The Captive Heart by Dale Cramer

strung up a fine standard-bred colt and two mules, turning the rest of the animals out. El Pantera himself shot a cow that wandered into his path, and with his pistol still in his hand, he turned and grinned at Caleb.
    â€œWhere are the pretty girls, gringo? In your casa I found only an old woman and a loco fat girl—no use to me at all.”
    Boots scuffled in the second level of the barn, and El Pantera shouted up to his men, a few of whom had climbed up to throw down sacks of oats.
    Caleb’s fear quickly turned to rage, and his anger made him do a foolish thing. He stalked right up to the barn and stood in the wide entrance as they were mounting their horses and leading away a team of mules loaded with sacks of his grain.
    Raising a fist, he yelled at El Pantera, “What gives you the right to do this? Who do you think you are?”
    But the bandit only laughed and spurred his horse. Caleb tried to dodge out of the way, but he couldn’t move quickly enough, and this time the big Appaloosa caught him flush. He was knocked off his feet and skidded to a stop on his face in the hoof-churned mud of the barn lot as the bandits galloped past him, laughing and whooping, waving their hats and firing their guns into the air. Horses flashed over him, and it was only by a miracle that he was not trampled.
    Barely conscious, he felt the snort of a horse near his head. Large hooves stamped and pawed the ground around him as he lay waiting for the gunshot that would end it all. But it never came.
    El Pantera’s raspy voice came from somewhere above, and there was a casual sneer in it. “I think I will let you live this day, Señor Bender, but only because you are such a good provider. We will be back.”
    Hooves pounded as El Pantera raced away to catch up with his men, and then there was silence.
    When Caleb finally managed to struggle to his feet he took inventory of himself. Half blind with a headache, his chest hurt when he breathed and his knees shouted with pain, but he had not been shot and his arms and legs seemed to work. More important, the bandits had not harmed his wife and daughter. They had taken nothing that couldn’t be replaced.
    Hobbling past the house as quickly as he could, Caleb leaned a palm against the windmill and watched the bandits ride into the distance. He stayed there, motionless, waiting to make sure they turned north around the end of the ridge— away from the hacienda village—because in that moment his only thought was to see that his girls were safe. He had not yet begun to deal with his own rage and fear, the awful sense of utter helplessness and violation.
    But things could have gone much worse.
    Once he was positive the bandits were leaving the valley he wiped the mud from his clothes and went to the house to see about his wife and daughter, then went back out to the barn for a block and tackle so he could hang up the dead cow and bleed it out. No sense wasting good beef.

    The next day, a Sunday, everyone was there when an automobile drove down the road and turned in at Caleb’s driveway. It was a shiny new convertible driven by none other than the hacendado, Don Louis Alejandro Hidalgo, with his overseer Diego Fuentes riding in the passenger seat. Caleb rarely saw Hidalgo because he traveled abroad most of the time or stayed at his villa in Mexico City, but he sometimes spent a few weeks at the hacienda around planting time and harvest.
    Most of the women were in the house fussing over Emma and her new baby girl. All of the men and boys stopped whatever they were doing and stared at the automobile when it pulled up in front of the house. None of them had ever seen one in Paradise Valley. It seemed out of place, a visitor from another world, another time.
    When the introductions were done and the two Mexicans had run the long gauntlet of Amishmen who lined up to shake hands, the boys went off to get up a baseball game and a clutch of men wandered up