This chapter was kinda challenging to write, but I hope you all enjoy how it turned out. One free review to the first person who can tell me where I got Liza's father's name from. (I'd say no cheating, but it's obscure enough that cheating will probably be required.) Thanks again to everyone who's still reading and reviewing after all these years!

"A while back, I heard a wee babe crying... Whose is it?"
"MINE!"

After the six girls all cried out this word in unison, there were a few seconds of stunned silence in the Pontipee barn, as their fathers and brothers and the other men just gaped at them with wide eyes and open mouths.

Then, as if on cue, everybody began talking and moving at once. It became difficult for Martha to keep track of everything that was happening. One man shouldered his rifle and left the barn right away, and Martha caught, "...see about this. I'm goin' find Mrs. Pontipee right now..." One man tried to shout orders. A few of the girls' fathers pulled them aside to talk them privately, but a few others confronted the girls right where they stood.

Martha happened to be in the middle of her circle of friends, and it took a moment for her father to reach her. The look on his face was stony and hard to read, and he didn't say a word as he took her hand and began leading her away to the rear of the barn – not gently, but not too roughly, either. Martha went along with him, but she twisted her head to look behind her and tried to find each of her friends.

Mr. Gailen had already dragged Dorcas outside the barn through its front entrance, but even though Martha couldn't see them anymore, she could hear them shouting at each other plainly. The Gailens had never been known as a soft-spoken family, but this argument was loud even by their standards. "I'm warnin' you, Dorcas, you're comin' home with me–" her father began, but Dorcas yelled right over him with, "No, I'm warnin' you, Pa, if you touch one hair on my Ben's head–"

As Martha passed by Liza and her father, she could see that the talk between them was quite the opposite. When the girls all screamed mine, Mr. Gorski, after he recovered from his shock, had gone over to Liza and began speaking to her very quietly. He now one hand on her shoulder, and it sounded almost like he was pleading with her. But then Liza said something to him very quietly, and the tender look on her father's face vanished into fury. Mr. Gorski reared back, and for a moment, Martha was afraid he was going to slap Liza, but instead, he called her a word that made Martha gasp.

Reverend Elcott heard this word, too, and he felt called to intervene. Holding Alice by the hand and dragging her along with him – Alice was still crying piteously for Gideon – he hurried over to Martha and her father. Martha heard, "Now, John, I know this is hard news to get, but as a man of God, there's some things I won't abide..." The rest of his words were lost as they approached Sarah and Mr. Kine.

"I won't go back, ya hear? I won't!" Sarah telling her father adamantly. "I can't be with Carl anymore. I only love Frank!" Sarah wasn't shouting like Dorcas, but she wasn't talking quietly like Martha, either. Carl, Sarah's old suitor, was standing there right behind her father, and the look on his face was a mix of shock and hurt and disappointment. No doubt he'd expected Sarah to give him a hero's welcome for rescuing her from the Pontipees. Had the circumstances been different, Martha would've felt sorry for him. Just now, though, she couldn't be concerned for anyone except Daniel and his brothers.

They passed by Ruth and her uncle next. "The whole kidnappin' thing was our idea, Uncle Matthew, really," Ruth was saying, with a convincing earnestness in her voice. "It was just supposed to be a... sort of a joke, you know? To give you folks a little scare? Now, the avalanche, that was a mistake. Caleb and his brothers got carried away, you see, and they feel plenty bad about that now, but it really was..."

Martha wanted to hear more of what Ruth was saying, and she quite was impressed with what a smooth liar her friend was. It occurred to her now that if only they'd gotten their stories straight, if only they'd sat down together one evening and agreed upon some lie like this to tell their families, this whole evening might have played out very differently. But it was too late now.

Now the rear door of the barn was right in front of them, and much too soon, Martha was outside in the night air, alone with her father, a man she hadn't seen in over six months, and who still hadn't said a word to her. What on earth should she say to him? Should she really try to make him believe that Millie and Adam's baby was hers and Daniel's? Or maybe she should try to copy Ruth's lie?

But before she had time to decide, a horse whinnied and reared up just in front of them. Martha gasped and jerked back for a moment, startled, but then she recognized the animal. It was one of the Pontipees' younger horses, a sleek reddish-brown one called Rusty, still hitched to the post behind the barn and frightened by all the noise and commotion. Martha remembered what Ephraim had taught her about horses over the winter, and she quickly put one hand on its head, gently rubbing the pressure point between its eyes, and talked to it quietly.

"Sh, sh, there, there, Rusty," she said in a low, calm voice, and soon, the horse's breathing evened out. It helped that inside the barn, things were a little quieter. Mr. Gailen had shouted at Dorcas a moment ago, "And just what should I go home and tell your little sister? That it's all durn well and good to fall in love with a man who kidnaps you out of your own bed? Have you thought 'bout what kind of example you're settin' for her?" Dorcas had fallen silent, as if out of everything that had happened tonight, this was the only thing to actually gave her pause.

