Daughter of the Sword (41 page)

“Bound to unless the South is allowed to make up its own rules. All the hotheads aren't goin' west to look for gold, though it seems mighty like it. That's the main reason I rode over.”

To the puzzled looks turned toward him, Johnny said, “Goin' to be mobs of gold-hunters passin' the smithy this summer, along with the usual settlers' wagons. Won't be very safe for an underground railroad station till fall, and without the Whitlaws' place, there's no station west of Lawrence till Topeka.”

Ansjie's eyes widened. Conrad was impassive. “You think we might help runaways. Ansjie and I would, but this concerns the whole community. I'll go around tonight and explain to each family. Then we can have a meeting and vote tomorrow morning.” He smiled. “It'll be a short meeting. The men will want to get to their fields.”

It was short. Twenty minutes after the men had assembled in the church, Elder Goerz led them out. They scattered to their work, except for the elder, who accompanied Conrad to where Johnny waited by the village well with Deborah and Ansjie.

Sturdy, sun-browned legs showing below trousers that reached just below the knee, with feet thrust into sandals and a wide-brimmed black hat shading his whiskered face, the Mennonite elder from Prussia looked at the buffalo-hunter-blacksmith from the frontier.

“All have talked with their wives,” he said in careful English. “All have prayed. All say yes, it is God's will that we shelter the oppressed.”

Johnny gripped his hand so hard that the elder, no weakling himself, flinched. “Thank you, friend! From now on, folks from Friedental get their smithin' at half-charge!”

The elder shook his head.
“Besser
we pay,” he said austerely. “We do this for God. He has brought us to a land where we can be free. Shall we not help those who also wish freedom?”

With a word to Ansjie and Deborah, he went to his field. Conrad dropped a hand on Johnny's shoulder. “It took only five minutes to vote.” He laughed. “The other fifteen minutes was for praying!”

“Tatanka wakan!”
gasped Johnny. “Now, wouldn't it be something if our legislators did that?”

June ripened along with wheat and corn. When Conrad went to reap, Deborah asked to be allowed to bind. “But that's such hot, dirty work!” protested Ansjie. “Conrad always hires one or two boys.”

“But I'd like to do it.” Deborah tried to answer Ansjie's baffled stare. “Last year we had our first wheat. Thos and I were so proud!” She gave a shaky little laugh. “And we were so glad that we'd have wheat flour instead of cornmeal all the time!”

What would cornmeal matter if her family was back? But working in the wheat would be a link with what endured when reapers changed.

“Of course you may bind if you wish,” said Conrad. “And it's likely your old wheat field has a new crop, sown from dropped grain. Would you want to go and see?”

Deborah stiffened. She hadn't been back to her home since Rolf took her away that night five months ago. But Thos's child would inherit it, which gave it a future, not just a tragic past, and if there were wheat, sowed from that reaped by her brother, she didn't want it to go to waste.

“Could we take a scythe or cradle?” she asked. “If there's a fair crop, after your share's taken out, it can be threshed with Johnny's, sold if it's not needed, and maybe Johnny could buy the baby a few cows or use the money for expenses.”

“That baby's not going to lack for people who care about it” Conrad grinned. “But my share of the reaping will be your satisfaction. Shall we harvest the baby's field first?”

Deborah shook her head. “We know you have a crop.” She smiled. “Let's get that in first!”

Ansjie helped, of course, though she grumbled that in Prussia only peasants did such work, or madmen like Conrad. “So?” he chuckled, pausing, white shirt open at the throat. “Are we in Prussia, then?”

He went back to swinging the cradle. Ansjie, signing, moved her shoulders to ease tired muscles, but she resumed her work. It reminded Deborah inescapably of the harvest last year, how Dane had helped. On the last day of the harvest, they'd ridden to the river—

A year ago. Blinking back tears, she added a bundle of grain to the shock. When was he coming?

Was he?

They harvested the Landers' field in four days. Conrad proposed to leave the next day for the Whitlaws', taking food and bedrolls so they could camp out the three or four nights they'd be gone. Conrad figured to strike due east rather than go the long way around by Johnny's. Cross-country, he thought it was about fifteen miles.

