The Captive Heart

by Dale Cramer

“Can we get him to a doctor?”

  Kyra shook her head. “Agua Nueva is even farther—he would never make it. But we can’t stay here. It isn’t safe.”

  Thunder rumbled around her words.

  “And it’s going to rain,” she added, glancing skyward. “We need to find shelter, and soon. Once, when I was a child, we camped at an old abandoned silver mine not too far away. We can take him there.”

  Miriam took a goat skin flask and dribbled a little water between Domingo’s lips while Kyra rode down to the woods and came back shortly with two long, slender poles—green saplings she had cut down and trimmed with nothing but a hunting knife and a rock.

  Kyra’s resourcefulness never ceased to amaze her. The first thing she did was split off a couple of splints from the thick ends of the poles. Miriam had to clamp herself onto Domingo’s head and chest, trying to hold him while Kyra locked an arm around his ankle and heaved against the broken leg with all her might.

  Domingo moaned and his back arched, but even the pain of setting his leg didn’t wake him. Once Kyra was satisfied with the angle of the leg she lashed the splints securely in place with rope.

  “I’m afraid this is all we can do for now,” she said, glancing up at the threatening clouds. “We need to get moving.”

  She showed Miriam how to roll the poles into opposite sides of a blanket to make a travois, and then she secured the thick ends of the poles to her saddle, leaving the flexible tips to drag behind and absorb the shock of the rocky path. They laid Domingo on the travois as gently as possible, tied him in place with rope, and started down the trail to the west under a low and ominous sky.

  Miriam brought up the rear, her heart in her throat as she watched Domingo bounce along behind Kyra’s horse on his makeshift bed. As she rode, she prayed. It didn’t take a doctor to see that he was near death, but he wasn’t dead, and Rachel’s miraculous return had taught her that any hope, no matter how faint, was infinitely better than no hope at all.

  Chapter 35

  News of Rachel’s return spread quickly that morning, and buggies traveled back and forth all day as the neighbors came to see her. But the joy over Rachel and Jake was tempered by the news that Miriam had gone off into the mountains with Kyra to look for Domingo’s body—a whole new worry.

  Jake Weaver was hailed as a hero, but circumspectly, lest they fill the young man’s head with pride. Late in the afternoon, when most of the day’s work was done, Hershberger granted the young hero a couple hours of daylight to go visit Rachel.

  Near dusk, the two of them walked out past the barn lot, up the face of the ridge a ways and sat together on a rock outcropping where they could look out over the valley. Dark gray clouds had crept in during the afternoon, and the freshening breeze brought the clean scent of rain. Distant thunder rumbled in the west. Rachel gazed toward the mountains, where the usual brilliant copper sunset had been blotted out by a sea of clouds.

  “Miriam is out there,” she said quietly. “I worry about her. What if the bandits are still there?”

  Jake shook his head. “After the battle in the pass, I bet the bandits are at home licking their wounds. Anyways, Kyra is with her.” He took his hat off, roughed his hair and let the breeze blow through it. Finally he said, “What do you think they will find?”

  Rachel shrugged, her eyes forlorn. “I can only hope Domingo is alive, but the way he talked when he turned back . . . I’m so afraid. Domingo believed he was going to die. It was in his words, and in his eyes.”

  “I saw it, too,” Jake said. “But maybe Domingo was wrong.”

  “He is usually right. I can only hope Gott will provide a way.”

  “Micah is pretty upset about Miriam,” Jake said.

  “He should be.”

  “Did you know they were engaged?”

  “Jah. She told me.”

  There was sadness in Jake’s eyes. “I didn’t know until Micah told me, just a little while ago. Last night, when he tried to stop her from going, he told Miriam she could not be his wife if she went off with Kyra.”

  Rachel blinked. “So that’s why he acted so strange.”

  “Jah. He didn’t really think she would do it, and when she did he had to stand by his word, so now their engagement is off. Micah didn’t want that to happen. He loves Miriam.”

  Rachel’s face hardened. “If he loves her, then he should have gone with her.”

  “If it had been you I would have tried to stop you.”

