Bride's Flight from Virginia City, Montana Read online

  If he had glanced east out of one of the windows, he would have seen that Augustine Yoder had not yet left. What he had done was climb out of his buggy and kneel by its side in the snow and ice and pray for God to spare the life of the young man from the Montana Territory. He stayed on his knees in the cold for at least ten minutes. Then he rose and got back into the buggy. Matchbox stamped his front left hoof, but Augustine did nothing. He waited until the train arrived and Zephaniah boarded. Not until the black smoke of the locomotive was a distant pillar in a sky rapidly losing its light did he flick the reins, turn the buggy around, and set Matchbox on a fast trot for the village of Bird in Hand.

  Chapter 28

  He came to the cemetery at night after he stepped off the train. Stars were white and sharp and pointed in the chill air of the February night. He walked through the tall brick arch of the cemetery’s gatehouse. Sometime ago back in the Montana Territory, he had read in a paper about the project, how the Union dead had been moved from other locations on the vast battlefield and reburied here, state by state, over three thousand of them. The moon rose like a bonfire and lit the white headstones, row upon row, and they suddenly gleamed like candles. Zeph put down his gear and moved among them like a spirit.

  He read the names. I know none of them, he thought, yet I fought beside them all. Up and down the rows he went. We fell here and there like sacks of corn, all jumbled up with one another and with dead Rebs, yet now we lie in straight lines without a hint of confusion or messiness. Zeph touched a headstone. He let the cold work its way up his fingers to his arm and shoulder and heart, so he could remember this place was about death, not order and decency.

  No Confederate soldiers were buried here. They had been unearthed and removed to cities like Charleston and Savannah. He kept walking through the snow. At one point he stopped and began to look past the naked branches of trees to the fields and hills that were white as open bone. It looked different from those hot July days, yet it seemed right to him that he should be here in the season that allowed no growth or green or lushness.

  He strained his eyes.

  Where was the wheat field and Emmitsburg Road? The McPherson Woods? Devil’s Den and Little Round Top? The peach orchard? The clamor of battle and the cries of dying men assailed him. Zeph groaned and put his hands to his face. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The only respite at night when lamps floated over the carnage as men looked for missing friends and wounded comrades.

  Why couldn’t Raber let the war go? Hadn’t once been enough? What could possess a man, any man, that he would want to relive the battles and the horrors, the death of companions, and the slaughter of boys no older than fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen, their young faces motionless against the tall hay and moist summer earth?

  They had almost lost Jude in the orchard. And Matt at Cemetery Ridge—he had taken a ball in his leg and come close to bleeding out. Three, four, five times over the three-day battle Zeph was certain he himself was in a fix he could not get out of and that he was finished. It was a miracle he had survived. Yet here he was at the battlefield again, and it was not clear at all whether he would walk away unscathed a second time.

  He had no idea what he would say to Raber or if Raber would even give him a chance to speak. Well, as long as the hope of getting his hands on Zeph drew Raber out of hiding and away from Bird in Hand, that’s what mattered. He was not interested in dying only hours after the most beautiful woman in the world had said she would marry him, but he was even less interested in seeing her and twenty or thirty men, women, and children die along with him. Gettysburg was where he had to be. If only Raber felt the same way.

  Zeph cleared away a patch of snow and laid his sheepskin coat down over the frozen soil. Then he untied his bedroll and spread it out, placing the Amish overcoat on top of it for extra warmth. Raber or no Raber, he was cold and tired. He removed his boots and climbed into his bedroll, tugging his father’s pistol free and holding it in his hand under the blankets. Then he put his head on his bent arm and lay down to sleep among the Union dead.

  When he woke, he could not remember having dreamed. The morning chill had woken him. The piker hat had fallen off, and the cold had gnawed at his skull. He sat up, found the hat, and crammed it back on his head. Then he put the revolver inside the top of his pants just near one of the suspenders. Tiny snowflakes melted against his forehead and cheeks. The first proper thought that came into his mind was a verse from Psalm 23:Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.

