Read Online Davey's Daughter by Linda Byler - Free Book Online

way.
    They hurried past Elam and Hannah’s, whose house was dark, which seemed unbelievable, but Sarah didn’t want to alarm them. Besides, she looked terrible and didn’t want Matthew to see her like that.
    “ Ach my.”
    Dat said the only thing he could think to say, the pity so overwhelming.
    Yes, it was the barn belonging to the struggling Widow Lydia Esh. It was a rather large, old one, the paint peeling like white fur down its sides, the roof in good repair even though the metal was mismatched.
    She kept a respectable herd of cows, and her oldest son, Omar, a square-shouldered, responsible seventeen-year-old, managed the animals with surprising expertise.
    “There’s no one awake!” Priscilla gasped.
    With no thought other than the poor widow asleep in her bed, the girls ran, their speed increasing as they rounded the bend, hurtled down an incline, and raced up to the porch, their breath coming in gasps as they pounded on the front door.
    The night their own barn had burned was still fresh in their minds. They opened the screen door and banged harder, yelling with all their might, the cows bawling in the background.
    “Get the cows!”
    Leaving the porch, they evaluated the distance from the licking flames to the cow stable. They might be able to save some of them.
    Priscilla was yelling, crying, spurred on by a sense of duty borne of her own heartbreaking experience. She had no thought for her own safety, only that of the very necessary cows, the widow’s livelihood, her bread and butter.
    They raced through the door and searched for chains, snaps, anything that would give them a clue as to how the cows were tied.
    “Snaps!” Priscilla shouted.
    Sarah fell and started to crawl along the floor but bumped into the large face of a cow that was clearly terrified. She groped along its neck, found the collar, then the chain and the metal clasp, and clicked it open.
    Bawling, the cow backed out, followed by four or five more.
    Silently, a dark form joined them, unsnapping the cow’s restraints, his arms waving, shooing them out.
    Omar!
    “Do you have horses in here?”
    “One!”
    “It’s getting hot!”
    “I’ll get him!”
    The youth plunged into the far corner of the barn, only to be met by a determined Priscilla, hanging on to the halter of a magnificent Belgian.
    “I got him. Get what you can from the milk house!”
    Sarah had already headed that way and was met by a stream of firemen, their great pulsing beasts already parked, men swarming everywhere, shouting, organizing.
    Lydia Esh was also in the milk house, blindly throwing out buckets, milking machines, water hoses, anything she could fling out the door, her mouth set grimly, determined to survive.
    The night sky was no longer dark, lit by the roaring flames of yet another barn fire, and it wasn’t quite April, the month of their own fire.
    Sarah heard strangled crying and looked to the old farmhouse, where she saw a cluster of shivering, frightened children cowering against the wooden bench by the door.
    Quickly, she wound her way between the fire trucks, saw Dat and a few neighbor men backing a wagon away from the barn, and went to the children, herding them inside, lighting the propane lamp, assuring them they would be safe there in the house.
    Anna Mae was Priscilla’s age, a dark-haired girl who was terrified senseless with the shock of the fire. She stood by the refrigerator crying, unable to help with the younger ones.
    Sarah steered her to the couch, covered her shivering form with an afghan she found on the back of a chair, and then sat beside her, rubbing her back and speaking any word of comfort she could think of.
    “Are we going to die?”
    The quavering little voice came from a small boy. There was a hole in his pajama top, his hair was tousled, and he was hanging on to a raggedy teddy bear with one of its button eyes loose and dangling from a white thread.
    Sarah scooped him up quickly, smoothed his hair, and assured him they