The Dakota Series Trilogy by Byler Linda

Author:Byler Linda
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781680996340
Publisher: Good Books
Published: 2020-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

THE DROUGHT WORSENED.

The sun beat down mercilessly. Tin roofs creaked and snapped, grasses swayed and shriveled to a melancholy brown color that spoke of the prairie’s desperate need for rain. The creek bed whispered itself to nothing, dry, jagged cracks appearing like dark scabs on the parched earth.

The wind blew hot and dry, laden with brown dust particles and the smell of dying vegetation. Cows moiled around the water tank and wandered far to crop the grass that had turned to hay on the stalk. Wild flowers gave up their glad colors of yellow, pink, and blue, hung their heads and became hot and dry and dusty like everything else.

The newly arrived Amish thought surely the end of the world was nigh. They had never experienced anything like it, these blue skies that refused to send even a spattering of raindrops. Sarah smiled and shook her head, saying, oh no, this was a normal North Dakota summer. The rains would come. That’s why we have so many acres, the cows travel far to get their fill of grass.

For awhile, Hannah and Manny rode out to sleep on the prairie, keeping watch like shepherds over their herd after Jerry had told them of cattle thieves. When nothing happened, they figured it was over. The Klassermans were the ones known to be wealthy and were therefore an easy target.

Ike Lapp built a horrible little stick house out of thrown away shingles and corrugated metal, the roof flat and wide and rusted to a deep brown. They moved their belongings and their seven skinny children into it, hung green blinds in the windows and called it home.

Ben Miller, of course, designed a long, low ranch house with dormers in the roof and bought logs from some fancy company in the Northwest. He built a barn the size of two or three ordinary barns put together, maybe four.

His windmill was up and running with orders pouring in from folks for miles around. The Midas touch, he had. Just about everything went well for that man. He even invented a homemade sprinkler for the garden, and chuckled and laughed his way through the dust-filled days. He said the women were blessed, now weren’t they, all that laundry that dried in a few minutes flat. No mud to worry about either.

Nothing much was heard from the vicinity of the old Perthing place. After Jerry took his three horses back, Hannah figured he must have built a barn, and didn’t care about anything other than that.

They all got together to have church services in the summer before the arrival of Grandfather Stoltzfus, Elam, and Ben. Hannah refused to go. Her excuse was that she didn’t know if she was ever going to be Amish, and why should she try to figure it out at her age?

Sarah and the children rode home from services at Ben Millers, renewed and refreshed, their faces alive with smiles and conversation, an invitation to dinner at Ike Lapps the following Sunday.

All of this was like a reviving drink of water to Sarah, a long awaited renewal of her faith, her roots.

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