by Jan Drexler
“There you go, boy. You’ll be good for some more miles, won’t you?”
Patting the horse’s shoulder, Cole eyed the useless saddle perched on the gelding’s back. It was tempting to ride, even for only a few miles. But if he did, the horse would become even lamer, and then where would he be? No. He’d have to find a farrier.
After another half mile, Cole caught the scent of wood smoke on the breeze. Another small farm, perhaps. Or a town. He picked up his pace until he caught sight of the canvas tops from a group of wagons. Keeping to the edge of the road where he could take advantage of the cover the underbrush provided, he drew closer until he could hear voices. He had caught up to those Amish movers again.
Tying the horse to a sapling, he crept forward until he could see the camp and watch the activity. Children played games near the wagons, while a group of women gathered clothing from where they were hung over bushes on the other side of the camp. A couple of the younger men sat near the fire, but both looked pale and weak.
Cole watched until he was sure Mattie wasn’t in the group at the campsite. In fact, several of the movers seemed to be missing, including that Jacob Yoder, the one who had confronted him the last time he had run into them. He fished his tobacco out of his pocket and bit off a chaw. The Conestoga horses were picketed at the far edge of the camp, away from the road. If the rest of the group stayed away, tonight would be the perfect time for him to claim his prize. None of the people left in the campsite would oppose him, even if they were aware of what he was doing. He’d have to take the horses through the camp to get them to the road, but if everyone was asleep, that shouldn’t be too much of an obstacle.
There was only one problem. Mattie was supposed to be part of that prize.
He hated that he couldn’t forget about her. There was no reason in the world that he had to have her, but no other girl had captured him like she had. If he was going to Oregon, she had the spirit and fire to make it there with him. And the journey wouldn’t get boring with her along. He flexed his fingers, remembering the feeling of her soft form caught in them.
Voices raised as a kid came running into the camp from the road beyond. Behind him came the rest of the group. Cole spit a stream of tobacco juice toward a nearby tree trunk and wiped his sweaty hands on his britches. Mattie was in the middle of them. No telling where they had been, but they were back, and they seemed excited about something. Mattie fell to the back of the group as everyone else gathered around a small boy with a hurt hand.
Cole dismissed the injured boy from his mind and watched Mattie. If she went into the woods alone, or back along the road, he might be able to head her off. But no. She was watching someone else up the road. That blasted Jacob and another man. Soon they would all be in camp and there would be no chance to go for the horses tonight.
Pulling back into the woods and his horse, Cole turned possibilities over in his mind. These movers were going west, and they’d stick to this road. But how far were they going?
Cursing under his breath, Cole shot a look at his horse as he untied him and started back toward the road. If the gelding hadn’t thrown a shoe, he’d be able to follow the Amish movers until they stopped in a good place where he could take the horses. But with a lame horse, Cole himself might as well be crippled. He needed to find a farrier, or another horse. He’d have to go on up the road to the next town. There would be a town up ahead somewhere, and then he’d come back. He could even scout out the best place to waylay them.
He grinned at his own cleverness. He didn’t need Hiram and Darrell. He’d do this job on his own, and then head west.
Crossing the road, he circled the campsite through the underbrush. He kept watch, but no one raised an alarm. Once past the Amish, he went back to the road, pulling the horse to a pace faster than they had been going before. He had a plan and itched to put it into action.
22
As Mattie climbed out of the wagon the next morning, the sky was dotted with wispy pink clouds, borne on a light breeze that fluttered the leaves in the tallest treetops. Birds sang in the branches, their music denying the violence of yesterday’s storm, but broken tree limbs and scattered leaves were a remaining testimony.
Mattie had awakened often during the night. Davey slept, but his rest was interrupted by dreams or the pain in his burned hand. He would sit up on the pallet between Naomi and Mattie, not quite awake and disoriented in the dark and strange wagon. Eventually Naomi’s voice would calm him, singing a nursery song or telling a story to distract him, and he would sleep again until the next nightmare startled him into wakefulness once more. His wounds, both his hand and his heart, would take a long time to heal.
Breakfast was quick and simple. The supplies were running low and they had decided that they needed to save at least half of what they had brought to sustain them for the first months in Indiana, until their first harvest. So dried apples, soaked and stewed, were the only food for the morning meal.
Mattie tied their milk cow, Pet, to the back of the wagon while Daed and Henry hitched up the team. The entire group was subdued this morning. Tired of traveling, Mattie thought. They must be close to their destination, but Yost had said their journey would take at least four more days.
The string of wagons made their way to the road and had started west by the time the sun touched the tops of the trees on the eastern side of the clearing. Mattie looked back at the small meadow at the side of the road. She should remember that place, where Jacob had kissed her for the first time. With the now-familiar sour turning of her stomach, she faced the truth again. Their first, and probably their last kiss. Since their argument, he had been friendly enough, but nothing more than that. No more long looks with their eyes meeting. No more tender touches on her hand or back. The last conversation they had was stilted and formal, with none of the close camaraderie they had shared before. Those few minutes during the storm had been an island of peace in the swirl of their lives. Lives where a kiss didn’t make a bit of difference—at least, not to Jacob.
