Where Grace Abides by BJ Hoff Page B

it all the way up and stuck her head out to look.
    Nothing but blackness.
    She hurried across the room to light a lantern, then ran out into the hall, stopping only long enough to look into Fannie’s room. The child stirred but didn’t wake.
    Susan ran down the steps, her heart pounding, her hands shaking as she unlocked the door. Time was when the Amish didn’t locktheir doors. But no longer, not with everything that had happened over the past couple of years.
    Stepping out into the night, she held the lantern high. The night air, dank and raw, slapped her skin.
    She lifted the lantern even higher.
    The barn doors stood open, the darkness within vast and gaping as if frozen in shock.
    The horses!
    Barefoot, she stumbled as she ran, stubbing her toe on a rock. Pain shot up her foot, but she kept on running until she reached the barn.
    Her bare feet smacked the planked floor as she came to a halt just inside and stood listening. Cold and utter silence greeted her. The quiet chilled her more than the cold. Her hands shook as she lifted the lantern, swinging it first to the left, then to the right.
    The two buggies—the small one and the larger, sturdier one that her husband, Amos, had favored—sat parked side by side looking eerily abandoned and useless.
    Smoke, the sleek black buggy horse, and the older Rosie were both gone. Missing too was Cecil, the honey-colored Percheron Amos had brought home some years before he died. Susan counted on the big, powerful draft horse for all the heaviest farm work.
    She called their names almost like a plea. The sound of her trembling voice unnerved her, and she called out again, this time more forcefully.
    The dark, empty silence of the barn mocked her.
    She tried to take in the reality of the missing horses, tried to quiet the thunderous pounding of her heart, tried to think what to do. The lantern dangling from her hand flickered crazily, creating shadows that seemed to move and lick the walls, then rush toward her.
    Something nagged at the fringes of her mind. She lifted the lantern a little higher and swept its beam around the barn.
    The cats. The little black and white spotted female and theall-black male—neither was anywhere in sight. The two always came running when someone entered the barn. She called for them, but she knew that they too had gone missing.
    Shock threatened to paralyze her as the enormity of her loss began to settle in. Tears burned her eyes, not only for the horses now but for the barn cats as well.
    Contrary to Amos’s warnings about treating animals like pets, she had always harbored an affection for the horses, especially the dependable, sturdy Cecil, whose massive size belied his gentle nature. And Fannie loved the cats, was always begging to bring them inside, though she knew Susan wouldn’t allow it.
    It suddenly struck her then that she couldn’t just stand here doing nothing. They were her responsibility, after all. They hadn’t run away of their own accord, this much she knew. She had to find them.
    She would find them.
    She whipped around, then took off running to the house and began to tug on the bell rope that would summon help.

  8  
A C ALL FOR H ELP
    Whatever the wealth of our treasure-trove,
The best we shall find is a friend.
    J OHN J. M OMENT
    T he clanging of a bell dragged David Sebastian from a deep sleep. He’d gone to bed early, already trying to accustom himself to Amish ways—one being their early-to-bed, early-to-rise routine. With his approaching conversion to the Amish church and his marriage to Susan, he wanted to be reasonably well-settled into all the Plain People’s ways.
    At first he thought he’d been dreaming, for the sound seemed a great distance off. He turned on his side, intending to go back to sleep, but when the ringing didn’t go away, he sat up.
    Years of being awakened in the middle of the night rendered him instantly alert. Four gongs, a pause, then two