The Captive Heart (28 page)

She ached for him, and with him, but he was in a place she had never visited, nor wished to, and there was nothing she could say to him now that would change anything. All she could do was listen, grant him a sympathetic ear and perhaps help him find some small measure of peace.

“Domingo,” she whispered.

In a moment he whispered back, “Sí.”

“Tell me about it. Talk to me about what happened in the Eye of the Needle. Sometimes it helps to talk.”

Chapter 38

D
omingo didn't move, didn't speak for so long that she thought perhaps he had not heard her, but finally his voice came, raspy and low.

“Before they got there I climbed as fast as I could, to a high ledge. It was my best chance. On the ground, they would have ridden over me.

“Six bandits came through the pass, one by one. When I killed El Pantera's horse in the narrow place there was shouting, confusion. I shot the man behind him and then another horse. When that one fell, the rider's leg was pinned. I killed him, too. The rest took to the rocks, and there was a lot of shooting. My arm was wounded, but I kept fighting until my guns were empty.

“After El Pantera's horse fell, I saw no more of him until I sat up to reload the rifle. He was standing on the ledge behind me with his gun drawn. When he saw that I was empty he laughed—a filthy laugh, full of malice. He put away the gun and pounced on me with his knife, slashed my chest before I could catch his hand.”

Domingo's voice was steady, but he kept his eyes covered with his arm.

“I was weak from the bullet hole in my arm. El Pantera could have killed me easily, but he did not strike to kill, only to wound. He pinned me down and whispered into my face that I would die slowly, that he would take his time and cut me up like a chicken. He said I would suffer for what I did to his horse.”

Domingo paused then, taking several deep breaths as he relived a horror.

“He tried to cut my shoulders so I wouldn't be able to use my arms. I had a grip on his knife hand, but I was weak. I could not stop him. When I saw there was no other way I held on to him and rolled off the ledge. We fell a long ways. I remember nothing else.”

“But we found you on a ledge,” Miriam said. “You didn't fall to the ground.”

His arm lifted from his face and he stared at her. “Then I must have caught on a lower ledge. So
that
is why they did not finish me. El Pantera must have missed the ledge or bounced off it. He would have been hurt from the fall too, and the others were wounded. Maybe they could not reach me.”

He lay back then, staring at the sky through the treetops, his breathing deep and troubled.

“This was in my dream,” Miriam said, suddenly remembering, her eyes wide with surprise.

“What dream?”

She told him of the vivid dream that had come to her more than once, of the stallion on the ridge, the jaguar, the desperate battle.

The fall.

“In the dream I was wearing the clothes of a Mexican peasant,” she said. “The clothes of a man. This was the reason I came with Kyra to look for you.”

He listened without expression, but when he glanced at her clothes a pained look came into his eyes and he nodded. “Dreams can be cruel.”

It was a mere whisper. He offered no explanation for this curious remark but sank back into solitude, the darkness closing around him. Casting about in her mind for a way to grant him some kind of peace, Miriam remembered the message he had sent to her through Rachel—the words he thought would be his last.

“Domingo, you laid down your life for your friends. It's true, what you said—there is no greater love.”

“Noble words.”

“A noble intention, no matter the outcome. What you did was
heroic
. You saved the lives of two people.”

His head turned and his eyes burned into her. “I
took
the lives of two people.”

“You don't know that for certain. We found no bodies.”

“I was there. I know what I saw.”

“Even so, they were bandits. They were trying to kill you.”

Wincing, he raised up on an elbow and his eyes grew fierce. “Sí, they were bandits. But they were also revolutionaries who fought alongside my father for a cause he believed in. They were not just bandits; they were men. I
knew
these men—the two I killed. Morales came to our house sometimes, when my father was alive. His wife's name is Maria, and his son was born with twisted legs—pushes himself around on a little cart with wooden wheels.” He paused, breathing heavily, his eyes intense. “I shot that boy's father through the heart. The other one's name was Carlos, and he was younger even than me. Carlos was the one whose horse pinned him. He was screaming, trying to free his leg, looking up at me. I could see panic in the whites of his eyes right before I shot him.”

Miriam recoiled in shock and horror. She had not seen the bodies, but suddenly it all became too real.

“It is a hard thing to look into the eyes of a man you
know
and pull the trigger, Miriam. Their faces, their voices, haunt my dreams. Carlos and Morales will not be going home to their families anymore.”

He fell back then, spent, and the two of them looked everywhere but at each other for a long time.

After a while she could not take the silence any longer. She spoke very quietly.

“I am Amish,” she said, “and we believe that to kill a human being at any time, for any reason, is a great sin. But you are not Amish, so I will not judge you. Anyway, I have always understood outsiders to hold a different view. You were threatened. El Pantera and his men would have killed you if they could—and Rachel and Jake, too. Does not the law excuse a man who only defends himself?”

