by Dale Cramer
Finally, after he turned in and made it halfway up his driveway his wife and children straggled out of the house to greet him. Even from a distance he could see Martha wringing her hands, and the dark look on all their faces filled him with dread. Something was terribly wrong.
He stopped short of the house, and Mamm hurried up to him as he climbed down.
“Diphtheria,” she said, fighting back tears. “Many of the children have taken ill.”
It knocked the wind out of him for a minute. This was worse than anything he could have imagined. “We must get a doctor,” he finally said.
Mamm shook her head. “One is already here. He came from Saltillo late Saturday in a fancy automobile and stayed up all night giving everyone shots. He’s over with the newcomers just now, at the camp. Already one of the new children died.”
“Who? Which one?”
“Little Enoch Byler. He was three. We buried him yesterday.” She lowered her head, struggling to speak. “There will be more.”
Caleb removed his hat, hung his head and was silent for a few seconds. When he raised his head again he said, “I guess this explains why no one is asking about the minister.” Important as the preacher was, his absence paled in comparison to a diphtheria epidemic.
“But wait,” Caleb said, “the doctor got here on Saturday? Why, I left on Friday and nobody was sick yet. How did a doctor get here so fast?”
“The doctor in Agua Nueva wired him when Aaron got there. He asked him to bring medicine to Paradise Valley.”
“Why was Aaron in Agua Nueva?”
Mamm dabbed at her eyes and struggled for control. “Because the first ones to get sick were Ada and Little Amos. Kyra saw the sickness on them two hours after you left. She didn’t think Little Amos would live. The poor child was very sick—it’s worse for the little ones. Aaron and Rachel took him to Agua Nueva in the surrey. And Ada, too.”
The color drained from Caleb’s face. “So, are they all right? Where are they now?”
Mamm snuffled, fighting a sob. “They haven’t come back yet. We’ve heard nothing. We only know they were with the doctor in Agua Nueva on Friday, and he had medicine. The doctor who came here said that if everything went right they might be home yesterday.”
Caleb nodded, staring down the road to the west. “If they don’t get back tonight, I’ll go looking for them in the morning. Could be they’re broke down someplace in the mountains.”
Miriam was standing next to her mother, listening. “Where is the minister?” she asked.
Caleb sighed. “Ervin Kuhns and his family didn’t ever come to the train station in Arteaga. Me and Domingo waited for them all day Saturday, thinking mebbe they just missed the train and took another one later, but they never showed up. We went back on Sunday, but they still didn’t come yet. In the afternoon, finally some passengers from Nuevo Laredo told us the border was closed and no Americans were allowed to cross just now. They didn’t know why, but when I talked to the stationmaster he said sometimes they close the border to keep a disease out.”
Miriam nodded slowly. “There was a medicine show in the hacienda village last weekend, and one of the women told Kyra they just came from the States. Maybe the medicine show people were the ones who brought it here. So what will Ervin do?”
“I don’t know,” Caleb said. “They might wait in Laredo for the border to open up again, but I don’t think so—not if they don’t know how long it will be. If it was me, I’d get on a northbound train and go back home. Anyways, Ervin’s got his own wagon. If they do make it to Arteaga, he can get here without our help. It just won’t be as easy.”
Mamm kept staring down the road to the west as if she could will the surrey to appear out of the mountains with Aaron, Rachel, Ada, and Little Amos in it.
“I’m mighty worried about my children, Dat. I hope they’re all right.”
Caleb put an arm around her shoulder. “Don’t fret, Mamm. I’m not worried a bit so long as Aaron is with them. They’ll be fine.”
A dark sense of foreboding gripped his heart like a cold fist, but he hid his dread behind a reassuring smile. It was his job. Mamm looked to him for hope.
Rachel clung to the horse’s mane, leaning forward as much as she could, doing anything to put some space between her and the weasel who shared the saddle with her. Her hands tied, his arms around her holding the reins, there was no way to avoid him, no way to keep his hands from groping. Every time she straightened up he put his face next to her ear and whispered his dark desires. His breath was foul, his body odor worse.
