Free DC03 - Though Mountains Fall by Dale Cramer Page B

dat without a word, head down, past the corral and up the ridge, almost to the tree line. This was about Jake, and she knew it. She’d seen her dat’s wheels turning as he pieced it all together during the ride home. He knew she had lied to him. Trailing along in her father’s footsteps as he trudged upthe steep face of the ridge she couldn’t help thinking of Isaac, following Abraham.
    Please let there be a ram, she prayed.
    He sat down on an outcropping of rock overlooking his farm, took off his hat and patted the rock beside him.
    “Sit,” he said.
    She sat.
    He was silent for a minute or two as he gathered his thoughts, and then he said, quietly but sternly, “I want you to tell me the truth.”
    She tugged at her kapp strings, thinking. There would be no more lies, but her whole future might very well depend on how she shaped the truth.
    “Do you remember when I told you about the night I was chained in El Pantera’s barn at Diablo Canyon?”
    Caleb nodded curtly. “Jah, I remember well. You said Jake knocked out the guard and that was how you escaped.”
    “There was more to it than that.”
    “Tell me the whole truth, Rachel. I want to know everything.”
    “The guard came to me alone in the middle of the night. To harm me.” She hesitated then, embarrassed.
    “You don’t have to say any more about that,” her dat said. “I understand.”
    “He came into the stall where I was chained, put his hand over my mouth and told me what he was going to do. He would have done it, but Jake came and stopped him. Jake caught him from behind with his handcuff chains and choked him.”
    “Jah, so that much was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth, was it?”
    She took a deep breath and her gaze dropped away from her father. “No, Dat. The guard was dead. Jake never meant to kill him, but it was dark as pitch and he couldn’t see. He onlywanted to stop the man, to make him pass out, but Jake was half crazy with fear and I guess he held the chain too long, too tight. I lit a match and . . . it was awful.”
    “Are you sure the man was dead?”
    Recalling the sight, she was overcome with emotion for a moment. Finally she managed, “Jah. There was no doubt. I only saw his face for a second, but it was a horrible sight. When Jake came to his senses he ran away to the other side of the barn. He didn’t see what I saw.”
    “So Jake believed the guard was still alive?”
    “No, not at first. He was so sure he killed a man that he nearly lost his mind. The flames of hell flashed before his eyes and he couldn’t think of anything else. He didn’t hardly know where he was after that.” Now she clutched at her father’s arm, pleading her case. “Dat, we only had one chance to escape and we needed Jake to be alert. Domingo saw how shook up he was, so he lied to him. Domingo told Jake he saw the guard breathing, that he was only unconscious.”
    “But Domingo knew the man was dead?”
    “Jah, he took the guard’s weapons. He knew. When Jake asked me if Domingo was telling the truth, I lied, too. I said yes, the guard was alive, and Jake believed me because he trusted me. He was all right after that. Dat, I don’t believe we would ever have made it out alive if we hadn’t lied to Jake about the guard.”
    Her father’s jaw tightened and he stared straight ahead.
    “So why didn’t you tell him after you got home? It’s been seven months, Rachel. The boy you love has been walking around in danger of hell’s fire for seven months, and he didn’t even know it. All because of you. Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”
    She hung her head and began to cry softly. “I was afraid he would be sent away and his father wouldn’t let him come back. I didn’t want to lose him.”
    Her dat stared into space a bit longer, and then as he jammed his hat back on his head and started to rise he said something that cut her like a knife.
    “The truth is more important than what you want , child. I’m disappointed in