care that the bodies could not be seen, but the boys could easily determine who was who by the sizes of the improvised body bags. They fell to their knees as they reached the first body. It was Helen.
***
Half the day was spent moving from body to body. At times the boys would cry out and at other times they sat or stood silent. They spoke to each other and to their dead, expressing regrets and love. They grieved to the point of exhaustion.
Sometime after midday, Jedidiah brought them some water and walked back to the barn without saying a word. He had known loss and knew they needed space.
By midafternoon, the boys had been sitting in silence for well over two hours. Adam stood up and began walking to the barn. As he walked into its cool shadow, his eyes began to adjust to the change in light. There in the middle of the barn were the bandits, hog-tied and gagged, lying face down. There were four more lying among them not tied, but obviously dead. Adam looked up from them and saw Jedidiah hard at work restacking their grain and trying his best to put things back where he thought they might belong. The raiders’ eyes were filled with fear. Jedidiah worked around them as if they weren’t even there. Just as he turned with a bag of grain on his shoulder, John rounded the corner behind Adam who had frozen in his tracks taking everything in, and ran past him toward the bandits. As he ran, John grabbed one of the rifles that Jedidiah had lined up on the inside of the barn wall, and stopped short at the closest man. As the bandit stared up through his dust-covered eyelashes, John aimed the rifle at his face. The bandit squirmed and tried to beg for mercy through his gag, but John pulled the trigger. They heard the hammer strike the firing pin, but the round did not discharge. He jerked the bolt back in an attempt to chamber another round but found that the rifle was empty. The man closed his eyes and breathed out heavily with relief. But as he did, John drove the butt stock into the back of his head. The man immediately lost consciousness but John continued to hit him. As if suddenly wakened from a dream, Adam looked at Jedidiah expecting him to do something, but Jedidiah stared right back at him without expression, standing still with the sack of grain on his shoulder. Adam rushed to stop his brother, but not before he got off one last glancing blow that tore the man’s scalp back like a flap of leather. He dropped the rifle to the ground, buried his head in Adam’s shoulder, and began to cry. As the two boys clung to one another, Jedidiah returned to his self-assigned duties in the barn.
Several minutes passed before the boys regained their composure. They looked over at the thieves and murderers and thought how strange it was that less than twenty-four hours earlier, they were the frightened ones. Now, as they looked down on these nine wretched souls, they could see the absolute horror in their eyes as they waited for the unknown.
Adam and John sat in silence for some time with their backs against the inside of the barn walls looking at the captives and watching Jedidiah tirelessly working. Sweat dripped from his brow as he unloaded the raiders’ pack animals. There were several dogs he had already unloaded and had tied up in the shade with some water. He was now working on the horses and mules, removing their rigs and brushing them down, gently speaking to them as he went.
John walked over to one of the animals not yet tended and began unloading. Adam soon followed, and so the three worked into the evening hours, no one saying a word.
***
As dusk approached and the work was finished, Jedidiah and the boys stepped outside to take in the breeze and sit down for a drink of water.
Adam finally broke the silence, “We need to bury our family.”
“If you would like,” Jedidiah said, “I can dig the graves tonight and you two can bury them in the morning.”
“No sir. We will do the digging and the burying. You have done so much already. Mr. Jedidiah, you have proven yourself to be our friend, and we thank you.”
The boys stood and walked back to the barn for picks and shovels. As they passed Jedidiah, John reached down and touched his shoulder as if to say “thank you” in his own way. Jedidiah watched the boys pick out a place for their family and begin to dig. Life was hard and made for short childhoods, but the maturity of these two boys impressed Jedidiah. They, he thought, would be fine.
***
As the next morning dawned, their stomachs ached with hunger. So much had happened over the last two days, they had neither made the time nor had the desire to eat. But as their eyes opened, their nostrils were filled with the smell of breakfast. Jedidiah had been up for some time and, knowing the boys would be regaining their appetites, he thought he would treat them to breakfast. He had eggs, cheese, sausage, and bread ready for the taking. John and Adam sat up from the barn floor and hungrily made their way outside to where Jedidiah was sitting by the fire.
His back was to them as they walked up, but he spoke as if they were face-to-face. “I figured you boys would be hungry.” He sipped from his cup, then said, “You two up for some breakfast?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Jedidiah. Thank you so much,” Adam responded, followed by John’s, “Yes sir. Thank you.”
So they sat in silence filling their stomachs.
After breakfast, Jedidiah spoke the words the boys knew would come. “What do you fellas plan on doing with those raiders?”
Neither boy responded. They didn’t really know what to do. In the minutes following the murders they wanted nothing more than to go after them and kill them in a shootout. But now, things were different. The nine men and women were bound and the killing would be more like an execution.
Adam finally asked, “Mr. Jedidiah, what would you do.”
“I would kill them,” he replied simply. “Not in anger or judgment, but for protection of the innocent. If they live, they will hurt more families. The burden of responsibility has fallen to us to ensure that does not happen. It has fallen to us, and we must bear it.”
They had asked and he had given his advice, but nothing else was said for several minutes.
Finally, Jedidiah added, “You boys decide what you’re going to do. If you need my help with anything, let me know. But if you’re going to let them live, you’ll need to water them soon and look after the one John got a hold of. The decision is yours and it’s a serious one.”
He stood up and walked away leaving the boys staring at each other over the fire.
“What should we do?” John asked in a low voice.
“I think we both know what needs to be done, but neither one of us really feels good about doing it,” Adam replied, keeping his voice low as well.
“Maybe we should just ask Jedidiah to do it for us,” Adam added, finally saying out loud what they were both thinking.
“No… No.” Adam seemed to answer his own question. “Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t the easy thing, and we know we have to keep these men from hurting other people. Jedidiah is right. The burden of responsibility has fallen to us. It’s a heavy burden, but it’s ours.”
John knew his brother was right. Neither of them thought there was any other choice. And it wasn’t that they didn’t want the bandits stopped; they just had to work it out in their own way and in their own time.
“I think I’d feel better about the whole thing if we hung them instead of shot them,” John said.
“Yeah...,” Adam replied, “me too.”
“We’ll probably need Jedidiah’s help, Adam.”
“I know we will. Let’s go talk to him.”
They found Jedidiah on the other side of the property, squatting down to inspect a tiny flower. This man was still a mystery to them. He hadn’t seemed like the kind of man who would be interested in admiring the beauty of a flower.
He continued to examine it as they came up behind him. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
Neither boy answered, but in response,