Taken for English Read online

  Twigg calmly tied his horse to a post directly in front of the Denton Emporium then methodically removed a stick from a saddlebag.

  “What’s he doing?” Walter whispered.

  “Shh.” Maura did not take her eyes off Twigg.

  Twigg pulled an arm back then thrust the stick at the chest of the horse. The beast screamed in protest, raised its forelegs, and pulled against the post.

  Shoppers poked their heads out of surrounding shops. Seeing Twigg, they quickly retreated. Twigg laughed. Then he untied the horse, mounted it in the middle of its complaint, and trotted down the street to his own store.

  Maura let out her breath.

  “It’s a message,” Walter said, “for the Denton brothers.”

  The street was silent, and Maura considered herding Walter back into the cart to take him anywhere but where they were. Maura’s father finally emerged from the emporium, a package in his arms. “Are you two all right?”

  “We’re fine, Daddy,” Maura said.

  “You look more like your mother every day,” Woody Woodley said. He turned to Walter. “I told the Dentons you would sweep for them this summer. Your daddy said you needed something to keep you busy this summer.”

  Walter slumped. “Isn’t it enough that I sweep for my own father’s shop?”

  “I wonder if that’s wise,” Maura said.

  “He’ll be fine,” Woody said.

  Maura glanced down the street. “Speaking of Walter’s daddy, where is Uncle Edwin?”

  “He’s at Crazy Man Twigg’s store, isn’t he?” Walter was at full alert again. “Selling eggs.”

  Woody shrugged.

  Maura clicked her tongue. “I wish people would not aggravate the situation by selling to Twiggs when they have been selling to the Dentons for years.”

  Woody moved his head from side to side. “Edwin says John Twigg is offering a better price for eggs and hens. Goose feathers, too.”

  “Can’t he see the Twiggs do that on purpose? They’re going to make people take sides. Does Edwin really want to be on the side of John Twigg in this feud?”

  “Times are tight. Edwin depends on that egg money. He can’t very well sell eggs in his milliner’s shop.”

  “But selling to the Twiggs and then letting Walter work for the Dentons—that could be dangerous.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Woody repeated.

  Maura held her tongue. “I should get Walter home. I’ll be home to start supper soon.”

  Walter pointed across the street. “Who are those men?”

  “They were in the emporium,” Woody said. “They look harmless enough.”

  “Mmm.” Maura narrowed the space between her eyes. “One can never be sure. I think I’ll go find out.”

  “Now who needs to be careful?” Walter laughed.

  “If they are connected to the Twiggs or the Dentons, I want to know,” Maura said. The men were oddly dressed in boxy black trousers and jackets with no collars. Maura pursed her lips while she considered what their garb might mean.

  “Now who’s looking to get in the middle of that feud?” her father said. “You ought to get yourself properly deputized.”

  Walter laughed. “Ladies can’t be deputized.”

  Maura put her hands on her hips. “But they can get to the bottom of things.”

  Four

  Yes, your appointment is confirmed for Friday at 3:00.” Ruth tapped her pencil eraser on the desktop as she spoke into the phone. She had checked the computer screen three times. “The doctor will have your test results by then.”

  Ruth hung up and glanced around the clinic’s empty waiting room. From a pocket in her blue scrubs, she took a key and went to unlock the front door. The first appointment of Monday morning was scheduled for fifteen minutes later. Ruth returned to the desk and double-checked that the patient files she had pulled from the drawers were in the correct order for smooth handling as patients arrived.

  When she arranged for this semester-long internship, Ruth had hoped for more patient contact. She had worked as a certified nurse assistant for over two years in a nursing home and had enough of her nursing degree behind her to be qualified to draw blood and do simple lab work. So far, though, the clinic manager had kept her on the front desk most of the time. She only worked five or six hours a day. After carrying a full course load and working twenty-five hours a week at the nursing home, the reduced schedule seemed like a vacation.

  It was only the second week. Surely things would pick up.

