Mattie's Pledge

by Jan Drexler

  “Your prayers were answered.”

  She laughed, keeping her voice quiet. “You aren’t my brother, Jacob.”

  “I can be closer than a brother.” He reached toward her and dared to stroke her cheek as he tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear. “You’ve always been part of my heart. Ever since you were a little girl.”

  He felt her hand tighten on his. When she spoke, it was a whisper so soft, he had to lean close to hear it. “And you’ve always been part of mine.”

  “I give you my pledge that I will always care for you. I’ll protect you from all harm, and provide for you and our family.”

  Her eyes grew large as he spoke, her expression solemn. “What are you saying, Jacob?”

  “I want you to pledge yourself to me. Promise that you’ll stay with me. That you won’t let anyone or anything come between us.”

  Mattie’s fingers twined with his, and she covered their joined hands with her free one. She didn’t answer for several minutes while Jacob’s heart pounded.

  “I don’t mean to say that I would ever let someone like Cole Bates come between us”—Mattie pulled her hands away and turned toward the fire again, hugging her knees—“but I want more than this ordinary life. All I’ve known is doing the same thing over and over again, living a plain, simple Amish life. But there has to be more, doesn’t there?”

  Jacob picked up a stick and stirred the fire. “There might be something different out there, but I don’t think you’ll ever find more than what we have right here. Don’t we have enough? We have all the food we need and work to do. Family, friends, a future. It’s a life of living the way God has ordained. How could you want anything else?”

  “It may be the way God has ordained for you, but what if he has something different for me?”

  Mattie had drawn her knees up and rested her chin on them, her hands clasped. Huddled into herself like that, she had shut him away from her as firmly as if she had refused his request.

  She reminded him of a ewe lamb they had once who wouldn’t stay with the flock. It had jumped every fence they put it behind and sought its own pasture, away from the others. Daed had finally said to leave it be until it got lonely, and then it would come back. He had been right. The ewe lamb spent a night outside the fold, but then was bleating at the gate the next morning. It never tried to leave the flock again.

  He wanted to pressure Mattie to give him her pledge, but what kind of promise would that be? She would never keep it, and before he knew it, she would jump the fence and be off again.

  The fire shifted and he pushed the half-burned logs back together again. He would have to let her go. Let her find her own way. He could still try to protect her, but he couldn’t force her to love him. He would have to leave that part up to God.

  That evening Cole Bates hefted the sack of gold pieces in his hand. The detour to the towns along the southern bank of the Ohio River last week had been lucrative. These movers heading west were too trusting for their own good. Stolen horses brought a good profit, if a man knew where to sell them, and Cole knew. But like Pa always said, once you made some headway, it was time to lay low for a while. They didn’t need to go pressing their luck.

  “Why don’t we spend some of that money on food?” Darrell lifted his stick out of the fire. The rat he had skewered dripped fat onto the coals, releasing an appetizing sizzle.

  “There’s nothing wrong with rat.” Hiram bit off a chunk of his own and Cole shuddered. Hiram was never patient enough to cook his meat all the way through.

  Cole dug the last hoecake out of his sack. The cakes had been fresh when Hiram had snatched them out of a settler’s kitchen two days ago, but now the cornmeal crumbled in his mouth.

  “Cole? We got to buy some food.” Darrell’s whine worried Cole’s ears like a mosquito. “Pa won’t miss a dollar or two of the money.”

  “Do you want to be the one to tell him we spent the money on food when he taught all three of us how to live off the land?”

  That shut Darrell up. He knew as well as Cole that Pa would get one of them to tell, and then they’d all get a beating.

  “Tomorrow you two can do some hunting. Maybe you’ll find a rabbit or groundhog and Hiram can make some stew.”

  Hiram’s grunt was his agreement. Darrell hunched his shoulders and stuck his rat back over the flames.

  “And no stealing. We’ll stay here a day or so, then move on into Ohio.”

  “You still looking to get them horses off the Amish?”

