Free Paradise Valley by Dale Cramer Page A

yourself on the map in the brochure. The dotted line represents the proposed route for the new rail line. When that goes in, why, the market will only be an hour away by rail. You’ll be able to haul your goods to Saltillo and be back home the same night.”
    Harris seemed to be gaining a little ground until a cabinetmaker from up around Wooster raised his hand.
    “What about the war?” he asked.
    Marlon Harris threw his head back and laughed. “Where you been, boy? Why, the revolution’s been pretty much over for two years now! Things are calm as can be.”
    Even Caleb raised an eyebrow, and the cabinetmaker persisted.
    “Mr. Harris, I’d like to know how a revolution could be ‘pretty much’ over. Is there war or not?”
    “Well, truth is, the war ended a while back, but some of the revolutionaries didn’t go home. The thing is, Pancho Villa’s army in the north was made up mostly of rabble from the border towns – brigands and thieves even before the revolution – and some of them enjoyed the looting and pillaging so much they kept on doing it after the fighting was over. So now they’ve got a slight problem with little groups of bandits roaming around, but the new government is working on it. From what I hear, it’s quieted down a lot just in the last year or so.”
    This was news to Caleb. He’d heard rumors, but nothing this concrete. There were skeptical glances, and some of the men began to whisper among themselves in Dutch. Fortunately, the rest of their questions were all about the land itself. It was, after all, a roomful of farmers. In the end, Paradise Valley sounded almost too good to be true, aside from the rainfall issue, which they all assumed could be remedied with irrigation.
    The serious questions came only after Harris and Fiedler left. Although in general the Amishmen didn’t trust the big Texan, what they gleaned from his answers was that this was indeed a decent and potentially productive tract of farmland in a place where they could raise their families without interference.
    “We’d have to learn a new language,” one of them said.
    Caleb shrugged. “We already have Dutch, High German and English,” he argued. “One more language shouldn’t be so hard.”
    “What about the church?” another wanted to know. This was the big question and everybody knew it. For an Amish settlement to last, they would need a minister to lead church services on Sunday. More important, unless a bishop was willing to make the yearly pilgrimage to the colony, they wouldn’t be able to baptize anyone, no marriages would take place, and they couldn’t hold communion.
    Caleb deferred to his minister, who had remained silent through the whole meeting up to now. Half of these men were members of his church.
    “If enough of you decide to do this,” the minister said, “and you go down there and build homes in this Paradise Valley, and you’re able to thrive there, then jah, I’m thinking we could find a minister who would agree to come and live. I wouldn’t make a promise, but I might even do it myself. Mebbe we would have a selection and draw lots to find a new minister. Now, I can’t speak for the bishop, but as long as his health is good, I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t be able to make a trip down there for a visit once a year.”
    This was a great relief to Caleb, a major hurdle overcome. His people would never move to a place that had no hope of a church structure. The church was at the center of their lives.
    “Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” John Hershberger said, ever the pragmatist.
    Caleb nodded. “Jah, it is, but they said they would sell us as much or as little as we want of the land. Our farms here are worth a good bit more than ten dollars an acre, and the agent said they will give us time to find people who want to go in with us.”
    “Well, I think mebbe that will be the real problem,” John said. “Finding people. I don’t care what that Harris fella