Taken for English (22 page)

Standing across from them and twisting her lips in thought, Ruth’s first instinct was to wonder what Annalise and Elijah would be talking about with such concentration. Were they discussing her?

She scribbled at the bottom of her checklist. So what if they were? Annalise had joined the church, after all. Soon enough Rufus would propose and they would marry. Why should she not talk to another member of the church in a public setting? They were the only two Amish people present. Annalise was probably just being friendly.

Tom Reynolds’s red pickup roared into the meadow with the horn blaring as if someone had strapped a rock to it. Adrenaline surged through Ruth’s midsection as Tom nudged his way past a couple of onlooking families and got as close to the security line as he could. He then jumped out of his truck and marched along the line, waving his hands at the fire chief. A moment later, the chief began pointing and shouting orders. The water supply to Bryan and Alan’s hose abruptly shut off, and they began rolling the hose rapidly. Two ladders came down while a second water truck also stowed gear.

Back in his truck, Tom gunned the engine and began backing up. Ruth ran straight toward him, slapping her hands on the hood.

“What’s going on, Tom?”

“A fire.” Tom turned the steering wheel.

Ruth moved out of the way of the turning front left tire but would not release her grip on Tom’s lowered window. “What are you talking about? The fire is right here. They have it all under control.”

“Another one.”

“Where?” Her heart thudded.

“An old outbuilding on the other side of the highway, about three miles out. I think it’s on county land. At first I thought it was the training burn, but I realized it was the wrong side of the road.”

Behind Ruth, the engine of a water truck howled. She was glued to Tom’s pickup.

“Get out of the way, Ruth.” Tom slapped at her fingers on his window and let his foot off the brakes. The truck rolled, and Ruth jumped back.

A moment later Bryan was behind the wheel of his water truck and rumbling through the meadow. His focus was strictly on navigating out of one fire scene and toward another. Beside him in the cab, Alan lifted three fingers in a wave. Ruth gaped at three vehicles being redeployed to the new fire even as she heard the shriek of the siren beckoning volunteers from around the county.

Ruth turned back to the fire behind her just as the final wall tumbled and remaining firefighters rushed in to fill the gaps left by the departing trucks. The glory of the construction burn was nearly extinguished, outblazed by the potential of an unattended fire in open grassland. Spectators were already jumping into their cars and turning them around toward the road.

Gripping her clipboard, Ruth ran toward her supervisor’s car, where the older woman already had the ignition fired up. The clinic would need to be ready if someone were hurt.

Word of the second fire advanced through the crowd. Annie saw nothing to be gained by dashing off to watch another fire. Suddenly, though, she wondered how Elijah had gotten to this destination. She had not seen a buggy all morning, and anybody with half a brain would have kept away animals that might bolt. She turned to ask him.

He was gone, already lost from her sight.

Annie turned back to the training burn, which was fast becoming a haphazard pile of glowing half boards. Water still flowed from two trucks but with less fury. When the traffic thinned a bit more, Annie decided, she would fetch her bicycle and head back to town.

A flash of blue caught the corner of her eye, and Annie snapped her head around. Amish blue. The more she handled Amish fabrics, the more distinctive that shade became in Annie’s mental palette. It was not the mass-dyed hue of a commercial manufacturer that clung to the surface of an inexpensive material, but the rich saturation that emanated from the core of tight-woven cloth.

Annie realized she was holding her breath and blew it out. Forgetting her bicycle—it was in the wrong direction—she ran after the flash of blue. At least where she thought she had seen it.

Leah had been there. Annie was sure of it. She must have left home with only the dress on her back, because every time Annie saw her, Leah wore the same hue, sometimes with a purple apron and sometimes without. But always the same blue.

At the edge of the dissipating crowd, Annie systematically scanned from left to right. When she finally spotted the girl, she was looking at her back. With her skirts gathered in her fists, Leah ran with surprising dexterity, and Annie did not think she could catch her.

Three miles. That was the rumor. The new fire was only three miles.

Annie looked again at the speed with which Leah moved and thought about the miles she knew the girl had been crisscrossing in the last two weeks. When Annie ran track in high school and was constantly training, three miles was nothing.

Would Leah set fire to another building because she had been forced out of this one? Surely not.

Rufus’s words from just after the first fire rankled.
“You talked to her over a crowded, lengthy meal. Can you be certain she was there during the service?”

Annie was just going to have to find Leah again. To be sure.

June 1892

W
e’re shutting down for the day.” The Dentons’ foreman wiped a handkerchief across his perspiring brow.

Joseph and Zeke gripped the ends of a felled tree sheared of its branches, sharing its weight with Dayton Brown and Oscar Board.

“What he means,” Dayton said, “is that he’s too old and tired and can’t stand the heat another minute.”

Oscar snorted.

“We’re all hot.” Joseph glanced at Zeke. “I’m sure he has in mind the best interest of the entire crew.”

“No doubt.” Zeke’s agreement came quickly.

“You Amish seem nice enough,” Dayton said, “but even you can’t think a half day off has anything to do with us. It’s not even lunchtime. They won’t pay us for the afternoon, you know.”

“I do know,” Joseph said.

They lugged the tree away from the edge of the bluff. Joseph had no idea what the Denton brothers planned to do with the heaps of logs cleared from their land and accumulating farther and farther from the shore. He could now stand well back from their ferry dock and see the curve of the White River. The Dentons would be able to sit on their front porches and see a horseman coming. The work would not last much longer, but Joseph and Zeke had been frugal with their pay. Whatever their journeys did not consume, they would take home to their families.

Joseph put his thumbs through his suspender straps. There was the matter of Hannah waiting for him. Perhaps in his absence someone else had sparked her interest.