  “Jah, but if I had gone anyway you would have gone with me, wouldn’t you?”

  Jake nodded without hesitation. “If it’s important to you it’s important to me, Rachel. But Micah doesn’t know Domingo like we do, and I think he’s jealous. He thinks Miriam likes Domingo.”

  Rachel was silent for a moment, staring off into the dark distance at a hack coming down the main road.

  “She does,” she said quietly. “Miriam would kill me for telling you, but it’s the truth. I think she’s in love with him.”

  “No . . .”

  “Jah, it’s true. Miriam never meant to fall so hard, it just happened. At first I was angry with her, but then I remembered it was the same for me. I never really had any choice. You captured my heart, Jake Weaver.”

  From the look on his face she was fairly sure he would have kissed her right then if they hadn’t been in plain sight from the kitchen window.

  “That’s a shame,” he said, then added hastily, “I don’t mean you, I mean Miriam—you know, in love with Domingo. It makes me very sad for her because nothing can ever come of it since Domingo is not Amish. He’s not even American.”

  “Miriam knows that. It doesn’t make the feelings go away, but she knows. That’s why she chose to accept Micah—to keep from breaking Mamm’s heart.” Rachel chuckled, lowering her head sheepishly. “There was a time, when I first got word your family was not coming to Paradise Valley, I made plans to go back to Ohio by myself. Miriam was the one who stopped me.”

  “You would have done that? For me?”

  “Jah, I would have. But Miriam said my family needed me and I shouldn’t abandon them. Family is everything, she said, and she was right.”

  Jake smiled a little smile and, without looking, reached over and patted her hand. “She’s right, and one day soon I hope to have a family of my own.”

  Rachel blushed, but she said nothing. Confident of Jake’s love, she had never once doubted it, nor doubted their future together, whether a minister came to Paradise Valley or not. But in another part of her mind a problem festered. It was a bigger problem even than a wedding, with direr consequences, and yet it was one she had not been able to bring herself to share with Jake.

  He was a murderer.

  Jake had killed a man, and his soul was in imminent peril of hell if anything should happen to him. What made matters infinitely worse was that he didn’t even know he was in danger. And it was her fault. She and Domingo had lied to him, so Jake went on blissfully believing he had not killed the bandit that night in her stall.

  Clearly he would have to repent of his sin, but that wasn’t the problem. Jake would be remorseful. In his heart, he was no murderer. But never in all her life had Rachel ever even heard of an Amishman killing a man except by pure accident. There simply was no precedent for such a thing in an Amish community because it had never happened before. If she told Jake the truth now, she was certain he would be forced to travel back to Ohio, where a bishop would decide his fate. And when he got to Ohio, what would his father say?

  Like Caleb Bender, Jake’s father was a man of principle. Jonas Weaver would never allow his son to return to Paradise Valley.

  Ever.

  Jake could be separated from her forever.

  Rachel sighed. Maybe she could wait it out. Eventually the day would come when Jake would be old enough to make his own decisions and go where he wanted. Anyway, it wasn’t like he meant to kill the weasel; he was only trying to keep him from harming her.

  But it was a lie,
and she had learned from watching Emma that a sin covered by a lie was a burdensome thing to carry. She knew in her heart that somehow it would come back to haunt them both. And what of his soul? If she guarded her secret in order to keep Jake for herself on this earth, she might very well be depriving him of an eternity in heaven. In her heart she knew—sooner or later she would have to tell him.

  But not today.

  Kyra picked her path carefully and moved slowly, jostling Domingo’s travois as little as possible on the rough, rocky mountain trails. By the time they reached their destination it was too dark for Miriam to tell much about the little valley, other than it was a narrow strip of fertile bottomland at the base of a sheer limestone cliff. A clear brook ran through a sandy wash close under the cliff face, and she could hear it gurgling over rocks and under snags of deadwood piled up by flash floods.

  The entrance to the abandoned silver mine was a little ways up a steep forested slope on the side of the valley opposite the cliffs, a black rectangular hole mostly obscured by thick brush and scrawny, twisted trees.

