Free Blood of the Faithful by Michael Wallace Page B

in place. I don’t even have a key.”
    “Neither did we, because someone had replaced the lock. We had to cut the chain to get in.”
    “Did you see any tracks?” Miriam asked.
    “Like a truck, you mean?” Stephen Paul asked. “No, nothing. The road would take you right past the Smoot house, though. So someone in the house would see if a grain truck pulled up.”
    “There haven’t been any trucks,” Smoot said. “Or any wagons, for that matter. We’ve got thirty people living in the house. One of us would have heard something.”
    “Seems like we’d be the most likely suspects, Father,” Ezekiel said. “Someone in the Smoot house, I mean.”
    “That’s stupid,” Smoot said. “We’d never do anything like that, and these people know it.”
    “Someone stole that food,” Miriam said. “It would either take a couple of big, noisy trucks to move the supplies, or a whole bunch of people coming and going. Either one of those things make the Smoots look suspicious.”
    “I refuse to defend myself,” Smoot said. “It’s ridiculous on the surface.”
    “What I want to know,” Rebecca said, speaking up for the first time in several minutes, “is what Jacob intends to do about it.”
    “He’s going to put Steve and Eliza to investigating,” Stephen Paul said. “We talked about Miriam, but . . .” He shrugged. “That seemed to concern him too.”
    “What does that mean?” she demanded.
    “That if you found a suspect, you’d administer frontier justice.”
    Miriam let out a bitter laugh. “And he wouldn’t? He’d shake his finger and scold?”
    “He doesn’t know what he’d do,” Stephen Paul said. “Jacob is deliberate. He doesn’t lash out based on emotion.”
    “So he’ll do nothing, really,” Rebecca said. “Unless he can catch them in the act.”
    “Don’t underestimate him,” Stephen Paul said. “He gets things done in the end.”
    “The problem with Brother Jacob,” Ezekiel said, and his voice was heavy, as if this pained him to say it, “is that we need him to act like a prophet, and he won’t do it.”
    “And I suppose you think you could do a better job,” Miriam said.
    “Of course not.” Ezekiel sounded shocked. “What I want is for Jacob to go into the Holy of Holies and recover the breastplate and sword of Laban.”
    “Don’t speak of that!” Smoot said.
    “Why? It’s no secret. We all know he must put on the breastplate and wield the sword. This is the perfect time.”
    Smoot stood up again and paced to the end of the porch. “Yes, but we don’t talk about it.”
    Maybe Smoot didn’t, but Miriam had heard it whispered or hinted at by others several times in the past two months alone. This sword and breastplate business was meant to guard against some looming, unstated threat. Miriam didn’t know what to make of it, if the objects even existed.
    “For all we know, Jacob has taken them out already and is ready to use them as soon as the Lord tells him to,” Rebecca said. “That would mean the Second Coming is at hand.”
    “What, so he can save ten minutes by grabbing them from under his bed?” Miriam scoffed. “Or maybe he wears the breastplate under his shirt and leaves the sword hanging on a hook in the coat closet.”
    Nobody said anything for several seconds. The bugs were swarming so badly around the kerosene lantern that Rebecca moved it away from her.
    Smoot returned from the far end of the porch and fixed Stephen Paul with a significant look. “Maybe you know about it.”
    “About the sword and breastplate?” Stephen Paul said. “If he’s taken them out of the box, he’s never told me.”
    “How about your husband?” Smoot asked Miriam. “Did David say anything?”
    “Not to me, no. I doubt he knows. Anyway, I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about it. Isn’t that what you were just telling us?”
    “We’re not supposed to touch them,” Ezekiel said. “But it’s not like our tongues will fall out if we talk about