The howling began on the third night in the mountains — distant, thin, rising and falling, like a voice that couldn't decide whether to sing or to cry.
Jakob lay in the wagon with his eyes open and counted the voices. Two. Three. Five. They called to each other across the valley, and the echo multiplied them, and it seemed the forest was full of wolves from horizon to horizon.
Daniel didn't wake. Anna didn't wake. Rachel lay beside him, and Jakob knew by her breathing that she wasn't sleeping, but neither of them said a word. Sometimes silence is also a conversation: I hear what you hear. I'm afraid too. We're here together.
In the morning, one sheep was missing.
Stoltzfus found tracks at the tree line: blood on the grass, a tuft of wool on a root, paw prints — large, palm-sized. Brut stood at the tracks, hackles raised, growling low.
"Gray wolves," said Stoltzfus. "Three. Maybe four."
"Will they come back?" asked Sara Yoder.
"They never left," Stoltzfus answered.
Beiler gathered the men.
"Night watches. Two at the fire, midnight to dawn. Livestock in the center, between wagons. Fires bright, all night. Does anyone have a rifle?"
Silence. The Amish don't carry weapons. This is a foundation of faith: nonresistance to evil.
"I have an axe," said Jakob.
"That's not a weapon," said Beiler. "That's a tool. If a wolf approaches — strike axe against iron. The noise will scare them. We do not kill."
Moses Yoder opened his mouth and closed it. Jakob knew what he wanted to ask: and if the wolf isn't scared by noise? But there are questions you don't ask the bishop.
The second sheep was taken the following night.
Jakob was on watch at the fire with Graber. They sat on logs wrapped in blankets, staring into darkness. The fire crackled. Horses stood tethered, ears pricked. Sheep huddled between the wagons.
At two in the morning Brut barked — sharp, clipped. Jakob leaped up, grabbed the axe, threw wood on the fire. Flame surged, and for one second he saw the eyes.
Yellow. Two yellow lights at knee height, twenty paces beyond the outermost wagon.
He struck the axe-head against the cast-iron kettle. The clang rang through camp. The eyes vanished.
But in the morning — blood at the camp's edge. And one sheep short.
Stoltzfus silently counted the flock.
"Ten. There were twelve."
On the third night Jakob didn't lie down at all.
He sat at the fire alone — Graber had fallen asleep at two — and stared into the dark. The axe lay across his knees. Beside him stood the kettle and an iron spoon.
They came at three. Not one — three. Jakob saw them in the firelight: gray shadows, silent as smoke. They moved along the camp's perimeter, searching for a weak point — a gap between wagons, a nervous sheep that might break from the flock.
Jakob stood. Took a burning branch from the fire. Walked toward them.
It was stupid. He knew it was stupid. One man with a burning stick against three hungry wolves wasn't heroism — it was idiocy. But he walked because behind him slept Rachel, Daniel, and Anna, and ten sheep that were the difference between life and starvation in the first winter in Ohio.
The wolves stopped. The largest — the leader — stood ten paces away and looked at Jakob. Eyes — yellow, calm, appraising. Not angry. Hungry.
Jakob struck the kettle. Once. Twice. Three times. Each blow — an explosion of sound in the forest silence. He yelled — not words, just a yell, a roar, an animal scream that rose from his belly and tore free, and he was frightened by his own voice.
The wolves left. Slowly, without panic, glancing back — leaving the way those leave who will return.
The whole camp woke. Children cried. Beiler stood by his wagon in a white nightshirt, hatless, gray hair loose, and looked old — for the first time on the entire journey.
"They'll come back," said Graber.
"No," said Jakob. "We'll leave first. We break camp now. We march before dawn."
Beiler nodded.
At four in the morning the column moved — in darkness, along a mountain trail, by lantern light. Children slept in wagons. Men walked with axes. Brut ran behind, guarding the flock.
The wolves did not return.
Two sheep had cost Jakob three sleepless nights, a voice gone hoarse, and new knowledge: nonresistance to evil is a good faith. But when evil comes for your children, faith is tested not by prayer but by whether you will stand with a burning stick between the wolf and the flock.
He stood.