by Dale Cramer
They waited for him, and when Micah came into the light he laid a gentle hand on Miriam’s shoulder.
“A horse?” he asked. “Where are you going so late?”
“Kyra’s,” she said, palming tears from her face.
“Would you have to go to Kyra’s house tonight? It’s nearly midnight, Mir. You should wait and go in the morning.”
Miriam looked up at him and calmly replied, “They are Domingo’s family, Micah—his sister, his mother, his nephews. He bought Rachel’s freedom with his life. Do we not owe it to him to respect his family and treat them as our own?”
Micah sighed wearily. He had no answer for this.
“All right, then I’ll drive you there. You shouldn’t be running all over the country in the middle of the night by yourself.”
———
As the crow flies the village of San Rafael was only a few miles away, but the ridge lay in between. It took more than a half hour by road. A midnight drive on a pleasant night under a sea of stars would normally have been a romantic outing for a man and his betrothed, but a palpable tension hung between them.
Halfway there, after a long silence, Micah said, “I still don’t see why you couldn’t wait till morning to talk to Kyra.”
“Kyra is my friend,” Miriam said, her hands in her lap, her eyes elsewhere. She would say no more.
The village was dark and quiet. A few skinny dogs bristled and barked as the courting buggy passed through the dirt streets. There were very few lights in the windows of the adobe huts at this hour of the night. Miriam guided him to Kyra’s house at the back of the village, bordering on the bean fields.
“How is it you know where Domingo’s house is?” Micah asked, the note of suspicion unmistakable.
“We always come here in the fall to help with the bean harvest. Here, it’s this one.”
It was only a little two-room adobe house with a thatched roof, but Kyra’s hand was evident. Vines covered a shade trellis over the front door, and dense beds of flowers and herbs crowded up against the house.
Miriam knocked, and a minute later Kyra’s voice came from inside. “Quién es?”
“Miriam.” She offered no explanation. Kyra knew she would never come in the middle of the night without good reason.
A bar slid away. The door opened and Kyra stood there, beautiful even now, in the glow of an oil lamp hastily lit. Her raven hair was tousled from sleep, hanging in her face and cascading down over the Aztec blanket she’d used to cover herself.
“What has happened?” she asked, clearly alarmed as she stepped aside and ushered them into the front room.
“It’s Domingo,” Miriam said, and the fear in Kyra’s eyes deepened.
“Oh no.” Shaking her head, Kyra took a deep breath and a slender hand came up to her throat.
Miriam nodded gravely. “Rachel came home tonight. Jake and Domingo found her and got her away, but the bandits came after them. El Pantera’s men caught up with them, and Domingo stayed behind to hold them off at a place called El Ojo. There was a battle, and Domingo did not walk away from it. I’m so sorry, Kyra.”
Kyra’s eyes filled with tears. She swallowed hard, but she did not break down.
“I must tell our mother,” she whispered, sighing with dread. Striking a match, she lit another oil lamp and set it in the center of a rickety square table. Miriam and Micah pulled out a couple of old kitchen chairs and sat at the table waiting while Kyra went to wake her mother.
The room was spare, a large fireplace at their backs with a cooking rack over it, an oak cabinet next to it, and pots hanging from pegs on the walls. There was a cot against the far wall, neatly made, with pine boxes shoved underneath it. Domingo’s bed. In the corner sat a little table, covered with a white linen cloth, bearing a hand-carved crucifix and a handful of stubby candles.
A moment after Kyra’s light disappeared into the back room the muffled murmurings of mother and daughter suddenly swelled into anguished cries of grief. Kyra’s mother wept loud and long. After a while Kyra came out without her lamp and closed the door softly behind her.
Chapter 32
Mi madre will dress herself and come out shortly,” Kyra said, joining them at the table. “The boys are away, helping my uncle for a few days. It’s good they are not here now because I need to know exactly what happened. Miriam, you must tell me every detail. It is very important.”
