Miriam's Heart. Emma Miller

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      “Yes?” She turned those intense gray eyes from the horse back to him.

      He suddenly felt foolish. He didn’t know what he was saying. He couldn’t tell her how he felt. They hadn’t ridden home from a frolic together more than three or four times. They hadn’t walked out together and she hadn’t invited him in when they’d gotten to her house and everyone else was asleep. They’d been friends, chums; they ran around with the same gang. He couldn’t just blurt out that he suddenly realized that he loved her. “Nothing. Never mind.”

      She returned her attention to Blackie. “Shh, easy, easy,” she said, laying her cheek against his nose. “He’s quieting down. He can’t be hurt bad, don’t you think? But where’s all that blood coming from?” She leaned forward to touch the gelding’s right shoulder, and the animal squealed and started struggling against the harness again.

      “Leave it,” Charley ordered, clamping a hand on her arm. “Wait for the vet. You could get hurt.”

      “Ne,” she argued, but it wasn’t a real protest. She didn’t struggle against his grip. She knew he was right.

      He nodded. “Just keep doing what you were.” He held her arm a second longer than he needed to.

      “Miriam!”

      It was a woman’s voice, one of her sisters’, for sure. Charley released Miriam.

      “Oh, Anna, come quick! Oh, it’s terrible.”

      Charley glanced up. It was Miriam’s twin, a big girl, more than a head taller and three times as wide. No one could ever accuse Anna of not being Plain. She wasn’t ugly; she had nice eyes, but she couldn’t hold a candle to Miriam. Still, he liked Anna well enough. She had a good heart and she baked the best biscuits in Kent County, maybe the whole state.

      “Don’t cry, Anna,” Miriam said. “You’ll set me to crying again.”

      “How bad are they hurt?” Miriam’s older sister Ruth came to stand on the bank beside Anna. She was holding Miriam’s filthy white kapp. “Are you all right? Is she all right?” She glanced from Miriam to Charley.

      “I’m fine,” Miriam assured her. “Just muddy. It’s Molly and Blackie I’m worried about.”

      Fat tears rolled down Anna’s broad cheeks. “I’m glad Susanna’s not here,” she said. “I made her stay in the kitchen. She shouldn’t see this.”

      “Did Irwin go to call the vet?” Charley asked. “We told him—”

      “Ya.” Anna wiped her face with her apron. “He ran fast. Took the shortcut across the fields.”

      “Is there anything I can do?” Ruth called down. “Should I come—?”

      “Ne,” Miriam answered. “Watch for the vet. And send Irwin to the school to tell Mam as soon as he gets back.” The mare groaned pitifully, and Miriam glanced over at her. “She’ll be all right,” she said. “God willing, she will be all right.”

      “I’ll pray for them,” Anna said. “That I can do.” She caught the corner of her apron and balled it in a big hand. “For the horses.”

      Charley heard the dinner bell ringing from the Yoder farmhouse. “Maybe that’s Irwin,” he said to Miriam. “A good idea. We’ll need help to get the horses up.” The repeated sounding of the bell would signal the neighbors. Other Amish would come from the surrounding farms. There would be many strong hands to help with the animals, once it was considered safe to move them.

      “There’s the Hartmans’ truck,” Ruth said. She waved, and Charley heard the engine. “I hope he doesn’t get stuck, trying to cross the field. The lane’s awfully muddy.”

      Miriam looked at him, her eyes wide with hope. “It will be all right, won’t it, Charley?”

      “God willing,” he said.

      “It’s John,” Anna exclaimed. “He’s getting out of the truck with his bag.”

      Great, Charley thought. It would have to be John and not his uncle Albert. He sighed. He supposed that John knew his trade. He’d saved the Beachys’ Jersey cow when everyone had given it up for dead. But once the Mennonite man got here, Miriam would have eyes only for John with his fancy education and his English clothes. Whenever John was around, he and Miriam put their heads together and talked like they were best friends.

      “John must have been close by. Maybe it’s a good sign.” Miriam looked at him earnestly.

      “Ya,” he agreed, without much enthusiasm. He knew that it was uncharitable to put his own jealousy before the lives of her beloved horses. “Ya,” he repeated. “It’s lucky he came so quick.” Lucky for Molly and Blackie, he thought ruefully, but maybe not for me.

      Chapter Two

      He’d witnessed a true blessing today, Charley thought as he watched John bandaging Blackie’s hind leg. Both animals had needed stitches and Molly had several deep cuts, but neither horse had suffered a broken bone. Between the sedative the young vet had administered and the help of neighbors, they’d been able to get the team back to the barn where they now stood in fresh straw in their stalls.

      Charley had to admit that John knew what he was doing. He was ashamed of his earlier reluctance to have him come to the Yoder farm. With God’s help, both animals would recover. Even the sight of Miriam standing so close to John, listening intently to his every word, didn’t trouble Charley much. It was natural that Miriam would be worried about her horses and John was a very good vet. Reading anything more into it was his own insecurity. After all, John wasn’t Amish; he didn’t have a chance with Miriam. She would never choose a husband outside her faith.

      Since she was a child, Miriam had had a gift for healing animals. When his Holstein calf had gotten tangled in a barbed wire fence, it had been ten-year-old Miriam who’d come every afternoon to rub salve on the calf’s neck while he held it still. Later that year, she’d helped his mother deliver twin lambs in a snowstorm, and the following summer Miriam had set a broken leg on his brother’s goat. More than one neighbor called on Miriam instead of the vet for trouble with their animals. Some men in the community seemed to forget she was a girl and asked her advice before they bought a cow or a driving horse.

      If Miriam had been born English, Charley supposed that she might have gone to college to study veterinary medicine herself, but their people didn’t believe in that much schooling. For the Old Order Amish, eighth grade was the end of formal education. He’d been glad to leave school at fourteen, but for Miriam, it had been a sacrifice. She had a hunger to know more about animal doctoring, so it was natural that she and John would find a lot to talk about.

      “I think we can fix the hay wagon, but a good third of the hay is wet through.”

      “What?” Startled, Charley turned to see Eli standing beside him. He’d been so busy thinking about Miriam that he hadn’t even heard Eli enter the barn.

      “The hay wagon,” Eli repeated. He glanced at John and Miriam and then cut his eyes at Charley, but he kept talking. “Front and back wheel on the one side need replacing, as well as some broken boards, but the axles are sound. We should be able to make it right in a few hours.”

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