The Amish Christmas Cowboy

by Jo Ann Brown

  “Trying to make sure you don’t wear out your shoes with pacing.”

  “Leave me alone.” She pushed around him and kept going as if the answer to whatever she sought was ahead of her.

  “If you wanted to be alone, then why are you here?”

  She halted midstep and blinked several times without speaking. At last, she said, “I’m not sure.”

  “About why you’re here?”

  “That and everything else.” She began walking again. “I was headed out for a walk in the woods, then I ended up here.” She gestured toward the door. “The woods aren’t too wide between this house and my brothers’ farm.”

  “Sit down, Sarah. I can’t keep up with you.”

  She sank into the closest chair.

  He pulled another closer to where she sat. Resting his crutches against his chair, he slanted toward her, his clasped hands between his knees.

  “Danki,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For not making me chase you in order to find out what’s going on.” He appraised the tight lines he’d never seen in her face before. Emotion exploded through him. Anger, he was shocked to discover. He’d been angry plenty of times, but not like this. It was a cold anger ready to be detonated at whomever had caused her to pull inside herself like an armadillo curled into an armored ball. “What’s wrong?”

  She didn’t answer him right away. Instead, she stared at her hands in her lap. Her knuckles were colorless, warning she was clenching her hands to the point they must hurt.

  He reached across the space between them and put his hand over hers. He wanted to pry her fingers apart as he banished whatever was upsetting her, but he forced himself to do nothing but gently stroke her soft skin.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked again in a whisper. “Will you tell me?”

  Raising her eyes, she met his gaze. He could see the flood of tears she was holding in by sheer will. “My brothers.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re playing matchmaker.”

  “For each other?”

  A reluctant smile tipped her lips for the length of a single heartbeat. “If they were doing that, I wouldn’t be upset. They’re matchmaking for me.”

  He arched his brows. “Brothers setting up their sisters with fellows is a pretty common occurrence.”

  “You don’t understand. They’ve matched me with James Streicher, a man I’ve never met.”

  “He’s a newcomer to the settlement?”

  “So new he doesn’t have a home of his own yet.”

  “So they knew him when you lived in Indiana?”

  She shook her head again. “He’s from Canada. They met him for the first time yesterday.”

  “They want you to marry him after they’ve met him a single time?”

  He hadn’t had a chance to speak with her brothers yet, but if they had half as much integrity as Sarah, they must be honest, gut men. Making such a snap judgment about a stranger made no sense.

  “That’s what they said.” She wrung her hands together again in her lap. “After being so overprotective of me that they make it hard for me to breathe, now they’re ready to hand me off to someone I’ve never met.”

  “Are you going to do as they ask?”

  Her head whipped up. “Menno is the head of our household. It behooves me to do as he asks.”

  “Behooves?” He was rewarded by her faint, swift smile, but it faded again. “That sounds like the Sarah Kuhns you don’t want to be. The one who wouldn’t help the kids because she’s worried about her job.”

  “I don’t want to be that person.”

  “I know that. You’d rather be the Sarah Kuhns who lets everyone know how she feels. The one who longs for something she doesn’t know she can have if she’s Amish.”

  Her eyes grew so round that he could see white around her deep brown irises. “I’ve never said anything about that.”

  “No, you haven’t, but you’ve said a lot about making sure the Summerhays kinder have the lives they want.”

  “I have?”

  “About them having time with their parents and asking me to help with the boys. You’re trying to give them plenty of experiences so they can learn and do things they may not be able to imagine now.” He took her hands and folded them between his. “You don’t want them to feel smothered as you do by your brothers’ gut intentions.”

  She sighed as she stood. “Smothered is the exact word.”

  He pushed himself to his feet, too. “So what are you going to do about it?” he asked as he had when they spoke of the kinder’s longing to spend time with their parents.

  Unlike that time, she didn’t square her shoulders and give him a strong, assertive answer. Instead, she hung her head and whispered, “I don’t know.”

