The Heart's Frontier (18 page)

“Not if we wear trousers,” Emma put in quickly.

Maummi
’s mouth fell open, and her chest heaved with her effort to reply. Even Papa had lost his impassive expression, and he stared at his older daughter with disbelieving wide eyes.

“Beneath our dresses,” Emma hurried to add. “Black trousers that will preserve our modesty. Trousers like yours, Papa.
Maummi
has mended the damaged ones. Rebecca and I can wear those.”

While
Maummi
sputtered with outrage, Papa closed his eyes and bowed his head. Emma exchanged a glance with Luke, who had taken a subtle step backward, thereby removing himself from the family discussion. He lifted an eyebrow in her direction before turning to scan the horizon with feigned nonchalance.

After a long, silent moment, Papa lifted his head and opened his eyes. “In service to our Lord, the apostle Paul contended with strange customs in pagan lands. Yet the Lord sanctified him and kept him pure. I believe that will happen here, that my girls will be sanctified in this offering of assistance and kept pure.” He turned toward Rebecca. “Bring two pairs of mended trousers.”

Rebecca cast a triumphant grin toward Emma before turning and running for their wagon.

Maummi
battled an obvious struggle, and then she stomped over to thrust her face a few inches from Emma’s. “Some things the bishop does not need to know.” Her sparse eyebrows lowered. “Mind that well, girl.”

Emma kept her expression carefully clear as she nodded. When Rebecca returned,
Maummi
stomped off in the direction of the chuck wagon to check on her patient, as though she couldn’t bear to witness the disgrace of her granddaughters donning men’s trousers.

The men politely turned their backs while Emma and Rebecca slipped Papa’s trousers over their legs. Papa’s girth was much wider than Emma’s. She grabbed a double handful of excess fabric at her waist. Giggling, Rebecca whispered, “We shall need suspenders to keep them on.”

Should they ask to borrow Papa’s spare suspenders as well? Emma glanced over her shoulder at her father’s stiff back. No, they shouldn’t push him any further.

“Tuck the excess into your bloomers, and be sure to hold them up when you mount the horse,” she whispered back.

Rebecca’s peals of laughter were contagious, and both girls were giggling uncontrollably when they finally turned to the men, their hands holding bunched fabric at their waists.

With an effort she regained control and announced, “We are ready.”

Luke and Papa turned toward them. Papa kept his eyes averted, but Luke’s gaze dropped immediately to her feet. Grinning, he caught her gaze and winked a private message for her alone. Her stomach fluttered in response.

“All right,” he said, much louder than necessary, “back to the lesson.” He stepped close to Sugarfoot’s side, cupped his hands, and stooped low to the ground. “Miss Switzer, if you’re ready.”

With a grin for Rebecca, Emma approached. Placing a hand on Luke’s shoulder to steady herself proved to be distracting. She was aware of the firm muscles beneath the rough fabric of his shirt, and the warmth of his skin. Her face was inches from his when he paused for a moment, her foot in his hands, his eyes searching hers with an intensity that she felt all the way to her core. His breath warmed her cheek and snatched her own breath from paralyzed lungs with an intense feeling she’d never experienced before.

And then he broke the moment with a deepened grin. “Up you go.”

Her fingers wrapped themselves in Sugarfoot’s coarse mane, and she pulled herself upward at the same time Luke raised his hands. Almost on instinct, her right leg swung over the horse’s back, and in the next moment she sat high in the saddle, the faces of those gathered around turned up to look at her.

Luke awarded her with a huge smile. He lifted his hand to pat her leg but then stopped before he touched her. A tickle erupted in her stomach. He brought his hand back to his side with an embarrassed expression and turned away. “Rebecca, you’re next.”

Riding the horse wasn’t nearly as difficult as Emma feared. In fact, straddling Sugarfoot was much easier than clinging to Big Ed’s mane, trying to keep her balance with both legs on one side of the horse’s barrel chest. Rebecca whooped with delight when she successfully mounted her own horse, and Emma didn’t bother to control a grin that seemed insistent on plastering itself on her face.

Even Papa seemed to enjoy his cowboy lesson. He sat astride his horse, a chestnut belonging to the recently deceased Willie, with an erect posture and a wide grin of his own.

“You’re doing great, Jonas.” Mounted on Bo, Luke urged his horse to the front of his small cluster of students. “Okay, now I want you to let the reins lay loose in your hands while you grip the horse tightly with your knees. That’s how you will communicate, through the pressure of your legs.”

Papa’s horse surged ahead of Emma’s to follow Luke. Emma admired the way he sat tall in the saddle, his posture straight and at the same time relaxed. While she clutched the reins with a death grip, Papa let the leather straps slide freely in his grip.