  They untied the travois and lowered it to the ground. Kyra picked up a fist-sized rock to pound the back of her hunting knife, and while Miriam gathered firewood she cut the poles of the travois down to make a litter.

  “The miners carved out a living space for themselves about fifty feet inside the mine,” Kyra said. “There’s a crevice in the top that draws the smoke, so we can build a small fire for light and cooking.”

  Thunder rumbled overhead, and Miriam started toward the entrance with an armload of dry firewood.

  Kyra stopped her. “I wouldn’t go in there yet,” she said, pulling a candle from her saddlebag. “Let me go in first and see what creatures are there.”

  With a candle in one hand and a heavy stick in the other, Kyra disappeared into the entrance and came back in a few minutes dragging a dead rattlesnake. When she held it up by the tail, its crushed head hung to the ground.

  “Dinner,” she said, and Miriam shuddered. “They look for a cool place in the summer.”

  Fifteen minutes later they had tied the horses, brought the saddles into the mine and built a small fire in the square chamber fifty feet down the timber-shored shaft. Just as Kyra said, the smoke drifted up and out of sight through a crevice. After they swept out the spider webs and rats’ nests they brought in Domingo’s litter and laid him far enough from the fire to keep sparks away from his blanket.

  Outside, the deluge began.

  Listening to the pounding rain as she casually skinned the rattlesnake by the fire, Kyra glanced up the shaft and said, “Our timing was perfect.”

  Miriam nodded. “Gott’s timing.” By candlelight she watched Domingo, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the gray pallor in his bloody face. He was shivering, so she got the other blanket and covered him.

  “We should clean his wounds properly now that we have a fire,” Kyra said, standing on the snake’s head while she peeled off the skin. “There’s a little cooking pot in my saddlebag. Why don’t you catch some rainwater and put it on the fire to boil?”

  By the time Miriam came back with a potful of rainwater Kyra had spitted part of the snake and had it roasting over the small fire.

  “I don’t think I can eat that,” Miriam said.

  Kyra was leaning over Domingo, feeling his forehead with a wrist. Without looking up, she said, “You’ve never been really hungry, have you? We only have one day’s food left, and if Domingo lives we won’t be able to move him for a while. I think I will have to teach you some new things.”

  She was right, and Miriam felt a pang of shame for worrying about what she would eat while Domingo lay near death.

  “Is he going to be all right?” she asked.

  Kyra looked up, shrugged. “I will do everything I can, but in the end his life is in God’s hands.” Then she smiled wearily and added, “In the end, all our lives are in God’s hands.”

  They had brought a few ears of sweet corn, and Kyra laid two of them in the coals to cook, still in the shuck. Even roasted snake wasn’t so bad once Miriam got over the idea of it, and as long as she was careful not to look at the carcass. Sort of a cross between fish and rabbit.

  By the time they finished eating, the water was boiling in the little pot. Kyra tore a square cloth from Domingo’s shirt and dropped it in. It took an hour to clean his wounds, and when they were done he didn’t look much better than when they started.

  “In the morning I’ll go out and gather some medicines,” Kyra said. “If he lives through the night, maybe tomorrow will be better. We’ll clean the wounds again and sew them up.”

  Miriam’s head tilted. “With what? We brought no needle or thread.”

  “Watch and learn,” Kyra answered, with a slightly condescending smile. “Everything we need is already here.” She felt Domingo’s forehead again, then his hands and feet. Her brow furrowed. “He is freezing, and we have only two blankets. You and I will have to keep him warm tonight.”

  “How?” Miriam asked.

  “There is plenty of heat in us, so long as we share it. We will lay against him, like dogs.”

  Miriam gasped. Her eyes widened and her hand flew up to cover her lips, shocked at the very suggestion.

  “Oh, I could never do that,” she said, her face flushing. “It wouldn’t be . . . I just couldn’t ever—”

  “Miriam. He’s unconscious. He won’t know. Look, I’ll leave the bottom blanket over him and we’ll lie on top of it, so you won’t really be touching him at all. You snuggle up to one side, I snuggle up to the other, and we’ll pull the second blanket on top of us. That way all three of us can share two blankets and Domingo can stay warm in the night.”