  He heard a footstep in the snow. A heavy coil of rope landed on his legs with a thump. At one end of it was a hangman’s noose.

  “Good morning, Captain Parker.”

  Zeph looked up. A tall man stood over him in a long sheepskin coat and Union slouch hat that reminded Zeph of Samuel’s cavalry Stetson. Sideburns curled down both sides of his face.

  The man smiled. “Looks like you could use more sleep. Well, I believe I can help you with that. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll see what I can do to help you find that long, deep rest you seem to need.”

  The man looked out over the fields and slopes covered in white. “I was here the whole three days. You?” “Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”

  “Lee always felt he would have won if he’d had Stonewall the Presbyterian. What do you think?”

  “I think if we’d had Grant the war would have been over on July fourth.”

  The man snorted. “Is that what you believe? The war ain’t over for me yet.” He looked around. “Thank you for being a man of your word. This will be an honorable exit, even if it is at the end of a rope. We spent an hour scoping this place before we came down. Been here for a day, truth be told, keeping an eye on things. No cavalry, no lawmen, just you and your piker hat. Get up and let me take a look at you.”

  Zeph climbed out of the bedroll in his bare feet. He and the man were about the same height. Just under the sideburn on the left side of the man’s face Zeph could see the trace of a scar it covered up.

  “Raber,” he said.

  “I am. Sideburns grow faster than a beard. You’ll recall it was a Union general who started the fashion.”

  A man stood a few feet behind Raber. He held a pistol in his hand and wore a long woolen coat and slouch hat like Raber’s, though it was quite a bit more battered and stained. Raber indicated him with a flick of his head. “Major Spunk Early of Illinois. I have two more of my boys watching the approach to the cemetery with sniper rifles. Billy and Wyatt are death at half a mile.”

  “There won’t be anyone coming.”

  “After the railroad I take precautions.” Raber glanced about. “Is there a tree you favor, Captain? I don’t want to prolong this.

  I’d like to take the train back to Lancaster. It was slow coming down by horse. I have work to finish in a timely fashion.”

  “What work?”

  “Oh, rape, pillage, and plunder, I reckon, the same as we did on our immortal march through Georgia. You killed a couple of my men, Parker. There’s a debt to pay.”

  “Those Amish are more your people than they are mine.”

  Raber exploded with rage. “They are not my people! They haven’t been my people since the day they threw us out of their church and killed my mother and my sister Mary! I hope they will take a picture of their bodies swaying in the breeze just as pretty as the one that graced the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune!”

  He glared at Zeph. “Get the rope, Major Early.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I know you came here on your own to draw me away from Bird in Hand, Captain, and you must understand I admire that. You’re a man of substantial courage. I salute you. It did the Amish no good, they will die anyway, but no one can say you did not make the most valiant effort. So I offer you a final opportunity—is there a view you’d like to see one last time while you’re swinging from your neck? Little Round Top? The peach orchard? McPherson Ridge?”

 
“Someone coming!” yelled a man by the cemetery gatehouse.

  Raber looked at Zeph. “Just one?”

  Zeph shook his head. “I swear, I have no idea—”

  “You swear, do you? On a stack of Bibles?”

  “It’s a woman! No one else! Just a woman in them funny clothes!”

  Raber drew a revolver from a holster under his sheepskin coat. “Let’s go take a look. After you, Captain. Put on your overcoat first. I wouldn’t want you to catch your death and cheat the hangman.”

  Zeph threw on the cape overcoat and slogged through the snow to the gatehouse. Two men in blue were using it for cover. The woman was about a hundred yards away, head bent, doggedly marching through the snowdrifts. A white bonnet, a long cape coat, very plain.

  “Amish,” said Zeph.

  “She your cavalry this time around?” Raber reholstered his pistol. “Didn’t think you’d get a woman to do your fighting for you.”

  “I don’t know who it is, Raber.”