The whole conversation was in Spanish, for Kyra knew only a few words of English. Micah’s eyes wandered about the room as he crossed his arms and sat back, uncomprehending.
“We don’t know what happened in the pass,” Miriam said, “because only Domingo was there. But the night before, he was severely beaten—twice, according to Rachel and Jake. He was not himself even before he turned back to hold the pass.”
“Even hurt, Domingo is formidable,” Kyra said. “Do not underestimate him. How many were there?”
“Rachel said six, including El Pantera.”
Kyra shuddered at the name, but she took a deep breath and asked, “Did anyone come through the pass after Domingo went in?”
Miriam shook her head. “Jake said no one got through, and Domingo never came out either.”
“Then we still don’t know for sure if he’s dead or alive,” Kyra said.
The door from the back room opened and Kyra’s mother joined them, her eyes puffy and red. A short, stocky woman with the leathered face of one who’d spent ample time in the fields, she wore a plain black dress and a black lace scarf over her graying hair.
“Por favor, continue,” she said as she pulled out a chair. She said nothing else, clearly fighting for control, holding a handkerchief over her mouth and moving it only occasionally to dab at her eyes.
“Again,” Kyra said. “From the beginning. I want to know any detail you can remember. Any little thing might be of use to me.”
Kyra’s eyes said she recognized the name Diablo Canyon as Miriam recounted Rachel’s story. Kyra’s late husband must have talked about it. By the time Miriam finished everyone was crying, except for Micah. He remained stoic, his arms crossed on his chest, understanding almost none of what was said.
“There is one more thing,” Miriam said, staring at her hands, pausing to get her voice under control. “Domingo told Rachel to tell you he was thinking of you at the last, and he requested that my father look after you. My father is a man of honor, and he loved Domingo. You will be part of our family from now on. You will never go hungry.”
A grim silence hung over the room for several minutes until Kyra’s mother rose from her seat and made her way over to the table in the corner. She struck a match and lit the stubby candles, then knelt down, clasped her hands in front of her face and prayed to the hand-carved crucifix.
Kyra rose slowly. “I need to change clothes. I must go and look for Domingo.”
Miriam blinked. “Now?”
Kyra nodded, met her gaze. “Sí. The sooner the better. I will not leave him to the coyotes and the buzzards. Miriam, I am deeply grateful to you for coming here tonight. It must have been very hard for you.”
Miriam shook her head, tried to smile. “The least I could do,” she said.
Kyra went into the back room and closed the door. Micah got up, yawned and stretched.
“Well? Can we go home now?”
Miriam stood up, but her eyes never left that bedroom door. “I should go help her get ready. Kyra needs me just now.”
Micah rolled his eyes, but said nothing.
“She is my friend,” Miriam said, and went to the back room without another word.
The bedroom was small, containing only three pieces of furniture: a double bed with a straw mattress where Kyra and her mother slept, a dark ancient chifforobe at the other end, and a dresser. The dresser seemed strangely out of place, for while the other furniture was heavy and crudely made, the dresser was dainty and beautiful, with elegantly curved legs. It held three finely crafted drawers with brass pulls and fancy inlaid des
igns, all highly polished—a very expensive piece of furniture.
Standing in front of the little dresser with one of the drawers pulled out, Kyra saw Miriam staring at it and explained.
“My father brought this home on the back of a hack, covered with a piece of canvas,” she said. “He took it from a hacienda that was about to be burned. It is the only beautiful thing we have ever owned.” She looked up at Miriam and added, “The only thing the Revolution ever gave us in exchange for my father’s life.”
She pulled a shirt from the drawer and held it up by the shoulders—a man’s shirt made from the rough, heavy cotton that all the poorer Mexicans wore. Stained and dingy and frayed from long use, it might have once been white.
“My mother keeps what’s left of my father’s things in here. It’s like a shrine.”
Kyra laid out the shirt on the bed behind her, pulled out a pair of pants that looked just as rough and laid them with the shirt. Then she began to undress.
