Paradise Valley (39 page)

“I’m nearly seventeen,” Rachel said. “Plenty old enough to court. Anyway, I’ve waited a hundred years for this moment, and I’ll not be robbed of one second. Let the tongues wag.”

And so they stayed longer, gazing together in blissful wonder at stars they now shared.

“There are more stars here,” Jake said, looking up at the diamond-clustered night, “and they are so much brighter.”

“Jah, they are,” she answered, for she knew what he meant, though at the moment the stars all ran together in tear-washed eyes. At least they were
there
now. She had not noticed the stars in a very long time.

Chapter 43

The next morning, under a wide red dawn, Miriam sat on a crate in the back of the wagon as it struggled up toward the first mountain pass. She could tell that her dat was pushing his team a little harder than usual.

Micah sat on another crate near her. Already she had felt his eyes on her far too often. Micah was a good man, no doubt, but she didn’t know him that well and still didn’t feel very comfortable around him.

Micah leaned toward her and spoke quietly. “Why does he push the horses so?” he asked. “They pull a heavy load.”

She knew why. She had seen El Pantera for herself, experienced the pall of evil surrounding him. Her father wasn’t the only one who wanted to be well clear of the northern mountains before dark.

“It’s not safe here,” she explained. “There are bad men in these hills.
Very
bad men.”

Micah smiled. He was not altogether unpleasant. “Well, if we meet them, don’t worry,” he said. “I will protect you.”

Two hours later, beside a deep ravine in the middle of the mountains where the dense forest crowded against the road, it happened.

Miriam heard it first – the sound of hoofbeats approaching from behind. She looked back over the top of the crates and spotted two men on horseback coming up the road from Arteaga. She turned around to warn her father, but Domingo was already watching them so she said nothing.

The bandits overtook them quickly. Riding hard they blew past both sides of the wagon, then reined in their horses in the road ahead so that her father was forced to pull up. They trotted together to Domingo’s side of the wagon and stopped.

The leader, a ferret-faced little man, raised himself up in his stirrups and craned his neck to look into the back of the wagon.

“Hola, señor!” he said cheerfully, grinning and tipping his sombrero to Dat. “What do we have here? Anything that might be of use to a pair of poor, tired soldiers?”

Dat shook his head. “Only a farmer’s dishes and clothes,” he said. “Nothing that would interest you, I am sure.”

“Maybe we should take a look in your crates and barrels and see for ourselves,” the weasel said, scratching his whiskered chin. But then, rising up in his stirrups and peering into the back of the wagon where Miriam sat, a sinister gleam came into his eyes.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said. “The trails we must travel are too steep for a wagon, so we have no way to carry barrels and crates even if you are kind enough to give them to us. But I think there may be something here that our captain will find much more valuable than your dishes and rags, and it is not so difficult to carry.”

Miriam squirmed uneasily as a cold fist gripped her heart. The weasel was hinting none too subtly at an unthinkable evil, and his eyes remained on her the whole time. Quivering in fear, she shrank down into a corner against the crates. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to run screaming the other way, but there was nowhere to run in these mountains.

“Porfirio,” the man said casually to his accomplice, “take the girl.”

Tears filled Miriam’s eyes and she began to pray.

With a gap-toothed grin the second bandit climbed down from his pinto and came straight to the side of the wagon where Miriam sat. He started to climb up.

Her fingernails dug into the sides of the crate and she cowered, whimpering. Afraid she would pass out from sheer terror, her eyes roamed, desperately seeking sanctuary, until she found Domingo’s face.

Domingo’s head was turned her way – still, calm, watching – but he made no move to intervene. His eyes, sharp and intense, fastened on Micah, who was sitting atop a crate near Miriam. When he caught Micah’s eye he nodded toward the bandit hoisting himself up on the side rails to enter the back of the wagon.

Micah returned the nod, ever so slightly, and when the bandit had reached the top of the rails, he sprang. Grabbing the bandit by his upper arms Micah yanked him into the wagon in one swift motion, planting the surprised bandit on his face on top of a crate. His feet flailed and kicked against the side rails and his shoulders twisted and squirmed, but Micah held on. His big hands slid through the bandit’s armpits, wrapped around and locked together behind that grimy neck. The bandit cursed and spat and fought, his arms waving like a trapped bug, but Micah’s hold was unbreakable and he could not reach his weapons. Then Micah leaned back, pulling the bandit upright, exposing his pistols and bandoliers.

“Take his guns!” he shouted to Miriam.

She had no idea where the courage came from, but she saw her hands snatch the pistols from their cross-draw holsters. Then she just stood there, holding them daintily in her fingertips as if they were poisoned, waiting for further instructions.

The weasel laughed out loud, watching this little comedy from his saddle, but in the same instant he drew his pistol and raised it to aim at Micah’s back.

It happened so fast Miriam saw only a blur from the corner of her eye. There was a flash and a shout, and the bandit was gone from his horse.

Domingo had launched himself from the front of the wagon like a spear. He clamped a fist around the gun barrel in the same instant that his shoulder crashed into the weasel’s ribs and swept him cleanly off his mount, the gun firing harmlessly into the air. The wide-eyed bandit plunged to the ground with Domingo on top of his chest and landed flat on his back with a resounding
whump
, driving all the air out of him.

