DC03 - Though Mountains Fall by Dale Cramer

you.”
    The dam broke then. Rachel Bender could bear almost anything, but not her father’s disappointment. She lay on the rock with her face on her arms and wept.
    “Jake will confess,” her father snapped. “He will have the chance to repent before Gott and his brethren, and cleanse his soul. A man’s soul is no one’s plaything, Rachel.”
    Then he stalked off down the hill and left her alone.

Chapter 8
    E mma clutched baby Will tight with one hand and hung on to the buggy rail with the other. Levi was pushing the horse harder than he should, his eyes fixed on the thick column of smoke in the distance. Little Mose and Clara clung to each other in the back seat as the buggy jostled hard over rocks and through ruts, flying past the other buggies and wagons.
    She tried to calm him, once. “There’s no need for such haste, Levi. What’s done is done.”
    But Levi only leaned forward and whipped the reins harder. “You never know. We might still save something.”
    He let out a long wail of anguish as soon as they were close enough to see. The barn had already collapsed in on itself, a tangled mass of charred rubble still belching smoke and flame from between the adobe foundation walls. A lone mule and a draft horse looked up at them from the kitchen garden as their buggy bounced into the yard. A few chickens pecked at the dirt by the smokehouse, but there were no other signs of life. Dead horses and cows lay scattered in the barn lot.
    The open front door of the house hung by one hinge, smoke crawling out the top of the doorframe. The roof was still intact.
    Levi jerked the buggy to a stop and leaped out, running. He grabbed a bucket from the back porch, filled it from the horse trough and rushed into the house. Two other buggies rolled up as Levi stumbled out the door and doubled over, coughing and gagging.
    They found more buckets, and the women carried water while the men doused the flames and dragged smoldering cabinets out of the house.
    “It’s only the cabinets,” Levi wheezed. “The rafters never did catch, and adobe walls don’t burn.”
    By the time Dat and Harvey arrived the fire was out. Levi had destroyed his coat beating out the flames, and one of the cabinets left a nasty burn on his forearm, but the house was still standing.
    In the barn lot, the men loaded two dead cows onto wagons to be strung up and butchered. Even though it was a Sunday, they couldn’t afford to waste the meat.
    ———
    In the evening, after everyone left, Emma walked out to the barn lot where Levi stood alone, leaning on a shovel outside the smoldering ruins of his barn. He was completely exhausted, his beard singed, his shirt filthy and torn, but beneath the weariness she could see rage in his eyes.
    “It could have been worse,” she said softly, holding little Will on her hip. “We still have our house, and the fields were too green yet to burn.”
    Levi sighed heavily, glaring at the carnage. “Besides our stores of hay and grain we lost a good mule, a milk cow, a yearling Guernsey bull, a fine kid-broke draft horse, a wagon, a harrow and a planter. All gone,” he said, his voice a raspy whisper fromfatigue and smoke. “Was this Gott’s doing, Emma? Punishment for our unconfessed sin?”
    She rubbed his shoulder. “Aw, Levi, everything bad that happens is not Gott’s punishment. Sometimes it’s just bandits. There are bad people in the world.”
    He still refused to look at her. “Then why did they only burn our barn? Why not someone else’s?”
    “Ours was the first one they came to, that’s all.”
    “A lot of hard work, wasted.”
    Emma shook her head, put an arm around him. “But it’s only work, Levi. Our children are safe. The things we lost are only things, and we have family and good neighbors to help us rebuild. We’re going to work every day of our lives anyway, no matter what comes, and even now, with the help of Gott and neighbors we will want for nothing. We will still have food to eat