“Fifteen miles?” wailed Ansjie. “On horseback? Never! I'm still sore from bending over!”

“I'm sorry!” said Deborah contritely.

Ansjie shrugged. “I was the fool—no one made me do it! But I'm not fool enough to jog all day over the prairie and then do more of this back-breaking work!”

“But Deborah needs a chaperone,” worried Conrad.

“You won't get any of these
hausfrauen
to gallop with you,” Ansjie predicted. “But one of the girls might. What about Cobie Balzer?”

Boyish, leggy Cobie was elated at the prospect, and Conrad reluctantly agreed that what he paid her parents would be deducted from the crop. The three would-be harvesters left Friedental at dawn. Conrad's cradle was wrapped with bedding and fastened behind his saddle. Cobie rode Ansjie's neat sorrel mare and kept stroking her mane, crooning to her ecstatically.

“Hansi Goerz's jealous because I got to come instead of him!” she crowed with a toss of her yellow pigtails. “So I'll bind better than he could! You won't be sorry you picked me!”

“I'm sure we won't.” Deborah laughed.

Even apart from propriety, she was glad the girl was with them. She had shrunk from visiting her home, though she felt it was time she did, time she accepted it as it was now.

Reaping the wheat would be both farewell and promise to Thos. And having a frolicsome youngster about would exorcise the haunted mood that might otherwise taint the pilgrimage. It was good to return like this, to harvest the fruit of her twin's labor for the child born of his seed.

Yet in the early afternoon when they struck the almost grown-over trail from the smithy and the country grew familiar, Deborah's nerves tautened. A sickness began in the pit of her stomach, then increased till she was shivering in spite of the warm, bright day.

There was the Osage orange hedge she and Thos had planted around the field to keep the horses and poor Venus out. The wheat was high inside, as high almost as if it had been planted.

Unwillingly, her gaze moved to the stable, the walls still standing, though half the roof was gone. There was the well-house.

And the cabin.

Charred logs, the fireplace seeming to wait, puzzled at its exposure to the elements. The debris was gone. She suspected that Johnny had finished burning it and cleaned away the remnants. Climbing down from Chica, she stared at the fireplace.

How many meals had been cooked there! How often the family had sat near the warmth and read or talked. Her eyes stung. She moved blindly toward the stable.

The earth where she'd buried her parents and from which they'd been moved had been carefully smoothed over. They were buried in the cemetery on the slope west of town and someday she'd have to go there, but to her this was their resting place.

I love you!
she cried to them through silence and death and time.
Mother, Father, Thos! Please hear me! I love you. I always will!

No answer. But the wheat waved golden in the sun.

Turning to Conrad and the hushed young girl, she straightened her shoulders. “Let's water the horses,” she said. “And then let's start the harvest.”

xviii

They worked till sundown, Cobie and Deborah following Conrad's steady swings of the cradle that left the grain pointing in one direction for easier binding. After washing off as much dust and chaff as possible the three sat down to feast hungrily on sausage, cheese, crusty fresh bread, nut cake, and molasses cookies, all washed down with water from the well.

Deborah had drawn it up, though she'd had to combat memories of the last time she'd done that, getting rid of strangled chickens before she could wash her parents. Using familiar things was, she felt instinctively, the only way to cleanse them of that last horror. She'd wept sometimes that afternoon, but with a sense of relief, of healing.

Sleipner and Ansjie's mare had been hobbled, but Conrad thought it safe to release them now, especially since Chica seemed to recognize her old pastures. Cobie and Deborah made their beds by the big plum thicket where laundry used to be hung, and Conrad spread his on the other side, out of sight but in hearing range. The late-rising moon, diminished at the top, silvered the prairie with its cool light, and the breeze made it pleasant to lie beneath a thin coverlet, weary body luxuriating in rest. The horses moved gently, crickets chirred, and distant coyotes set up a yipping that blended with other night sounds.

Everything was so much
now,
including the ache of her back and shoulders, that Deborah sighed as the wind teased her hair and snuggled deeper into her pillow, sinking into sleep.