“The
law
?” A sardonic chuckle. “Law is the whim of this year's ruler. A man must have his own law. What pains me now is not the law, but what is in my own heart and head.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “My father has often said we live by a higher law, but I have also heard
you
say that it was not against your religion to kill.”

“My religion did not prepare me for what I would see, what I would feel. Facing the edge of El Pantera's knife, everything I knew was swept away like dust. I only wanted to live, to take another breath, to see the faces of those I love once more.”

His chest heaved deeply, and Miriam waited.

“The Nahua gods deserted me. At the last, I saw no choice but to roll off the ledge—and take El Pantera with me. It seemed a kinder death.”

“But you didn't die,” she said.

He shook his head weakly. “No, but all that has come to me since is pain and grief, with troubling dreams I cannot understand.”

The truth of this was in his face. Up to now she had felt out of place in this strange debate, standing on the wrong side of the question—an Amish woman trying to ease the conscience of a killer. Reaching deep inside her own honest heart, she finally saw precisely what it was she really wanted to tell Domingo, and she said a silent prayer.

“Every man is born with a conscience,” she said, “and sooner or later his conscience is grieved. Your gods have no answer for that grief?”

His eyes wandered and a sigh escaped from the depths of his despair. “No.”

It was a delicate moment. She sensed that the darkness of the last three days had opened Domingo's soul like a moonflower. Too much light and he might close again. Too little and the moment would pass.

“Mine does,” she offered, very softly.

He lay silent for a long time, thinking. Lying back with his eyes open, looking up through the trees at the deep blue sky, he said, “I have read enough of Kyra's Bible to know a little about your God, and I have watched your father long enough to know a little more. Yours is a God of peace. He would turn His face from one like me.”

“Perhaps you should try talking to Him.”

A deep sigh. His eyes wandered. “Why would your God listen to me? Who am I to Him?”

“Domingo,” she said gently, “the thing you do not yet understand is that my Gott loves you. He always did. He loved you even as you squeezed the trigger.”

The weather in Parrot Pass was perfect—not too cold, not too hot, plenty of sunshine, and a light breeze blowing all afternoon. Domingo slept most of the day, lying out by the mine entrance, and when he awoke in the afternoon he was feeling a little better. Physically. His leg and hip still troubled him, but some of the pain in his head had abated. His vision remained blurry.

Kyra took the rifle with her in the afternoon and came back with a large, dull gray bird swinging from her hand.

“
Chachalaca
,” she said as she tossed the dead bird on the ground. “Mexican pheasant. They are named for the noise they make.”

“An ugly bird,” Miriam said, lifting the bird by its feet, appraising it. “The pheasants back home are beautiful, colorful.”

“But these are just as good to eat,” Kyra answered. “A delicacy.”

Miriam cleaned the pheasant and gathered wood for a fire. None of them wished to go back into the musty depths of the mine until it was absolutely necessary, and it was plain that the fresh air did Domingo a world of good. His spirits had lifted a little. Kyra brought him a couple of stout green limbs, both of them forked at one end. Hardly a word passed between Domingo and his sister, but he sat up against the timbers, pulled out a knife and began trimming the limbs.

“What are you making?” Miriam asked.

“Crutches,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, I will be able to move around a little.”

“Do you think that is wise?”

He raised an eyebrow, shaving a twig from the branch. “It is not wise to lie still too long. The sooner I can move, the better.”

Kyra came out of the mine with the cooking pot in her hand. “That pheasant will take a couple hours to roast. I'm going to the creek for a bath before the sun gets too low,” she said, holding up the pot, “and I will bring back some
aguamiel
. You'll be all right?”

“Sí,” Domingo said, glancing at the rifle leaning against the timbers.

While he had his knife out, Miriam had him trim a couple of forked sticks for the spit while she built a fire. Using a rock for a hammer, she drove the forked sticks into the ground on opposite sides of the fire. A half hour later the bird was beginning to brown, and smelling wonderful.

———

When Kyra returned from the creek she brought the cooking pot, half full with a milky white liquid.

“Aguamiel,” she explained. “Our first morning here I cut the heart from a maguey—the one whose flowers we ate. The hole fills with sap from the leaves. Taste it.”

Miriam dipped a finger in the pot, tasted. “Not bad,” she said. “Sweet.”

Kyra shot a mischievous glance at her brother. “It will give him strength . . . and perhaps sweeten him a little.”

Before she thought, Miriam muttered, “He is sweet enough.” Then she blushed and turned away to check the fire, hoping he hadn't heard.