“Mi pequeña fresa madura,” he kept calling her. My little ripe strawberry.
Just let me die, she prayed. Please, Gott, just take me home.
They rode for hours on the narrow trail without stopping, up and down rocky ridges, through mountain passes and along babbling bottomland creeks, working their way ever northward. In the evening, before the light completely failed, they finally stopped in a little mountainside meadow and made camp. The weasel dragged her from the saddle and threw her down, turning his back on her while he tended to his weary horse. No one seemed concerned that she might run. They were in the middle of the wild mountains and there was no place she could go.
One of the men had shot a young deer with his rifle an hour before they stopped. Now El Pantera slung the field-dressed carcass on the ground in front of Rachel, untied her hands and pulled a hunting knife from a sheath at his back—the knife with the rosewood handle, the one that felled her brother. She was sitting cross-legged on the ground when he threw the knife so that it stuck firmly and quivered an inch from her knee.
He leaned close with that evil grin and said, “The knife is for skinning the deer, señorita. If you get other ideas, I will use it to skin you. Now get to work. My men are hungry.”
She picked up the bit of rope they’d used to bind her hands and used it to tie her hair back out of the way while she skinned the deer. One of the bandits built a fire, and an hour later the deer hung spitted on a green sapling, roasting over the fire.
They had built the fire between two downed logs, and after they had tended and tied all their horses they came one by one and sat on the logs warming themselves in the glow of the fire. Darkness had fallen, and two rows of faces leered at Rachel, laughing raucously at their own rude remarks as El Pantera made her come and sit beside him on the log.
They passed around a canteen, and when El Pantera had drunk his fill he handed it to Rachel. She didn’t want to drink after these animals but her throat was parched and she didn’t know when she would be offered water again. Their eyes were on her as she wiped it clean with her sleeve and turned it up.
She got a big mouthful and almost swallowed before the pain hit. Fire exploded in her throat and she pitched forward instantly, spitting, gagging, coughing uncontrollably. Some of the bandits laughed so hard they fell backward off the log.
Pounding on her back, El Pantera grinned widely and said, “Our little strawberry doesn’t like mescal. I suppose it is an acquired taste.”
Later, after they had eaten most of the venison and some of them had begun to yawn, they wandered off to get their bedrolls from the piles of gear and saddles by their horses. El Pantera went away for a minute but he returned shortly with a set of wrist irons dangling from his hand. He held them up to show her—two iron cuffs shaped like Ds, with a short length of chain between them.
“Such a pretty girl,” he said. “I want you to have these bracelets. My gift to you.”
He threw a horse blanket down next to a skinny pine not far from the fire, made her sit on the blanket and wrap her arms around the tree. He put her hands in the cuffs, took a little T-shaped tool from his pocket, inserted it into the barrel of the D and gave it several turns until the latch clicked.
Squatting beside her, gazing into the simmering fire, he tucked the tool into his vest pocket and said, “We would not want you to wander off and get eaten by wolves in the night, señorita. I think you will be warm
enough here. Sleep well. I have big plans for you.”
His ominous words haunted her for a long time after he walked away, for she had heard rumors about El Pantera and the kind of business he engaged in. She tried very hard not to think about it, to concentrate on finding a way to get comfortable lying on a horse blanket with her arms wrapped around a tree. Her life was over—she had already accepted that—but the endless possibilities of horror and torture that awaited her frail human form before she would be allowed to die plagued her thoughts for a long time. Again, she prayed for death, for release. Eventually she cried herself to sleep.
———
She jolted awake, but she couldn’t move. Someone was straddling her, holding her down, and his hand was clamped over her mouth so she couldn’t scream. The fire had died to embers and in the darkness she couldn’t see his face, but she knew the smell of his putrid mescal-tinged breath.
