Bride's Flight from Virginia City, Montana (8 page)

She laughed. “And I’ll look even more like a man.”

Matt smiled. “It’ll help.”

They came down the front steps. Zeph had the jackets ready for her and the children. He helped Cheyenne with hers and then held Charlotte’s open. She liked his touch as he tugged the sleeves over her arms. Cody had already pulled his on over his suit.

“Cody,” said Zeph, “Cheyenne, you know Mister King, and these two deputies are Mister Dunning and Mister Doede. They’ll be riding with us tonight.”

The deputies raised their derby hats.

“You two have handsome mustaches,” said Charlotte.

“Thank you, ma’am,” they responded, one after the other.

“And this is Pastor Jude,” continued Zeph. “He’s also riding with us to Virginia City. You remember him?”

“He prayed for everyone,” said Cheyenne.

“That’s right. Cody, this is your horse over here, Raincloud. Think you can handle him?”

In the lantern light all of them could see Cody’s pleasure at being given the tall dapple gray. “Yes, sir.”

“Charlotte, this is your buckskin. What do you think, Cheyenne? Isn’t she a beauty?”

Cheyenne nodded and smiled. “Yah, sir.”

“Her name’s Marigold.” He helped Cheyenne into the saddle. “There you go, m’lady.”

Charlotte put her left boot into the stirrup. “Will you ride beside us, Mister Parker? Or should I say Deputy Marshal Parker?” She had caught sight of the badge.

“Matt’s idea,” he muttered, “and only temporary.”

Charlotte looked down from Marigold at Laycock and Martin. “Tell the men I appreciate all they are doing for the Spence Ranch. But I do not wish that to include getting themselves shot. If Raber’s men show up, I don’t want any of you to stand in the way. Let Raber do what he wants, so long as no one is hurt.”

They touched the brims of their hats.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Laycock. “We’ll look forward to the day you return.”

“As will I.”

She walked Marigold over to Matt. “Marshal, I have spoken with the children. They are looking forward to seeing their aunt Rosa again, so this long trip is something they are glad to take. As for drawing likenesses of the men, well, that is not something they feel they are able to do right now. But they understand how it might help you, and they are going to try and remember what some of them looked like and put charcoal to paper. When that happens, and I believe it will, I shall have the sketches sent to you by the fastest means at my disposal.”

Matt nodded.

As Charlotte turned her horse toward the road, she said in a quiet voice, “None of the men were masked, Matt, and neither was the leader that they called Angel.”

As she headed out with the others, Charlotte wondered if her ranch hands would listen to what she had told Martin and Laycock. Somehow she doubted it. She prayed they would make it through the next few days without a scratch. Then she wondered if that was too much to ask of God under the circumstances, given the kind of men who worked for her—loyal to a fault, hardworking, proud and brave—and the kind of men they would be facing—vicious, treacherous, and bloodthirsty. She shook her head and wished, not for the first time, that God would scour evil from the earth the way she scoured grime from her pots and pans. Then a place like Sweet Blue Meadow, already a jewel, would be a paradise without end.

But that’s heaven, Charlotte,
she said to herself,
and you’re not in heaven yet.

A mile from her ranch, they veered west toward the Rockies and a stretch of forest, taking a little-used track left over from the gold rush days. This route would bypass the town and any of its citizens who might be up and watching the main roads.
Who would be watching for us?
she wondered again.
Who would help a man like Seraph Raber harm two innocent children?

She felt someone’s eyes on her. It was not an unpleasant sensation, as sometimes it could be, so she let the feeling linger a moment before she turned her head. She hoped it would be Zephaniah Parker, and she was rewarded with his concerned face and smile.

“Are you worried about me, Mister Parker?” she asked.

“No more than usual, considering what we’re going through right now,” Zeph answered, “but you did seem awfully faraway.”

“Did I? Perhaps I’m missing Sweet Blue already and wishing we were to Pennsylvania and back again. Do you recall the day you first came to this place?”

They spoke softly in the dark, and their horses trotted quietly through the rocks and pines alongside the others.

