Wild Horses (26 page)

“But … why would you go back home to Pennsylvania?”

“Because I don’t want to live in Montana if I can’t have you.”

The music in her heart began then. It was as full and soaring as the music Barbara Caldwell listened to, taking her along to the heights of joy. It was an emotion that lifted her above the snow, the hills, the trees, and the cold. She could not speak, because if she did the music would stop. And she couldn’t bear to part with that sound.

“Sadie…”

She blinked, lifted her head, faced him.

“Yes, Mark. We’ll sit in the living room after my parents are in bed. I would be glad to hear what you…” She broke off, watching Chester.

His head went up, his ears forward and turned slightly toward the tree line. Mark stiffened, watching. An icy chill went up Sadie’s spine, and she turned her eyes, straining. Chester stood stock still. Sadie’s hand went to his neck.

“Mark?” Sadie whispered.

“Shhh.”

She felt them before she saw them. The wind picked up, there was a sense of rushing, and the ground vibrated beneath her boots with a shuffling of snow.

“Mark!”

She stifled a scream as a line of dark shadows moved along the tree line. It was as if the trees were swaying along the ground in an up and down movement in a mixture of colors and shadows, and yet there was not one horse, or even a band of horses, in sight.

“Mark! Mark! It’s them! It’s… It’s… They’re in there!” she screamed in a hoarse, terrified cry.

“Get up! Now! Sadie, you have to listen to me. Let me put you up. Whoa, Chester! Good boy! Hang on!”

She was picked up firmly and dumped unceremoniously on the leather saddle. Chester was prancing frantically beneath her and she hung on, grateful for all the skills she remembered. In a flash, Mark was behind her, turning Chester, goading him back the way they had come.

Sadie leaned forward, the wind nipping her scarf, her hair. The air was frigid. She felt Mark’s solid form behind her, felt his breath.

The line of horses was moving with them. They weren’t visible except as undulating shadows among the trees. Chester was galloping steadily, his powerful strides covering the slopes easily. Sadie turned her head and screamed as she saw the dark forms emerging from the tree line. Mark saw them at the same moment and called to Chester.

“C’mon, boy! C’mon!”

Chester responded with a gathering of great, powerful leaps. Sadie’s mind turned to the night with Ezra. She fought off the panic and fear from the accident.

The black leader called his terrible stallion challenge, a scream of territorial rights. It lent wings to Chester’s feet, goading him across the snow. Speed was their only chance, and Mark urged his horse on.

The bonfire!

Brightly it blazed, like a beacon of rest, of safety. Sadie could see the two horses, the youth seated around the blazing light. Sadie felt Chester relax, loosen his gait. She saw the youth scatter, calling in alarm as they slid up to the fire.

Mark was down before Chester stopped, and he lifted Sadie off in a blink.

“Get the horses and stay by the fire!” Mark yelled in an awful voice.

The girls screamed, their hands going to their mouths, their eyes wide with fear. Aidan and Johnny grabbed the reigns of the horses, and they all huddled around the blazing fire. They watched in disbelief as the band of horses streamed past. Chester stood between the youth and the horses, his nostrils flaring as his sides heaved with exertion.

The great black leader shook his head, reared, and pawed the air as if to warn them. They were in plain sight, the firelight identifying the colors, the heads, whipping manes, streaming tails. The snow obscured the feet and legs, but as one body they galloped in perfect rhythm.

Sadie watched in wonder.

The horses were not any old, scraggly, wild mustangs. They were not the usual stock that were a nuisance to all the ranchers in the area. These horses were different. Sadie had caught the wild-eyed look on a small mare. She was afraid. These horses were running scared and they were very thin.

Something was not right.

And, oh, that black stallion! His cry! She would always remember the sound in her worst dreams and nightmares of that night.

After the last hoof beat faded, a general babble of voices broke out. The boys began talking at once. The girls came running to Sadie, asking a dozen questions. She sank weakly onto a bale of straw.

“Now I’m telling you, this is the real thing! No one can even pretend these wild horses aren’t around!” Marvin Keim was yelling.

“Good thing we had this fire!”

“I mean, they were running!”

“Did you see that big, black one?”

A somber mood enveloped them. They knew they were extremely fortunate to have been by the blazing fire, all of them together. The sledding was over. No one felt like straying very far from the bonfire.

Mark reached out to Chester and said they’d better stay as a group and all return to the Detweiler farm together.

The walk back was quiet, the girls casting fearful glances in the direction of the trees.

Mark walked beside Sadie and held her gloved hand in his. She was grateful and let her hand rest inside his strong one.

“I’ll see you next Saturday evening.”

“Oh, yes,” she breathed happily. “But try to get to my house fairly late.”

“Why?”

“Well, Reuben is… He’ll never go to bed if he knows you’ll be there. He’ll lie flat on the floor upstairs with his ear pressed against the floor and listen to every word we say.”

Mark laughed his deep rolling laugh that Sadie loved to hear. It would be a very long time until Saturday evening.

A
FTER THE SLEDDING PARTY
, the Amish community in Montana buzzed with the news of the wild horses. The women sat in their phone shanties and had long conversations about what had actually happened that evening. Mugs of coffee at the men’s elbows turned cold as they talked, visualized, and tried to come up with a feasible plan.

Before church, when the men stood in the forebay of Jesse Troyer’s barn, the topic was wild horses. And after services, around the long dinner table spread with traditional church food—pie, homemade bread, jam, pickles, red beets, homemade deer bologna, and slices of cheese, all washed down with cups of steaming coffee—the talk was wild horses.

Of course it was the Lord’s day, and the sermon was not about wild horses, but instead a good, solid lecture on forgiveness and the wonders of allowing ourselves to be freed from any grudges or ill feeling toward others. Still, no one could keep their minds from the events of the youth bonfire.