  Cole glanced at Hiram as his brother sucked the meat off a tiny bone. “Those horses are the best we’ve seen. Matched teams like that will bring a good price.”

  “They won’t be easy to get.” Hiram threw the remains of his supper into the bushes behind him and wiped his fingers on his trousers. “You were wrong about those Amish. You said they’d be easy pickings.”

  “I misjudged them.” Cole shrugged. “But we’ll get the horses.”

  A guffaw sounded from Darrell’s side of the fire. “You going to get that girl too? She’s a pretty one.” Darrell took a bite from his rat. “She’d be nice to cozy up to on a cold night.” He laughed again, ignoring the juices dripping down his chin.

  Cole turned away from both of them. “I’m going to scout the trail up ahead before it gets dark. You two stay here.”

  “If you bring that girl back, make sure you bring her friends too!” Darrell collapsed on the ground, laughing at his own words.

  Ignoring them, Cole made his way to the trail along the top of the bluff and walked for a little less than a mile, until he could see the Amish camp. They had picketed the horses too near the wagons for his liking and probably were setting a watch. Those Amish weren’t fools.

  He settled along the trail, lowering himself so he could peer through the long grass at the edge of the bluff without being seen. The camp below was quieting down in the evening dusk. He watched one young woman coaxing a small boy to leave the flock of sheep. The boy came to her and she lifted him in her arms, hugging him as she did. Cole swallowed a lump down in his throat. He barely remembered his mother, but he knew she had never hugged him like that. Pa would never have allowed it.

  Catching sight of the girl, Mattie, he risked raising his head over the top of the grass. She carried a dishpan to the edge of the camp, and the water flew in an arc onto the patchy swamp grass. She was a pretty thing and not afraid of hard work from the looks of it. His hand clenched, remembering the feel of her soft arm in his hand. The flowery smell of her seemed to waft its way toward him on the evening breeze.

  As the other members of their group made their way to their tents and wagons, Mattie and the other young people gathered at the fire. One man, the one called Jacob, sat a little too close to her, but no matter. She told him she had no man, and even if she did, Cole knew how to take care of a rival. He waited until darkness fell and the fire died. Once he could no longer see her, he moved back away from the edge of the bluff and started down the trail back to camp.

  The idea of going west had grown on him during the past week. Those Conestoga horses would bring top dollar in Independence. The only problem was what to do with Hiram and Darrell. Darrell couldn’t keep a secret to save his life, and if Pa asked the weasel-faced kid why Cole hadn’t come home, Darrell would blurt out the whole story. After that there would be no rest. No starting over. He’d never be able to get away and live on his own. Pa would follow him to the ends of the earth to take revenge for his betrayal.

  No, if he was ever going to get away from Pa, he’d have to do it in secret. That wouldn’t be too hard. He’d change his name, head west with that Mattie girl and a good team of those Conestogas, and he’d never have to worry about Pa again.

  But Darrell and Hiram were a problem. They’d have to up and disappear. They couldn’t go home to that hardscrabble farm of Pa’s in Missouri, and they sure weren’t going to tag along with him. Darrell was a real liability with his stupid, thick head and constant whine. And he c
ould never keep a leash on his tongue. More than once on this trip he had spoiled their chances to grab a horse or two because his whining had alerted the owners.

  Then there was Hiram. There was something wrong with that boy. No, not a boy anymore. Hiram had gotten his full height a couple of years ago, towering over Cole’s near six feet, but on this trip he had filled out with pure muscle. He didn’t talk much, but he wasn’t dumb like Darrell. He was sly, and a cruel streak ran through him a mile wide and two deep. It was only a matter of time before he decided he should be the leader of the group, and Cole didn’t want to be around when he did. He grew cold just thinking about it.

  If he was ever going to be free of Pa, he’d have to act soon. The rumors he had heard of that place called Oregon made it sound perfect for a man like him. A place to start over, to make his way without Pa looking over his shoulder. With a girl like Mattie, he could raise a passel of sons to be just like him—tough and able, willing to take whatever that new land had to offer.