  “Major General Raber.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone where I was going.”

  “Well, then I guess a little sparrow told her.”

  As Zeph watched her come toward them, his heart began to sink. He had seen that very walk only the day before as he sat under a cluster of trees on the Zook farm and waited while a person made her way across the snow toward him. He hoped he was wrong. But the closer she got the more certain he became.

  Oh, Lord.

  As she approached the gatehouse, Raber swept off his slouch hat. “Good morning, ma’am. Where have you come from?”

  “Good day to you, sir. I have just stepped off the early train from Philadelphia, Lancaster, and York.”

  “Perhaps you have come by to place some flowers on a brave soldier’s grave, even at this chill winter hour?”

  Her head was still down. She kept her eyes on the steps she took through the snow and ice. “Not entirely. Although I have come to find and speak with a brave soldier if one may be found.”

  Raber smiled broadly. “Look no further then, ma’am, you have found what you seek.” “Why, a brave man, sir?” “None braver.” “And a soldier?”

  “All my adult life and most, I may confess, of my youth.”

  “I am glad to hear it. Because then we may actually be able to hold a Christian conversation and you can explain to me where that brave soldier has been hiding these ten years. You have certainly not been him, and he has most certainly not been you.”

  A frown covered Raber’s face. The woman lifted her face defiantly and let him stare at her in astonishment.

  “Good morning, brother. It has been a long time since our good-bye in the summer of 1861, when you snuck out of the house to enlist in the Federal Army.”

  Raber looked as if he had been bayoneted. “Little L,” he finally whispered.

  “Seraphim.” Her blue eyes crackled with fire.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, since you have made up your mind to hang my husband, I thought I should at least come along to pay him my last respects. Isn’t that what a good Northern woman would do, Major General Raber?”

  “Him?”

  “He declared his love for me only yesterday, brother, and I accepted. It was he who protected me and the children all the way from Iron Springs. Don’t you know my name? Charlotte Spence, the woman you threatened to kill in the Montana Territory.”

  Raber stood rooted, taking it all in like a boxer standing stunned and still absorbing fresh blow after fresh blow.

  Lynndae stepped closer to him so that they were only inches apart. “My brother. The boy I played with. The boy I read to. The boy with a dog named Sparkles and a raccoon named Jingles. The boy who became a man amidst the horror of war and led his men, Ricky said, like King Arthur leading the knights of the Round Table—brave, gallant, chivalrous, merciful to the defeated, courteous to the prisoner, noble, unconquerable, the very flower of manhood. What happened to that officer and gentleman, brother? Who stole his soul out of your body and replaced it with the spirit of a demon?”

  She drew back and slapped him across the face with all the force she could muster, which, Zeph knew, was not inconsiderable. Blood sprayed from Raber’s lips. Still he did not move or speak. His men looked alarmed, and Spunk Early took a step toward Lynndae.

  “Child killer!” she spat. “Woman killer! Thief! Murderer! Is this how you honor our father? Would he be proud to stand up among the saints in heaven and have them look toward earth with him? ‘There is my youngest boy, Angel. There is my pride and joy. There is my heart and soul, my righteous and holy Christian son?’ Do you remember nothing of the prayers he prayed over you or the Bible stories he read to us by the fire at night? Have you forgotten your own baptism or the day you kneeled before us all and said Jesus was your Savior and Lord?”

  Raber continued to stare at her, his face white, blood trickling from the cut on his mouth.

  “What about our mother? They say there are no tears in heaven—oh, Seraph, how could she have no tears when she looks down on the babies you have murdered and the mothers you have slaughtered and the fathers you have put in early graves—unarmed, unwilling to fight, innocent—yet you butchered them like cattle and hogs, no remorse, no conscience, not a drop of pity in your heart. Oh, stop it, stop it, put away your guns and ask God’s forgiveness and give yourself up. End this bloodshed, and even if you find death in this world for your sins, you will find eternal life in the next in the presence of God. Angel, I beg you, don’t go into eternity an unrepentant killer—”

  “Shut up, you devil!” shouted Early.