  He could have no sooner stopped his arms from enfolding her to him than he could have stopped the sun from rising the next morning. As he drew her against his chest, she pressed her face to his heart. He wondered if she could hear how it was breaking.

  For her, because she was torn between her hopes for the future and what her brothers had planned for her?

  Or was it shattering for himself as he realized he would never have another chance to hold this woman who fit so perfectly in his arms?

  Chapter Twelve

  On the next Sunday morning, a humid day where breathing was so hard Toby could have believed he was underwater, he found it hard to accept that two weeks had passed since the last time he’d sat on the front steps and watched for a buggy. It meant he’d completed nearly half of his banishment to Summerhays Stables.

  Banishment? It didn’t feel like that any longer. He was able to go to the stables, though he had to remain on the sidelines so the crutches didn’t spook the horses. Even so, he could watch as the three horses they’d brought from Texas, along with the others, were exercised. He spent time talking with the stablemen about the horses and their idiosyncrasies. He learned training for Summerhays’s horses began at these stables, and only the horses that achieved a certain competency were taken to the stables in Saratoga for further training.

  In addition to his physical therapy, he spent time with the Summerhays kinder. He watched them take their swimming lessons while he put his foot in the hot tub, letting the jets work on loosening the muscles. He enjoyed talking with Natalie, who knew more about horses than most grown-ups, including people he’d worked with on J.J.’s ranch. He and Natalie had developed an easy rapport. She tried to stump him with questions and, so far, he’d been able to answer each one. The other kids would join them, but none was as horse-crazy as Natalie.

  Then there was Sarah. Each morning as he opened his eyes, his first thought was how blessed he was to spend time with her. He hadn’t had an excuse to hold her again as he had the evening she’d wandered from her home to the pasture out by the stable, seeking an answer to her dilemma. He doubted he’d done anything to help her make that decision simpler, but the memory of her, warm and soft, in his arms warned him his attempts to be standoffish with everyone until J.J. and Ned returned had been futile. He couldn’t wait each day to see Sarah. Even last Sunday when there had been no church service, she’d come by to take him to visit with her neighbors.

  They hadn’t stopped at her family’s farm, and she hadn’t introduced him to her brothers. Toby didn’t know if they wanted nothing to do with him or she was avoiding what might be an uncomfortable meeting. Though she hadn’t said, he sensed she feared if her brothers discovered how much time she was spending with him, Menno and Benjamin would become more insistent she marry the new blacksmith.

  He looked at his bound right ankle. The worst of the swelling had vanished, leaving a variety of colors from a plum purple to a banana yellow laced across his foot and on his shin. Gone, too, was the devastating pain of the first weeks. Each motion threatened
to bring it back, but he’d learned to avoid movements that sent a jagged shard slicing along his leg.

  Sarah had helped him get to this point. He must not do anything to make the situation worse for her.

  Though he’d tried several times in the past three days to turn their conversations to her brothers’ matchmaking, she’d refused to speak of it. He wasn’t sure if that was a gut thing or bad. One fact was irrefutable. She was going to remain in the Harmony Creek settlement, and he was heading to Texas as soon as J.J. got back.

  A gray-topped buggy drove up the long drive toward the house. Toby came to his feet. Sarah had been quite clear her family wouldn’t be trading their black Indiana buggy for a Lancaster County style one until after the harvest was in.

  Who...?

  The buggy stopped, and a short man with a thick brown beard stepped out. He reminded Toby of someone, but Toby wasn’t sure whom.

  “I’m Lyndon Wagler,” said the man. “My sisters, Annie and Leanna, are friends with Sarah. When she mentioned you’d need a ride to the service, I volunteered.”

  “Danki,” he said, glad he had to concentrate on getting himself and his crutches into the cramped buggy.

