn’t the men Caleb was worried about.
The Appaloosa stopped next to Caleb’s wagon, and El Pantera’s gaunt face glared. A jagged scar ran down across one eye, and the iris was milky white. He and the man behind him both wore slouch hats, while the third bandit wore a shapeless felt sombrero. All of them were heavily armed with pistols, bandoliers across their chests and rifles in their saddle scabbards.
“Buenos días,” Caleb said, his voice hoarse. He would not forget that face as long as he lived, but he fervently hoped El Pantera did not remember him. They had met once before, a year ago on Saltillo Road. Domingo had later warned him to keep his daughters away from this man, a white slaver with no conscience, a dangerous man.
El Pantera squinted at him. “I know your face, señor. We have met before.”
Sitting on the bench of the empty wagon with the check lines still in his hands, Caleb was paralyzed with fear. He could manage only a slight shake of his head. Words failed him.
John and Ira had not moved, frozen in place, wide-eyed, but there was nowhere to run. The best thing was to remain calm and civil.
El Pantera blinked and his eyes narrowed. He shook a crooked finger at Caleb and his face twisted into an evil grin. “I remember you. The road to Arteaga! You were the one with the two beautiful daughters. One of them—the young one—I remember she had red hair. Very pretty. I don’t suppose you have brought your lovely daughters with you, no?” He sat a little taller in his saddle, craning his neck toward the woods.
Caleb shook his head, trying to mask his revulsion. “No, Señor Aguilar. They are not here.” Technically, they weren’t. His daughters were up in the woods. It was a lie, but he saw no choice, and he would repent of it later. If he lived.
“Well then, I don’t suppose you have anything to eat. We have traveled far and we are hungry.”
“We have already eaten, but there is some soup left,” Caleb said weakly. “You are welcome to it.”
The ringing of axes came from the woods above, and a moment later the rhythmic rasp of a crosscut saw.
“What about your young friend?” El Pantera said, watching the woods where the noises came from. “The son of Ehekatl. Is that one still with you, señor?”
“Sí.” Caleb pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. “He is working. But Domingo is no threat to you, and we have nothing you would want.”
El Pantera threw back his head and laughed. “Make no mistake, señor, there are very few men who threaten me, and if I want something I will take it. I am not afraid of your little friend. Now where is that soup?”
While the four bandits dismounted and tied their horses to the wagon, Ira and John climbed down and helped Caleb take the half-empty cauldron from the back of the hack and hang it over the coals. The four bandits rifled through the dishes on the back of the wagon for bowls, then helped themselves to the soup without waiting for it to heat up. They ate standing, drinking straight from the bowls as if they were starving. Even as he turned up the bowl, El Pantera’s hard eyes watched the three Amishmen constantly.
Caleb was just beginning to think things might turn out all right when disaster struck. Miriam’s dog barked, up the hill to the right, away from the sounds of the logging crew. El Pantera glanced in that direction just as the sound of girlish laughter rolled down through the trees. He said nothing, but his eyes crinkled with a lascivious grin as he turned toward Caleb and nodded slowly, the lie discovered. Without taking his eyes from Caleb, he casually backhanded the chest of the man next to him and gestured toward the woods where the laughter had come from.
The bandit flinched, then dropped his half-full soup bowl on the ground and scurried up the bank into the woods. Horrible, unthinkable pictures flashed through Caleb’s mind, but he felt utterly helpless against such men. All he could do was pray.
John Hershberger’s hands shook as he removed his hat and held it against his chest. His daughter Lovina was up in the wood
s with the others.
“Please, sir. We have done you no harm. We have shared our food and fire with you and shown you only kindness. Please do not harm our girls. They are chust children.”
El Pantera’s head tilted, and his grin turned quizzical. “No hablo Inglés,” he said. “But I know the sound of begging, and it is music to my ears.”
Caleb translated for John, his eyes locked on El Pantera as he spoke. “He says he is not moved by your pleas, John. This man has no conscience. Pray that Gott will intervene.”
El Pantera chuckled softly as he squatted down to dip another bowl of soup from the cauldron. When he stood up again he looked over his bowl at Caleb and said, rather ominously, “Tell your tall friend we will be good to his daughter, señor. Very good.”
Caleb refused to repeat this. He shook his head and said nothing.
Domingo balanced himself atop a large downed pine, walking up the trunk and clipping limbs off with an axe, his bandanna tied around his head to keep his long hair out of his face. Despite the chill in the mountain air, he had long since shed his shirt. His chest was slick with sweat, peppered with wood chips, and he wore only the coarse cotton pants of a peasant. Raising his axe high over his head, he snapped it downward in a powerful stroke aimed at the base of a limb, but his foot slipped as he swung and the axhead overshot the limb. The force of the blow cracked the handle. He raised it up to look at it, then called out to Micah.
“I broke my axe,” he said in German.
Micah, who was dragging the sheared limbs out of the way, paused and answered, “There’s a spare handle in the back of the wagon, and a hammer to set the wedge.”
Domingo nodded, jumped nimbly from the tree trunk and ambled down the hill toward the wagons with his cracked axe.
Halfway there, out of the corner of his eye he caught an odd movement through the trees off to his left, and stopped. Dropping into a crouch to see through the brush, what he saw made his heart race. A hundred yards away, a man was moving stealthily up the slope toward where the girls had gone to hunt flowers, and it was not an Amishman. He could see, even at a hundred yards, that this man wore a pistol at his waist and a sombrero on his head. Domingo’s heart pounded. The bandit was surely not alone, but whatever was happening down at the wagons would have to wait because this one was heading directly toward the girls. He would have to be dealt with, and quickly. Gripping his cracked axe tightly near the head, Domingo stalked the bandit like a cat, looping around to take him from behind.