They dined on pheasant and greens that evening, washing it down with the nectar of the maguey and sharing the ripe purple fruit of the nopal for dessert. As the sun dipped behind the white cliffs, the sky faded from turquoise to crimson and the parrots ceased swarming to settle in their holes for the night. Miriam sat contentedly by the fire, poking it occasionally with a stick.

“I could live here forever,” she said.

Chapter 39

U
nder Kyra's constant care Domingo's wounds healed rapidly, though the pain in his head lingered and he saw two of everything. Each morning Kyra and Miriam hauled him out of the mine on his litter so he could spend the day in fresh air and sunshine, yet his mood remained dark and he spoke very little. While his handmade crutches were ready and waiting, Kyra wouldn't let him get up. She said his broken leg needed to knit.

Still, when Miriam woke up early on Wednesday morning he was gone, the litter empty, with Kyra sound asleep on the other side. Alarmed, she woke Kyra and they hurried up to the mine entrance.

“There he is,” Kyra said, pointing.

Miriam could just make out a shadowy figure in the gray predawn light, down in the valley, hobbling slowly through the brush on the homemade crutches. Kyra snugged her straw sombrero on her head and started to go after him, but Miriam grabbed her arm and stopped her.

“If he went to the trouble to get up on his crutches and leave without waking us he probably wants to be alone. We should leave him be.”

A smile slowly curled Kyra's lips. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”

“Sí, but it is probably not what you think. Your brother grapples with his conscience.”

Kyra raised an eyebrow. “His conscience? He has said nothing of this to me.” She knelt by the remains of last night's fire and sifted the ashes with a stick. Finding an ember still glowing, she began piling dry twigs over it.

“We talked about it the morning he first woke up,” Miriam said. “While you were out gathering medicines. The two men he killed in the pass . . . he knew them. It is the reason for his dark mood.”

The little catlike smile crept back onto Kyra's face. As she fanned the embers, a small wisp of smoke began to rise. “It is interesting that he spoke of these things with you, but not with his own sister.”

“Men are different,” Miriam said. “Sometimes it is hard for them to talk to a sister about deep things.”

“Like what?”

“Dreams. I think Gott troubles his dreams.”

Now
both
of Kyra's eyebrows went up. “You talked to him about God?”

Miriam nodded. “Only a little.”

“I thought it was odd when he borrowed my Bible,” Kyra said. A tiny wisp of flame licked at her hands as the twigs ignited. “I could never get him to talk about God. I think he believed it would dishonor the memory of our father.”

Miriam's eyes were still on Domingo, a pale figure lurching into the low mist across the valley. She sighed. “We put too much faith in words, I think. Best to wait, and see what happens.”

Domingo stayed away all day. When Miriam went to tend the horses that morning she spotted him sitting on a rock by the creek near the upper end of the valley, and she watched him for a moment. But Domingo's eyes missed nothing, even now. If she could see him, he could see her, and if he needed help he would have asked for it. She moved on and left him alone.

Late in the afternoon Kyra was spitting a rabbit to roast over the fire when she turned to Miriam and said, “I'm beginning to worry about Domingo. He has had nothing to eat all day. Shouldn't we go look for him?”

“I'll go,” Miriam said, picking up the goatskin and slinging it over a shoulder. “You're busy, and I know where he is.”

He had not moved, though he was no longer sitting upright. Lying on his back on a slab of limestone overlooking the creek, when Miriam called out to him he raised his head and looked, then patted the rock with his palm. She climbed up to sit beside him.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded, taking a long pull of water from the goatskin flask without rising. “Much better, now.”

He was using Miriam's straw sombrero to cushion his head against the rock.

“I wondered where my hat got to,” she said. “I couldn't find it this morning.”

“I'm sorry. I thought it was Kyra's.” There was a curious smile on his face when he said this—the first time she'd seen him smile since his awakening. He sat up, used a fist to reshape the crushed crown of the sombrero, and placed it gently on her head.

“What have you been doing?” she asked.

“Keeping still. Listening.”

Bright green and red parrots swooped about the cliffs. She could hear their cries, and the sound of the creek tumbling over stones. A Mexican jay landed on a cactus nearby and let out a sharp hack. The triple caw of a crow echoed down the valley, and from somewhere in the distance the yipping of a coyote.

“Life is busy here,” she said.

“More than you know.” He winced, shifting his weight from his injured hip. “I spoke to your God this morning.”

He seemed embarrassed, almost apologetic. Picking a pebble from a dimple in the rock, he flipped it into the creek. His eyes remained on the creek as he said, “There has been a great weight on me these last three days. I could not sleep last night, and this morning I could bear it no longer. I came down to the creek thinking today I would either find peace or drown myself.”

“Well, you haven't drowned yourself,” she said.