  He’d need to get those horses and the girl, and get to Independence by the end of May if he was going to join up with a wagon train this spring. If he didn’t get there in time, he’d have to wait until next year. And he wasn’t a man to wait when he knew what he wanted.

  13

  Mattie slipped around to the far side of the wagon from where Jacob watched her from his spot by the fire. She should climb into the wagon, take her place on the pallet next to Naomi, and go to sleep. But she couldn’t. As hard as her heart was beating, she would wake Naomi and the rest of the family for sure.

  Jacob’s promise to protect her, to take care of her, was what she had dreamed of before Daed had gone west last year and come home with stories of the land he had seen in Iowa. But even with her longing to see those western prairies, knowing that Jacob felt something for her pulled at her heart. How could she refuse him?

  She held trembling fingers to her lips, took a deep breath, then another. Slowly her heart quieted until she could once again hear the croaking of the frogs along the river.

  The sheep had settled in groups of two or three on the grass, patches of white in the darkness. Jacob had staked a rope around them as he often did at night, just enough to remind them not to wander away, he had said. If they did wander, he, Andrew, Josef, or one of the other men keeping watch would see them before they got too far away. Mattie walked toward the nearest white shape, and the sheep lifted her nose in greeting. It was Bitte, the lead ewe. Mattie patted her head, then looked up through the branches at the edge of the woods to the canopy of stars. The northern sky was blotted out by the trees and the bluff rising steeply, but overhead the night sky shone silvery white. There was no light except the stars and a faint blue in the west left from the evening sunset.

  Mattie hugged herself, rising up on her toes. Then she flung her arms out. Nothing could keep her from flying up to those stars tonight. Jacob Yoder said he cared for her. She twirled around twice, three times, then hugged herself again. Closing her eyes, Mattie let her mind go back to the first time she had realized how much he meant to her. It was just before her family had left the Conestoga to move to Brothers Valley. Jacob had changed that summer, like many boys did when they turned fourteen. But even with all the grown-up mannerisms and obvious disdain for the younger children in their church, he had never changed how he acted toward her.

  One Sunday afternoon, he and the other older boys had found her sitting high in her favorite tree. She had often gone there the last few months before they moved, letting the wind sway her while she thought about her dream—the dream she had several times that spring. The dream she had again just before they left Brothers Valley.

  When they had spied her in the tree, the other boys teased her, calling her a tomboy and other nasty names, but Jacob had intervened. He stood up for her against them, and after they went on to some other pursuit, he climbed into the tree with her.

  “What are you doing up here?” he asked.

  Mattie looked at him then. At the whiskers he had missed in his early attempts at shaving. At his long legs and arms that had made his climb awkward. And at his eyes. Jacob’s serious, gentle eyes. “Do you have dreams, Jacob?”

  “You mean at night, while I’m asleep?”

  She nodded.

  “Sometimes. But mostly they disappear when I wake up.”

  “Do they ever come back? Do you dream the same thing more than once?”

  “Maybe. I don’t remember. Why?”

  Mattie shrugged. “I keep having this dream that I’m trying to get somewhere, but I can’t get through the wall. It’s a high wall, like the picture of the mountain cliff in my schoolbook. And in my dream, I’m looking for a secret passage.”

  She waited for Jacob to laugh, but he didn’t. He only broke a twig off the tree branch and rubbed it between his fingers. “What is behind the wall?”

  “I don’t know. But it must be something wonderful. I feel like it’s calling to me, inviting me to come in, but I can never find the way.”

  “Are you alone in the dream?”

  “There are a lot of other people outside the wall with me, but they aren’t trying to get in. Only me.”

  Jacob waited then, twirling the twig until the bark wore off. After peeling the twig all the way around, he tossed it to the ground. “I had a dream once where I was looking for something.” He broke another twig off the branch.

