Wonderful Lonesome (25 page)

Hours.

Hours since Mary’s buggy rattled onto Weaver land, and perhaps hours more since Little Abe slipped out of the Miller house undetected.

Abbie’s thickened throat scarcely allowed air to pass.

Her first impulse had been to give the horse its head and hurtle toward Little Abe, scanning the countryside. But he was so small. It would be too easy to gallop past him if he had fallen asleep in a ragged field or lay frightened in the shade of a ball of thistle. Instead, Abbie mentally divided the land north of the Miller’s home into calculated sections and set out to cover every square yard in a systematic manner. But when she had taken the buggy through every acre without finding him, and still no one galloped toward her with the news of a rescue, she started over, widening the perimeter of her search and slowing her pace even further.

“God,” she said aloud at regular intervals, “I cannot understand Your will in this. He is an innocent child.”

The horse grew sluggish, and Abbie urged it on. Periodically she slid out of the buggy and walked widening concentric circles around the horse before returning to ride to another sector. Finally she admitted she could no longer see well enough in the descending gray to trust her eyes, and she stopped long enough to fish the lantern out from under the seat and shield the wick from the rising wind long enough to light it. She heard only her own breath, a desperate, shallow, tattered effort to suppress the visions that roared through her mind.

“Little Abe!” she called out, over and over.

She listened for the slightest rustle of small feet, the faintest cry of a small boy’s voice, or the gathering approach of a rider with good news. None of these sounds met her ears.

Abbie stepped farther away from the buggy in full darkness.

The only vibration to break the silence was the distant howl of a coyote.

Standing in deepening gloom, Abbie held the lantern high, sweeping slowly from side to side in a field of dry, half-grown wheat that would probably not be worth the price of having it milled.

“Little Abe, where are you?” she said softly.

When Abbie raised her eyes to consider where she would move next, she gazed into the shadowy distance, wondering where the other searchers were. She blinked twice at a shifting shape before she realized it was Willem astride his horse.

“Willem!”

He gave no sign of having heard her shout, instead holding his pose in the pale light cast from the moon in its last quarter. Abbie could barely make him out. If it had been anyone else she might have told herself her eyes were transforming a large thistle ball into something she wished were there. But the slope of his shoulders, one raised higher than the other in his characteristic posture, made her certain.

“Willem!” Abbie swung her light from left to right hoping he would see it and be curious enough to investigate.

He shifted this time, but away from her. Willem moved slowly, no doubt for the same reasons Abbie did—to look and listen carefully for any sign of Little Abe. His horse made a full quarter turn now and began a slow pace. Abbie kicked at a small loose stone and heard it thwack a stalk of wheat six feet away. With equal desire she wanted to find Little Abe or to hear the thunder of a horse whose rider came to tell her he was found. Willem’s concentration in the search told her the boy was almost certainly still missing. Willem eased out of her sight, and Abbie’s heart fractured.

Keep the boy safe till we find him
. She blew out her breath heavily as she pondered whether God was listening to her prayers.

The coyote’s howl once again dominated the night and seemed to echo gusting in the wind. Night breezes often cooled the temperature considerably, but tonight Abbie perspired as much from anxiety as heat. Not wanting to wander too far from the buggy, she began a path that would take her in a straight line to where the horse and buggy stood at the center of her wide circles.

“Little Abe!” she called out once again, forcing conviction into her tone.

She gasped and held still. A tiny sound. Holding her breath, she listened for any swish in the wheat or footstep in the narrows rows between planting. Had it only been a noise carried on the wind?

“Little Abe!”

A cry. A child’s cry, this time full and fearful and angry. Abbie turned around and hustled back through the wheat, swinging the lantern as she ran beyond the circle she had just abandoned and toward the cry.

“Little Abe! I’m coming!”

She found him face down in the ground trying to push himself up. Abbie set the lantern on the ground and knelt to fold him into her arms. Partially upright, Little Abe clung to her neck with grubby hands, his small shoulders heaving with shallow breaths and his plump cheeks smeared with dirt and tears. Abbie ran her hands over his arms and torso and legs, looking for injury. Where his right knee should have been, her hand hit earth, and she grabbed the lantern to pull it closer.

Little Abe’s chubby leg was stuck in a gopher hole. Despite the warnings Abbie had heard Mary give her son time and again, the little boy remained fascinated by gophers and giggled every time he saw a round, brown face with tiny ears peek out of a hole or dash across the ground. He was too little to understand the risk of a gopher hole and just little enough for an appendage to fit into one. Abbie clasped him tight, waiting for both their hearts to calm.