She awoke to the aroma of coffee and the song of meadowlarks, dressed hurriedly, spread her bedding on a plum bush, and joined Cobie and Conrad. As well as the pot of coffee perched on the edge of the dug-out firehole, a skillet of eggs was frying.

“You brought
eggs?
”

Flipping them, Conrad smiled. “Ansjie wrapped them well. She said cold breakfasts are no good for this kind of work.”

He set the skillet on a stump, and they made a hearty breakfast. “No dishes!” Cobie laughed. “No housework! I wish I could live like this forever!”

“It'd get very cold in the winter,” reminded Deborah, rinsing out the tin cups and setting them to drain.

Cobie cleaned the skillet of egg and butter by rubbing it with a piece of bread, which she then popped in her mouth. “In the winter,” she said reflectively, “I might go south. Maybe to Texas. I want to see the Alamo. Or I might go to California.”

Oh, dear! thought Deborah. Have I given this child ideas that'll get her into trouble?

“What do your parents think of these ambitions?” Conrad asked with a quizzical lift of his eyebrows.

“I don't tell them,” said Cobie flatly. “But Hansi—we talk sometimes. He wants to see it all, too—outside!” And she spread her thin young arms, embracing the horizon.

She danced off to caress the horses. Deborah looked ruefully at Conrad. “Don't blame yourself,” he chided. “That one, and Hansi, they've always been curious, restless. Good workers, but it's clear they won't stay in Friedental. Some are born to stay, some to go, and all other people do is perhaps hurry the leaving a trifle.”

“But it's so peaceful in Friedental. No drinking or brawls, no stealing or hunger!”

“It also gives few choices for how to live. Mennonites will die for freedom to practice their religion; they'll give up everything and move halfway around the world for this. But as for freedom of the individual to be different, that sounds like vanity and folly to them.”

“There certainly are individuals out here,” said Deborah rather grimly. “And they tend to be
very
different!”

“So Cobie and Hansi will fit right in, paradoxically.” Conrad smiled, rising. He surveyed the wheat. “We may be able to finish by early afternoon tomorrow and get home before dark.”

At mid-morning they stopped to drink from the bucket Cobie fetched. It was hot. Conrad's shirt clung wetly to him and Cobie had unbuttoned her dark green dress. Chaff and dust mixed with sweat trickling between Deborah's breasts and between her shoulder blades. She promised herself a good washing that night behind the plum bush.

Cobie called suddenly and pointed. Stopping their work, Deborah and Conrad scanned the moving figure, barely in sight, along the road from town. They relaxed slightly when no other horsemen appeared. Roving Indians, as well as pro-slavers, might hit an isolated farm, and enough had happened at the Whitlaws' to make anyone nervous about riders.

This one seemed alone, though. Sleipner and the other horses whinnied from where they grazed beyond the cabin and loped down to meet the approaching animal, a powerful steel gray.

She had seen that horse before.

A cry lodged in her throat. Dropping the wheat she held, she squeezed through the Osage orange hedge, heedless of the prickles.

Dane! It was Dane!

She ran forward as he brought Lightning to a stop, sprang down, and swept her close.

“Deborah!” His voice broke. He kissed her as if to prove she was real, bruising her mouth, crushing her against him till she had no strength. Then his lips turned sweet, cherishing, caressing, then left hers and moved to her throat.

“Oh, my darling!” he breathed. “No one in town knew where you were!”

“Then how did you—”

He held her back, eyes going over her, as if to make sure she was real. “Melissa thought you'd gone back to New Hampshire. I was going to the smithy, hoping Johnny would know, but something made me stop here.”

“It's been so long! Oh, Dane—”

He held her, stroking her hair. “Your parents. Thos. And I wasn't here when you needed me.”

“You're here now.” She smiled through her tears. “That's what matters.”

She really thought so in the joy of that reunion. But it wasn't to be that simple.

Conrad and Cobie came to meet Dane, who treated the former nobleman in a distinctly guarded way even after Deborah had explained the Landers' hospitality and this harvest excursion.

“I must thank you for sheltering my fiancée,” Dane said as he offered his hand. “There's no way to repay all you've done, especially since my brother seems to have made her trouble worse, but if there's any way I could lessen the debt, I'd be happy to do it.”