Free Paradise Valley by Dale Cramer Page B

says, none of us has ever seen this place. Not even you, Caleb.”
    Caleb nodded solemnly. “That’s the plain truth. Only a mighty foolish man would spend all he had on a piece of land without first looking it over.” He’d seen this one coming, and there was only one answer to it. “One of us will have to go and make a start in this Paradise Valley so we can know what it’s really like down there. That’s the only way.”
    It would be hard. Pulling up stakes and leaving behind everything familiar, breaking ground in a new country without the help of neighbors, learning a new language, building a home, digging a well, feeding livestock, putting up barns and fences, all while planting crops to fend off next year’s hunger – it would be a massive undertaking. But it was, in Caleb’s mind, exactly the same price paid by the Amish pioneers who had first come to America in search of religious freedom. They had borne it stoically, in the sure knowledge they were doing the right thing. That was all that mattered. The man who accepted such a calling would need all the courage and conviction of his forefathers and, like them, the help of a benevolent Gott. He would have to be a man of vision, entirely convinced of the ultimate rightness of the task.
    And it wouldn’t hurt anything if it was a man whose wife needed a dry climate to survive.
    Caleb Bender took a deep breath and looked John Hershberger in the eye.
    “And that man ought to be me.”

Chapter 9
    Dat told the family about it over dinner, while they were all gathered around the long pine-plank table in the kitchen. They were moving to Mexico, and they would have to move quickly to take advantage of the rainy season. They would leave in two months.
    The news hit Rachel like a thunderbolt.
    Jake!
    Her first thoughts were all about her secret boyfriend. She’d stolen enough time with him to know already, Jake Weaver was the one . Some things a girl just knew , right from the first moment. She knew in her heart, without the slightest doubt, she wanted to spend her life with Jake, but she was quickly learning that such knowledge could be a curse. She wasn’t even old enough to date, and now her father was going to haul the family to Mexico, a thousand miles away.
    In two months!
    Right after she reached courting age.
    Rachel was quiet all through supper, and said very little while she helped clean up the kitchen afterward. When the dishes had all been washed, dried and put away, she went quietly to the back door, put on her heavy coat and slipped outside into the cold and dark. She didn’t even take a lantern.
    It turned out she didn’t need one. A full moon hanging above the barn was so bright it cast shadows at the feet of trees and fences. The night sky was achingly clear, a billion polished stars winking at her as if all were right in the universe. The wind had quieted. The night was eerily still, and very cold. Rachel shrugged deeper into her coat, buried her fists in her pockets and angled across the yard toward the back lane. She had to be alone, to think. Her father’s news had left her reeling.
    She walked past the barn and the smokehouse, on out the lane along the pasture fence all the way to the back of the Bender property. There she came upon an old familiar stump where she had often gone to play with her sisters and cousins – back when she was just a child. For a while she sat on the stump thinking of Mexico, and Jake. No matter how mature Jake was, she didn’t really believe any boy would wait for a girl so far away. Not for long, anyway, and she didn’t know how long it would be.
    In the end, thinking about these things only made her feel worse, so when the cold began to creep into her bones she got up and trudged back down the lane toward home.
    As she passed the barn lot she heard a noise and stopped. It came from behind the smokehouse, across the lane from the barn. At first she only heard a little whisper of a sound, like a sniff, but as