The Shepherd's Bride Read online

  “Many of the quilts we sell fetch fine prices. The Englisch don’t seem to care what they have to pay. I’ve seen some of the larger quilts at auction go for thousands of dollars.”

  Overwhelmed with gratitude and excitement, Lizzie realized she had more than enough to buy bus tickets for all her sisters.

  “Danki. Please tell Naomi that I am eternally grateful for her help. Now I have to get this in the mail.” As Adam turned the buggy around, Lizzie sprinted toward the house.

  There is still time. There is still time. The refrain echoed in her mind.

  “Carl! Carl, where are you?” She knew he had gone to town earlier, but she had seen him return. She wanted to share her joy and she wanted to share it with him. She raced up the steps, yanked open the screen door and ran full tilt into him.

  * * *

  Carl wrapped his arms around Lizzie to keep her from falling as they both struggled to catch their balance. Fear clutched at his heart. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She looked up, grinning from ear to ear. She patted his chest with both hands. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right and God is good.”

  She didn’t seem to notice that he was holding her. He noticed. She was close enough for him to see the flecks of gold in her bright hazel eyes. She was close enough to kiss. More than his next breath, he wanted to taste the soft sweetness of her lips.

  Duncan nosed open the screen door and joined in with exuberance. He jumped up and planted his front feet on Lizzie’s side, barking wildly. Carl slowly lowered his arms and reluctantly released her.

  She turned her beautiful smile on the dog. “Yes, everything is fine, and you, Duncan, are a goot, goot hund.”

  She took hold of his front feet and turned in a circle as the dog hopped to keep up with her. Laughing, she grabbed his face and ruffled his fur. Duncan dropped back to all fours, but continued to wag his tail as he fixed his eyes on her.

  Carl folded his arms over his chest and tried not to be jealous of a dog. “Have you had good news about Joe?”

  “I haven’t heard anything about Grandfather today, but my quilt has been sold. I have money, Carl. Enough money to bring my sisters here and some left over.”

  “That’s great news. Are you sure your sisters will come? They haven’t written to you.”

  “I pray that they will. I pray with all my heart that they will find the courage to leave my uncle’s house. I used to think that everyone’s lives were like ours. That words of compassion were spoken at church but not practiced at home. Since coming here, I realize there are kind and generous people who live their faith as our Lord commanded and do more than pay it lip service. I’m so glad that I came.”

  “I’m glad that you came, too.”

  She blushed at his words, but nothing dimmed her happiness. “I have to get this in the mail to Mary. What will you do if three more women show up on your doorstep?”

  “I’ll hide.”

  She laughed as she rushed up the stairs. She didn’t believe him. If only she knew the truth. The last thing on earth he wanted was a house full of women to look after.

  Just the thought of it made his blood run cold.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lizzie carried the coffeepot to the sink and began filling it with water. It had been two days since she put her quilt money in the mail to Mary. It should arrive today or tomorrow. How soon would she hear something?

  Joe would be home before long. Would that mean less time working beside Carl? She enjoyed his company. She glanced out the window and noticed a speck of white in the green grass on the hillside beyond the barn. She leaned closer.

  “A lamb. That’s a lamb. Oh, my goodness, they’re coming.” She left the pot in the sink, ran out the door and raced down the hill to Carl’s hut.

  The door was open. He was seated on the edge of his bunk pulling on his boot.

  “Carl, I saw one. I saw a lamb!”

  A slow grin spread across his face. Why wasn’t he as excited as she was? “We have been expecting them, Lizzie.”

  “You don’t understand. It’s out there all alone. The mother isn’t with it. What if she has abandoned it?”

  “Then you will get to bottle-feed one, but let’s hope the mother is nearby.”

  Lizzie waited impatiently for him to pull on his other boot. “I don’t see how you can be so matter-of-fact when a baby has been left all alone out in the wilds.”

  Her patience gave out. She turned and ran back up the hill toward the pasture. She was out of breath and panting when she reached the baby sleeping quietly in the grass. She held her aching side as she sank to her knees beside it.

  It was so small and so precious. She wanted to scoop it up and cuddle it in her arms, but she was afraid to touch it.

  She heard a noise nearby and realized the mother was less than ten feet away on the other side of a bush. Her second lamb was busy nursing and twirling its tail.

  “You didn’t leave your baby. What a good mother you are.”

  Lizzie was still gazing at the beautiful sleeping creature when Carl joined her. He had a large navy blue bag slung over his shoulder. Duncan trotted at his heels.

  Carl leaned down and picked up the lamb. It came awake with a start and struggled in his hands. Its frantic cries brought the ewe running back. She immediately began bleating loudly in protest. At a word from Carl, Duncan went out to distract her.

  “What are you doing?” Lizzie demanded.

  “When a lamb is born, some processing is required.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “First, I checked to see if the lamb is healthy, and this one looks like she is. Then I put iodine on the navel to prevent infection. I give her a numbered ear tag because we will need to know which babies belong with which mothers. The numbers are easy enough to see when the lamb is standing still, but when they are running about, it’s a lot harder, so I mark them with these waxy crayon sticks. I put the ewe’s number on like so.”