  That way, neither Lyndon nor his wife and kinder could get a glimpse of his expression. Before he’d been able to control his face, he knew his disappointment must have been visible on it. Why hadn’t Sarah mentioned to him that she was sending someone to collect him for the service?

  His stomach ached as if Bay Boy had driven a hoof into it. Could she have gone on her date with the newcomer and taken such a liking to the man she wanted to avoid complications by being seen with Toby? She hadn’t said when she was seeing James. Had Toby been wrong to assume it would be after the youth singing tonight? No, he realized. She had arranged for someone to get him so she didn’t have to bring him home when she was supposed to ride with James tonight.

  Everything made sense.

  And everything made his stomach threaten to erupt.

  Making sure he was wearing an innocuous smile as he sat in the front next to Lyndon, Toby turned to say, “Gute mariye.”

  Lyndon’s wife, who introduced herself as Rhoda, smiled before cautioning her young son and daughter to stop trying to peer out the rear of the buggy. Chuckling, Lyndon added that too often they had to halt the buggy to collect hats or bonnets that had fallen off the kinder’s heads when they tried to see everything they passed.

  Toby appreciated the Waglers’ easy acceptance of him as they drove to the Troyers’ house at the end of the hollow. When they pulled to a stop before a big farmhouse that looked as if it’d had recent repairs to its roof, he wondered how many different homes he’d entered on church Sundays. He’d lost count years ago. At least on this church Sunday, many of the faces were familiar from when he’d worshipped with these people two weeks ago.

  While Rhoda took her kinder and went to stand with the women, Toby and Lyndon joined the other men waiting to enter the house with the beginning of the service. Which one was James?

  It was easy to pick out Sarah’s brothers. The family resemblance was strong between the siblings. They must be a decade older than she was. Neither wore a beard, showing they hadn’t married, which was surprising.

  Maybe, like him, they hadn’t felt at home in one place and didn’t want to put down roots and make connections until they found that place where they intended to stay. No, that didn’t make sense. As far as he knew, Sarah had lived in only one community near Goshen, Indiana, before moving to Harmony Creek. Unless her brothers had jumped from district to district as his parents had, they came to the hollow from northern Indiana, as well.

  As if he called to them, the Kuhns brothers edged toward him through the gathering of men. Lyndon gave him a bolstering smile before going to talk to a tall man Toby knew was Caleb Hartz, the man who’d gathered the families together for the new settlement.

  “I’m Menno Kuhns,” said the man with the darker hair. “This is my brother, Benjamin.”

  “Gut to meet you. I’m—”

  “We know who you are. Toby Christner, the Amish cowboy who’s living with the Summerhays family out on the main road.”

  “I work with horses, not cows.” He tapped one crutch with the other. “Though right now, I’m not doing much of either.”

  His attempt at levity was wasted. The Kuhns brothers continued to scowl at him as if he were a snake they’d found in the henhouse.

  “You’re from Texas, we hear.” Benjamin spoke but kept glancing at his brother.

  Toby was curious why. “Ja.”

  “You’re here for only a short time?”

  He hit one crutch with the other. “I’m here until I can get rid of these.”

  “Looks as if you’re doing pretty gut now.”

  Toby felt his feigned smile wither, and he struggled to keep it in place. Even if Sarah hadn’t confided in him about her brothers’ plans to match her with someone she didn’t know, he would have been able to gauge what the real meaning was behind the interrogation. The Kuhns brothers wanted to make sure he remembered he wasn’t staying long in Harmony Creek Hollow.

  Why didn’t they just come out and ask how long he was staying? He didn’t appreciate their sly attempts to ferret out information he would have given them without a second thought. Did they think he would tell them a bold-faced lie? What sort of man did they think he was?

  He flinched at the thought. Had the tales of his daed’s troublemaking reached the brothers? His daed had believed he knew more than any minister or bishop, and he never hesitated to give his opinion, whether welcome or not. That outspokenness had vexed many people who hadn’t liked the idea of a newcomer trying to change their ways. Corneal Christner had never learned, making the same mistakes as he moved his family from one district to another, always looking for those who would agree with his outrageous opinions.