  Ruth could have arranged some clinical experience in Colorado Springs, with its multiple large hospital systems and wide-ranging network of medical practices. But she had left Westcliffe because she wanted to return to a place like it someday qualified to provide a basic level of medical care. People in Colorado Springs had plenty of doctors and nurses. Amish communities often were spread out and remote, especially in new settlements like the one in southwestern Colorado. Though she had chosen to leave, unbaptized, and get her GED and enroll in college, Ruth also longed to be among her own people.

  She had a hard time thinking of herself as not Amish, but even in scrubs and behind a desk looking at a computer monitor, she did not feel English, either.

  The door opened and Mrs. Weichert came through it.

  “Good morning.” Ruth picked up Mrs. Weichert’s file from the top of the stack. “Is all your information the same?”

  Mrs. Weichert laughed. “I’ve lived in this town my whole life. I’ve had that store on Main Street for twenty years. Yes, my information is the same.”

  “Sorry. I have to ask.” Ruth stood. “They’ll be ready for you in just a minute.”

  Ruth stepped into the hall behind the desk and set Mrs. Weichert’s file in a rack. The clinic manager stuck her head out of her office.

  “Why don’t you take the patient back?”

  “Me?” Ruth’s heart sped up.

  “Sure. Review her list of meds and get a pulse and blood pressure.”

  Ruth retrieved the chart and opened the door to the waiting room. “I’ll take you back, Mrs. Weichert.”

  In the exam room, Ruth laid the file open. Mrs. Weichert dropped her purse in a chair and sat on the exam table.

  “I guess your people are pretty excited about Annie,” Mrs. Weichert said. “Her baptism and all.”

  Ruth clicked the point down on her pen. “It’s a big step for her.”

  “I respect her choice, but I sure did like it better when she wore jeans to work in the shop.”

  “She’s gotten used to the clothes,” Ruth said. “We don’t really let our dresses hold us back.”

  Mrs. Weichert scanned Ruth from head to toe. “You’ve made a conversion of your own.”

  Ruth shrugged. “Scrubs are standard.” For a long time Ruth had worn skirts to work at the nursing home. Only recently had she relented and agreed to wear scrubs. She had to admit they were practical and comfortable.

  “You look like you know what you’re doing.”

  “I assure you, I do,” Ruth said. “Let me start by getting your blood pressure.”

  Rufus took a thermos of coffee from under the bench of his open-air cart. He stroked Dolly’s long nose as the horse stood obediently still in the street. Mrs. Weichert’s shop had become a familiar destination for both of them. Rufus hoped the shop would be empty for a few minutes. It was noon on a Monday. Tourist traffic should be nonexistent. It was the locals Rufus wanted to avoid.

  Annalise smiled when he stepped through the door, making the bell jangle, and reached under the counter to produce two mugs.

  “We seemed to have formed a habit.” Rufus unscrewed the top of the thermos and poured.

  Annalise wrapped the fingers of both hands around the mug to sip. “Ah. I am glad becoming Amish does not mean I have to give up kaffi.”

  “Tell me,” Rufus said as he picked up his own mug, “does having an Amish employee attract more tourists to the shop on the weekends?”

  Annalise laughed
. “I could have made a study of that if I were keeping better records.”

  “You might have been tempted to write a software program to analyze the data.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. There are no software programs in my future. I created and sold two successful companies. It’s out of my system for good.”

  “I suppose the busy season is over now.” This would be Annalise’s second winter working in Mrs. Weichert’s shop of unsorted small antiques, rare books, and an increasing inventory of Amish crafts.

  “As long as the weather holds up we’ll have traffic.” She sipped her coffee. “Winter will be quieter.”

  “Ike Stutzman is complaining that a lantern has gone missing.”

  “He probably just misplaced it, or one of his daughters used it and didn’t put it back.”

  Rufus nodded. “Most likely. But he was pitching a fit about it yesterday when I got back from the fire. Suddenly he’s worried that an overturned lantern will start a fire in his barn.”

