Marion forced herself to breath more slowly, willing herself to calm down. She was scared, and worried about Jakin, hoping he was all right. These men could be taking her anywhere…
Jakin tried to roll his way over to Tony, but it was slow going. Finally, he reached the now still man, and tried to call out to him through his gag. "Mmmf!" It didn't get any reaction, and Tony still lay unmoving.
Marion woke suddenly when she felt the wagon stop moving. What now? She thought to herself, as she heard someone's shoes crunching on the road, getting closer, and closer to her. Finally, the person stopped, and Marion squinted and cowered down as the coffin lid was flipped open, and a man peered down at her. Marion assumed he was a farmer, as he wore overalls, and a wide-brimmed hat. He stood over her for a moment, looking her over, before shutting the lid again. Marion felt desperate. Kicking the coffin with her tied feet, she screamed through her gag, making a teeming noise through the air. After five minutes of this, she lay back down, limp. Then, the wagon started moving again, and Marion shut her eyes.
Jakin shoved Tony with his feet, praying that the man would waken. It was a wonder he was still breathing, as blood was everywhere, and his face was pale. If only I could get untied! I need to stop his bleeding. He kicked Tony a few more times, then lay back down, breathing heavily. He looked around the room, searching for anything sharp. Nothing. Well, maybe I could roll over to the door, roll outside, and wait for someone to see me. Right. It was all he could think of, so he rolled onto his shoulder, and continued on to the door. But he didn't get very far, when he heard the door open, and he desperately swung around to face the door. It was the pastor! The man let out a startled yelp, his eyes wide, then, he ran to Jakin, shoving his hands down in his pockets, searching frantically for his pocketknife. Finally, his hand grabbed it, and soon he had untied Jakin, and helped him to his feet. Jakin had told him all that had happened while being untied, and then the two raced to Tony. Jakin tore part of his shirt off, and pressed it against Tony's gunshot wound, as Pastor O'Brian raced for a wet cloth. Tony's face was covered in sweat, and he was still pale. Both Jakin and the pastor feared they were too late, but they tried to stop his blood flow as best as they could, before racing to find a doctor. Jakin stayed with Tony, wondering if the man was going to live. Jakin's hands started to shake, and tears came to his eyes as he thought of his sister, and all that had happened. His shoulders shook as a sob caught in his throat, and he pleaded with Eashoa to let Tony live.
It was pitch dark in the coffin, so Marion could not tell whether it was day, or night. She had been able to fall asleep for a while, but she could not tell if she had been asleep for only a few moments, or for hours. Then, she heard people talking nearby the wagon as it moved, then she heard a strange sort of whistling noise. It was loud, and it pierced the air. It was in fact a ferry whistle, but Marion had never heard the like, and she didn't even know what a ferry was. They had reached a dock, and one of the men climbed out of the wagon to talk to a deckhand about their cargo. Marion could barely hear them talking, but what she did hear sounded something like this:
"Just going to Narrow haven, that isn't too far."
"We don't take passengers that far down, sir. The end of the line is in Chicago; from there you'll have to take another ferry if you want to go to Narrow haven."
The men seemed to move away, because Marion couldn't make out any more for a few moments. She recognized the man's voice; it belonged to the man who had aimed his gun at her. He had a sort of cold, gravelly voice, and it sent chills down Marion's back whenever she heard him talk. Then, she heard him call to the other man in the wagon, "Pull ahead!" And she felt the wagon move ahead. The wheels rolled onto what sounded and felt like a wooden plank, and she heard several men yelling from all sides of her saying things like, "To the left!"
"No, go over a bit—we don't want you to fall over the side, now do we?" And then, all was still.
The doctor gently put a damp cloth on Tony's head, and then motioned for Jakin and the pastor to follow him out of the room. The doctor had come quickly enough, and they had been able to get a car around, and carefully get Tony in the back seat, and into one of the beds in the doctor's small house. The town was small enough that there was no hospital, just the back room in the doctor's house. The doctor was a small, thin graying man, but there was power and gentleness in his hands as he had tended to Tony's wound.
"He'll make it, there's no worry over that. I'm glad I was able to get there as fast as I did. He'll recover, but he'll need a lot of rest. Why don't you two go home, and get some rest. I'll send word to you as soon as he wakes." The pastor and Jakin nodded their relief and assent, and slowly walked out of the door. The pastor sighed, and wrapped his arm around Jakin as they walked down the street. "I'll alert our church and the other Believers, Jakin. We have some outside authorities that we can rely on to start a quiet investigation in this matter, and they will be on the lookout for those men that took your sister. I'm so sorry that this has happened to you, especially you being a visitor to our town. Right now, we just need to trust the Lord that everything will turn out all right."
Tony couldn't sleep all night. He couldn't seem to pray, either. All he could think about was Marion, replaying the scene in his mind from that night, when the men had forced her into the coffin. Her face had been nearly white, and her eyes were wide. He'd never forget how she looked, never. And he had failed to protect her, like he always said he would. His thoughts went from sorrow to anger, and self-pity. Hot tears came to his eyes, and he sat up in the small cot that the pastor had insisted he lay in. He stood up, and paced back and forth, fists clenched. It was his entire fault, and he would most likely never see Marion again because of it.
A day went by before the ferry sailed into Chicago, and Marion had finally fallen asleep when her head banged against the coffin, the wagon going over the gangplank, and onto land. Her head pounded, but she was now awake, and her stomach growled fiercely. Her throat felt extremely dry, and the gag didn't help any. Her mouth and lips hurt and ached, as the gag was stretched tightly around her face. She hoped she would be let out of the coffin soon, because she felt like she couldn't stand this much longer.