Though Mountains Fall

by Dale Cramer

  Halfway through the service, while John Hershberger was reading aloud from the Bible, all their questions were answered. Hershberger paused to take a breath, and into the little silence fell the distant but unmistakable echo of a gunshot.

  Heads turned, and the men started to rise. Every one of the men, the heads of household, scrambled outside as quickly as they could. Hershberger stopped reading, closed the Bible and started after them. He hadn’t even reached the door when another shot rang out, this time closer.

  Now even women and children got up and surged toward the door to see what was happening. Rachel elbowed her way to the front of the crowd. The fathers stood in a cluster at the edge of Caleb’s field, watching the road to the west.

  It was Jake, on horseback, charging hard across the fields with a rifle in his hands, the barrel pointed straight up in the air. The gunshots were warnings. Jake was sounding an alarm. He shouted something, over and over, and the wind finally carried his words to her.

  “They’re coming!”

  Caleb stood in the edge of his field, his heart pounding.

  “We should go,” Ira Shrock said, his voice high-pitched and full of angst. “Most of us came on foot, Caleb. It will take time to get back to our houses and hitch up. Oh, this couldn’t have come at a worse time!”

  “Wait,” Caleb said. “Let’s see what Jake has to say.”

  Jake made a beeline across the field, sliding the rifle into its scabbard. He pulled up right in front of them, his horse prancing sideways.

  “They’re coming! Bandits. I counted maybe thirty-five of them.”

  “How long before they get here?” Caleb asked.

  “Not long. Maybe ten minutes. I’m sorry, they came from a different trail than what I expected and I didn’t see them until they were only a few miles away.”

  Caleb gave orders, scattering the men. Most of them bolted away on foot while one or two borrowed horses from Caleb’s corral and took off bareback.

  Caleb went up to the crowd of women and children gathered by the barn.

  “An army of bandits is coming,” he told them, perhaps a little too bluntly. The women gasped and clutched at each other. He raised his hands, trying to calm them.

  “The men will bring the buggies. Go down to the road as quickly as you can and wait for them. We will all flee to the hacienda, where we’ll be safe.”

  Turning away, he called to his son. “Harvey, the surrey won’t hold our whole family. Get a team of Belgians and we’ll hitch the wagon.” He could ill afford to lose his draft horses anyway.

  Ten minutes later a line of buggies and hacks and wagons converged in the road in front of Caleb’s farm, and a caravan began slowly trundling out of the valley to the east.

  Caleb brought up the rear in his farm wagon. He’d gone no more than a mile when Harvey, standing behind him, tapped his shoulder and said, “I see them.”

  Caleb looked back. At the far end of the valley a line of men on horseback charged down the hill and headed for the nearest farmhouse—Levi and Emma’s place. He could hear the faint pop of pistols as they stormed the house and barn, slaughtering cattle and horses.

  Caleb snapped the reins, urging his draft horses into a trot as he shouted to the buggy ahead of him. The warning was passed up the line and everyone picked up the pace.

  When Caleb looked back again he could see a plume of smoke trailing from the roof of Levi’s barn, but that wasn’t the worst of it. El Pantera had apparently spotted the escaping Amish. His army had regrouped and turned toward the wagon train. Now they were galloping flat out in pursuit.

  By then the caravan had made it past the crossroads, but they were still a mile from the gates of the hacienda—and the bandits were gaining on them. It was going to be close.

  Standing on the portico of the old Catholic church in her antique Mexican wedding dress, Miriam’s emotions warred against one another. She was giddy with joy over finally being united with the only man she had ever loved, yet haunted by twinges of unspeakable grief over the absence of her family. The entire morning went by in a disoriented blur, right up until the moment when Father Noceda asked quietly, “Who gives this woman?”

  Her padrino answered, “I do,” then placed her hand in Domingo’s and stepped back. As Domingo’s fingers closed around hers she looked up at his face and felt herself falling straight through those dark confident eyes, into his soul. His unshakable devotion calmed her, instantly and completely—a love that would weather any storm without complaint, for her. Domingo was the embodiment of grace and patience wrapped in a towering strength, and all of it laid freely at her feet. She could trust him. He would always be there for her. Miriam was at peace, her mind no longer divided, and it was in that precise moment that she and Domingo Zapara became one.

