Enchanted Heart (2 page)

“How long will he be gone?” Mama asked with a high pitch to her voice. “When will he come back for us? When will we build our new home?”

Hans chuckled and told her, “You sound like the girls, my Addie.”

She pushed air through her lips, sending the sewing needle flying across the tiny hut that they had dug with kitchen utensils for their temporary home. She answered while her husband searched for the needle by picking through the grass clippings that they had laid on the ground to ward off the damp coldness that seeped into their bones while they slept, “Better the questions come from me than them!”

“Yes, Addie,” Hans chuckled again while he handed her the needle. “They talk together, the same words, the same phrases as if they are one person.”

“And they can be quite loud while doing so,” Mama mused.

“That, they can,” Papa agreed, turning his head toward the sleeping forms of the twins.

His mind wandered back to the meeting that had been held for the heads of households the first night that they had arrived. He thought of the other families who had dug their own home-holes in the marsh after they were all told that there were no picks or shovels. As Hans had done, others had hunkered down in their make-shift shelters and they waited for their leader to return.

“What of the treaty with the Indians?” Adelaide’s voice broke into his reverie.

“They say that Meusebach made the treaty with the Comanche Indians who inhabit the area where we are to be settled. They say that he traveled all the way to the San Saba River to meet with the three chiefs, Santa Anna, Old Owl and Buffalo Hump and to sign an agreement that we will all live in peace, if not harmony.”

His wife shivered at the thought of living amongst savages, but Hans waved her misgivings away and continued, “For the sum of three-thousand dollars, the Comanche tribes agreed to allow us into their region without being harmed. But in exchange, they expect to be able to enter our settlement without being harassed.”

“I’ll not be harassing them,” Adelaide assured him with a huff. “And I tell you this, my dear husband, if they lay a hand on my girls, they’ll get the long end of my broom across their backs!”

Hans had to laugh. Mama never raised a hand against their daughters but she was ready to protect them from anyone or anything. What a badger she could be when provoked by danger!

“I’m sure they won’t, Mama,” he said with a chuckle. “And we’ve been promised by the chiefs that they will fight against our enemies, but they expect us to do the same for them.”

“Fighting a fight that you had no cause for?” She spouted, her face alight with growing ire at the thought of defending a race of people that might eventually turn on them.

“If that is what it takes for peace among us, Mama, that is what we will do,” Hans said with a sigh while he wiped his sweat-speckled brow.

“Are you feeling well, Papa?” Adelaide put aside her sewing and went to her husband’s side. “You are burning up, Hans! Get yourself to bed and under those blankets. I’ll fetch some warm broth for you.”

“I’m all right, Mama,” he argued but he did not protest when she ushered him onto the pallet next to the one that their daughters slept upon.

Chapter Two

Weeks later, when Meusebach finally arrived back in Indianola, his appalled exhibition of outrage that the settlers had no living quarters echoed across the Texas coastline. He was equally aghast that they had dug holes in the ground for shelter and his indignation could be heard over the deluge of incoming waves on the shore. And the fact that they had been living on small game and fish because they had not been given more sufficient means to hunt riled him almost as much as the indication that the only drinking water available was rainwater caught in buckets.

And while he walked around the camp of starving immigrants, they could see the concern for their welfare on his shocked face. Many of them suffered from malaria and dysentery caused by the continuous downpour of rain that filled their home-holes with murky and deadly water that sloshed in muddy puddles up to their knees. These diseases had killed many of the settlers before he came to their rescue.

Hans Hirsch was one of the victims who had taken ill from malnutrition and fever. His vigor had been washed away by the rain, drowned by its constant thudding barrage as he’d trudged the sludge that was laughingly referred to as sand. He had foraged for rats and slung traps for rabbits to feed his family but he’d unselfishly refused to eat any of it himself. And when the fever attacked him like a turbulent hurricane, he fell like a timber in his illness. He lay in his soggy bed, shivering with the ailment that had taken over his starving body. But he smiled proudly at John O. Meusebach as the man laid a palm upon his shoulder and promised him that there was a better life just a few hundred miles away and all Hans had to do was to cling to life long enough to claim his land.