“Make a sound, mi pequeña fresa madura,” the weasel whispered, “and it will be your last, do you understand?”
Wide-eyed with terror, she barely had the presence of mind to nod. She understood, and she did not doubt for a second that the weasel would do as he said.
His hand moved away, but in the next instant he stuffed her mouth full of a filthy rag and tied a bandanna tightly around it so she couldn’t scream even if she wanted to. She would have. She would have screamed loud enough to shake boulders loose from the mountains and then welcomed his knife, but all she could manage was a muffled moan.
Rough hands grabbed her ankles, flipped her onto her back and yanked so that her arms stretched tight against the handcuffs. She could only make out the dimmest silhouette in the paltry light cast by the dying embers of the fire, but it was enough.
She raised a leg and kicked hard. Her foot found his chest and drove him backward, but in the next instant he bounced back and punched her in the jaw, his foul breath brushing her face with dire threats.
Dazed now, and helpless, she turned away from the weasel and stared at the dying campfire. The patch of simmering coals pulsed a dim red. In the moonless night it was the only thing Rachel could see, so she fixed her gaze on it, hoping to find a way to remove her mind from what was about to happen.
But the coals moved. Against the blackness, as if by magic, a burning ember the size of a man’s fist floated slowly up out of the ashes and hovered all by itself, three feet above the ground. The coals crumbled, the campfire drew breath and a little flame sprang up.
Startled by the sudden brightness, the weasel turned his head to look, and as he did the ember arced through the air like the end of a baseball bat and caught him flush on the jaw. Sparks flew. The weasel flipped over and landed on his back, partially on top of her. The flames of the campfire leaped higher, and in their light she saw El Pantera standing over them both, holding a thick branch like a spear, the pointed, smoldering tip a foot away from the weasel’s face.
El Pantera’s eyes sparkled in the freshening firelight, and his lips curled as he hissed, “Would you ruin my prize, Ramirez?”
The weasel tried to crab backward, to put some distance between himself and the glowing spear, but El Pantera planted a foot in his middle and held him down. Rachel found it hard to breathe with the bandit on top of her and her mouth plugged. She shifted a little and somehow managed to fill her lungs.
Rubbing a still-smoking jaw, the weasel’s voice came out high-pitched and quivering, pleading for his life.
“I would have done her no harm, my captain. I only wanted—”
The burning branch inched closer and cut off his words. He squirmed in terror.
El Pantera seethed, his white eye glowing in the firelight. “Do you know what your moment of fun would do to the price of this girl when she is sold? Do you?”
The weasel’s head vibrated, a quick and fearful no.
“I thought not. You nearly cost me a lot of money, Ramirez. You are a short-sighted fool, and if you cost me money, fool, it will cost you your life. Are you prepared to die for this girl?”
The smoldering spear inched closer as he spoke, and even Rachel shrank from the mental picture of what might be about to happen to the weasel. The terror in his eyes told her he saw the same picture.
“No, my captain.” It was a hoarse whisper.
El Pantera wavered, then casually tossed the branch into the fire. With one hand he reached down and grabbed the smaller man by the collar and flung him into the darkness. The weasel hit the ground with a grunt and rolled, then skittered off toward the trees like a wounded spider.
El Pantera knelt down and untied the bandanna, pulled the rag from her mouth.
“Are you . . . unharmed?”
She nodded. “Sí.”
“Get some sleep,” he said, then rose and walked away.
She waited several minutes, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid some new horror might descend upon her. Finally, when all was quiet, she rolled over and scooted up to the scrubby pine sapling to relieve the pressure of the handcuffs. Her hands were numb. Curling herself into a ball at the base of the tree, she pulled her hair about her face and tried to make herself small. She fervently wished she could just disappear.
Thoughts of home flooded her mind. She saw Jake’s smiling eyes and prayed again that he would not come after her. He would never fight these men; he would only try to reason with them, and then they would kill him. Her mother’s face came to her, praying, agonizing, perhaps never knowing what had become of her daughter.