Even Luke noticed the ease with which Papa rode. “You’re not a bad rider, Jonas.”

The grin on Papa’s face tickled an answering grin from Emma.

“I may be Plain,” Papa replied with dignity, “but I’m tough.”

Emma laughed and then tightened her legs around Sugarfoot’s chest. Her heart thrilled when the mare surged forward in response.

She urged the horse to Luke’s side. “When will we learn to lasso a cow?”

Luke threw his head back and laughed, his expression the lightest she had seen it since they had caught up with him.

“I’ll be happy if you can manage to keep yourself in the saddle,” he replied. “Leave the roping to us.”

“Hmm.” Emma gave him a tight-lipped reply, and then she urged Sugarfoot forward with a tightening of her knees. Yes, the situation was serious, but before this herd was delivered in Hays, she intended to prove to Luke she could do more than keep her seat on a horse.

S
ix graves took a while to dig with only two shovels. While Luke taught the Switzers how to ride and move the herd, he assigned McCann and Charlie to dig and sent Griff and Morris riding off toward the southeast where Luke had seen a large number of cattle run during the earlier skirmish. The pair had instructions to ride hard for thirty minutes, gathering strays along the way, and then head back. Vic returned to camp shortly, having caught up with the scattered remuda a short distance away. He corralled his charges, and then he relieved McCann from digging duty so he could get a start on supper.

The sun had started to sink in the western sky by the time Griff and Morris returned, driving a hundred and fifty head before them. The strays approached camp almost gratefully and quickly lost themselves in the anonymity of their herd.

Griff’s horse galloped to the campfire, and the man dismounted near Luke. “We caught up with them not more than five miles from here, standing around like they were waiting for us to come and get them.”

“They’re tired.” Luke examined the cattle closest to him, noting the way their heads drooped on their necks and the halfhearted way they grazed. “It’s been a long trail since El Paso, and I think that stampede the other night exhausted them. They don’t have another one in them.”

“Which is why those rustlers chose this place.” Griff’s eyes hardened. “Right at the end of the Chisholm Trail within a few days of the railhead. That sure wasn’t an accident.”

Luke felt certain the man was right. “Did you see any sign of them?”

Griff shook his head. “Not a one.” His gaze shifted to the four fresh graves set off a distance from the other two, their occupants already in place and dirt mounded overtop. “They’re shorthanded now. Probably take a while for them to regroup.”

“Yeah.” Luke heaved a bitter laugh. “But they have four men to run three hundred head of my cattle, which means they’re not nearly as shorthanded as we are.”

The grizzled cowboy looked over Luke’s shoulder. “How are the replacements coming along?”

Luke turned to where the Switzers sat near their wagon. Mrs. Switzer had requested that her rocking chair be set near the cook’s campfire, where she watched over a sleeping Jesse stretched out on a pallet in front of her. He’d pitched a fit when she insisted on using perfectly good whiskey to clean his wound, and when she ignored him, howled like a wounded coyote when she poured it over the gash in his leg. Under her instructions, McCann and Charlie set the bone, and Jesse had screamed until he passed out. She seemed unconcerned. At the moment she rocked in her chair as though she were in front of her own hearth at home. Emma and Rebecca sat on the ground nearby, Emma stitching on her own sewing project while Rebecca stared at the unconscious Jesse like a starved barn cat yearning for a bowl of cream set just out of reach.

Good thing Jesse was out cold, or he’d be fit to be tied.

“They did okay,” Luke told Griff. “They’re not going to be competing in any rodeos, that’s for sure, but as long as the herd stays docile they won’t have a problem riding flank from here to Hays.”

Griff nodded and then jerked his head toward the two empty graves. “Looks like they’re ready for us.”

Inside the second hole, Charlie tossed his shovel out onto the nearby ground and then Vic reached a hand down to pull him out. Luke shut his eyes and was swamped beneath a wave of sorrow. His first cattle drive as trail boss, and he was about to say a final farewell to two good men. Yes, Willie and Kirk had known the risks when they signed on, as every trail rider did, but that made no difference now. Not to them, and not to him either.

When he opened his eyes, he found Emma watching him. Their gazes met and held. He saw compassion on her face, and understanding lay heavy in her kind eyes. A sad smile softened those lovely lips. She knew his pain. She understood. Though she didn’t speak a word, he somehow drew strength from their silent conversation.

He squared his shoulders. “I guess they are,” he told Griff. He lifted his head and called in a voice loud enough to reach the entire camp, “It’s time to say goodbye to our friends.”

Griff clapped him on the back as they headed toward the graves.