"Well, I'll be," Martha heard her father mumble, and with her hands still on Rutsy, she turned to look at him. The expression on his face was now one of plain astonishment. "And just what happened to you bein' a-feared a horses, Martha?"

It had always been an embarrassing secret. Only Martha's family knew about it, for she managed to keep it secret from her friends and the townsfolk. Maybe being scared of horses was all well and good for girls back east, but who had ever heard of a girl on the frontier who was scared of horses? But Martha had been terrified of them all her life. She could handle riding in a carriage or a wagon just fine, as long as the horses stayed between their shafts and away from her, but she'd never petted or fed a horse in her life – much less ridden on one directly – until she'd arrived at the Pontipee farm.

Martha couldn't explain it to herself, much less to her father, but she tried to, anyway. "Well, ya see, Pa, it was Daniel," she said, still petting Rusty's muzzle and neck and moving even closer to him, which made her father gape even more. He looked more surprised by this than by when she'd yelled out that Millie's baby was hers. "He's been teachin' me 'bout horses all this winter, and... well, somehow, he just made 'em seem not so scary."

Martha felt silent for a moment, remembering. One day last winter, after watching Daniel with the horses for a few weeks, Martha had joined him in petting the gentle, old brown mare over the fence. And when Daniel said off-handedly, "I reckon horses ain't so different from people, really," Martha saw for the first time that maybe they weren't. She never actually told Daniel that she was afraid of horses, but he seemed to sense it. He began patiently teaching her everything he knew about them, and by the time spring came, she was helping Daniel brush and feed all the horses regularly.

"Daniel even says he's gotta watch me now, says I'm spoilin' the horses," Martha went on, more relaxed now and even laughing a little. "I ain't really spoilin' 'em, though, Pa, I told him that. I only like to give 'em a little somethin' sweet every now and then, ya know, an apple slice or a bit a sugar. But Daniel says I shouldn't be gettin' 'em used to rich foods. Don't he, Rusty?"

She smiled at the horse, then at her father, but he didn't smile back. His expression had become hard to read again, and he watched her silently for a moment. He seemed to be thinking about something, and then he straightened his hat and said, "Well, Martha, I reckon any man who can teach you not to be a-feared a horses don't deserve to get shot."

Martha gasped and clutched her chest, not trusting herself to speak. Did he mean... could her father really mean that he would let Daniel live? And maybe... that he might even let him and Martha be together? Her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment, she saw a dazzling, sunny future stretched before her, she and Daniel walking hand-in-hand, and him carrying a little boy or g –

But then Martha squeezed her eyes shut, blacking out that bright future. No, she couldn't let her heart hope for that. The situation was still too precarious. Between Mr. Gailen shouting at Dorcas and Mr. Gorski calling Martha that terrible word, perhaps the other men were still determined to hang the Pontipees from the nearest tree.

Martha opened her eyes again when she heard movement. Ruth's uncle and Reverend Elcott were now standing beside her father, talking to him in hushed voices. Her father nodded at them, then turned to Martha and gestured for her to follow him.

Martha soon found herself and her friends in a little circle inside the barn again, while their fathers, Ruth's uncle, and Mayor Perkins caucused among themselves a little ways away, shooting occasional glances at them over their shoulders. Many of the men were still angry. When Martha and her friends had first regrouped, Mr. Gailen shook a stern finger at them and said, "You all stay right here, and don't any uppity ideas 'bout tryin' to convince us you've birthed a Pontipee baby since you been here. We had two fellas search that house up and down, and they only found one baby in it, and Millie swears it's her and Adam's."

Martha had bristled with anger at this. Calling that beautiful baby girl an it! Strangers searching their house! For she now thought of the Pontipee house as theirs. Perhaps they'd even done it while keeping Millie at gunpoint, since for all the townsfolk knew, Millie had been in on the kidnapping, too.

For a moment, Martha thought back to night of the kidnapping. She remembered how they'd all arrived here at the farm sobbing and hysterical, and how Millie had appeared on the front porch like a beacon of light from the darkness. She'd stood up to the boys and banished them to the barn and brought the girls into the kitchen and brewed them tea and somehow made everything better. Martha wished that Millie would appear and do that again now, but she supposed that tonight's problems were too big for even Millie to solve. Where was Millie? Still in the house with the baby?

She knew where Daniel and his brothers were, and her eyes went to them again. She could just see them through the open front door of the barn. They were all sitting in the dirt in a small circle, with two men with rifles standing guard over them. They weren't talking or moving – no doubt they'd been warned that they'd be shot if they tried to get away – but at least they were all still alive.

"Ooh, I wish we could hear what they're sayin'," Sarah whispered, looking at her father and the other men.

It occurred to Martha that tonight's problems might be too big for Millie to solve... but they were not too big for God. "Please, God," she whispered, "please let the boys be all right." As she spoke, she reached out and took Sarah's hand in one of hers, and Liza's in her other. They reached out, too, until all six of them were holding hands together. And even though they were quiet, Martha could sense that they were all praying the same prayer, too.