She was not the flighty type.

He felt the poke in the middle of his back, Zeke’s test of his nerves, and refused to flinch.

“Let’s ride the crew’s wagon into town,” Zeke said. “We can ask at the post office for a letter.”

“You go ahead.” Joseph still surveyed the river. “I would like to walk and think.”

“In the heat?”

“It is not so hot as the
English
believe.”

“Surely there will be a letter,” Zeke said. “We posed a simple question about the bishop’s wishes. I am beginning to fear something has gone wrong at home that would delay his response.”

“What does it matter?” Joseph murmured.

Hands on his hips, Zeke moved to stand between Joseph and the view of the river. “My friend, we can continue our scouting mission or we can go home to Tennessee. When the letter comes, we will do one or the other, but we will not linger in Gassville.”

“I did not suggest we should.” Joseph raised both hands to straighten his hat. When his hands came down away from his face, he imagined flinging his black felt Amish hat into the White River’s current. He shook the devilish image out of his mind. “I’ll see you back at the livery.”

Joseph did not hurry. Eventually he would end up in town, behind the livery. He would go inside to help with the few simple chores they exchanged for the privilege of spreading their bedrolls under the night sky. But for now, he walked without specific destination. Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades.

At the crack of a pistol, Joseph dropped to the ground. Laughter followed the shot. Joseph did not find it amusing to be the target of an
English
gun. Another shot blasted a tin can. Joseph knew that sound. Even Amish boys learning to hunt for food had to practice on something. He crawled toward the shots. Making himself seen was his best hope for avoiding a stray bullet.

“Hello!” he called.

Boots shuffled against the ground.

“I’d just like to get through,” Joseph shouted. He looked past the underbrush toward rows of toes reorienting toward him. Black
English
boots. “Is it safe?”

“Who’s there?” a voice demanded.

Joseph stood and kept a tree between himself and the clearing ahead. “Joseph Beiler.”

“Oh, the Amish man.”

That was Walter’s voice, Joseph was sure. What was he doing out pistol shooting?

A moment later, Walter tugged on Joseph’s sleeve. “You can come out.”

Joseph stepped from behind the tree in Walter’s protection. Several young men stood with pistols in their hands, the tallest of them Jesse Roper. Joseph had followed Sheriff Byler into the town hall the night of the dance in time to see what Roper was capable of.

“It’s just a friendly shooting match.” Roper grinned. “Do you shoot?”

After John Twigg’s death, Joseph had heard enough
English
talk to know that a shooting match in the woods was against the law in Baxter County.

“Well, do you shoot?” Roper asked again.

Joseph shook his head. “Only rifles, and only for food.”

“So you’ve never fired a pistol?”

Again Joseph shook his head.

“You can use mine.” Roper offered the heel of his weapon with a faint smirk.

“No thank you.” Joseph scanned the group of shooters. Roper clearly was the oldest and Walter the youngest, with three in between. Joseph did not see a pistol in Walter’s hand, a fact that brought some relief.

Jesse Roper fired another shot at another can. “One bullet left. It’s yours if you want it.”

“Try it,” Walter urged. “Maybe you have a knack.”

“I don’t believe I will.” Joseph touched his hat. As good as Roper was, Joseph was certain he was a better shot. He needed no target practice and would not fire for sport. But watching would cause no harm as long as he was behind the shooting line.

“I’ll try,” Walter said.

Roper laughed. “Some say I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.”

“I’m a good shot,” Walter insisted.

“Well, we’re not going to find out today.” Roper nodded toward one of the other men. “Your turn.”

The shooter missed, which Roper found riotously amusing. In the middle of his laugher, he raised his own gun, aimed, and fired a bullet against the innocent can.

“That’s it, boys. I’m hungry. Somebody owes me lunch.” Roper pointed at Digger Dawson. “I believe it was you who wagered your mama’s cooking.”

Digger kicked up a flurry of dirt. “Yes, sir, I reckon I did.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“Oh good,” Walter said. “I’m hungry, too.”

Jesse Roper shook his head. “Not you.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t aim to get between a boy and his daddy. You skedaddle on home. And not a word about this, you hear?”

Walter started to protest further, but Joseph caught his eye and gave the look he generally aimed at Little Jake when his brother seemed inclined to foolishness on the family farm. The boy picked up a rock and heaved it into the woods, but he left.

Jesse Roper laughed, and Joseph could not help liking the sound. Jesse seemed to do just what he wanted at any moment. The voice of Joseph’s father jumped the miles and the years to speak to Joseph words of caution, words of warning, words of the scripture about what happened to fools. Joseph had no doubt that all of the Amish and many of the
English
would cast Roper in that category. Still, watching the carelessness of Jesse’s face, Joseph wondered what such abandon would feel like. Obviously Jesse could saunter into a strange town and attract a following. What did these young men see in him? A daring spirit? Fearlessness they did not dare explore themselves?

Joseph reached up and tugged his hat.

“You do that a lot, you know.” Roper pointed a finger at Joseph then reached for his own hat, high and broad and black with a deep crease in the crown.

Joseph ran his hands down the front of his trousers. “I don’t notice when I do it.”

“It’ll ruin your hat.”

“It is not much of a hat to begin with.” Nothing like Roper’s.

Jesse threw his head back and laughed again. “You got that right. You comin’ to lunch with us?”

Joseph shook his head immediately. “Thank you, but my friend will be expecting me soon.”

“By all means, we don’t want to make your friend jealous that you had a warm, home-cooked meal and he did not.”

Joseph swallowed. He had the good sense to decline the lunch invitation because he suspected the rumor that Roper was related to the Twiggs was true.