  Toby didn’t remember living in northern Indiana, but families in one settlement had friends and family members in others, so rumors—both true and exaggerated—were shared along the Amish grapevine. Letters and gossip exchanged by neighbors moved more swiftly than the news printed in The Budget.

  “I’ve been told it’ll be a couple more weeks,” he said coolly, “before I can head out of here.”

  The two men exchanged another glance before Benjamin said, “Sarah knows, ain’t so?”

  “She was there when I got the gut news. Your sister has been a blessing. She helps with my physical therapy. She has a real gift for helping those in need.” He shouldn’t have said the last, but he didn’t like how the Kuhns brothers acted as if she couldn’t form a single worthwhile thought on her own.

  “Ja,” Menno said in his grim tone. “She’ll make a gut mamm, tending to scraped knees and other childish injuries. Anyone can see that.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Soon enough, she’ll be settled here,” Menno added, reminding Toby of how his daed had made his comments in a tone that suggested no sane person would argue with them.

  The rebellion and irritation inside him were familiar. How many times had Toby heard his daed say such things and then watched as others reacted? Too many to count. Each time, Toby had wanted to shout that his daed spoke for himself alone. There were those who deemed the son should suffer for the sins of his sire, but they seemed to forget that God had promised in the Old Testament to make sons suffer if their daeds hated God. Corneal Christner didn’t hate God. He insisted that others share his ideas of how to worship Him and live in His service.

  The Kuhns brothers walked away without another word. That told Toby—in no uncertain terms—even if he had two legs that worked as they were supposed to, he wouldn’t be welcome if he went to see Sarah at her house. Her brothers didn’t want her spending time with him.

  If he pushed the issue, he feared Sarah would be the one to suffer. As he and his mamm had suffered, ti
me and again, for his daed’s insistence that he knew more than others. After seeing his mamm’s grief each time they’d prepared to move again, he knew he couldn’t be the cause of Sarah suffering the same sorrow.

  * * *

  James Streicher gave Sarah a faint smile as he held out a stack of plates covered with cupcake and cookie crumbs. The food had vanished during a break in the youth group’s singing. She put the three plates she held on the others and thanked him. When he said he was glad to help, those were the first words he’d spoken to her. She waited for him to add something, but he turned on his heel and walked away.

  Was he shy? If so, why had he agreed to her brothers’ suggestion that he escort her home from the evening’s events? Maybe he’d been too timid to ask her himself.

  Her eyes were caught by an uneven motion by the door, and her heart leaped to attention. Her joy deflated when she realized it wasn’t Toby, but a teen boy who’d broken his leg when he fell asleep and toppled off a wagon.

  She’d hoped Toby would remain for the singing but guessed he’d left with the Waglers. Each church Sunday, Lyndon got his family home in time for him to do barn chores, so he would have left earlier in order to get Toby to Summerhays Stables.

  She sighed when she saw the teens streaming out of the barn. They’d be pairing up for rides home in open courting buggies. It seemed like a lifetime ago she’d hoped Wilbur would ask her to go with him. Before she got to know him well, he’d seemed lighthearted compared to her brothers. How wrong she’d been!

  When she couldn’t remain behind in the barn any longer, she went outside. Most of the buggies had left. The few who weren’t courting were clumped in groups of three or more to share the walk home along the dark, twisting road. Each group had at least one flashlight with them. Englisch drivers often sped or raced on the road, so it was vital to have something to show them pedestrians were there.

  James stood by his buggy. Even in the fresh air, the odor of smoke and heated metal drifted from him. He helped her into the buggy, and she gave him a grateful smile. She wasn’t sure if he saw it in the dim light from the Troyers’ front porch. She waited for him to say something, but he was silent other than giving his horse the command to go.