“You’re going to wear your father’s clothes?” Miriam asked.
“Sí. If I am going into the mountains alone, I have a better chance if I look like a man—at least from a distance.”
“You’re really going to do this? Alone?”
Kyra met her eyes, unflinching. “Domingo is my brother, and we do not even know if he is dead or alive.”
“You know how to find El Ojo?”
“Sí, I know the place,” she said, stepping into a pair of pants. “The full name is El Ojo de la Aguja.” The Eye of the Needle. “We went that way many times when I was a child.”
Kyra pulled the stained shirt over her head, slid her hands under her hair and flipped it out, then began twisting and binding all that luxurious hair on top of her head.
In that moment, as Kyra stood there dressed in her father’s clothes, the sight suddenly triggered a shock in Miriam, an earthquake tremor of déjà vu.
The dream.
These were the very clothes she had seen in the dream, except that in the dream she’d been wearing them herself. She had nearly forgotten that part because it made no sense. Up to this moment the clothes meant nothing, an anomaly, an afterthought hastily drawn in the shadowy corner of a surreal painting. But Kyra looked enough like her to be her sister, and the sight of her in those rags had jarred Miriam’s memory. Her mind flashed startlingly clear images of the desperate fight, the fall, the empty moaning wind and herself . . . clad in the rags of a peasant laborer.
When the moment passed and her senses returned, Miriam found herself leaning heavily on the dresser, her knees too weak to hold her.
The drawer was still open.
There were more clothes in it.
Kyra touched her shoulder. “Are you all right? Your face is as white as your kapp.”
Miriam nodded numbly. “Sí. It will pass.” Staring into the drawer, she now knew what she had to do.
After a deep calming breath, she lifted a dingy shirt and a pair of pants from the drawer and tossed them on the bed. As Miriam took off her kapp and began removing the straight pins that held her dress together, Kyra suddenly realized what was happening. Her mouth flew open in shock and she grabbed Miriam’s shoulder.
“No, Miriam, you cannot do this!”
“You’re going to need help. You know you can’t do it alone.”
“Miriam, no! It’s too dangerous, and you’ll get in trouble with your people. I cannot let you do it.”
Miriam looked calmly into her friend’s eyes. “I cannot do otherwise. My people will have to forgive me.”
“But why?” Kyra’s eyes pleaded.
Miriam shook her head, broke eye contact. “Do you believe in dreams?”
A shrug. “Everyone dreams.”
“Do you believe they can tell you something, that sometimes the voice of Gott is in a dream?”
“Oh, sí! It is in the Bible.”
“Then later, when this is all over, ask me about the dream. But not now. Right now I could not bear it. How long will it take us?”
“What?”
“El Ojo. How far is it?”
Kyra stared at her for a moment and her shoulders slumped a little, resigned.
“A day there, a day back. Three days at most, if all goes well. Miriam, you’re loco. I wish with all my heart that you would not do this . . . and yet I am glad. You are a true friend.”
Ten minutes later the two women emerged from the back room with their hair tied up under ragged straw sombreros, wearing heavy ponchos with faded stripes over the clothes of common laborers. There were sandals on their feet.
Micah’s mouth fell open in utter shock and disbelief. He shook his head, raised an arm and pointed toward the back room.
“You go in there and change back. Right now, Mir! This is an abomination!”
Kyra’s mother glanced up from her kneeling place in the corner, but she said nothing.
Miriam went up to Micah and placed a hand gently on his chest. He looked her up and down and recoiled as if she were diseased, his face twisted in disgust.
She lowered the hand, but met his eyes. “The clothes are a necessary evil, Micah. I’m going with Kyra, to help her. We know too well that there are bad men in those hills, and if they see two women traveling alone they will teach us the true meaning of abomination.”
His head shook, almost involuntarily it seemed. “You cannot do this, Miriam. I forbid it!”
“You forbid?”
He blinked. “Jah, I forbid you. If you do this thing, you will not be my wife, Miriam. I have spoken.”