  Miriam gave her a sideways look.

  “He’s freezing, Miriam. We must keep him warm.”

  Warily she said, “Later, when he wakes, you won’t tell him?”

  “Not a word, I promise.” Kyra’s eyes danced, enjoying Miriam’s discomfort a little too much. “It’s the only way, Miriam. It must be done.”

  She nodded, her mouth a thin line. The very idea was mortifying to her, but she had to concede the necessity of it. Slowly, nervously, she lay down against his side and put her arm across his chest.

  “I will never be able to sleep a wink,” she muttered as Kyra put out the candle and lay down against Domingo’s other side.

  Miriam could feel the rise and fall of his chest, the rhythm of his heart. In the beginning it made her very nervous, but then a strange thing happened. Lying close to him, with firelight flickering dimly from the rock walls, listening to his slow, even breathing, her nerves began to dissipate.

  I suppose I can get used to anything, she thought at first, but in a little while she began to realize that she felt safe and warm, and holding Domingo seemed strangely natural. A while longer and she became so completely relaxed that she fell sound asleep.

  Chapter 36

  Dr. Gant came home early that evening and announced that he was heading back to Saltillo in the morning. He hung up his hat and collapsed, exhausted, into a chair. His shoulders sagged.

  “We lost two children in San Rafael,” he said wearily, “and an old man, but I think the worst is over. I treated everybody I could until the antitoxin ran out, burned a lot of infected bedding and trained them to boil and sterilize. There haven’t been any new cases in three days. I think we’ve stopped the spread.”

  “You sound like you think you failed,” Caleb said. He was building a fire in the stove because the evening was chilly and Mamm couldn’t get warm. She sat huddled in a rocker near the stove, crying softly.

  Gant sighed deeply, put his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. “It’s hard for a doctor to watch children die,” he said through his hands.

  “It’s hard for anybody to watch children die,” Caleb answered, his voice thick with emotion as he closed the iron door and latched it. Flames flickered through the grill. “But how many would have perished if you hadn�
�t come? I don’t think we can ever repay you.”

  Gant waved him off without looking up. He had toiled day and night, almost single-handedly stemming the tide of disease, and yet he was haunted only by his failures. His limitations. Caleb gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze as he passed, thinking that it was rare indeed to find such a man wearing a three-piece suit and driving a fancy car.

  “Oh, Miriam,” Mamm whimpered.

  Gant looked up, stared at her. “I’m worried about her, Caleb. I wish there was something I could do.”

  “Me too,” Caleb said, lowering himself into a chair near Mamm, then reaching over and tucking the blanket about her legs. “Mebbe she’ll be all right. I don’t know.”

  “I have a friend in Saltillo,” Gant said. “A psychiatrist. I might be able to talk him into prescribing something for her if you like.”

  Caleb only shook his head. “No. We’ll take care of her. I think she’ll be all right once Miriam gets back.”

  The girls were cleaning up the kitchen, and when a knock came at the back door Barbara opened it. Micah shuffled in, hat in hand.

  Caleb rose and greeted him with a stiff handshake, offered him a chair.

  Micah shook his head, remained standing. “I just came to see if you heard anything yet,” he said. He acted subdued, apologetic, all trace of pride gone.

  Mamm stared at him with red, puffy eyes, and whimpered, “Have you seen Miriam?”

  Caleb sighed, sitting back down. “In the morning I will go and look for them. I would have gone already but for . . .” He nodded slightly in his wife’s direction. She was oblivious. “Rachel, do you remember how to find this Needle’s Eye?”

  “It’s on the same trail as the logging place,” Rachel said, drying a plate. “Just a lot farther north.”

  “Let me go,” Micah said, and there was a note of pleading in his voice. “Caleb, your wife is not well. Wouldn’t it be better if you could stay here and take care of her? You been through so much already. Let me go look for Miriam.”

  Caleb considered this for a second. The boy was full of remorse, and it was a remorse that Caleb felt he deserved, but he was hoping to make amends. Micah was trying to do the right thing, and Caleb would not stand in his way.