She faced the western road again and looked past the wagon in front of them to the road disappearing in the trees ahead. That view looked no different than the view to the east behind them. They were traveling through an endless forest, hemmed in by trees, the sky a narrow stripe above.
When they passed the ruined cabin, Mattie looked away. If Davey was awake, Naomi was keeping him inside the wagon. He didn’t need to see the reminders of the tragedy that had changed his young life so abruptly.
Only a few hundred yards beyond the farm, the signs of storm damage lessened. Soon only a few wilted green leaves lay on the ground where the wind had tossed them. The storm had broken a narrow path through the woods, but a deadly one. Mattie shivered. If the storm had hit their camp with as much force as it had hit the Mullers’ farm, would any of them have survived?
Mattie looked up and down the wagon train. She wished for someone to walk with and talk to, but her friends all had others to spend their time with. Johanna rode in the Bontragers’ wagon with Andrew, and Naomi was keeping Davey occupied in their wagon. Even Mamm was busy entertaining her young grandchildren in the spring wagon. Jacob . . .
She wouldn’t think about Jacob. Mattie kicked at a rock in her way. She liked Jacob. Of course she did. She probably even loved him. But . . . The memory of her dream still haunted her. The pull of what she might find behind that rock wall. The need to find a way through to the other side.
How could he expect her to become his wife when she didn’t even know what she wanted yet?
“Mattie, slow down.”
Johanna’s call came from behind, and she stepped out of the path of the wagons to let her friend catch up.
“Can I walk with you?”
“I thought you were riding with Andrew.”
“He needs to rest, and I’m ready to walk for a while anyway. I get so tired of riding all the time.”
They fell in behind the Bontragers’ wagon, the last one in line.
Mattie looked sideways at Johanna. “Are you thinking of marrying Andrew?”
Johanna blushed. “Why wouldn’t I? I can’t imagine not spending the rest of my life with him.” She leaned closer to Mattie and spoke with a lowered voice. “I worried when he was so ill. What if he never recovered? What if the illness left him so weak he wouldn’t be able to support a family? Then where would we be?”
“But he is recovering, isn’t he? You don’t have to worry.”
“But I still think about it. What would I do without him?”
Mattie tried to imagine her life without Jacob. Now that he was part of her world again, she wasn’t ready to change that. But the plans he had . . . he didn’t understand how they made her feel like her feet were mired in the mud.
“What about you?” Johanna continued. “You and Jacob have gotten quite close, haven’t you? Has he talked about marriage?”
“We were always friends, even as children.”
“He doesn’t look like he’s thinking of you as a child.” Johanna hid her mouth in her hand. “I think he’s smitten with you.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to set up housekeeping, though.”
“Why not?” Johanna stopped walking, her eyes round. “What else would you do?”
“Don’t you feel like there’s more to life?”
Mattie walked on for a few steps and Johanna hurried to catch up with her. “What can be more important than building a home with the man you love?”
“I know that’s what you want, and what Naomi wants, but I’m not sure I do. What if there’s something better out there?” Mattie waved her hand toward the west. She stopped walking and faced Johanna. “Don’t you worry that once you marry Andrew, one of you might discover that you’ve made the wrong choice? What would you do then?”
Johanna took Mattie’s hand in hers. “I’ll tell you what my mamm always said: ‘Choose your love and love your choice.’”
“What does that mean?”
Johanna kept walking. “You choose to marry because you fall in love with someone. But then hard times might come, or troubles of other kinds, and you might feel that the love is disappearing. That’s when you have to choose to love your husband because you are married to him.” She smiled. “I don’t quite understand what she meant, because I can’t imagine my love for Andrew being threatened. But I will remember that we need to choose to love, even when we don’t feel like it.”
“Like we choose to love our brothers when they tease us too much.”
Johanna laughed. “Ja, like that.”
“But . . .” Mattie felt the thread of her dreams slipping from her fingers.
“But what?”
“What if there is something more?”
Johanna shrugged. “You decide to be content with the life God has given you. Why would you want more than that?”
Andrew peered out the back of the Bontrager wagon and waved to them. Johanna ran ahead to talk to him, but Mattie stayed in her place, trailing behind the wagons. Decide to be content with what God has given her? But what if he was the one who had placed this desire in her for the wide spaces and open skies of the west? She wouldn’t want to disobey God.
Mattie watched Andrew’s face as he talked with Johanna. He must have shared some joke with her, because his face broke into that carefree grin she knew so well. He and Johanna would be happy together.
The line of wagons slowed, then stopped. Mattie went to the side of the road to look ahead and saw the reason. A freight wagon was stopped at the edge of the gravel and dirt road. She walked ahead to hear the conversation between Daed and the freighter.
“Are you having troubles?”
Daed spoke in English to a short, round man standing next to the road. The wagon was the kind Mattie had seen several times on their journey. Made for hauling freight on smooth roads, it was shaped like an oblong box. A canvas cover was pulled tight over the load inside, and another man was lying on top of the load. He was still. Too still.
“Troubles and then some, neighbor.” The man’s face was red and angry. “Horse thieves struck us in the night. Shot my partner.” He pointed toward the body on the wagon with a jab of his finger. “Stole the team. Left me here to rot.”
