DC03 - Though Mountains Fall by Dale Cramer Read Free Book Online Page A

door and climbed up onto the padded seat opposite Miriam. Gripping her shoulders, Rachel leaned close and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Foreheads touching, she locked eyes with her sister and whispered, “No matter what. Always.”
    Then, without another word, she jumped down out of the carriage and disappeared into the darkness.

Chapter 5
    K yra’s little house became the center of a whirlwind once Miriam arrived. The men, already dressed, waited outside while the women took over the entire house to get themselves ready. Kyra and Maria swept Miriam into the back bedroom and fitted her into the same white cotton dress Kyra had worn on her wedding day, the same one her mother had worn. The loose-fitting dress was decorated around the yoke in intricate red Aztec patterns, embroidered near the bottom with a ring of red roses the size of her hand. They let her hair hang loose and full down her back. Leaving her face exposed, they draped her head and shoulders in a sheer lace mantilla veil, secured by a wreath Kyra had woven for the occasion out of delicate little vines salted with tiny white blooms. They put white satin shoes on her feet and filled her hands with a thick bouquet of white flowers.
    When they went outside to load into the carriages, Miriam came last. Watching Domingo’s face, the other women parted to let him see his bride, and the first glimpse took his breath away. Broad-shouldered and erect in his fancy jacket, with hishair tied back, his regal bearing didn’t change when he saw her, but he swallowed hard, and for an instant Miriam thought she saw tears in his eyes.
    It was a fine spring morning, yellow and purple wildflowers dappling the fields, cactus beginning to bloom, and birds swarming through air scented with flowers and ringing with songs and laughter as the wedding procession wound its way into the hacienda village and up the narrow streets to the church.
    Two little girls sprinkled flower petals in front of them as Miriam’s padrino escorted her up the church steps alongside Domingo. Father Noceda met them there on the portico, and the crowd in the churchyard fell silent as the ceremony began.

    Miriam’s departure left a hole in Rachel’s heart, and she sat through services in the Bender barn that morning stiffly, listening without hearing. Perched on the backless bench behind her mother, Rachel knew she wasn’t the only one thinking of Miriam. Mamm sighed deeply every minute or two and kept a handkerchief at the ready the whole time, occasionally dabbing at the corners of her eyes. Again, she had eaten hardly a bite of breakfast. Mamm’s dresses hung loosely on her these days, and Dat worried about her. She endured church with a sullen, vacant look in her eyes, staring at nothing, as if she were watching Miriam’s wedding from a distance.
    Miriam’s wedding. Even the words sounded disjointed and ironic to Rachel. When they first came to Mexico, of all the Bender girls except Ada, Miriam was the one with the slimmest hopes of ever finding a husband. Rachel, on the other hand, already knew whom she would marry, and yet in the absence of a minister three years had passed without the opportunity. Now here she sat, nineteen and still single.
    And Jake wasn’t in church this morning, another disquieting sign. There had been rumors whispered between the women for the last month. They knew something was going on because every day a couple of the younger men would disappear on horseback before dawn and return at dusk without saying where they’d been—a different pair every day. They did this even on Sunday, a breaking of the Sabbath that Rachel had never witnessed in her entire life. Esther Shrock had finally gleaned from her son that the fathers had assigned sentries to the heights on the north and west, but he would say no more than that. If the men were frightened enough to post lookouts on Sunday it could only mean that whatever was out there threatened the lives of everyone in the