The Captive Heart (4 page)

Chapter 5

W
hile Ira and John mapped out their plots and broke ground for houses, their sons started digging a huge irrigation well just like the one Caleb and his sons had dug the year before. Miriam and Rachel spent the next week teaching the boys how to make adobe out of the dirt from the well; the girls had become experts while making all the bricks for their own house and outbuildings. John Hershberger put Jake in charge of the brickmaking crew, and Rachel took singular delight in showing him how it was done.

Miriam watched them together, saw the way Jake looked at her younger sister, the way he listened to her, respected her. The way he
smiled
at her. They were very good together, and it was a little irritating after what had happened with Domingo.

Fortunately, she didn't see Domingo very often. He was only a hired hand, so most of the time he was off somewhere plowing or planting or helping build one of the new houses. Her heart still leaped when she saw him, even at a distance, but her face kept her feelings secret. Domingo probably didn't even know he had torn a hole in her heart. She would wait, and take whatever came. Either Domingo's heart would change or the pain would wear away over time.

Twice a week Miriam taught school for the Amish kids, as well as any of the local Mexican children who wished to attend. Through the winter Domingo had attended her class regularly, pretending to ride herd over his two boisterous nephews while he learned to read along with the children. But when the planting started in late February, he stopped coming to class. What with the building of two new houses across the valley and the planting of oats and wheat and corn and clover, he claimed he didn't have time for school, but Miriam suspected he was avoiding her. In spite of her own discomfort, she fervently hoped he would continue to sharpen his reading skills, if only by reading the copy of
Don Quijote
she had given him at Christmas.

In her spare time Miriam helped Emma plant trees. Levi and Ezra, Miriam's brothers-in-law, had finished both their houses in late fall and now were busy plowing their own fields, turning the new soil again and again to let the sun kill the weeds. Her sister Emma, Levi's wife, grew bigger by the day that spring, her second child due to be born in late summer. Emma kept house for Levi, tended her kitchen garden, cared for little Mose, and spent what little spare time she had putting out trees. The trees were Emma's passion. She missed the forests of home, and when she wrote to ask the newcomers to bring trees they overwhelmed her with saplings and seeds and nuts from Ohio. Every day she and her growing belly could be seen planting oaks in strategic spots around the houses so they would one day provide shade, planting lines of poplars and elms along the driveways and scattering an army of maples and fruit trees along the edge of the woods at the base of the ridge.

Miriam kept very busy that spring, telling herself in dark private moments that Domingo was right about the fences, and it was for the best. But the dream of the stallion and the jaguar came to her again one night, as vividly as the first time, and it haunted her. Try as she might she could not banish him from her heart. She could not stop herself from hearing the whispered word
cualnezqui
, and she could not shake the feeling that the recurring dream was a veiled premonition of things to come, a disturbingly clear vision from Gott himself. All her life her religion had taught her to be careful of what she wanted, but now she was learning that the wanting itself was not always a choice. Most of the time a girl could choose what she would
have
, but she could not always choose what she
wanted
. The wanting simply would not go away. Domingo had captured her heart, and like it or not, she wanted him.

But he made no move toward her. Domingo stopped by at Hershberger's once while she was helping the boys make bricks, and she couldn't keep herself from making eye contact. When he made a little joke she couldn't keep herself from laughing a little louder than the others, and when he made a casual observation about the bricks she was the first to acknowledge his expertise. But he made no move toward her. He was polite and treated her exactly the same way he treated everyone else, but nothing more.

And he no longer called her Cualnezqui.

The spring had passed and the trees on the ridges had leafed out by the time Ira Shrock looked up and realized they were very late in getting the lumber they needed from up in the mountains.

“We should go soon,” he said to John as they were lunching on leftovers on the back of the wagon one afternoon. “We'll be needing lumber to build barns before harvest, and we don't have any laid by yet.”

“Jah, that's right.” John took a bite of a biscuit loaded with salt pork and gazed up at the mountains as if he could hear the timber calling him. “It'll need to cure for a couple months, at least. Caleb, do you think we could mebbe borrow your wagon and team one day next week?”

Caleb smiled. “Only if you let me drive it. I'm thinkin' we should let some of the girls go, and make a picnic of it. The mountains ought to be beautiful this time of year. It will be a nice outing for all of us.”