His family waited by his side, hoping that Hans would have the strength to continue to their new homeland while their leader began the preparations to move the immigrants onward. Seeing the fear in his wife’s gray eyes and encouraged by Meusebach’s words, Hans summoned the vigor to rise from his deathbed and to climb into the wagon bed to be carried from Indianola to New Braunfels.

“Let’s go home, family,” Hans said enthusiastically while they hugged him and then covered him with the quilt that Mama had made from the hut covering that she had sewed a few weeks before.

Little Marty Hirsch narrowed her eyes at the pathway ahead of them, which had been formed by wagon wheels from earlier settlers, or maybe the leader that Papa seemed so proud to know had made the trail on his way to their new settlement while they had waited for him to come back for them. The tracks reached all the way to the distant horizon, curving around to avoid what she surmised were dried puddles and boulders. But as they walked onward, she realized that the tracks had skirted around skeletons and rotting wagons.

Along the one-hundred-fifty mile journey, many of the settlers in this party fell in their tracks as they walked alongside the few wagons that were lucky enough to be pulled from the mire of the muddy marshland. Marty watched in horror as the people and animals were left behind, like the tracks from the wheels, to become a permanent part of this heartless land. Stark skeletons of men, women and children dotted the prairie alongside the bones of oxen, giving the trail to New Braunfels an ominous impression to those who would follow the first wave of settlers, a pristine path of bleached bones unmistakably marking the way. Of the six thousand original immigrants, who walked alongside Marty and her family, only fifteen hundred survived the march from the coast to their new settlement, a number that the seven-year-old could not fathom, but one that she knew was less than it should be.

But more were coming from their native land to replace those who had died and more would die on their way to the Promised Land, as they had come to call this hopeful new territory. And, like the ones who walked with her and those who had fallen in their tracks, they were all willing to risk lives, limbs and fortunes on this remarkable endeavor called the Fisher-Miller Grant.

There was no doubt in Marty’s mind that there would be someone to replace poor Papa as she laid a cool cloth to her father’s feverish forehead. Another father or mother, a sister, brother or friend would walk that same long journey as she had, or would become ill upon arrival in this new land, as Papa had. Possibly, the next column of immigrants would survive and their bones would not show the way to the new settlement, but those people would live on to honor those who had died.

She looked out the back of the wagon at her twin sister, Margarethe and her mother, who stumbled on a rock and was righted by the hand of her husband’s business partner Sven Reinhold. They were thin, she thought as she sniffed away the fear that gripped her heart. At least Greta had recovered from her ship sickness, as Papa had called it. But, Mama would never make it if she did not find food to eat and a place to rest her weary feet. Greta would simply die if something happened to Mama or Papa, for even though her twin was her mirror image; her sister was weak and frail.

Then, she turned back to look at Papa, who had opened his eyes and who stared at her as if she was his lifeline. His face lit up with a smile that made her think that he was going to recover and he raised his feeble hand to catch hers in his palm.

“Marty,” he sighed with great fortitude as he rolled his head on the pillow to face her. “You are my strong one. You have to make sure that Mama and your sister get to the Promised Land. I am afraid I won’t make it there myself.”

“No, Papa!” Marty argued while she squeezed his large hand in her tiny one. “You’ll get better. You’ll see your new land. You have to!”

Papa sighed again and let his head loll back on the pillow to stare at the canvas cover. His eyes followed the curving frame that held the heavy cloth in position above him and, in his mind; he equated his daughter to that sturdy metal apparatus, which seemed to be the backbone of the wagon that carried him. He moved his head back to face her and he bored his eyes into hers before he begged her, “Promise me, Marty. Promise that you will be strong and take care of your Mama and Greta.”

All Marty could do was nod, for the tears that threatened to spill over her dark lashes seemed to halt her speech. In her faithful heart, she knew that Papa expected her to take his place in the family no matter how infantile she may appear on the outside, for her inner strength seemed to exude from her miniscule body and declare her worthiness to her father as a replacement for his capacity to bind this family together and to deliver it to the land of promise.