Mothers shook their heads, children listened wide-eyed. It was not safe to be on the road after dark, especially alone with a horse and buggy.

There was an undercurrent of gossip about that Jacob Miller’s Sadie as well. That girl had better slow down. What was she doing riding a horse with that stranger from Pennsylvania? Someone told Katie Schwartz that he had been raised Amish but that his parents were English. They clucked their tongues and shook their heads, saying nothing good could come of it, that Jacob and Annie better rein in their Sadie. She almost died in that accident. Her Ezra was gone, bless his soul, and here she was gallivanting about with this other man already.

That’s what happens when someone is too pretty for her own good. Look at Aunt Lisbet. She ran off with the butcher from Clarksville, and if she hadn’t been so pretty, it likely never would have happened. But then, her mother hadn’t been very stable either so…

Mary Miller shrugged her shoulders and said Jacob Miller didn’t look like himself these days. Someone mentioned Annie wasn’t doing so well, but she looked all right to her.

They watched Annie as she brought more pies to the table, lowered them, then stooped to talk to little Clara Amstutz, patting her head and smiling so nicely. Nothing much wrong with her.

Sadie stood against the counter in the
kessle-haus
and listened halfheartedly as Lydiann and Leah talked endlessly about the wild horses. She was hungry, tired of the restless chatter, and wished those fussy older women would hurry up and eat so they could have their turn.

She skipped breakfast that morning, having overslept. She had tried to pull off looking tired and grouchy, although inside she was anything but that. She had lain awake, giddy with the thought of Mark Peight coming to see her. But her giddiness turned to concern when she thought of all the things that could go wrong between them.

What did he want to tell her? Was it something so terrible that there was no possible way they could begin dating, let alone get married?

She had slid out of bed, wrapped her warm robe around her, then stood at the window looking out over the snowy landscape with the stars scattered all over the night sky and prayed.

She always prayed at her window, standing. She knew the proper way was to kneel beside her bed and clasp her hands, but somehow she couldn’t find God in the way she could when she stood by her window and saw the night sky, the stars, the whole wide world. She imagined God was just beyond those twinkling little lights, and he could see her from up there where he was. And so she prayed.

She asked God to direct her heart and to help her remain a sacrifice so she could discern his will for her life. She already knew without a doubt that she wanted Mark Peight for her husband someday. She wanted to be with him, listen to him talk, watch his deep, brown eyes crinkle at the corners when he laughed. She had been amazed at the depth of her own emotions the first time they met, but she had tried to hold him at a distance. She had felt good when she was in his presence. He had been so kind, so sincere, and that was something.

She would have married Ezra. She had planned on dating him. But God took him away. There was still a special part of her heart that was Ezra’s, but there was another part—a bigger part—that belonged to Mark.

She ended her prayer.

Thank you, God, for Mark.

She had let the curtains fall, but caught them again when she saw a dark form moving slowly down the driveway. Surely it wasn’t Mam on a frigid night like this?

The dark form continued forward, the head bent. Yes, it was Mam. Should she get dressed and go to her?

Sadie’s heart beat rapidly as she struggled to suppress her fear of the unknown, wondering why Mam would roam the roads alone at night. Was she so troubled in her spirit that the freedom of the outdoors soothed her?

Sadie had remained by the window, watching until her mother returned, still plodding quietly, head still bent.

It was a pitiful sight. Love for her mother welled up in Sadie’s heart like the fizz from a glass of soda. Dear Mam. She had always been the best Mam in the world. It was just now … she was only a silent shadow. She went about doing mundane little tasks, but the bulk of the work fell on the girls’ shoulders.

Sadie breathed a sigh of relief when the laundry room door creaked quietly, and she could be sure Mam had safely returned.

At work on Monday morning, Sadie divulged her plans for Saturday evening. Dorothy’s spirits soared.

“You got a honest-to-goodness date?” she yelled above the high, insistent whine of the hand-held mixer.

Sadie glanced at her happily. Dorothy clicked it off and tapped the beater against the bowl, streams of frothy egg running off.

“Well, do ya or don’t cha?”

“Yes, I do. He’s coming to our house,” Sadie answered as she sliced oranges, popping a section into her mouth.

“Well, what are you gonna do? You don’t have a television set to watch an’ you can’t go to the movies. So how are ya gonna entertain this young man?”

Sadie smiled.

“First, I have to think of some kind of brownies or bars or cookies to make. I have to have a snack, of course.”

Dorothy’s eyes lit up, her smile wide.

“I can sure help you out on that one!”

Dorothy turned to her eggs, poured them into a greased baking pan, and then got out the vicious looking chef’s knife. She held it like a professor about to begin a lecture with his wooden pointer.

Sadie raised her eyebrows.

“We played Parcheesi!”

“What?”

“Parcheesi! It’s the most fun game ya ever saw. I’ll bring my game of Parcheesi, and you and yer feller can play. Aw, that’s so sweet. Just like me and Jim. Now my Jim, he’s different from other rough cowboys. He’s a good man, my Jim. If he wasn’t so stuck on riding those horses and working at this ranch, we’d have more money. But then, ya know, Sadie, he wouldn’t be happy, an’ what’s money compared to being a purely contented soul? Huh? Tell me that. The whole world is moving faster and faster and faster tryin’ to make more money, and it ain’t bringin’ nobody no happiness. Jes’ look at my Jim settin’ on the back of a horse, his chaw stuck in his cheek, and his old hat covering his bald head. Why he’s happier ’n a coon in a fish pond. An’ me? I like it right here in Richard Caldwell’s kitchen cookin’ up a storm.”

She paused for breath, threw a handful of mushrooms into the beaten eggs, and surveyed her breakfast casserole. Sadie looked over her shoulder.

“That’s not very much food.”