Little Abe did not want to let go of her as Abbie tried to settle him in the mound of dirt that would have warned an adult that the hole was nearby.

“I’m not going to leave,” she said with more calm than she felt. “We have to get your leg out, Little Abe.”

He whimpered and tightened his grip on her neck.

On her knees, Abbie pried his hands off her skin and moved them to her skirt. “Here. Hold on to my dress.”

She kissed his forehead, and his wide, frightened eyes stared at her, but he made no more effort to grab her neck.

The dry earth was unyielding to her fingers, and Abbie did not want to cause further injury. The boy might have hurt his ankle when he felt into the hole. Abbie banished from her mind the thought that gophers underground could have nibbled on his toes. If only she had a table knife or a spoon or anything to dig with. She felt around on the ground until she came up with a stone hardly bigger than a coin. One stroke at a time, she began chipping away at the edge of the hole to widen it just enough to pull Little Abe’s leg out.

She drove with the child in her lap, his face buried against her chest and his arms wrapped around her waist. His heart beat wildly against her body, a testimony to his hours of fear, but he did not cry.

Abbie dipped her head to speak into his ear. “We’ll get you home to your
mamm
and
daed
. You’ll go to sleep in your own bed.”

He nodded and dug his head against her as if he wanted to burrow a tunnel straight through her like a gopher. His skull against her breastbone was uncomfortable, but Abbie would tolerate whatever comforted Little Abe. When they got out of the dismal wheat field and onto the road that cut through the Miller farm, Abbie urged the horse a little faster, and faster still as the house came into view. By now Abbie drove with one hand around the reins and the other around Little Abe’s tense back.

The front door stood wide open, and the light of half a dozen small oil lamps emanated out of the structure.

“We’re almost there,” she murmured to the boy.

“Mamm.”
This was the first word he had spoken during the ride, though Abbie was sure he knew several dozen words.

“Yes, your
mamm
is waiting. She will be so glad to see you.”

“Home.” Little Abe sat up and twisted around toward the light-warmed house.

“That’s right!”

A figure appeared in the doorframe, and Little Abe pointed.
“Mamm. Mamm.”

A grin of relief split Abbie’s face. She tightened her grip on Abe before he could get any ideas about getting down from the bench before the buggy stopped.

Mary rushed to the buggy and swept her child out of Abbie’s lap and squeezed. Her chest heaved in sobs of relief.

“Be careful of his leg. I’m not sure if he got hurt.” Abbie’s own legs were melting rubber by the time her feet hit solid ground.

“Where did you find him?” Mary inspected the boy, running a hand over every inch of him.

Abbie explained the gopher hole.

Mary exhaled. “Albert has been trying to get rid of the gophers because he thinks they eat the wheat. But it is hard to find all the holes.”

Abbie put an arm around Mary’s shoulders, and they stepped into the house.

Esther looked up from the stove. “I’m heating water.”

Mary nodded. “He needs a bath.”

Abbie glanced around and settled her eyes on two tea cups. “Everyone else is still out looking?”

“The bell.” Mary looked out through the open front door. “We need to ring the bell and call everyone in.”

“I’ll do it.”

At the corner of the house, Abbie tugged on the bell and kept it clanging until she heard horse hooves beating from every direction.

At dawn Rudy stood at the corner of his barn and whistled for his dog, Rug. Though the small dog often wandered the acres late at night, it was unusual for him not to scratch to be let in at some point. Rudy had long ago become accustomed to opening the door at two in the morning and falling immediately back into sleep as if he had not been interrupted at all. Waking and finding the spot at the foot of his bed empty was disconcerting.

At his whistle, several cows mooed, a horse neighed, and chickens fluttered in the henhouse, but no dog appeared. Rudy paced around the outside of the barn to satisfy himself that the dog was not sleeping so comfortably under an eave that he could not bother to respond to a breakfast summons. Then he ventured to the farthest point in the barnyard and the spot in the fence where the dog was most likely to appear. Still not seeing the animal, Rudy hoisted himself over the fence and whistled again.

His whistle died half formed when he saw Rug—or the carcass that had been the dog. The teeth marks of a full-grown male coyote told the story, first clamping into the dog’s neck then ripping open the abdomen.

Rudy turned around and retched. He had worked with animals long enough to see bloodier visages than this one. But the dog had been a companion in the wilderness. Rudy wiped his mouth, straightened, and went to the barn for a shovel.