The air was rich with the scent of roses and honeysuckle as Ellen Mast walked from the house to the barn. She entered the old wooden structure to get a bucket of chicken feed, then exited to release the birds into the yard.
“Here you go! Come and get it!” She smiled as she watched the hens and chicks scurrying toward the food. The lone rooster strutted out of the enclosure last, his chest puffing up when he saw the hens.
“Red,” Ellen called to him as she tossed down a handful. “Over here. Come get it!” The rooster bent and ate, his red-crested head dipping toward the feed. “That’s it. You always have to make an appearance last, ja?” She chuckled as she threw more grain, loving how the hens followed the trail wherever it landed.
“You’d better get down, Will, or you’re gonna fall!” she heard her brother Elam exclaim.
“Nay, I won’t!”
Ellen frowned as she skirted the barn toward the sound of her younger brothers’ voices. She found them near the hog pen. Will was walking barefoot along the top wooden rail of the surrounding fence while Elam watched with dismay from several feet away. A number of pigs and hogs wallowed in the mud, while others snorted and stuck their noses into the wire fencing between the rails. She approached slowly. “Will!” she called softly so as not to frighten him. “You need to get off there.”
Her brother flashed a guilty look. He teetered on the rail but managed to maintain his balance.
“Now,” she said sharply when he made no effort to climb down.
Will shot her a worried glance. “El, I’m trying.” He wobbled, lost his balance and fell into the mud pit. The hogs grunted and squealed as her brother scrambled to his feet.
Ellen dropped her bucket and ran. According to their father, their largest sow weighed close to five hundred pounds, while the rest weighed from twenty to two hundred. Fear pumped through her as she raced to unlatch the gate. “See if you can make your way, Will. Hurry!”
Will slogged through the mud, moving as fast as he could. The hogs and pigs grunted and squealed, the big one malevolently eyeing the intruder.
Ellen kept an eye on the animals as she held open the gate. After Will was out of danger, she shut and latched it, then scowled at him.
“You know better than to climb onto that fence or to do anything near the hogs except toss scraps to them.” She stood with her hands on her hips, noting the mud covering him from head to toe. She wrinkled her nose at the stench. “Mam’s not going to be happy. You stink.” Fortunately, Will hadn’t been wearing his hat and shoes or he’d have been in worse trouble with their mother.
“Ellen!” Mam called. Her mother waved her over to where she stood on the front porch of the farmhouse.
“Coming, Mam!” She hurried to put away her feed bucket, then quickly headed toward the house. Her younger brothers trailed behind—Will a sight covered in hog mud, with Elam walking some distance away, no doubt offended by the foul odor emanating from his brother.
As she drew closer, Ellen smiled at her mother. “Ja, Mam?”
“I need you to run an errand. The quilting bee is next week at Katie’s. I’d like you to take our squares to her.” Mam firmed her grip on the stack of colorful fabric squares as she leaned against the porch railing. “I promised to get them to her yesterday but couldn’t get away—” Her mother stopped suddenly and looked past Ellen, her eyes widening. She inhaled sharply. “William Joseph Mast, what on earth have you been doing?”
“Walking the hog fence,” Elam offered helpfully.
His mother frowned. “And you, Elam? What were you doing while Will was on the fence? Waiting for your turn?”
“Nay, Mam. I told him to get down but he wouldn’t listen.” Elam blinked up at her without worry. “And then he couldn’t get down.”
Her mother clicked her tongue with dismay as she turned back to Will. “Go to the outside pump and wait there, young man! You’ll not be stepping into the house until you’ve washed and changed clothes.” Her gaze didn’t soften as she turned to her other son. “Elam, run upstairs and get clean garments for your bruder.” Her lips firmed. “I’ll get soap and towels.”
“Mam?” Ellen asked softly. “Do you still want me to go to Katie’s?”
“Ja.” Her mother glanced at the fabric squares in patterns they’d stitched by hand and nodded. “Let me put them in a bag first.”
Ellen left shortly afterward to the sound of Will’s loud protests as Mam scrubbed the stinky mud from his hair and skin at the backyard water pump.
The day was clear and sunny, and the traffic on the main road was light as Ellen steered Blackie, the mare pulling her family’s gray buggy, toward the Samuel Lapp farm.
Many of their women friends and neighbors would be attending the quilting bee at Katie Lapp’s next week. Katie would stitch together the colorful squares that everyone had made at home. She would pin the length of stitched squares to a length of cotton with a layer of batting in between. Then she would stretch the unfinished quilt over a wooden rack from which the community women would work together, stitching carefully through all three of the layers.
Ellen enjoyed going to quilting bees. She had been taught as a young girl to make neat, even stitches and was praised often for them. After their last quilt gathering, Mam had confided to her on the way home that her work was much better than that of many of the seasoned quilters, who were often too busy nattering about people’s doings in the community to pay much attention to their stitches. Her mother had told her once that after everyone left, Katie would tear out, then redo the worst of the stitches, especially if the quilt was meant to be given as a wedding present or sold at a community fund-raiser.
“Won’t Alta know that Katie took out her stitches?” she’d asked her mother.
Mam had smiled. “Nay, Alta never remembers which area she quilted. She often takes credit for the beautiful work that Katie or you did, Ellen.”
The memory of her mam’s praise warmed her as Ellen drove along the paved road, enjoying the peace and beauty of the countryside.
The silence was broken when she heard the rev of an engine as a car came up too quickly from behind. A toot of a horn accompanied several young male shouts as the driver of the vehicle passed the buggy too closely without trying to slow down. Her horse balked and kicked up its pace and the buggy veered to the right. Ellen grabbed hard on the reins as the buggy swerved and bumped along the grass on the edge of the roadway.
“Easy, Blackie,” she commanded, trying to steer the animal in another direction. She pulled hard on the leathers. The horse straightened, but not before the buggy’s right wheels rolled into a dip along the edge of someone’s property where the vehicle drew to a stop. The jerking motion caused Ellen to slide in her seat and hit the passenger door before smacking her head against the inside wall. She gasped as pain radiated from her forehead to her cheek. She raised a hand to touch the sore area as she sat, breathing hard, shaken by the accident.
“Hey, Amish girl!” a young male voice taunted. “Stop hogging the road!”
Ellen felt indignant but kept her mouth shut. She’d been driving with the awareness that if a car needed to pass her, it could. She’d stayed toward the right and left plenty of room.
She saw with mounting concern that the car had pulled over to the side of the road ahead and stopped. Four teenage English boys hung out the open windows, mocking her driving skills and the way she was dressed.
“Too afraid to wear something nice, huh?” one called.
“Why don’t you let us see your pretty blond hair?”
They didn’t ask, nor did they care, if she was all right. They apparently