The other men gathered around Daed, listening to the conversation.
“Your partner is—”
“Dead. Dead and gone.” The man spit brown juice onto the ground. “Horse thieves and murderers. They should be hanged. Every one of them.”
“How many were there?” That was Jacob’s voice asking the question.
“I don’t know. Took us by surprise. Bill here shot at them, but he was in the firelight, and they shot back. Then they were gone with the horses and Bill was bleeding out on the ground.” The round man spit again.
Mattie backed away from the men as they continued talking. The man had said it was horse thieves, and that might mean Cole. But murder?
She turned over the memory of his threats to kill Jacob the first night after they left the Swamp. He had been forceful, and she had believed him then. But to go beyond the threats and actually kill someone? It couldn’t have been Cole.
They took their leave of the man after promising to stop by the freight company office in Angola and send help back for him.
“You watch out for them thieves too,” the man called after them as they pulled away. “Those horses of yours will be prime targets. Watch your backs!”
Mattie joined Johanna again, and as they passed by him at the rear of the line, the short little man winked at them, then sent a stream of brown tobacco juice off to the side.
“He doesn’t seem to be too upset about his friend.” Johanna moved to the side of the road, as far from the freighter’s camp as she could get.
“Losing the horses made him angry, though. Maybe he didn’t like his partner very much.”
“Do you think we’re in danger from the horse thieves, like he said?”
Mattie shook her head. “They were only two men and ready for a fight. We’ll be safe with our daeds and the other men. And we won’t resist the thieves, so no one should get hurt.”
“The thieves had to be those Bates brothers, don’t you think? Who else would be around here?” Johanna shuddered. “I don’t want to think about it anymore. Let’s hurry and catch up with Naomi. I want to see how Davey is doing.”
Mattie stopped as Johanna ran ahead, and turned to peer back down the road. A man had been killed there last night. Killed by horse thieves. Cole couldn’t be that evil.
When they stopped for the noon meal, Jacob unharnessed the horses while Josef rubbed them down and gave them each a drink from the canvas bucket.
They had reached Angola midmorning. On the way through the town, Yost and Eli had found the freight office and sent help back to the man stranded along the road.
“Do you really think they’d hang those horse thieves if they find them?” Jacob asked as he pulled the harness off the last horse of the team.
“Ja, I’m thinking so, since a man was killed.” Josef hung the bucket on its hook on the side of the wagon. “Do you think they will find them, though?”
Jacob shrugged. “I didn’t see any sign of the stolen horses along the road. And the freighter didn’t know how many men there were. What if there was only one?”
“You are talking of that Cole Bates?”
“We know he’s still around, and he is a horse thief.”
Josef gathered the picket ropes in his hand. “Ja, ja, ja. But is he a murderer?”
Jacob couldn’t shake off the feeling of evil that came over him every time Bates’s name came up. “I think he could be.”
After the horses had been cared for, Jacob took his dinner plate to a shady spot next to the wagon. From here he could watch the rest of the group. Mattie caught his attention more than anyone else. She prepared a plate of food for Naomi, and then held it while Naomi tried to get Davey to eat. The little boy sat on her lap like a half-empty sack of cornmeal, turning his
head away every time she brought a spoonful of mush to his mouth. Jacob looked away and took a bite of his own plate of mush sweetened with syrup. Hot and filling, it satisfied his empty stomach.
When he had scraped his plate clean, he took it to the women washing dishes, and then glanced at Mattie again. She was holding Davey while Naomi ate her own dinner, but the boy cried and fussed in her arms. He looked hot and feverish, and Jacob’s stomach turned. The white-blond hair was wet and matted to the boy’s forehead, just like Hansli’s had been. His face was pale, with bright red blotches on his cheeks, just like Hansli.
Jacob went back to the wagon and stretched out on the grass to rest, covering his face with his hat. But he couldn’t erase the memory of Hansli’s face the last time he had seen him alive. Naomi and Mattie were both doting over the little English boy, but what would happen when he died? And he was going to die. It didn’t matter how strong and sturdy he was, he was going to die just like Hansli did. No amount of loving care could prevent the inevitable.
He mentally shook himself and pushed away that black tide. There was no reason to think what happened to Hansli would be Davey’s fate too. He tried to turn his thoughts away, but it was Cole Bates who intruded next, with the echo of his confident tone when he told Jacob that Mattie would go west with him.
Jacob’s eyes popped open and he sat up, pushing his hat into place. He clasped his arms around his knees and leaned his forehead on them. He swallowed, his throat dry. As sure as the sun rose in the east, his Mattie was in danger in spite of her pledge. Her own desire to go west was just the enticement a man like Bates needed to lure her away.
He lifted his head again, swiping his hand across his face, trying to erase the images that kept his mind reeling. He wouldn’t get any rest this way.
Leaving the quiet noon camp, he walked to the grassy spot where Josef had picketed their horses with the others. A few of the big horses grazed, but most of them stood sideways to the sun, one hip cocked and their heads hanging. Tails swished at flies, but other than that, every horse was relaxed and calm. There was no danger that they were aware of.