“You hear that, Ira?” John's long face split into a grin. “It's a mighty stout old man that calls a day of logging a picnic. Caleb, we'd be glad to have you and your boys along, and bring the girls, too. Many hands make light work.”

Miriam had just finished teaching school for the day when Kyra arrived in the oxcart to pick up her two boys. Kyra was helping stack desks against the back wall and straighten up the buggy shed when Rachel ran in, literally skidding through the doorway, giddy with excitement.

“Miriam, we're going on a picnic in the mountains!” she chirped, bouncing with glee, unable to contain her excitement. “Jake's going, and Dat said we could ride together on the hack, so long as we have a chaperone. Just think, Miriam, a whole day together!”

Miriam smiled. Her younger sister hadn't quite gotten used to the new freedoms that came with being seventeen and able to court openly.

“That's nice. So who else is going?”

“Dat said all the men are going except for Levi and Ezra—somebody has to stay here and keep watch. The children are staying behind with their mothers, but the teenagers are going. It'll be great! Oh, I can't wait to tell Jake.”

Kyra slid a desk against the wall, and when she straightened up she pushed a wave of black hair out of her flushed face and spoke to Miriam in Spanish.

“
Que pasa?
I didn't get a word of that.” Kyra had learned a little English from Miriam, but Rachel's Dutch was beyond her.

Miriam repeated the news in Spanish, and Kyra's eyes lit up. “A picnic! May I come, too? The mountains are beautiful in early summer. The flowers are all in bloom and I can show you which ones to dig up and bring back for the garden.”

“Oh, sí!” Rachel beamed, switching to Spanish. “Mamm will be thrilled. I'll check with Dat, but I'm sure it's all right.” Rachel bolted out the door as quickly as she had come in, leaving Miriam and Kyra shaking their heads and chuckling.

A week later the men hitched their draft horses to three heavy wagons, loaded up the axes and saws and log chains they would need and set out before dawn. Caleb took the lead wagon with Domingo. Ira Shrock and John Hershberger drove the second, and Micah Shrock sat in the third one, check lines in hand. Miriam was about to climb up onto the back of Caleb's wagon when he pointed and told her to ride with Micah.

She stood there for a minute with her mouth hanging open, stunned. The last thing she wanted right now was to encourage Micah. Her father had never shown the slightest interest in her love life, and now he was playing matchmaker? Micah would think it was
her
idea. Given a choice, she would rather have ridden anywhere else. She started to argue, but Caleb turned his back before she could answer, so she did as she was told. Then, in the semidarkness, she spotted Kyra sitting in the back of Micah's wagon with her two boys and several of the teenagers, so before she climbed aboard she caught Kyra's eye and jerked a thumb toward the front seat. Kyra grinned and shook her head, but when Miriam's eyes widened and her lips narrowed, Kyra relented and climbed up front. Miriam took the outside seat, keeping Kyra between her and Micah.

Rachel, Jake and Lovina brought up the rear in a hack carrying food and cooking utensils for the day. Miriam turned around and looked back at them as the team lurched forward. Even in the half-light she could see the mischievous grin on Lovina Hershberger's face. At least now she knew who had put her father up to it. She pulled her coat tight about her and faced forward, her lips a tight line.

Micah talked the whole way, mostly about himself. He leaned around Kyra, grinning at Miriam, and prattled on about the farm he would one day have for himself in Paradise Valley. Occasionally she gave him a perfunctory nod and said, “I see,” but she didn't even attempt to hold up her end of the conversation. Kyra sat between them trying to keep up, once in a while elbowing Miriam and biting back a knowing smile.

There was a chill in the mountain air even after the sun rose above the peaks. As their wagons climbed the narrow switchback trails they found the terrain as rugged and steep as Fuentes had predicted, but the views were spectacular. The deeper they drove into the mountains the taller and denser the forest grew, with snowcapped peaks looming in the blue distance.

Once, as they lumbered along the steep mountainside, Micah pointed out a grizzly on the opposite slope, nearly a mile away. Shambling into a little clearing, the bear raised her head and sniffed the air.

Kyra said something in Spanish, and Micah didn't understand.

“She says the bear has cubs,” Miriam translated.

Micah squinted. “Her eyes are better than mine. I see the mother, but where are the cubs?”

Again Miriam translated, and Kyra answered. “Behind mama, in the trees. See—she smells the air to make sure they are safe.”

They watched for a moment, and sure enough, two fat cubs gamboled into the clearing to join their mother.