It was all over in a second. The two riderless horses bolted away in a swirl of dust, and when it settled, Domingo sat straddling the weasel’s chest, pinning his arms to the ground with his knees. One hand held the bandit’s head down by the hair while the other kept a very large razor-sharp knife pressed against his throat.

Domingo’s jaw flexed and his knife hand tensed.

“Domingo, NO!” Dat shouted, and Domingo paused.

Slowly, without relaxing his grip, Domingo turned his head and looked up at Dat, fierce eyes staring through a loose curtain of black hair.

“Please, señor,” the bandit whimpered. His eyes pleaded with Dat, but he dared not turn his head.

“Shut up,” Domingo hissed without even looking down.

“You must not kill this man,” Dat said. He spoke quietly now, the way he would soothe a spooked horse.

Domingo’s head tilted, curious.

“Why not?”

“Because it is a great sin to kill a man.”

Domingo stared at Dat for a few seconds more, then turned his eyes back to the weasel, the decision made.

“Not in
my
religion,” he muttered. His arm tensed, and his knuckles whitened on the knife.

“Domingo!” Miriam shouted. She flung the pistols into the ravine and hung over the side rails so he could see her face. “Domingo,” she repeated softly, “let him live. For me.”

He hesitated for a second longer, but then in one swift motion he launched himself to his feet and sent a vicious blur of a heel-kick to the weasel’s chin. The man’s head snapped sideways and his eyes rolled back, unconscious.

Switching to German, Domingo snapped, “Then what would you have me do with him?” His knife disappeared into a sheath behind his back.

“Take his weapons and let him go,” her father answered.

Domingo glared at him. “These are El Pantera’s men, Herr Bender. Let them go, and in two hours he will know. In four, we will all be dead.”

Dat sighed. “Jah, well, there is only one thing left to do then. If we cannot let them go and we cannot kill them, we will bind them and take them with us. Tie their hands and feet, and Micah can sit on them until we are far enough away.”

Domingo shook his head in obvious disgust, but he turned back to the unconscious bandit and started stripping weapons. He took two pistols and a boot knife from the weasel, along with two bandoliers of bullets, and piled all of it under the seat in the front of the wagon.

“I know you won’t touch these, Herr Bender,” he said, “but they are mine now, and before the day is out I may need them.”

Dat nodded.

The other bandit had ceased struggling and had become very docile when he saw what happened to the weasel. Without his guns he was no match for Micah.

Miriam heard a noise from the road in front of the wagon.

“Dat, look,” she said, pointing.

One of the bandits’ horses had returned. The paint had galloped out of sight around the bend, but the chestnut was ambling back toward them. As Dat turned to look, the horse shoved her head right into the wagon and nudged his arm.

The mare was dirty and thin, her ribs showing, her coat a dull mess. A gob of what looked like dried mud obscured part of her forehead, and only after Dat wiped it away with his palm did he see the little white mark that looked like a lopsided star.

“
Star
,” he murmured, a touch of wonder in his eyes as he patted his horse’s jaw. “I didn’t believe I would ever see you again. How have you been, girl?”

Five minutes later both bandits lay facedown between the crates in the back, tied hand and foot with baling twine. Dat left the Mexican saddle on Star and tethered her to the back of the wagon with a length of rope. She was going home.

It was two hours before Miriam’s heartbeat slowed to normal. She sat staring at Domingo’s back the whole time, deeply shaken. The sudden emergence of Domingo the Warrior had rocked her foundations like an earthquake, leaving them shifted and tilted. What troubled her most was the suspicion, deep down, that what Domingo had done was the right thing. That ferocity – that decisive and unapologetic
violence
– had saved Micah’s life, possibly her own life, and her father’s, too. Was there a time when violence was the right thing? Did not the Bible say there was a time to kill? She could see no way around it.

And then something came to her that Kyra had said the day of the horse race. She could still hear it, in Kyra’s voice, word for word.
“He is very gentle . . . until someone he
loves
is
threatened.”

Was it possible? Could it be that Domingo’s claws came out because someone he
loved
was threatened?

Kyra’s words haunted her.

There were cracks in her world, and through the cracks shined the light of a breed of man she had never encountered before.

Caleb pushed his horses perhaps too hard, but he feared for his daughter. He noticed that Domingo’s sharp eyes constantly scanned the ridgetops, and every few minutes checked the road behind them.

But no one came. They passed Schulman’s farm at sunset and pulled into Caleb’s driveway in the purple hour of twilight. There were lanterns and campfires lit in the yard, and children ran to meet the wagon. He was home.

Exhausted, Caleb climbed down and met the throng of neighbors in front of his house, leaving the work of unloading and putting away the horses to his sons. Domingo took the pile of weapons with him rather than leave them unattended. With gun belts and bandoliers slung over both shoulders he looked like a bandit himself. All the newcomers eyed him warily and avoided him.

Children swarmed over the wagon, and as Caleb talked with John Hershberger a little boy standing atop the mountain of crates cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Mr. Caleb, there’s a pile of
Mexicans
in your wagon!”

Caleb nodded wearily and said to John, “It’s a long story, but I have one more little piece of business to attend to.”

He had Harvey bring the painted pony from the corral and put the Mexican saddle on him while Micah and Aaron cut the bandits loose and escorted them down from the wagon.

All the Amish looked on in silence, most of them wide-eyed with terror. Word had spread quickly. These were real live bandits.