  She kept her eyes on Domingo while they repeated the vows spoken by the priest. Words. She barely heard them. In her heart she was already married.

  The ring bearer, one of Kyra’s young sons, handed a long pink ribbon to the priest, who tied the ends together and draped the loop over their shoulders, a symbol of binding.

  Domingo took a small leather pouch from his pocket. Maria had told her about the arras in advance, so she knew what to do. When he opened the pouch she held out her hands, fingers splayed, and he poured thirteen little gold coins into her palms, a symbol of abundance. But it was only a ritual; the coins were, and would remain, the property of the church. The priest’s helper held out a basket to catch the coins as she let them slip through her fingers, a symbolic offering to the poor.

  As the young robed assistant whisked the basket of coins away the ring bearer opened a small hand-carved box and held it up to the priest. Father Noceda took a gold band from the box and slid it onto Domingo’s finger, then handed him a smaller duplicate, which Domingo slipped onto Miriam’s hand. This too Maria had told her about. Gold rings were expensive, so for a peasant wedding such as this the church provided the rings, but only for show. They would be returned in three days, replaced by leather bands like all the peasants wore. It didn’t matter. A ring was, after all, only a symbol.

  After the priest blessed them and pronounced them man and wife, Miriam and Domingo kissed and turned about, arm in arm, to be saluted as a couple by the throng of family and friends in the courtyard.

  The ceremony was only half done. There were still certain religious rites to be performed inside the church, but as the priest threw open the huge front doors a commotion rolled through the streets.

  A barefoot peasant charged out from the main street across the churchyard, one hand holding his sombrero in place as he ran, shouting something to the guards on the parapet wall around the hacienda grounds. Miriam couldn’t make out the words, but Father Noceda brushed past her and flew down the steps, through the crowd and across the yard to see what was happening.

  Domingo froze, listening.

  Then she heard it—the unmistakable sound of gunfire in the distance. She gripped Domingo’s arm.

  “My family!”

  “Come with me,” Domingo said, pulling her with him through the big doors into the narthex, then pressing her shoulders against the stone wall.

  “Don’t move!” he commanded, and then dashed through a side door and up a spiral staircase to the belfry.

  The commotion outside grew, and in a moment Domingo flew back down the stairs, burst into the narthex and whisked her out into the churchyard.

  “Bandits,” he said. “We must get everyone behind the walls of the hacienda. Come.”

  Fifty yards from the church, the massive iron gate in the hacienda wall swung wide. Bedlam ensued as everyone from the wedding and most of the people in the hacienda village crowded through. Miriam dropped her flowers and struggled to keep up in her wedding dress and satin shoes. She stopped. When Domingo’s hand tore away he skidded to a stop and came back to her. Hastily stripping the dainty shoes from her feet, she gripped them in a fist as she hiked her skirts.

  “Now I can keep up,” s
he said. And she did.

  Once inside the gates most of them kept running, on up the hill away from the walls. Domingo stopped and pointed.

  “Go up there with the others. I will stay here and do what I can to help. Go!”

  Terrified, she did as her husband said and ran up the long hill to join the wedding party by the stables. When she finally looked back her heart leaped. A flood of Amish poured through the gates in wagons and hacks and buggies and on horseback—all the Amish in Paradise Valley. Something truly horrific must have descended upon them.

  When the last of them were behind the walls one of the haciendado’s men closed and barred the gate. Diego Fuentes, the superintendent, stood in the back of a wagon down near the wall, handing out rifles and ammunition. Domingo’s tall figure was easy to spot in his wedding finery, already manning a parapet on the crenelated wall with a rifle at the ready.

  She spotted her dat, driving up the hill in a farm wagon—the last one through the gate before it closed. Mamm sat beside him, and the rest of her family was safe in the back of the wagon—Ada, Harvey, Rachel, Barbara and Leah. Caleb turned the wagon aside near the stables and stopped less than twenty yards away from her. Standing among a crowd of locals and dressed as she was, no one in her family even noticed her.