She saw Zeph nod slightly. “It was ‘69. Thousands of people living up and down the valleys here then. Some had gone up to Helena when they had their strike in ‘64, but men were still pulling a decent amount of gold out of the hills in Iron Springs and Virginia City. Matt was already here. He had dreams of making it rich and buying a big spread in Texas. When Jude and I showed up, he was a deputy, and it’s been the law for him ever since.”

“What about you?”

“Jude was talking about being a circuit rider with the Methodist Church, and I guess I just wanted to make enough gold to get my own place in California. We hit pay dirt all right, not a lot, but Jude decided to start a church with his cut. He put that whole building up on his own, and I bought the land I turned into the Bar Zee. Funny, I never thought about California again, and he never thought about circuit riding. This place got a hold of all three of us and never let go. Maybe it’s the water.”

She was sure he was smiling in the dark; she could
feel
him smiling in the dark. “Your mother and father never wanted to join their sons?”

“Well, Mom passed away just after the war—at least she got to see us home to our little ranch safe and sound, and Dad, it seemed as if he never wanted to leave her side. So we’d visit him once a year, stage and train we never could talk him into leaving Wyoming. Died in ‘73. I believe he would have loved all the mountains here and the valleys and the streams. He was always one for hunting and getting away from the crowds.”

He glanced up at the stars, and she knew he was wondering how the view would have made his father feel.

“I guess I’m talking too much,” he apologized.

“Not at all,” she responded. “It makes the time pass. Please, go on.”

“Well, Cheyenne was growing too cramped for Dad. They started her up in ‘67, just south of our place. He liked going into town at first, but he must’ve seen where it was heading, four thousand people in the first few months.”
Now,
she thought,
he is shrugging his shoulders in that cute way he has.
“Couldn’t get him out here, though. Matt got married in Cheyenne for Dad’s sake, and Sally didn’t mind. I would like for Dad to have seen the Bar Zee, and he would have been proud to watch Jude preach at his own pulpit in his own church. These things don’t always work out, do they?”

“No,” she said, and she thought of her father and brothers never coming home from the war, never stepping through the door again, only Ricky making it out with a bullet in his lung, a bullet that wouldn’t let him alone until it had finished what it started.

“I hate war,” she said suddenly and more loudly than she meant.

Zeph was silent for a bit, and then he said to her, “I’m sorry, Charlotte. I believe your family would have liked the Sweet Blue.”

Charlotte wrestled with all kinds of memories and feelings that usually she would just hold inside. But this was the ride she’d wanted to take with Zeph for years, this was the time God had given her, and she felt she needed to make as much use of it as she could.

“You warm enough, Cheyenne?” she suddenly asked the girl snuggled up against her.

“Yah, Miss Charlotte.”

“All this grown-up talk isn’t boring you?”

“I don’t listen to much of it.”

Charlotte laughed. “The perfect audience, Z.”

They rode for a while without talking. She glanced around her and finally found Cody riding with Billy King. King was leading one of the packhorses, and she spotted Jude leading the other. Then she returned to the thoughts she’d thrust away a few minutes before and decided it was time to offer them to Zephaniah Parker to see what he would make of them, and of her, once she’d finished.

“Do you know what Amish is?” she asked him.

“No, I don’t,” he answered.

“Mennonite?”

He seemed to hesitate. “A fellow in our platoon during the war said he had Mennonite roots. Said they didn’t believe in wars and violence and that his family had been real disappointed in him for joining up.”

She nodded. “It’s like that. The Amish broke away from the Mennonites because they wanted to be even more strict. Jacob Amman felt people should be shunned if they broke the rules of the church. Ignored. Not spoken to. Cut off. Until they repented of what they’d done wrong, and then they could be brought back into fellowship again.”

She looked over at him. He had brought Cricket in closer. She took a deep breath. “I’m Amish, Z, Amish born and raised. You said once I had a sweet accent. I grew up speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. English was my second language. We were part of an Amish community in Bird in Hand in Lancaster County, the same community Cody and Cheyenne are from. I had a happy childhood, Z. There is a great deal of gentleness and love among the Amish. But my father felt it was wrong for the South to force slavery on other people. So he joined the Union army to resist them. And my brothers did, too.”