“The day is not over yet.” But he smiled again. “I didn't know if your God was listening, but I told Him this thing was very hard for me to bear, and if I understand your Bible right, it says the weight can be taken away by this Jesus. So I asked for forgiveness—I think Kyra calls it
absolution
.”

She held her breath for a moment. “And have you found peace?”

He took a great deep breath and let it out. “Sí. The weight is gone, but there were no voices, no great sign from the heavens. I wasn't sure. I thought maybe your God is very subtle, or maybe it was only the sunshine and the birds and the music of the stream that lifted my spirits. So only a few minutes ago I decided to put Him to the test. I told Him if He was real and this peace was His doing, He should give me a sign.”

Her eyes widened. “It is not good to put Gott to the test. What did you ask of Him?”

“It was only a simple little thing.” He reached up and ticked a finger on the edge of her sombrero. “I asked Him to bring me the owner of this hat.”

Miriam's mouth hung open, speechless.

He shrugged, smiled sheepishly. “I thought it was Kyra's. Perhaps your God plays tricks, but He is real, and He is here. I know that now.”

———

When they got back to camp Miriam told Kyra the things Domingo had shared with her. They expected a lot of questions from him, but as the evening passed he remained his usual quiet self—except that the dark mood was gone. He seemed content for a change, at peace, though he still kept to himself.

“Don't worry about it,” Kyra said, when she had a moment alone with Miriam. “It's just his way. Domingo has his own mind, and he will not be told what to think. If I know my brother he will spend many more hours thinking it through before he will talk about what he has decided.”

The next morning he rose early again and slipped out before the girls were awake. He went back to his rock, alone, and stayed until Miriam came to him in the afternoon with food and water. She couldn't resist asking him, once, if he'd talked to Gott any more.

He shrugged. “Mostly I just listen.” Without another word he eased himself gently down off the rock and onto his crutches.

Miriam went with him as he meandered about the little valley, and he showed her his world. They stopped at the maguey Kyra had hollowed out, and she dipped aguamiel from its heart for him to drink.

“They make a kind of beer from this, called
pulque
,” he said. “Also tequila. A very useful plant.”

It became a routine of sorts. Every morning Domingo would rise early and go to his rock, and every afternoon Miriam would join him for a leisurely stroll. He grew stronger every day. The pain in his head eased a little day by day, but the double vision proved very stubborn.

They walked together at Domingo's hobbling pace and talked of many things. Miriam was constantly amazed at how much there was to learn about the rich variety of life all around her. In a place she had first thought was a barren waste, Domingo unveiled a veritable Garden of Eden and shared it with her.

It was a pleasurable time, a time of laughter and discovery, a golden time when Miriam marveled at the fact that she didn't have a care in the world. She'd spent ten wonderful, carefree days in a deserted valley high up in the mountains of Mexico with nothing but a pot, a rifle and a knife, and not once had she gone hungry or suffered for want of anything. She felt perfectly safe and at ease living off the land with Kyra and Domingo.

By the middle of the second week Miriam and Kyra had grown used to Domingo's routine and did not expect to see him in the mornings, but when Miriam went down to the creek on Thursday morning to move the horses she found him already there, leaning on his crutches and feeding leaves to the mare.

“Where is Kyra?” he asked as Miriam untied the horses.

“Gathering breakfast,” she said. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“A little. I found some berries, drank some aguamiel from the maguey. I am fine.”

She walked slowly, leading the horses a little ways up the creek to find fresh grazing. Domingo hobbled along beside her on his crutches.

“I am strong enough to travel,” he said. “We should leave soon. You have been gone almost two weeks, and your people do not know where you are. They will be worried.”

“Sí, I worry constantly about my mother, especially after all that has happened. But it's your head Kyra is worried about.”

“The pain is gone from my head and I can see pretty good now.”

“Still, I think it's best to wait and let Dr. Kyra tell us when you are well enough to ride.”

He shook his head. “I cannot ride a horse with this leg, and my hip still hurts.”

“Then we'll have to make another travois. You can ride lying down, but it will mean your head has to take a lot of bouncing.”

“I hope no one sees me being dragged home behind my sister's horse,” he said. “My amigos would never let me hear the end of it.”

She tied the horses in a new spot and left Domingo at the water's edge as she waded out into the creek to fill the goatskin. A question had plagued her since that first morning when Domingo awakened, but up to now she hadn't had the nerve to ask.

“Who is Dulcinea?” she said absently, her back to him as she submerged the big flask in the creek.

He gave out a single brief snort of a chuckle. “Where did you hear that name?”

“
You
said it.” She tried her best to seem disinterested—she had no right. But an unexpected pang of jealousy had pierced her when he said the name, and now she wanted very much to know more about this Dulcinea. Who was she? How long had he known her and where did he meet her?

“I said that name? When?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he frowned. Disquieting.