  “Did you ever find it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I never had the dream again. Maybe when you find what you’re looking for, you’ll stop having your dream.”

  “You don’t think it’s silly? Having dreams like that?”

  He smiled at her, then climbed down the tree. “Mattie,” he said, reaching up and tugging gently at her dangling foot, “I don’t think anything you do is silly.”

  Jacob walked away then, but he had stolen her heart. From then on, she compared every boy she met to Jacob, and none of them had come close.

  Mattie reached down to pet Bitte again, scrunching her fingers into the sheep’s woolly head to scratch the soft skin behind her ears. And now Jacob had asked her to give him her pledge. He wanted her to be part of his future . . . her fingers slowed. He wanted her to live forever with him on his farm in Indiana.

  She looked toward the west, where the faint blue had darkened into the black night sky. Stars shone in a white carpet overhead, with a few wispy gray clouds hanging in the air between the night and her outstretched fingers. Her hand dropped to her side. If she pledged herself to Jacob, she would never go west again. Never see the western mountains, or the ocean. She would never know if Oregon was as wonderful as the travelers going by their Brothers Valley farm had claimed.

  Her dream came back to her. The high, gray cliff looming above her, and the certainty that there was a way through. But what was behind the wall? Was it Oregon? Is that what the dream was telling her, that she was meant to go farther west?

  If she did what Jacob had asked, she would never know. She sighed and gave Bitte a final pat before turning back toward the wagon. She couldn’t live not knowing what the west was like. Even now her heart was about to burst with longing, but for what? For Jacob, or for adventure?

  The second day after the group had left the river, Annalise grabbed the edge of her bench seat as the wagon lurched, stifling a groan. Ever since they had headed west, the rain had been relentless. Now the track they were following had turned to a sticky mire. Every few miles the men had to halt the teams to knock the clumps of mud out of the big spoked wagon wheels, but the mothers with small children were forced by the weather to stay inside the crowded wagons. The young people—Hannah, Mattie, and the rest—chose to ride in the open spring wagons, but Annalise wouldn’t risk the little children’s health.

  Margli and Peter sat across the wagon from her, playing cat’s cradle with a bit of yarn, but little William was at loose ends. His wooden cows and horses lay scattered on the bench where he had left them.

 
“Memmi, tell me a story.” William, three years old and used to being active all day, climbed onto the bench beside her. His voice was almost a whine, but she couldn’t reprimand him. Not today.

  Gathering him close, Annalise rubbed her belly to ease the pressure of the babe’s protesting push. “What story would you like?”

  “Grossdawdi Isaac and the ship.” William squirmed around until he was seated on his bottom. “Tell me about the rats.”

  “Haven’t you heard that story enough?”

  William shook his head and leaned against her.

  “Many years ago, Grossdawdi Isaac had to leave Europe with his wife and three children.”

  “Nancy.”

  “Ja, his wife’s name was Nancy. Do you remember the names of the children?”

  “William, like me, and Suzanne and Mary. She was the baby.”

  “That’s right. They traveled by ship on a long voyage across the ocean.”

  “Storms.” William spoke around the thumb he had stuck in his mouth. His head slipped down to her knee and he laid down on the bench.

  “There were many storms that tossed their little sail ship to and fro. There wasn’t enough food to eat, and they had to fight the rats to keep them from eating the supplies. Many people got sick.”

  William’s blue eyes stared up at her. He popped his thumb out of his mouth. “Mary died.”

  “Ja, Mary died.” Tears filled her eyes, as they always did at this part of the story. “And their memmi, Nancy, died too.”

  “Not William and Suzanne.”

  “The other children survived, and so did Grossdawdi Isaac. When they arrived in Philadelphia, an Amish family was waiting for them. Grossdawdi’s cousin, Christian. They walked from Philadelphia to Berks County. To the Northkill Settlement.”

  “That’s where they were attacked by the Indians,” Peter broke in.

  “But first something else happened.”