  “It could.”

  “Yes, it could. But a lantern that is simply lost is not likely to start a fire, now is it?”

  “Did anyone get hold of Karl yet?” Annalise picked up a rag and wiped dust from the counter.

  Rufus shook his head. “Tom was going to go by his contractor’s trailer this morning and see if his assistant has a number for him.”

  “I heard he went to see his dying father in Virginia.”

  Rufus lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug.

  “I also heard he went to Montana to look at horses he might want to buy for his ranch.”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  The shop door jangled again, and Joel Beiler stuck his head in. “We have everything ready to load at the back of Tom’s store.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Rufus drained his coffee cup as his younger brother let the door close behind him.

  “Joel seems to be buckling down,” Annalise said.

  “He is. I believe he has a knack for farming that I never had. He ordered soil nutrients through Tom’s hardware store. I promised to help him get the load home.”

  “I suppose you should go.”

  Annalise’s gray eyes were clear and unsullied.

  “You look happy,” he said. “Are you still coming to supper tomorrow?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll see you there.” Rufus took his thermos and stepped into the sunlight, wishing he did not have to wait until tomorrow evening to see Annalise again. He never liked being away from her.

  He could do something about that dilemma. She had done her part yesterday. Now it was up to him.

  Ruth was out of the clinic by two o’clock and walked the few blocks to Annalise’s house off Main Street. She only stayed long enough to grab a sweater and a water bottle.

  And her car key.

  Annalise had given her the blue Prius a few months ago as part of divesting herself of English ways. Ruth had surprised herself how quickly she adjusted to the freedom of going somewhere on a whim. Quick trips. Short errands. Just go and do something and come right back.

  It was all very un-Amish, and Ruth was not sure any longer that using a car to be efficient with time meant a person did not value the community.

  Ruth shook off the brooding. What she wanted right now was fresh air and room to move. She wanted to be on the trail that the Amish and English had created together over the summer. But it was five miles away, behind the property line of her family’s home. Thus the car.

  Just a few minutes later, she parked the Prius at the top of the trail, locked it, and dropped the key in a pocket of her scrubs. Pockets. Another convenience that did not seem the least bit detrimental. Ruth was not hiding anything, simply storing something valuable.

  She took a deep breath and quickened her pace, craving the movement. In Colorado Springs, her work at the nursing home sent her up and down the halls, lifting and pushing and pulling for entire shifts. The clinic in Westcliffe simply was not large enough to be physically demanding, and this left Ruth seeking opportunities to move her entire body.

  Ruth walked the trail from one end to the other, about a mile across land that began in meadow and ended in the woods behind the Beiler home. When the house came in view, Ruth turned around. Humming a tune from the Ausbund, she eyed the large, flat boulder at the edge of the meadow. She had climbed the footholds of that rock hundreds of time in an Amish dress. She could certainly manage it in scrubs and tennis shoes.

  She stopped short when she saw a figure on the trail. He was between her and the rock, between her and the Prius. And he was looking at her.

  “Ruth Beiler, right?”

  The close-cropped blond hair and goatee looked familiar. “You’re the firefighter,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten whether you are Bryan or Alan. Yesterday you looked alike.”

  “We get that a lot.” Bryan grinned. “I’ve known Alan a long time. People are never sure who is who.”

  “Is everything all right?” Ruth glanced past him toward her car. “At the house, I mean. Where the fire was.”

  “Funny you should ask.” Bryan moved to close the few yards between them. “As a matter of fact, someone violated the tape this morning.”

  “Why would anybody do that?”

  “Good question. There wasn’t much there to steal.” Bryan glanced at the boulder. “You ever climb that thing?”

  Ruth laughed. “All the time.”

  “I’ll race you up.”