There was a noise behind her. Miriam looked over her shoulder and saw Kyra down on her hands and knees pulling a long box out from under Domingo’s cot.
She turned back to Micah. His breath hissed between his teeth in bursts as if he were in a wrestling match, his jaw muscles flexing and his eyes blazing. It had never occurred to Miriam to openly defy him but it was he who had issued the ultimatum, and there was too much of Caleb Bender’s blood in her veins to even think of abandoning what was right just to please Micah.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Domingo died saving my sister. I cannot let his sister go up into those mountains alone. You can forbid me, Micah, but you can’t stop me. If you will not have me now, then so be it.”
She turned away before he had time to answer, and went to help Kyra with the pine box. Kyra laid the hinged lid back to reveal weapons—the remains of the pistol belts, knives, and bandoliers that Domingo had taken from the bandits. There was also an old Henry repeating rifle. Kyra strapped a gun belt around her thin waist and handed Miriam a bandolier. Standing, she turned to Micah with the rifle propped on her shoulder and said, in broken English, “How I look?”
Miriam knew that Kyra’s intention was not to confront or offend. The plain fact was that she didn’t speak Dutch and hadn’t understood a word of what passed between Micah and Miriam.
But Micah didn’t answer; he just snatched his hat from the table, jammed it on his head and stomped out the front door.
Miriam ran after him, calling to him from the open door. “Micah, wait! We’re riding back to the house with you. We’ll be needing horses.”
It was an icy ride home, the three of them crammed side by side on the single bench of the courting buggy. Micah’s jaw was clenched, his eyes stone. He never uttered a word the whole way, but he took out all his frustrations on the horse. There was nothing Miriam could do, though she understood. Any Old Order Amishman would be mortally embarrassed at the mere thought of being seen with a girl who was wearing pants, let alone the whole outfit of a Mexican laborer. On top of that, Kyra sat beside them dressed exactly the same, only with a bandolier across her chest and a rifle on her lap. Halfway home, Micah reached behind the seat without a word, shook out a blanket and threw it over them both.
———
By the time they arrived back at the Bender farm the house was dark and dead quiet, everyone asleep. Miriam and Kyra lit a lantern in the barn and grimly went about saddling two
fresh horses while Micah watched, his arms crossed on his chest, his jaw working.
“We’ll need food, and some blankets,” Miriam said as Kyra saddled a young mare.
“We will need rope, too,” Kyra said. Her voice dropped when she added, “For binding the body to the horse.”
“There’s plenty in the tack room. You go and get the rope while I gather what we need from the house.”
Kyra headed for the tack room, and as Miriam passed Micah in the doorway of the barn she stopped and said, “Micah, you may as well go on home now. There’s no more to do here. In the morning, tell my mother where we’ve gone. It won’t do any good, but tell her not to worry.”
He glared, his arms still crossed. “Miriam, do not do this thing . . . please.”
Any other time Miriam might have taken that last word as merely a polite afterthought, but now, as she looked into Micah’s eyes in the lantern light, she saw through his innate pride and stubbornness. His voice, though hard, was tinged with regret, and she suddenly realized there was no going back. He had painted himself into a corner. His pride would never allow him to back down once he’d issued an ultimatum, so now he was practically begging her to change her mind. It was the only way he could keep both his pride and his girl.
She knew better than to touch him, but she moved a little closer. Tilting her sombrero to look up into his eyes, she said, “I’m truly sorry, Micah. I wish we could have come to an understanding, but in this matter I simply have no choice. I must go. I hope someday you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”
Hanging her head, she walked away, the lantern swinging at her side, taking the light with her and leaving Micah standing in the dark. When she came back out with an armload of bread and blankets his buggy was gone.
Chapter 33
Two miles up the trail, as their horses began to climb the first of the hills in the pale moonlight, Miriam dabbed her eyes with the back of a wrist, and Kyra noticed.
“Are you crying?” Kyra drew her horse up close and reached out to her friend. “What’s wrong?”