She rode in silence for several minutes. All of a sudden she felt a reluctance to continue talking about her family. It was more painful to bring it up than she’d thought it would be.

“I suppose I’m boring you,” she said, with an irritability she didn’t mean to direct at him.

“No, ma’am. Nothing that interests you could be boring to me.”

“Is that right?” she snapped.
Calm down, Charlotte,
she told herself,
there’s no need to get your Spence up.
“Please do not call me ma’am again.”

He was quiet for a moment and then said, “I won’t.”

Still irritable, she decided to plunge on in defiance of her misgivings for starting the conversation at all.

“Perhaps it wasn’t all about the South bullying people. My father did not feel there should be two countries. He was very much against that. But the church was against war and warned Father that if he left to fight he would be shunned, our whole family would be shunned. He was a proud man and was convinced that God had told him to take up arms against slavery. Told the elders he was done with being Amish and being part of the colony. Took steps to make sure his family would be taken care of if the elders really did turn the church against his family. Then he and my brothers went to Philadelphia to enlist.”

Again she grew silent, struggling with her memories.

Zephaniah thought she was done. “Did the church turn its back on you?”

Charlotte flared. “I will tell this in my own way and my own time. I am not a rush ahead, restless spirit like you.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Just stop. Yes, the church turned its back on us. Satisfied? From that time on, my mother and I and my sister, Mary, were shunned by the other Amish. No one would even say hello to us. We still lived among them—Mother wouldn’t leave the house Father had built—but there was no friendship, no sense of family or community or love. Mother might have taken us to Virginia if Virginia hadn’t been one great battlefield during those years. She had family there. I saw a few acts of kindness from the Amish, usually from the family Father had asked to keep an eye on us. But even when my sister, Mary, grew ill and died, there was little support.”

Charlotte had been telling her story without looking at Zeph. Now she stole a glance to see if he was even listening. His eyes were locked onto her. It was obvious he was taking in every word she spoke.

“I watched Mother wither. When we received the news that Father had been killed, and then the same terrible news about each of my brothers, it was just as if the Confederate army had plunged a bayonet into her own chest. She gave up and lay down, and would not rise. An Amish family took me in after her death. These were the people Father had asked to help us. I was thirteen, and I remember how very lonely I felt, and frightened, but they were kind to me and did not seem to care that my family was excommunicated.”

She was angry that she felt tears on her face. Crying was not a luxury she afforded herself. Looking up at the night sky, she swiped at her eyes with the palm of her hand.
Oh, you’ve come this far,
she said to herself impatiently,
you might as well be done with it.

“We did not know Ricky had survived,” she went on, “but he came one day to our door and took me in his arms and thanked the Amish family; then he said we were leaving Pennsylvania and going west and starting fresh. We came here in ‘66, and Ricky struck gold. He poured it all into me and the ranch at Sweet Blue. So, you see, I understand something of what the parents of these children have gone through, how awful the shunning must have been to make them pick up and leave the Amish community and travel here by wagon to start again. The only reason I am taking them to Lancaster County is because Seraph Raber will kill them if I don’t.

“When this is over, I pray they will want to come back and live on the Sweet Blue. To tell you the truth, if it were just about me, I would prefer to stay here and face Raber and his savages than travel to Pennsylvania and face the people who destroyed my family. But there are others to think of. Cheyenne here, asleep against my chest. Cody. The women and men and children of Iron Springs. That’s why I’m going to Ogden with you, Z, and for no other reason. I swore to God I’d never return to Lancaster County. Never.”

I will not look him in the face,
she said as she stared straight ahead at the winding gold rush trail,
I will not let him see my tears and my pain.
But she did turn to him in the hope that he could do something, anything, about the anguish she had locked in her heart for a lifetime and buried in beef cattle and stock prices and horses and fencing. His face was a pale blur, and she could not read his eyes through her tears.