Emma listened to the music echoing back to her from a rise in the land north of them. Luke’s voice, deep and vibrant, seemed to form a foundation for the others. It rumbled in her ears and in her heart. The tune of the song was unfamiliar, but the words were so touching that the sight of Charlie and Morris shoveling earth into the graves blurred behind a curtain of tears.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me
.

I once was lost, but now am found
.

Was blind, but now I see
.

The words reached into her soul with gentle fingers and tapped on a door to her inmost being. At times she felt as lost as a blind woman, stumbling around with her arms outstretched, searching for a safe path to travel. Did the song refer to the sight of those who have passed from this life to the next, when the veil would be torn away and the faithful would encounter the Savior face-to-face? Or did it mean something more imminent?

I once was lost, but
now
am found, was blind but
now
I see
.

Emma glanced sideways at Papa, who stood with his head bowed, his hat in his hand. Her gaze switched to
Maummi
, who clutched her hands before her with a white-knuckled grip, eyes and lips tightly shut. Did they see, really
see
, right now? Did they ever feel lost, as she did, wandering through life, looking for the place where they would encounter grace and happiness?

This funeral service was so different from anything she had ever encountered before. The one seared into her memory was Mama’s. When Mama breathed her last breath, the Amish community had converged around Papa and Emma and the infant Rebecca. Though Emma had been only seven years old at the time, she remembered the sight of the plain wooden coffin being lowered into the ground with ropes. The memory was as vivid as if the funeral had happened this morning. Bishop Miller, who had been a figure of authority even though at that time he had not yet been called to serve the Apple Grove district as a bishop, held one end of the rope. Emma still remembered his tender smile toward her across the grave as he let out the line. No graveside words then, no songs. A sermon and Scripture and lots of talking by various ministers in the community, followed by mountains of food on miles of tabletops. And the soul-searing ache that accompanied the knowledge that her beloved mother lay inside that simple wooden box being covered up with dirt.

I want songs at my funeral
.

The thought startled Emma. The only music in any Amish service was plain German hymns whispered in monotone voices. But this music, though offered by the rough voices of trail-weary men, refreshed her soul in a way the chants of her Amish brothers and sisters did not.

“Amen.” Luke’s deep voice at the end of the song concluded the service.

Emma looped arms with Rebecca, who was curiously subdued, and headed back toward the campfire with the rest of the funeral-goers.

“After Mama’s funeral,” Emma whispered to her sister, “there was a big meal. That was the first time you tasted Mrs. Beachy’s apple pie. Though only a babe, you ate it as though you’d been starved for weeks.”

Rebecca smiled up at her and hugged her arm close. “I liked the music at this one,” she whispered.

“Me too,” Emma confessed, her voice low so as not to be overheard by
Maummi
or Papa. “And I like the way they spoke of Willie’s life. I feel as though I knew him and Kirk now.”

“Me too.”

They arrived at the campfire to find an argument in progress between
Maummi
and McCann.

“Spice!”
Maummi
’s voice rang out over the prairie. “’Tis the difference between a plain cook and a good one.” She raised her finger and pointed in the cook’s face. “Merely plain you are, and not in the Amish way.”

McCann drew himself up, his face a mottled purple, and stared her down with bulging eyes. “I’ll have you know I’ve been feeding cowpokes on the trail for more than twenty years and never had a single complaint. I’m the best trail cook west of the Mississippi!”

“Starving men, their tongues dulled from dust and numb from cow stink.”
Maummi
stiffened her spine. “Little skill it takes to satisfy them.”

McCann looked apoplectic. He cast around wildly for support from his fellow cowboys, but no man would meet his eye. Emma turned her head to hide a grin. She would not like to confront
Maummi
over the craft of cooking.

She sucked in a gasp when the cook lifted a hand and shook a finger in
Maummi
’s face. “Leave me to do my job, madam. Stay away from my beans.”

If Emma had dared to shake a finger at
Maummi
, no doubt she would have lost it within three seconds. McCann, however, escaped with all ten digits intact when he turned and glared at Luke. “Keep that woman away from me,” he shouted before stomping away to disappear within the confines of his chuck wagon.

Luke spared a respectful glance toward Emma before escaping toward his horse.

The moment McCann was out of sight and Luke’s back was turned,
Maummi
whipped a jar of spice out of her apron pocket. She rushed to the pot of beans simmering over the campfire and dumped the contents in. Then she picked up the long iron spoon and gave the contents a quick stir. By the time McCann reappeared, banging pans and glaring all around,
Maummi
was seated once again in her rocking chair, her hands busy with a mending project.

Emma turned away again so the cook wouldn’t see her smile.