  She could not resist the dare in his green eyes and sprinted toward the rock. Running without a flapping skirt between her ankles was a rich sensation. She got there first and scrambled up the back side before Bryan found his first toehold. Triumphant, she hefted herself over the top—and found Elijah Capp flattened against the rough surface. At the sight of her, he sat up.

  “I’m sorry.” Startled, she stumbled slightly. “I didn’t see you from down below.”

  “Looks like you have a shadow.” Elijah straightened his hat on his head and tilted it toward Bryan.

  Bryan put his hands on his hips. “I don’t know why I’ve never come up here before. The view is beautiful.”

  “You must be new to Westcliffe.” Elijah stood now as well.

  Ruth was starting to regret her outing.

  “I’m Bryan Nichols.” He extended a hand, which Elijah shook.

  “Elijah Capp.”

  “Bryan and I met yesterday.” Ruth felt her back teeth start to grind. “He’s a firefighter.”

  “Well then,” Elijah said, “I imagine he must be something else as well. Custer County firefighters are volunteer.”

  Ruth’s teeth started to hurt.

  “True enough,” Bryan said. “I’m a cashier at the grocery store, and I’m about to be late to work.”

  “I suppose you’ll be going, then.” Elijah nodded.

  “Yes, I suppose I will.” Bryan turned to Ruth. “It was good to run into you. I hope I’ll see you again.”

  He squatted and began his descent. As he loped across the meadow, Ruth wondered where he had left his car. She turned to Elijah and forced her jaw to unclench.

  “You were rude, Elijah.”

  “What were you doing with him, Ruth? A man you only met yesterday?”

  Ruth stared at Elijah. “I was not doing anything. Not that it is your business.”

  “I feel toward you as I always have.” Elijah crossed his arms behind his back, his voice soft.

  Ruth said nothing.

  “You were laughing,” he said. “Happy.”

  “I feel the joy of the Lord when I come here. You know that better than anyone.”

  He stepped closer. “Ruth, is your heart open to someone else?”

  Annie remembered the days—years—when she pulled on shorts and expensive tennis shoes and traversed the countryside in strides measured for endurance. In her ankle-length dress and with her hair carefully pinned up, these days she aimed for a brisk power walk. Clear mountain air was
irresistible after six hours in a shop almost completely dependent on artificial light. Over recent weeks, Annie had tramped down a path several feet off the highway but running alongside it. She gave her kapp one last tug and began swinging her arms as her feet set their pace.

  Coming out of the grocery store parking lot, where Main Street met the highway, Annie looked up just in time to lurch to one side out of the path of a white horse pulling an Amish buggy. The animal was not going fast, but he seemed confused. Behind him the buggy jostled and tilted in ways that made Annie nervous.

  Doing what she had seen Rufus do so many times, she reached out and slid her fingers through the bridle, pulling to slow the horse’s random movement, and reached out to run her hand along his neck. A year ago Annie Friesen would not have known what a horse’s neck felt like.

  “Whoa there,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  She glanced inside the buggy and saw two little boys. Neither one of them looked older than ten.

  “Who is driving your buggy?” Annie tried to place their faces. She thought she knew everyone in the congregation now, even the children, at least by sight. Except the Deitwallers. These could be Leah’s little brothers. They stared at her with huge guilty brown eyes.

  “What have you boys done now?” An Amish couple strode across the parking lot with two girls in their wake toting plastic grocery sacks.

  Yes, the Deitwallers.

  “I’m not sure what happened,” Annie said, “but the boys seem to be fine.”

  “Of course they’re fine.” Mrs. Deitwaller snapped her fingers and pointed. “Girls, get in.”

  “What about Leah?” one of the girls asked.

  “She knew she was supposed to be back here by now.” Eva Deitwaller hoisted herself up to the bench beside her husband, who had the reins in his hands now. “I’m tired of chasing after her.”

  “Would you like me to help you look for Leah?” Annie offered.

  “No need,” Leah’s mother said. “She wants to be treated like an adult. She can learn to show some adult responsibility the hard way.”