Free Rebecca's Promise by Jerry S. Eicher Page A

cattle away.
    Emma kept beef cattle on each of her three farms, preferring that to milking, which was the preference of most of the Amish farmers in the area. Luke’s father was no exception, of which he was glad. Milking held no attraction for him.
    “Less work,” Emma had once told him, “yet it still brings in a nice income.”
    That it did, he supposed, if you had three farms. She paid him well enough though, and he was not about to complain. At Emma’s other two farms, she maintained renters who took care of the cattle for a reduced rent.
    Luke was aware that requests were periodically made to Emma to sell her farms, because she had told him. He also knew that she always refused, but she had never told him the reason for her refusals.
    Opening the gates surrounding a long row of round hay bales, he then cut another notch back on their plastic coverings, picking up a bale with the forks and driving outside. The cattle paid scant attention to him as he dropped it beside the partly eaten bale that was already there. They were well-fed, these cattle, at Emma’s insistence. This came as much from her principles as from a desire for fat cattle, he supposed. Too much hay allowed the cattle to trample it under their feet, but that bothered Emma less than cattle without hay at their beck and call.
    An hour later, after checking two more pastures, he headed back toward the house and parked the New Holland in the front yard. Knocking on the back door, he waited.
    “Come on in,” Emma called, his signal to enter.
    Emma was in the living room, seated at her little roll-top desk, a legal tablet open in front of her. This was how she appeared to him when he thought of her because she was often here when he came into the house, businesslike, perched at her desk. A gas lantern was lit and hung from a hook just behind the desk, even at this time of the day. The usual Amish frugality required that lights be turned off as soon as the sun came up, but Emma was different.
    This morning he was struck again by her commanding figure. Her hair, done up in the usual Amish head covering, did little to dilute the effect of her presence.
    She turned to him, her eyes characteristically serious, and said, “Good morning, Luke.”
    “Good morning,” he replied, waiting just under the arched opening between the dining room and kitchen. Built by the English in the early 1930s, the house had features not normally seen in Amish homes, including the elaborate stone fireplaces in both the living room and the master bedroom. Not that Luke had been in the bedroom recently, but he remembered it from his childhood visits.
    “Cattle looking okay?” she asked him, nodding her head toward the falling snowflakes drifting past the window.
    “Okay,” he answered, staying by the opening. “They don’t seem to mind.”
    “Shelter and hay should keep them,” she said, “unless the weather turns worse. Let me know if anything looks unusual. I’ll want to go out myself and look.”
    He nodded.
    She swung her chair around to face him, strands of gray hair from beneath the head covering hanging loose on her forehead. “I need this envelope dropped off at the post office today. Do you think you can run it into town on your way home? There’s not much to do around here with the snow still coming down.”
    “Does it take special postage?” he asked.
    “Yes,” she said, “but that’s not the reason I want you to drop it off. It needs to be mailed today. With the snow I doubt the mailman will make his rounds. I have extra stamps here and could take a guess at it, but if you’re in town anyway, you could get the exact postage.”
    “Sure,” he agreed, extending his hand to take the large brown envelope.
    She gave it to him, along with five dollars. “That should cover postage. Have it sent first class.”
    He nodded again, closing his fingers around the envelope.
    “Before you leave, I want you to clear the driveway,” she said. “If it needs it