  Except Ada. Ada stared straight at Miriam with a wide childish grin on her ample face. Ada’s grin finally caught Rachel’s attention and she too spotted Miriam.

  Rachel did a double take, but then she glanced at Mamm and Dat on the bench up front. They were looking the other way, watching the walls. Rachel beckoned with her fingers.

  Miriam shook her head. I can’t face Mamm and Dat. Not now. Not dressed like this.

  Rachel took another quick peek at her parents, then jumped down from the back of the wagon and trotted over to the stable. Miriam ducked behind a wall.

  Rachel rounded the wall and ran right into her. Miriam grabbed her shoulders.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Bandits,” Rachel said, breathless. “El Pantera attacked us, and it looks like he brought his whole army.”

  Horror-stricken, Miriam half wailed, “Is everyone all right?”

  “Jah. Jake was watching from the ridge and warned us in time. They chased us all the way to the village—and shot at us too, but no one was hit.”

  Miriam’s knees almost buckled. “What will happen now?”

  “I don’t know. Dat said we are safe here because there are not enough of them to storm the hacienda.” Rachel took a deep breath and added, “But they will probably go back and burn our houses and barns.”

  Miriam started to answer, but her words were drowned out by a booming barrage of rifle fire, thick and close—the men on the hacienda walls.

  The bandits were attacking the hacienda.

  Chapter 6

  When the rifles roared Caleb instinctively herded his family down off the wagon and into the stables, where the smoothly stuccoed walls were plenty thick enough to stop stray bullets. Townspeople and Amish alike ran for cover, screaming, crouching as they ran. Some gathered behind the superintendent’s house and a great many ran clear up the hill to take cover behind the main mansion. Caleb and his family mingled with the panic-stricken throng pouring through the big double doors of the stables.

  He rushed his brood to the other end of the long building, mother and daughters huddling together in sheer terror. The guns thundered steadily. Men were fighting and dying right there on the other side of the hacienda walls—an unimaginable horror.

  Counting heads, Caleb suddenly missed Rachel. Scanning the crowd in the stables he saw several white kapps, but only one with flame red hair. She was at the far end, by the doors, talking to a couple of Mexican women. In the shadows of the stables it didn’t immediately dawn on him that the Mexican woman in the fancy white dress with the roses embroidered on it was Miriam. Before he thought about it he pointed her out to Mamm—a big mistake. Mamm turned her face to the wall, fetching a handkerchief from her pocket as her shoulders began to shake, weeping.

  Caleb leaned close and whispered in her ear, “She is still our daughter, Mamm. I must speak to her. You stay here with the girls.”

  Mamm nodded without turning.

  When Caleb walked up, the plump Mexican woman between Miriam and Rachel was complaining bitterly about her husband.

  “My Paco is up on the walls with Domingo. In his wedding clothes! Just try to keep a Zapara out of a fight, Miriam. You’ll see. Silly old goat.”

  Miriam was listening intently when Caleb walked up. It was a tense moment. He wasn’t sure whether Miriam was ignoring him or just didn’t see him. He studied her embroidered dress for a minute—the white satin shoes in her hand, the lacy mantilla veil over her undone hair.

  “Miriam Bender,” he said softly.

  Miriam’s mouth flew open in shock, but she collected her wits quickly. “Me llamo Miriam Zapara,” she said, and there was a hint of respectful sadness in her eyes. “I am Domingo’s wife. This is Maria, his aunt. She is my madrina.”

  So it was done. “Are you all right?” he managed to ask.

  “Sí, Dat. I am unharmed, but I am afraid for Domingo. He is on the wall with a rifle.”

  Caleb gazed in the direction of the gate. “Sí, he would be. I hope he doesn’t get himself killed.”

  There was a commotion by the door as a Mexican in fancy clothes stumbled into the stable clutching his shoulder. He dropped to his knees in the dirt, his face ghostly pale.

