Free A Promise for Miriam by Vannetta Chapman

outhouse, as planned. On the way there, she’d had to stop to put on her boots, coat, scarf, and hat with earmuffs.
    The outhouse itself wasn’t as cold as she’d feared. Her dad had built it with consideration for the Wisconsin winters—so he’d sheltered it from the north wind by building it on the south side of the house, behind the woodshed. In addition, he’d built an awning over the building which kept the majority of the snow off the structure. Lastly, he’d rigged it to receive some of the heat which vented from the big stove in the kitchen.
    It was almost comfortable.
    No, the main problem wasn’t walking to the outhouse or even around the mounds of pristine snow accumulating at an alarming rate. Though the snowfall had stopped momentarily, Miriam could tell by the lowness of the clouds and the weight with which they seemed to press down that more would be falling soon.
    She had hurried into the outhouse and was on her way back to the kitchen, back to hot kaffi and her mamm ’s warm cinnamon rolls when she was sidetracked.
    Pepper’s bark pealed across the morning, bright and clear, like the sound of the Englischer ’s church bell. Glancing toward the barn, she saw the dog jumping up and down as if he had treed a prize animal after a long hunt.
    What in the world?
    His yapping grew more urgent with each leap.
    Miriam gazed longingly toward the house as she turned and trudged along the path to the barn her dad and brother had already made in the snow. Simon lived with their older brother, David, because his place was closer to town and Simon’s job. He tried to come home most weekends to help their parents. She was relieved he’d made it before the storm closed in on them.
    Now what was wrong with her dog?
    Pepper didn’t usually tree an animal unless he was set on its smell. At the moment his silky brown ears were bouncing with each jump, his bark pronounced as he went up into the air. Each time he popped up, he gained a good height of two to three feet.
    When he saw that he’d earned Miriam’s attention, he ran toward her and then shot back toward the tree near the barn. He continued sprinting back and forth—tree, Miriam, tree, Miriam, tree, Miriam.
    My, but he was excited.
    If he had treed a squirrel or a coon, it would faint from fear before she could pull him away.
    “What is it, Pepper? What have you found, boy?”
    Once Miriam was standing under the tree, Pepper flopped at her feet, a whine escaping from his throat as he waited for her to set things right.
    She stared up and into the branches, looking for eyes or ears, but she saw only snow.
    Then she couldn’t see snow because it was in her eyes.
    Pepper barked once as she wiped it away, and that was when she heard a tiny meow.
    Stormy, Grace’s kitten, had somehow escaped the barn and scampered up the tree.
    “How did you get up there?”
    Pulling her coat more tightly around her, Miriam began to carefully climb the tree. Even in her boots it wasn’t that hard. She’d climbed it a hundred times as a child.
    She had made it to the middle limb and grabbed Stormy, earning herself a nice scratch across the back of the hand in the process, when her dad walked out of the barn.
    “Aren’t you a bit old to be playing in trees?” He stood beside Pepper, a smile plastered across his face. Both of them looked up at her as if they were expecting an answer.
    “It’s the kitten’s fault.”
    “ Ya ?”
    “I couldn’t leave her up here.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “She would freeze.”
    “She found her way up there. Chances are she would find her way down.”
    “Oh, dat. It’s not so simple.”
    “Why not?”
    Miriam clutched Stormy inside her robe. She could feel the kitten shaking as she made her way back down and out of the tree. She reached for her dad’s hand as she jumped from the final limb, landing in the soft snow.
    Suddenly, she didn’t feel so cold as she stood there, holding her father’s hand with the cat purring against