Rachel wept softly in the darkness and prayed for Aaron, that by some miracle he might live. Then she wept and prayed for someone to find Ada and Little Amos before it was too late. When the red streaks of dawn stretched over the mountaintops she cried and begged for a swift end to deliver her from the coming evil, and for Gott to give her poor mother a measure of peace.
Chapter 21
Ada awoke with a chill. Pitch-black. Clouds covered the moon and she couldn’t see her own hands. Something had awakened her, but she didn’t know what it was. At night the fog came in a dark red tide, creeping in from the edges of her eyes and bringing the hum with it. She wrapped her arms around herself and started to rock. Something was not right. Her memory worked well enough, or so it seemed. Spurred by throbbing knees and a hundred dire pains from torn feet to skinned elbows, her plight showed itself to her right away. She knew she was lost, and she remembered why. But something else was wrong, and it refused to be coaxed to the front of her mind.
The air was perfectly still, as if the world held its breath. Total silence, total blackness. The unknown surrounded her. She began to rock harder until a little squeak of a sound came to her, faint and distant.
She stopped rocking and listened. There it was again, like a baby crying, far away. It was only then that she realized her arms were wrapped tight about her and there was no child in them.
Little Amos!
The cry came again, piercing the red hum.
To her right, somewhere. She turned her head, listening, and when it came again she knew the direction. Pushing herself to her feet she forgot to be afraid—until she found that she couldn’t walk. There was no ground, no sky, no rocks or trees, no stars. Only black space, the whole world a yawning pit of unknown, waiting to swallow her, to throw her off a cliff. Ada tried to take a step, but she couldn’t make her foot go down without knowing what lay beneath it. Holding her arms out in front of her, she tried sliding her feet so they stayed in contact with the earth, though her head felt vulnerable. Her eyes widened, yet there was only blackness and she didn’t know what demons might dive at her like bats. Afraid to stay and afraid to go, she stood still until the red hum swelled and she began to hyperventilate.
Again she heard the baby’s cry, fainter this time but still in the same direction. From the distance behind her, she heard the yip of a coyote and a chill ran down her spine. Coyotes steal babies and eat them.
She couldn’t let that happen. Slowly, groping with splayed fingers, she knelt down until s
he found the ground. Lowering herself onto her hands and knees, she began to crawl. It was easier with her hands because she could feel her way. Crawling, she ignored the complaints of her battered knees and inched her way toward the sound. The going was slow and painful, but she would not stop. The coyote yipped again, and was answered by another, closer. Still, she did not stop.
She might have crawled for hours, she didn’t know, but his cries kept getting louder until finally she was near enough to hear Little Amos whimpering right there in front of her. She reached out, expecting to touch his warm little body, but her hand landed on nothing. He was right there—somewhere. She could hear him breathing, yet her hand landed on thin air. She drew her hand back and slid it forward from her knee, keeping contact with the rock. Her fingers found the edge of a little drop-off. Lying flat on her belly, she reached down into the blackness beyond the lip. Her hand, groping, touched the cloth of his coat and her fist closed about it.
Hoisting Little Amos over the lip of the rock, she gathered him to her breast and wrapped her coat around him, rocking, moaning.
He smelled. Ada knew what that was—she’d smelled it often enough through a lifetime of babies, but her mother always fixed it. Mamm always knew what to do.
But Mamm was not here. Mamm was far away, and she was probably asleep. Still, Ada had seen it enough times to memorize it, so she decided to fix it herself, even if she couldn’t see. First, she took off his coat and spread it out like a blanket. When she went to smooth out the coat, her hand found a lump and fished in his pocket to see what it was.
The harmonica. She stuck it in the pocket of her dress and laid Amos down on his back. In total darkness her hands pulled his suspenders down, took off his pants. She folded the diaper and used it to wipe him, the way she had seen her mother do a million times.