  He demonstrated by marking the number forty-two on the lamb’s left side with a yellow marking stick.

  “If it’s a single birth, the lamb will get marked with one stripe across its back from side to side. If it’s a twin, two stripes and so on. Always mark them on the left side.”

  The mother continued to bellow her displeasure and lowered her head in a threatening gesture. Lizzie took a step away from Carl. “Are we done? She’s very upset.”

  “Almost. I just have to put this rubber band over the tail. It’s a bloodless way to dock the tail. The part below the rubber band will simply die and fall off in a couple of weeks. A shorter tail allows for cleaner sheep.”

  “I could’ve gone my entire life without knowing that fact.”

  He chuckled as he put the lamb on the ground. She quickly scurried to her mother’s side. The mother stopped protesting and nuzzled her baby before moving away with it only to go through the entire process all over again when Carl caught and marked her other lamb.

  He gave Duncan the command to gather, and the dog began herding the sheep and lambs toward the barn.

  From that moment on, Lizzie had very little time to think about her sisters coming, about Joe getting out of the hospital and about how much she enjoyed working beside Carl. She was too busy with the newborn lambs.

  Things went well until the weather took a turn for the worse. April began with an unusually cold and rainy week. It was a potentially disastrous combination for the newborns.

  Some of the newly shorn mothers sought the shelter of the sheds and the barn, but some chose less suitable birthing places, such as dense thickets and groves of trees in the pasture.

  Carl worked tirelessly to move the reluctant mothers and their newborns into the sheds. He built additional pens inside the barn and even moved the horses out so that he
could turn their stalls into sheep maternity wards. Lizzie divided her time between bottle-feeding a pair of orphans every three hours and making sure Carl had food, hot coffee and warm, dry clothes.

  When he wasn’t assisting an ewe with a difficult birth or checking on the condition of the lambs, he combed the pastures for the few expectant mothers who had wandered away from the flock.

  After three days of nonstop birthing, Lizzie could see how tired Carl was. “Please, let me help more. Tell me what to do.”

  “You’re doing enough.”

  “I can do more.”

  “Lizzie, that’s the trouble with you. You always think you can do more.”

  “Try me. If I can’t manage, what have you lost?”

  “Very well. In the smallest shed are the ewes that lambed three days ago. I need you to take hay to them and make sure they have plenty of water.”

  “I can do that. What else?”

  “Add fresh straw to the pens if they look dirty. That will keep you busy for the next hour.”

  It didn’t take her an hour to complete the tasks. She was back at his side as soon as she was able. He had delivered a set of twins from one ewe and was helping a second one deliver a lamb that was breech. “I’ve given them hay and water and new straw. Now what?”

  “Check on number fifty-four. She had twins, but she wasn’t letting one of them nurse a while ago. Let me know if they’re both doing okay.”

  Lizzie walked down the aisle looking into the small pens where the mother sheep stood with their new babies until she saw the one whose ear tag was fifty-four. One of her babies was up and nursing. The other lay in a small huddle in the corner. Lizzie stepped into the pen and tried to rouse the little one, but it seemed too weak to stand. She rushed back to Carl.

  “One of them is lying down and won’t get up.”

  “Can you check his temperature for me?”

  “If you tell me how.” She felt so stupid. How could she be of help to him if she had to constantly run to him for information and instructions?

  He grabbed a thermometer from his box of equipment and explained what she needed to do. “A lamb’s temperature should be about 102°. If he’s colder than that, take him to the warming boxes I have set up by the stove in the house.” He extended the thermometer to her. She hesitated, then took it from him. This wasn’t about Carl’s shunning. This was about saving as many lambs as possible.

  The lamb was much colder than he should have been. She bundled him up in a blanket and carried him up to the house. Carl had set four boxes around the stove in the kitchen. She put the lamb in one and made sure there was plenty of wood to last the night before going out to the barn again. She paused and groaned when she stepped outside. The bitter-cold rain was mixed with snow. How much worse could it get?

  Carl’s second ewe had successfully delivered her lambs. Both were trying to get to their feet while their mother nuzzled them. He gave Lizzie a tired smile. “These will be fine. I’m going back out to the hilltop pen. I saw two more ewes laboring up there an hour ago.”

  “Carl, it’s snowing.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t last. Go back to the house. I’ll be in shortly.”

  She did as he asked, but he wasn’t back soon. She moved a lamp to the window to let him know she was still up in case he needed her, then she sat down in her grandfather’s chair to wait. Carl would need some of the warm soup she had simmering on the stove when he came in.

  Sometime later, she was jolted awake when the kitchen door flew open. Carl came in along with a flurry of wet snow. His black cowboy hat and coat were dusted with white. She hurried toward him. “You must be chilled to the bone.”

  He had something buttoned up inside his coat. Crossing to the stove, he knelt there. “I need your help. Bring me blankets, old ones if you have them, or towels.”

  He opened his jacket enough for her to see he had two tiny wet lambs bundled against his body for warmth.