  Raber turned to him. “No, Spunk, don’t—”

  But Early’s gun swung up on Lynndae, and his face was a mask of hate. “I’ll close that mouth forever and thank the good Lord in heaven I did it!”

  Chapter 29

  Early was going to shoot. Lynndae didn’t even notice him; she was still looking up at her brother’s face, tears springing into her eyes, her gloved hands on his chest.

  The snow was pouring down. Raber drew his revolver as he turned toward Early. But Early caught the movement of Raber’s hand and flicked the barrel away from Lynndae. He fired and Raber went down. Lynndae cried out and knelt over her brother. Early shifted his pistol back to her.

  Zeph pulled his father’s gun free from under his vest and overcoat. He knew there were no bullets in it, but there was nothing else he could think of to do that might save the life of the woman he loved. He hoped Early would see him draw the revolver and swing his weapon away from Lynndae a second time. But Early ignored him, yelling as he aimed his pistol to fire. Zeph squeezed the trigger of the six-gun. A roar filled his ears, and the bullet caught Early high up on the shoulder of his gun hand. He flew backward into the snow, and his pistol went spinning into the air.

  Dad loaded six chambers, Zeph thought in astonishment as the gun smoke burned his nostrils.

  But now the two men at the gatehouse had decided to shoot.

  “I got him!” shouted one, aiming his rifle at Zeph. “I got the woman!” shouted the other. Zeph ran at Lynndae and drove her backward with the weight of his body. Something like a hot knife went through his clothing and into his arm. The force of the blow spun him around and hurled him onto his back. Snow stabbed at his neck and made him wince.

  Lying in the snow, he thought he could hear cannon fire, the shouts of men charging, the crack of muskets, and the whiz of minié balls as they scorched the air over his head. He glanced to his right and saw Raber push himself up on an elbow, his revolver flashing. All of earth and heaven seemed to be roaring, seemed to be on fire.

  Where was Lynndae?

  He struggled to sit up. One of the men at the gatehouse was lying in the snow. He was not moving. The other was wounded in his leg and leaning against the brick of the arch and fumbling to reload his rifle. Finally he tossed it to one side in frustration and dug a small pistol out of a coat pocket. Zeph watched him aim it at Raber and fire
twice. Then he pointed it at Lynndae, whom Zeph saw was only a few feet to his left. She was struggling to get to her feet, bracing both hands against the snow and frozen earth. All he could think to do was roll. In a sudden swift movement, he came at her. Again, he felt heat cut through his clothing and sting his flesh. This time it was the back of his leg. She fell as he smacked into her.

  “Stay down!” he hissed.

  There was still firing. Snow and dirt spat into his face from a near miss. A ricochet whined nearby. He lifted his head and saw that Spunk Early had climbed back to his feet and was trying to cock a revolver with his one good hand. Early ignored Raber and Zeph. He was clearly interested only in getting a shot off at Lynndae. Zeph squirmed through the snow and placed his body between Lynndae and the gunman. A bullet smacked into his boot, but he felt only a short stab of pain. Early fired again, and Zeph heard it go past his ear like a wasp.

  Zeph glanced at Raber, who had pulled another pistol from a holster under his arm and was aiming it at Early. Zeph saw him shoot three times. Then an invisible hand seemed to lift Raber off the ground, shake him, and drop him into the snow. He fired a final shot in the direction of the gatehouse and then lay still, snowflakes covering his face and hands so rapidly that soon all his flesh had vanished.

  The roaring stopped.

  Zeph was on his stomach. One arm would not work, so he used the other to push himself up. The man at the gatehouse had slid to the ground with his pistol in his hand, and his eyes were closed. He could see Early sprawled on his face and the snowfall burying him as it came down thicker and thicker. Zeph tried to reach out to Lynndae with a hand that would not respond to his commands.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She looked at him. “There’s blood on your coat.”