Hans Hirsch patted her hand and closed his eyes again as he let out a breath of liberation. Then he opened his mouth to whisper as if he had no more energy to say it aloud, “Go on, Marty. Go to the Promised Land. Live my dream for me.”

When the empty silence enveloped her, Marty leaned over to cry upon Papa’s barely moving chest and she promised, “I will, Papa! I will!”

Then she kissed his forehead and looked out the back of the wagon at her poor, sickly sister and felt a tug of appreciation for her own tenacity to carry on. Yet still, there was a tiny bit of jealousy for that skinny little red-headed girl who carried no burden on her frail shoulders, no yoke of responsibility, no encumbering obligation to assume the role of the foundation of her family.

But there was great love for her twin in her heart and she took on that role with pride and principle. Greta needed her, as if they were joined by some invisible bond where one could not exist without the other. And that bond gave Marty the drive to undertake the task of taking care of her mirror image, no matter the cost to herself.

“Greta,” she called to the emaciated girl who stooped to pick up a flower. “You look tired.”

Her sister skipped ahead of her mother and hopped up as Marty pulled her inside the wagon. That same cheerful smile on Greta’s ever-present optimistic face greeted her sister in the shadows of the canvas cover.

“I’ll stay with him, Marty,” Greta said, her face turning concerned for Papa. “You should stretch your legs a little.”

“Thank you, Greta,” Marty said with a smile at her twin sister who seemed to read her mind. She eased her thin body over the planks of the wagon gate and stepped onto the hard ground below. She almost lost her balance when tufts of Texas grass snatched at her feet when they hit the ground. But she regained her composure and watched her wagon continue to move forward while she stood on the endless mound that separated the twin tracks in the unyielding soil.

She walked beside Mama for some time, drawing idle conversation from her in order to ease her mother’s worries about Papa. She took Mama’s hand and swung it in hers, extracting a miniscule smile on Mama’s withering face. But when Mama told her to run ahead to bring back some water, she did as she was told.

As she neared the wagon, Marty saw her sister’s stricken face and she knew that Papa was gone. Greta had not screamed to Mama or to Marty when she had witnessed poor Papa passing away. Instead, she had crawled to the edge of the wagon gate to quietly sit and stare, as if frozen in her grief. With a tear-stained face, she blankly watched the winding row of wagons and walking people that followed her. And that was where her sister found her, clinging to the rigid boards of the wagon gate as if they could somehow give her strength.

When Marty saw her sister’s fearful eyes, her heart melted. She scurried over the gate and hugged her fragile sister, whispering comforting words into her ear. Then she took Greta’s hand and they knelt beside Papa to pray for his soul. Opening her eyes again, Marty wondered if she should tell Mama right away or wait until dark when the wagons stopped for the night. She leaned over to cover Papa’s lifeless face with Mama’s quilt. Deciding to wait, she sat with him, remembering the long journey from Germany and then from the Texas coast that the family had taken in order to get to their new home. And knowing that Papa would never see it, she silently vowed to him as he took his final journey that she would tell him all about it when she saw him in Heaven.

She leaned close to Papa’s ear and promised, as if he could hear her from way up there in his new Promised Land, she whispered, “I’ll live your dream, Papa.”

“What did you tell him?” Greta asked, wringing her hands in her skirt.

“I told him good-bye and that I love him,” Marty lied.

Greta repeated the actions that her sister had made and whispered into her father’s unhearing ear, “I love you Papa. I won’t say good-bye. I’ll see you in Heaven.”

That night was filled with mournful sobs from the three females who huddled in the wagon bed around the man whose dream had all but died with him. Mama dressed Papa in his finest clothes after the girls had washed his thin body, her frail hands lovingly pressing on the coat that covered his chest as if this feeble fabric would warm his cold and lifeless limbs. A woeful sigh brought tears of anguish from her heartbroken body and she fell across him, losing all tenacity to raise her prone frame and continue with life.