  Lizzie sprang into action. She raced up the stairs and pulled towels and blankets from the linen closet. Returning to Carl’s side, she waited as he extracted one lamb and handed it to her. “Dry her good. She might make it. I’m not so sure about her brother.”

  “Did their mother reject them?” Lizzie knew it sometimes happened. She wrapped her baby in a towel and handed a second towel to Carl.

  “Yes, she had triplets, but she would only nurse one.”

  Lizzie put the little one down for a minute and put several of the towels in the oven to warm. She went back and dried her charge as best she could. When the towels in the oven were warm, she wrapped the lambs in them.

  “They’ll need colostrum,” Carl said. His baby remained lethargic.

  Lizzie had learned it was the first milk the ewes produced and was essential to the newborn’s health. A supply was kept frozen in a small propane-powered freezer in the barn. “I’ll get some and warm it up.”

  She handed him her lamb and jumped to her feet. Carl caught her hand as she walked by and looked up at her. “Thank you. For everything you’ve done. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  “I’m glad I was here to help.”

  “So am I.”

  He slowly released her hand and she missed the comfort of his touch more than she imagined was possible. “You’re an amazing man, Carl. I don’t know how you do it. I admire your dedication, your skill, your selflessness. This has been a time I will never forget.”

  * * *

  After that, the following days became something of a blur for Lizzie. Two more orphans joined the collection in the kitchen. Each morning at five o’clock, Lizzie rose, made a mug of strong tea and checked on the orphaned lambs. Most times, Carl was already there feeding them their breakfast before getting his own. It was amusing to see him seated on the floor with a baby bottle in each hand and lambs climbing on his lap in the hopes of being next.

  After the babies were fed, she and Carl walked together to the pasture looking for lambs that had arrived during the past few hours or for ewes that were in obvious distress. When they found lambs, they would carry them back to the barn with their anxious mothers following alongside.

  During the peak lambing season, the new arrivals came fast and furious. The ewes delivered late at night, in the early hours and throughout the day. At times, it seemed to Lizzie that there were baby sheep in every nook and cranny on the farm.

  Through the rough parts, it seemed to her as if Carl never slept. She knew, because she slept very little herself. But no matter how tired or busy she was, she always made time to run down to the end of the lane and collect the mail. Every afternoon she hoped for a message from her friend or her sisters, but none came. Slowly, her hope began to fade.

  The bad weather finally broke on Sunday morning and the sun came out. Lizzie had never been so glad to lift her face to the warming rays and simply soak them up. It was the off Sunday, so there was no need to travel to church.

  Carl opened the gates of one shed and let the ewes with lambs several days old out into a larger enclosure. The ewes, thrilled to be back outside, got busy eating the new green grass where the sun had melted patches free of snow. The lambs, not used to being ignored, discovered each other.

  They gathered in a bunch and began butting each other. Suddenly, they broke and ran, jumping and leaping for the sheer joy of it over the ground until they noticed that they had strayed too far from their mothers. In what looked like a race, they all came galloping back. Only an occasional mother even raised her head from the green grass to check on them.

  Lizzie leaned on the fence beside Carl and watched it all with a feeling of deep contentment. “‘This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.’”

  “Psalm 118:24,” he said quietly.

  Her heart turned over as she looked at
him. “Isn’t it wonderful how God brings us joy in the simplest ways? It’s a sign of His endless love.”

  She didn’t turn away from the warm look that filled his eyes. “You almost make me believe that, Lizzie.”

  Drawn to the change she sensed in him, she stepped closer and laid her hand over his heart. “Then I’m happy to be His instrument. The Lamb of God gave up His life on the cross so that we might know salvation. It is up to each of us to cherish or to deny that gift.”

  He looked away. “It’s more complicated than that.”

  She let her hand fall to her side. “When you come right down to it, it’s not.”

  Bracing his forearms on the fence, he stared at the ground. “There are other people involved.”

  “God didn’t create us to live alone. There are always people who touch our lives, for better or for worse. None of them can change God’s love for you or for me. It is eternal.”

  “So they say, but it doesn’t feel like it to me. I’d better finish checking the pens in the barn. We have a dozen mothers-in-waiting left.”

  He walked away, leaving her aching for his pain. He was so lost. If only there was some way to help him.

  * * *

  When the last pregnant ewe gave birth, Lizzie gave a huge sigh of relief. After more than a week of nonstop work, the worst was finally behind them.

  On Friday, just like clockwork, another letter arrived for Carl, but this time there was a letter from Mary, as well. Lizzie had been on the verge of giving up hope. Clara’s wedding was less than a week away.

  She quickly opened her letter and read the bitter news. Mary had been unable to see her sisters, but she would keep trying to get Lizzie’s money to them.

  Lizzie nearly screamed with frustration. She wanted to hear from her family so badly, while Carl ignored letters from his. It wasn’t fair.

  Back in the kitchen, Lizzie started supper, but she was drawn to Carl’s letter. She picked it up and spent a long time looking at the envelope. Was Carl ignoring an olive branch extended by his family? Lizzie had no way of knowing unless she opened the letter and read it.