  Maria wailed. “Paco!” She ran to her husband and peeled off his jacket to reveal a shirtsleeve soaked in blood. Kyra went to her aid, kneeling beside Maria and ripping away her uncle’s shirt before they laid him down on top of his ruined jacket.

  Paco smiled weakly up at his wife. “A flesh wound, Maria. The bullet passed through. I have been hurt worse shaving.”

  Feigning anger, Maria’s eyes widened and she hissed at him, “Sí, you will live, but you will still be an old fool!” Her hands never stopped working, wiping blood, applying pressure. Kyra ripped Paco’s wedding shirt into long strips to make bandages.

  Caleb went over and knelt in the dirt beside the wounded man’s head.

  “I am Caleb Bender, Miriam’s father,” he said. “Perhaps you can tell me, Señor . . .”

  “Zapara. But Miriam’s father may call me Paco.”

  “Paco, if you are able, can you tell me what happened out there? I didn’t think the bandits would attack the hacienda.”

  “They didn’t, at first.” Paco winced as Maria jerked a bandage tight. “The bandidos stopped short of the town when they saw all the rifles on the walls. They turned around to go back to your valley, but three wagonloads of federales came down Saltillo Road and blocked their retreat. The bandidos had no choice but to take cover in the village where they were caught between the hacienda walls and the federales, taking fire from both sides.”

  As he spoke, the rifle fire from the walls grew sporadic, then stopped entirely.

  “The troops have come, then,” Caleb said. “This is good.”

  Paco gave him a doubtful look and half shrugged with his good shoulder. “Maybe. We will see.”

  A shadow fell across them both, and when Caleb looked up, Domingo was standing in the door, rifle in hand. Miriam ran to him and opened his jacket, searching for wounds.

  The echo of a pistol shot came from beyond the walls, and a few seconds later, another. Caleb watched the men on the walls. None of them seemed alarmed by the shots. They didn’t even raise their rifles.

  Domingo put an arm around his bride and smiled.

  “I have no wounds, Cualnezqui, but you are welcome to keep looking for one if you wish.” Then he spotted Caleb. His arm dropped away from Miriam and he suddenly became serious again.

  “Your federales arrived just in time, Señor Bender. Half of the bandits fell in the streets and the rest have taken refuge in the church. The battle is all but over.”

  Another solitary pistol shot echoed from
the distance. “Then why are they still shooting?” Caleb asked.

  Domingo shrugged. “The troops are cleaning up.”

  “Cleaning up?”

  “Sí. Some of the bandits were only wounded. The federales finish them.”

  “No! They can’t do that!” Horrified, Caleb went to the door to see for himself. From the height of the stables he could see over the walls to the far edge of the town below. The street was full of smoke, but in the distance he could make out what he thought were a couple of men, lying prone in the hazy street. The silhouette of a soldier appeared through the smoke and dust to stand over one of the downed bandits. The man on the ground moved, raised a hand. The soldier aimed his pistol, his arm recoiled, and a second later Caleb heard the sharp report. The bandit’s hand dropped lifeless into the dust.

  Caleb stormed out the door and down the hill toward the gate. The haciendado’s men parted for him as he stalked up to the gate, hoisted the bar aside and heaved open the heavy iron gate.

  He could see rifles lining the rooftops and protruding from windows, all pointed at the church. Four bandits lay scattered in the open ground between him and the church, none of them moving. Across the way he saw a clutch of federales gathered in the lee of the nearest building on the main street. One of them was peeking around the corner, watching the church.

  He headed straight for the federales, striding purposefully and erect across the thirty yards of open ground. Halfway there, a shot rang out from the belfry of the church, and dirt flew up in front of him. He didn’t flinch, didn’t break stride. A second shot tore open the front of his coat but didn’t touch his flesh. He kept walking, and this time a barrage of rifle fire answered from both sides, peppering the stone tower. Five yards short of his goal Caleb was tackled from behind and driven to the ground. Domingo grabbed his arm and yanked him roughly past the corner of the building, then helped him to his feet.